More depth sorting issues with orbits? [Known Issue]

[ElChristou]

I still have some depth sorting problems as shown on this screen; under white arrows the dark green should be below, under blue arrows, the blue orbit should be below, under the green arrows, the red orbit should be below:

Image-1.gif

Is that a known issue?

[chris]

It's a known issue... Depth buffer writes are disabled for orbits right now. I could enable it, but then line antialiasing and orbit fading would look bad (because they both rely on alpha blending.) I'm torn on what the right thing to do is... I'm leaning toward enabling depth writes (and thus fixing depth sorting) and letting people use full-scene antialiasing if they want smooth lines. Full-scene antialiasing doesn't rely on alpha blending, so it works well with depth buffering. As for orbit fading, there's an OpenGL extension called 'alpha to coverage' that might help mitigate some of the artifacts.

--Chris

[ElChristou]

Ok then, closed topic. Tx for the in depth!

[Cham]

Chris told me he was interested (still working on it ?) in a new orbital path rendering, something like what is used in Uniview.

[chris]

Ok then, closed topic. Tx for the in depth!

You're welcome. I hope to do some investigations after 1.6.0. The changes are easy to make, but gathering feedback will take a while.

--Chris

[chris]

Chris told me he was interested (still working on it ?) in a new orbital path rendering, something like what is used in Uniview.

I'm not trying to emulate Uniview or any other software package. I'm implementing orbit path rendering that *just works*. Things I want:
- No visible kinks in the orbits
- Smooth orbits
- Control over the portion of the orbit that is visible
- Orbits exactly intersect the orbiting object, even when it's as small as a spacecraft and the orbit is as large as Pluto's

--Chris

[ElChristou]

...but gathering feedback will take a while.

No way, release a patch, I'll test in the following minute!

[ElChristou]

I'm not trying to emulate Uniview...

What is this Uniview? I mean they seems to have a pretty solid soft, but looking at their screens, we can see the galaxy from Mitaka... I don't get it right.. Is that a soft? a consortium of different softwares? Seems there is no way to grad a demo or something... Someone as tested?

Edit: despite being eye candy, I don't like much their orbit system...

[selden]

Uniview is a professional, commercial 3D astronomical visualization package used in several major planetariums.
About a year ago the Hayden Planetarium announced that they were hoping to provide their Digital Universe with a free version of Univew, but I don't know if that's actually going to happen. They currently use Partiview.

See http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/univer ... n/uniview/

[ElChristou]

Uniview is a professional, commercial 3D astronomical visualization package used in several major planetariums.
About a year ago the Hayden Planetarium announced that they were hoping to provide their Digital Universe with a free version of Univew, but I don't know if that's actually going to happen. They currently use Partiview.

See http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/univer ... n/uniview/

Tx for the info Selden.
These softs seems to be pretty strong! Celestia looks like a baby in comparison... (at least from the material available, I'm not talking about hard code)
Hopefully this will change soon with the new UI and official material...

[greg57]

Just for information:

On Nov 27, 2006, at 2:28 AM, gregxxxxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
Hello and congratulations for your work.

I've be using partiview for some space FX in a video I'm currently making and I was wondering how Uniview is far from release. As far as I understood, the soft itself is already written and operational. So is it just a matter of having it go open source or something like that? For the moment I'm using celestia for my planetary views but the kind of "seamless integration" you're talking about for sure has some great appeal.

Best regards.

Hi Gregory:

Indeed, Uniview is operational, but is still a work in progress, as is any active software project. Uniview will likely never be open source, though. We are co-developing the software with our Swedish partners SCISS, AB. We are looking forward to offering a free version at some point, but I don't know when that will be or what the capabilities of this version will be.
Thanks for writing,

I've just asked again to Brian if he has news about this new version.