Earth Central Updated! New Info!!

[Don. Edwards]

Hey everyone,
It's not the big update, but it is an update.
Everyone can now get a better idea of how the site will look and function in the future.
Besides the updated look I of course have some new textures to go along with it.
At this time I am going to go ahead and release three textures. They shouldn't put
to much of a drain on the server I hope and if anyone wants to mirror them please go
ahead and do so ASAP. I am planning on moving the storage of most of my textures
to the servers that house the Motherload site. This will hopefully take any future strain
off of shatters.net servers.

Now for some bad news. I have deleted all the old content from Earth Centrals download
folder except for the normalmap and the new textures. Most of these files are being
mirrored elsewhere anyway. Besides I prefer that my old textures disapear as the ones
get releassed. The Earth 18,000BCE texture will be back when the new Earth Central
4 comes online.
So now about the new textures that are available. They are the new Realistic Earth v.4,
Earth Pale Blue Dot, and the new Northern Summer-Southern Winter cloudmap.

The Realistic Earth texture is the continuing evolution of the past versions. I have done
some major reworking of the oceans, seas, and large lakes. I have also brought the color
level in the texture up from the last one. Also this one is based on BlueMarble's shadowless
21k texture parts. The only data the I used from Space-Graphics was for the Antartic areas
and it was used for insperation only. So these textures are truely my own work.

Some of you may figure out where the name for the next texture came from. It's Pale Blue Dot.
It is based on the Realistic Earth texture but I have increaed the oceans gama about 30%.
I did this for those users that might not care for the darker look of my traditional textures.
I do know there are a few. This is in likelyhood the only time I will make this color variation of
a texture. If I do this with all my textures there would be over ten versions for each textutre not
counting the different sizes.

Last but not least is the new Northern Summer-Southern Winter cloudmap. This is a totaly new
texture. I have resized the tropical storms down by 25%. When I made the last one I didn't
take into account the fact that when the cloudmap gets placed on a sphere it does get stretched
some so in the end everything looked bigger than it should have. This problem has been fixed in
this version. Also this will only be an interm version as I have allot of new data for cloudmaps
and will be adding this info in the next release.

Now about the Seasonal textures. They were all finished and I was just waiting to finish the work
on the new Earth Central homepage. Then I found a pretty bad glitch in the Northern Winter
texture. It shouldn't take long to fix it. What I found was that with all the dark forests showing
through the snow I found that this effect was not being carried over in North America's Rockie
Mountains. So all I have to do is plug in the data and it will be ready.

So I am hoping that the early release of the other textures will give me the time to get the rest
of these textures finshed. So have a look at the site and the textures.
http://www.celestiaproject.net/~impulse/Earth_ ... ntral.html

Well I think that will cover everything for now. As always coments and input are always welcome.

Don. Edwards

P.S.
I have also placed what you may call an easter-egg on the website. So see if you can find it and tell me what you think it is. All I will say is move your cursor around the site to find it.

[alphap1us]

All the new file are now are now mirrored in Don's space at the motherlode.
http://celestiamotherlode.net/creators/donedwards/ (The new files are date Sept. 10)

Thanks, Don. These textures look amazing.

Cheers,
Joe

[ElPelado]

P.S.
I have also placed what you may call an easter-egg on the website. So see if you can find it and tell me what you think it is. All I will say is move your cursor around the site to find it.

Its getting really cold in here...
Looks like The Day After Tomorrow...
Nice video, but I would also like one of South America...

[Don. Edwards]

Yes that is a video of my North Winter & TDAT texture. It was mentioned that my winter texture was pretty close so I took a look at my brothers wink, wink nug, nug, internet copy for the other data.
ElPelado,
Unfortunatly in the movie TDAT it was Northern Autum or Winter so there wouldn't have been any ice and snow in the Southern Hemisphere due to it being Summer down there. There was a major lack on info on snow coverage in the Southern hemisphere so I had to take a major guess and I am sure I have missed something. But there isn't nearly the landmass in the South as there is in the North so that is another reason.
I need to try and find more data but right now I am trying to intergrate the weather data into new cloudmaps.

Don. Edwards

[Seb]

I wish you had a 32k version of this Don. I got this 32k (98mb) Earth I'm using at the moment, which is quite good and has more detail, but do like your version better.

[Don. Edwards]

Seb,
I do have the makings for a 32k version. As soon as all the web updates are finshed and all the textures are released I will begin work on the 32k texture. I allready made a test run of the texture. I was able to put a decent 32K single piece texture together using Photoshop CS 8. The newer photoshop has better memory managemnet and create a texture beyond the 30k limit that Photoshop 7 has, but it is slower on some things and can be a bit bitchy when I try to do other things. One other thing about Photoshop CS is that Adobe took the product code registering to serious. I had to roll back my install XP a couple of times and this has invalidated CS and made me have to call Adobe to get a new authorization code. I had to do this three times now and have told them that this is totaly stupid and that if I could get my money back I would. So the next time I install it it will be for making the 32k texture only and then I will be removing it. Photoshop 7 just can't make 32k textures in one single piece. This was the main reason why I always resisted going ahead and making one. I was worried about mismatches along the seam line. that won't be an issue with a single piece texture. The main issue will be transporting the texture to someone who can cut it up into a working VT. I just simply do not want to do this myself. Not unless someone has written a really good script for an image editor that can do most of the work for me. I just hate the idea of cutting it up and then having to compress all the pieces into DDS files. A very dougnting task at best.

Don. Edwards

[Rich]

Hi Don,
Nice site, nice navigation with those buttons under each map, and NICE maps - your Earth and Mars texmaps are the ones I've been using for Celestia. I really dig the earth night texture with aurora.
-Rich

[Don. Edwards]

Hey everyone,
I thought I would update everyone as to what is going on at this point.
All the Earth seasonal textures are finshed as of now. All have been zipped up and are ready for upload and will be uploaded as soon as the webpage is done.
However I have had a major set-back. I recently joined the homeless as of last weekend. The job problems here were I live have really hit hard. Luckily I am staying with my brother and sister-in-law so I have a roof over my head and a place to sleep. Of course its not my own home but it will have to do for a while.
I am going to try my best to finish the update to Earth Central as fast as I can so I can get things finished. The only things missing at this point will be the North Spring and Autumn clouds.
One thing I am not sure about is my TDAT texture and if I should release it. For thoughs that can't figure what TDAT is, its my The Day After Tomorrow texture. Here are some pictures to look at.








As always input is welcome. I am not however going to try and give any date for the completion of Earth Central and the upload and tranfer of the textures to the motherload site for full distribution. All I will say is when everyhting is done and feels right the word will be given. Also for those that have been waiting for word on the HD28185 system add-on there will be updated info soon.

Don. Edwards

[selden]

Don,

I'm very sorry to hear about your situation.
I hope things improve for you in the near future.

The Earth seasonal and TDAT textures look great!

Have you investigated getting a job with a graphics-arts company?

[bh]

Yeah...good luck with your situation Don...crikey...a guy with your talents shouldn't have to wait too long!

Regards...bh.

[fsgregs]

Don your skills in computers and your love of graphics just begs of a solution in the movie and film industry. I agree with Selden wholeheartedly! I could easily envision you working for Industrial Light and Magic. You are that good, and should be able to prove it to them! Although it looks like a high pressure, schedule laden job, I would personally enjoy doing such a job if I had your talent.

Anyway, I look forward to downlading the new textures as soon as you get the time to upload them.

Thanks as always for boosting our experience in Celestia.

Frank