New Earth Overlay Textures

[maxim]

Hi all,

here are some new earth textures - as overlay to the default earth.
You can download them at http://www.nefkom.net/z-bau/celestia

1. Ocean surface temperature
2. Continental base elevation
3. Seismic events - Japan's almost invisible there.








Have fun ,
maxim

[TERRIER]

Maxim

These are interesting alternate textures, but are basically meaningless. I have no way of knowing what the different areas of colouration are meant to represent. Apart from a guess, that in the ocean temperature map, the yellow colour is the hottest while the very dark green is the coldest!

I am wondering if it would be a good idea to produce a seperate document with a 'key' showing a range of values for each colour, that the user can use as a guide?

regards
TERRIER

[bh]

Yes..they look great but need a legend box or similar...a seperate app maybe?

Regards...bh.

[maxim]

I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I know about the problem. It's gonna become even worse when my ongoing projects of geologic and geographic earth textures will be finished.
I'm working on it, but I haven't yet a solution that can be integrated easily into celestia. I've thougt about a small custom satellite, presenting the legend on his solar panels, or just integrate it at a free place directly into the texture. I would like to hear of other ideas.

Some quick hints by now:

- ocean temperature from yellow(~30°C) to darkgrey (~0°C) - roughtly

- seismic from yellow, pink to red (weak to strong). the interesting part hereby is, that a zoom will show lots of small weak seismic events directly along the crustal bountaries.

- base elevation from green to white - this is untergoing a change of coloring in the near future, to have it more like standart geographic coloring.

so far thanks for your comments,
maxim

[TERRIER]

I've got to say, that I like the idea of putting the info on a satellite

[don]

Howdy maxim,

Very nice work!

Yes, there does need to be some kind of key for each of the textures. May I suggest making it something that is easy to implement / modify so that other texture creators could use it also?

There are a LOT of images and data out there for many things related to Earth as a whole, including the things you are working on, land and water temperatures, population density, agricultural activity, deforestation, etc., that other folks may want to try and create Celestia textures for. Thus my suggestion.

Happy Holidays, and keep up the great work!

-Don G.

[maxim]

Ok, let's follow this satellite idea.
As I'm not currently working on 3D modelling, and I don't have time do get into for the next months, Would there be anybody out there making a 'display satellite' form me? I would like to have some that looks like these nice flying advertising crafts like there where in 'The fifth element' - or was it at 'Bladerunner'? ... I don't remember.

Some questions to that:
Would it be able to make the satellite use a texture from the textures directory, so it can be easily changed? (This is yes so far as I know, but I'm not shure)
Would it be neccesary to use one extra satellite for each planet texture?(Hopefully no).
Would it be possible to change the satellites texture dynamically as the planet texture changes? (No, I fear)
Would it be possible to change the satellites orbit dynamically? (Also no, I believe)
Is there any solution to the above in someones mind?
Is there any other idea of how to display an key or index chart inside celestia?

In hope for lot's of responses,

maxim

[selden]

One easy way to do it would be to use a sphere. This would require no special modelling. You could even make it arbitrarily oblate so you have a flat surface, if you want. Scaling the writing appropriately might be a challange in that case, though.

If you use AltSurface declarations with the same names for both the planet and the "legend body", the surface texture image on both the primary and the "legend body" will change at the same time.

Here's a quick example.

Code: Select all

"legend"  "Sol/Mars"
{
   Texture "mars-legend.*"
   EllipticalOrbit
   {
   Period 1.0e6
   SemiMajorAxis  10000
   }
   Radius 2000
}

AltSurface "rgbmars" "Sol/Mars"
{   
   Texture "rgbmars.*"
   SpecularTexture "rgbmars-spec.*"
      SpecularColor [ 0.5 0.5 0.55 ]
      SpecularPower 25.0
      BumpMap "marsbump.*"
      BumpHeight 2.5
}

AltSurface "rgbmars" "Sol/Mars/legend"
{
   Texture "rgbmars-legend.*"
}


If you also specify "Emissive true" in each of its texture definitions, then the legend body will light up like a neon sign, and you don't have to worry about shadows making the legend unreadable. I didn't bother to do that in this example.

These "legend" surface texture images just have some writing on them in this example. You can use whatever image you want.


(this links to a larger image)

[maxim]

Ah, it's good news that textures can be switched simultanouesly.
This should also work for a modeled body like a satellite, hopefully?

I'm asking, because I'm not right on my celestia computer, so I can't
just figure it out.

Thanks selden, and christmas greetings from over here,

maxim.

[selden]

Maxim,

Whether or not alternate surfaces work for a 3DS model depend on how the surface texture is specified within the model file. (I have to admit that it's still not clear to me how 3DS model surface textures are specified so they'll accept the surface textures decleared in an SSC file's "Texture" definition. Most of my model work has been done for DSC objects which don't support that option at all )

However, when a particular alternate surface name has been selected for any object, Celestia actually selects all of the alternate surfaces which have the same name, no matter what object they're associated with.

In other words:
Design "TreeOrnament" alternate surface textures for all of the planets.
Define AltSurface SSC entries for all of them.
Name all of their AltSurfaces "TreeOrnament"
Run Celestia.
Select "TreeOrnament" from the RMB menu for Earth.
GoTo Mars
You'll arrive at a Mars which is being drawn with its "TreeOrnament" surface texture.

Now if someone would actually do that, we'd have a version of the solar system all decked out properly for the holiday season!

[don]

Now if someone would actually do that, we'd have a version of the solar system all decked out properly for the holiday season!

... I love it!

Just duplicate our solar system, off-set it somewhere else, and name it the Christmas system.

It's fun to let the imagination run wild once in a while, especially with Celestia!

Happy Holidays to all,

-Don G.

[maxim]

There are a LOT of images and data out there for many things related to Earth as a whole, including the things you are working on, land and water temperatures, population density, agricultural activity, deforestation, etc.

My intentions are more on static things like geology, oceanography or geographics. No demoscopic textures from my side - but I'd like to see them if anybody does them.

One easy way to do it would be to use a sphere. This would require no special modelling.

I will follow the sphere solution for a first approach. Another idea arised in the meantime - putting the info onto the planet in a cloudmap texture, so it can be switched on and off. But it seems that cloudmaps can't be defined in an alternate texture definition because the atmosphere block isn't recognized there - or do I miss something?

maxim.

BTW: I'm searching for a higher resolution ocean temp map so that the gulf stream and ohers can be visualised. I can't find anything on the net that just nearing remarkable areas of the whole world. If anyone has a hint ... post me!

[selden]

maxim,

While cloudmaps can't be included in an AltSurface definition, an OverlayTexture can be.

OverlayTextures are full-color images that incorporate an alpha channel. They are drawn at the same altitude as the surface texture.

They're usually used in "Limit of Knowledge" AltSurface definitions, but as Don Edwards found, they're quite useful for other applications, too.

[maxim]

OverlayTextures are full-color images that incorporate an alpha channel. They are drawn at the same altitude as the surface texture.

Yes selden, I know. That's what I'm actually doing.
You must have been slightly malconcentrated when posting this

I've also seen Dons cloud shadows - a very nice and creative way using overlays.

What I was talking about above, is a way of displaying legend-information inside celestia in a convenient manner. There were ideas of using a satellite or a sphere (your idea). The disadvantage of this is, that you have to go to a certain point to view legend data. Putting the legend data onto the clouds layer would make it possible, to switch it on and off via the mouse menu and to rotate it over the texture you are looking at. So you would have the information at the location you need it. But that would only make sense if the legend-cloud layer could be locked to the AlternateSurface where you need it. Unfortunately this isn't the case with the actual celestia version - just another thing to put onto my feature request list.

So far,
happy new year greetings to you all,

maxim

[ogg]

Ultimately, the legend/key for a texture would best be handled in the gui (IMHO), displaying lodged in a corner of the window, the way that planet temp and other info are.
eg, have celestia look for a file called <texturefilename>key.png, and display it in the 'info' corner of the screen if it has the right dimentions. This seems more desirable to me, then inserting a purely fictional second object or overlay into celestia that you can only veiw from a certain vantage point. You'd lose the default planet info of course, but if you'd rather have that for a certain texture you could just rename the key pane texture (an option somewhere in the gui menu to enable texture-specific key panes would be desirable too I guess). Developers could include this file or not with an alttexture, and it could contain a legend, copyright information, or whatever.

Anyway, obviously this doesn't help at the moment, but is there enough interest from addon developers for me to post this as a feature request?

happy new year all...

[maxim]

The integration of additional information panes into celestia would of course be a very good idea. That would work very well for certain tasks. Unfortunately legend/key tables tend to have unusual formats like this:



or are quite big like this one that will become part of my ongoing project of a geologic earth:



So I would extend your outline of an information pane by possibilities of free positioning and free size definition and, additionally, by a page switching mechanism for those legends that are even too big to be presented completely on the screen. Thus an addon could be packaged with all necessary and additional informations that now are only present in the readme files and *.scc comments. Not only technical textures would benefit from that. Conceptual addons like black holes, pulsars and others could explain their purpose, limits and asumptions made. And designers of custom systems could explain their fantasy worlds in details or point out certain highlights.

But I still wouldn't leave the ideas of floating overlay information or information on custom bodies. They have their own purposes. Informational custom bodies could be of good use with (educational) scripts. Besides their implementation is possible without depending on a certain celestia version, they are also good stopping points. And giving them a funny shape could be of good use especially for children following the lesson.

I think all this is worth of further/deeper considerations.

have nice days,

maxim.

[selden]

But if you're starting to talk about "floating panes" and "resizable windows," aren't those facilities already available with the "InfoURL" declaration? It opens a browser window which displays any file or Web page that was specified in the "InfoURL".

Right now, the user does have to actually open it using the RMB popup menu, however. Maybe one of the developers could be persuaded to make InfoURL available from a CEL script?
(or maybe it'd be almost as effective to include an instruction in a script that says to use the RMB Info menu.)

Alternatively, why not make use of the "Navigation" "Tour Guide" menu item?

Right now it's just monochrome text, but maybe one of the developers could be persuaded to extend it to include images.

Do these suggestions help?

[maxim]

But if you're starting to talk about "floating panes" and "resizable windows," aren't those facilities already available with the "InfoURL" declaration? It opens a browser window which displays any file or Web page that was specified in the "InfoURL".

Well, I'm indeed planning to make a script that uses this feature. But for inline information display it has several disadvantages by now. First 'AltSurface' doesn't recognize it. It could only be used in a fully qualified object definition. Furthermore it doesn't work well in fullscreen mode. It brings up the 'Start' panel of Windows together with the browsers window (at least on my computer), and the window can be accidently pushed to background by a wrong mouseclick.

Alternatively, why not make use of the "Navigation" "Tour Guide" menu item?

That works better for the windowing concerns. But it seems to be a 'all or nothing' panel - no way to restrict it to a certain set of infos dependenting on the actual selection.

maybe one of the developers could be persuaded to extend it to include images.

If they already had to be involved, why not persuade them for a little more?

maxim

[Buzz]

A nice option would be to show an info label on mouse roll over on these types of overlays, that is, a different info label for every colour/element rolled over. Don't know if that is hard to do though.

[maxim]

A nice option would be to show an info label on mouse roll over on these types of overlays, that is, a different info label for every colour/element rolled over. Don't know if that is hard to do though.

That would be shurely a nice thing.
It would need a working pick functionality. Picking is quite easy to use in Java3D, because it's well implemented there, but it's a long time ago that I've worked with OpenGL, so I don't know if it's yet available there (as part of the library functions). Otherways it would be difficult to implement.

maxim.