Earth/ocean/shallow water

[bh]

See this Earth/Ocean texture, it's also available for download here:

http://www.rhundley.freeserve.co.uk/earthwater.html

It might a bit on the blue side for some tastes, but give it a go. It weighs in at around 8 megs.

[Don. Edwards]

And I thought the textures from BlueMarble were to over-saturated. I stand corrected. These win the prize.

[bh]

The Bluemarble texture is way too dark... I'm doing some more work on this and it should be available later today...this evening UK time. I will post the forum when it's ready.

The colour of Earth's oceans in Celestia seems to be a matter of contention.

I like to see blue oceans. Nasa's 'Earth From Space' site has some great photos.

Don... your new earth clouds texture is great.

[Don. Edwards]

As I have some experience with working with Earth textures let me give just a few pointers. Just because the oceans my look lighter in color from the NASA photos doesn't mean its true. You have to take into consideration there is a great deal of atmosphereic defraction going on from orbit. The oceans are reflecting the color of the sky above them not there own color. You have to keep in mind water works like a mirror. Thats why Celestia has built in specturals to help give the water that reflective effect and to help give the illusion that you are seeing the water reflect the skys color. I agree that BlueMarbles colors for the oceans in just a bit dark and a little to purple. Thats why I used Space-Graphics.com version of the Earth texture and adjusted it to a more or less accurate version. I have been told by several people thats it a good comprimise.
The other thing you must do is to take the colors of the vegitation down several notches and maybe even to half. Vegitation from orbit is a very dark green almost looking black in the most densly vegitated areas like the Amazon basin and the Congo of Africa. I had a heated debate over this with a friend of mine. He felt the vegitation colors from Blue-Marble were right. After showing him several NASA photos he changed his tune and came onboard with me and me ideas that I implemented into the texture I released. Keep up the work though. Maybe you can do better than I did. But you really need to have a better look at some more of those NASA images before you consider yourself happy with what you have done.

[bh]

I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I've reworked the Bluemarble texture and to some extent, the vegetation.
The blue is lighter but I fear any more desaturation will wash it out completly...

Check it out at the above link.

I still think that if the oceans look blue from space, because of refraction, atmospheric reflection or whatever, then they should appear blue in Celestia... afterall we are viewing Earth from space...right?

[selden]

Personally, I think the blueness should vary depending on whether or not "Render Atmosphere" is enabled. Presumably with atmosphere disabled, the water surface should look black (reflecting outer space) with glints of stars when specular reflections are enabled.

But somehow I doubt that'll ever get implemented.

[Don. Edwards]

Well the oceans may reflect the blackness of space but it doubt you would see any stars. The ocean surface is dynamic and in mosion for a single tiny point of light to be seen. I don't even think you would the moon reflected very clearly. But Selden is right. From space the watter would be almost black. Thats why the BlueMarble textures have such a dark look.
As I said before the pupose of the spectural lighting effects does the job you are trying to do. I am starting to wonder what kind of video card you are using bh. Are you using an NVidia based card or a card from another chip vender. If you were using an NVidia card you woluldn't need to do all this. I am inserting 4 pictures that show what I am talking about. They are of the texture I have been working on and show spectural lighting on and off. First we look over the Java area from above with spec lighting turned on.

Now with it turned off.

Now we see the same area at a much lower angle with spec lighting on.

And now with it off.

As you can see if you have a NVidia based card this is what you should be seeing but if you are useing say an ATI based card or another chip vender your are going to see the oceans as very dark unless you artificialy lighten them up. There are some textures already made that look like that but there quality is no where as good as the others that are avaiable. If you check http://www.space-graphics.com I think they have a lighter version available for download. I will check into this and if they do maybe I can do some work on it and make it available as well.

[bh]

Very nice shots Don...

My card is a Ceative gforce2 32mg.

This must be the root of my problem here.

Thanks for taking so much trouble on this topic.

I'm going to abandon this project for the time being...

I'll work on some nice 4k textures and work on the oceans for my own use untill a can afford a better graphics card...phew!

[Don. Edwards]

bh,
You should be able to get these same effects with your GeForce 2 32meg without much effort. I used to have one myself and I was able to use spectural lighting effects. Fridger only uses a GeForce 2 with 32megs and look the things he has done. I think you need to try a texture with a specmap plugged in or add one yourself by adding the image to your textures folder and enter its name in your solarsystem.ssc. You have the card so why not use the features it has. I think you have the right idea about texture size though. I always kept my textures to no more than 4k when I used my GeForce 2. I know this may sound dumb but you never stated what OS you are using. I know speclighting isn't working on the Mac platform right now but I believe it works on Linux and it definetly works in Windows all versions. Don't give up on this now. I know you can get these features to work if you take just a little time to try. Make sure you have the newest drivers from NVidia not Creative. As most card manufacturers are always months behind in implementing the newer drivers. Go staight to NVidia and download, if you are using Windows the Detonator 40 driver set for your OS. Get them installed and do a little tweaking to your solarsystem.ssc and see if that gets you up and going.
I will have my 4k version of the Earth texture I made ready in a day or two. When its ready for download you can just plug it in as your earth texture and should be able to take screen caps just like these. Trust me you can get this to work for you.

[bh]

I've got Fridgers latest eath 4k dds and the oceans/sea texture is grey to blue.

This must be wrong.. ( argue) I'll try to get some screen shots off later. Sorry to keep harping on about this one, the Earth is not 'Battleship Grey'. Or is it?

I've tried all the render options in Celestia but to no avail. My card is a GeForce2 MX400 with the latest Detonater drivers..... Arghh!!

Awaiting your 4k textures with glee... your new earth clouds are wonderful.

[bh]

Hello all... this will probably be my last post on this topic.

New Earth/Oceans/Shallow water texture is ready.



And if we zoom out...



Available here:
http://www.rhundley.freeserve.co.uk/earthwater.html