export to OpenSceneGraph?

[chrisgnicholas]

Greetings - I am a complete newbie to Celestia, but it seems *totally* cool, from a hardcore group of dedicated people based on real data.

Looking briefly at the sources, I see things are generally based on octrees and OpenGL. I was just wondering if it is at all conceivable to "export the universe", as it were, to OpenSceneGraph (http://www.openscenegraph.org) format, and leverage that whole wunderworld.

The general concept is to be able to start adding level of detail info to the surface of planets, whereby someone might actually start putting in crater info for the Moon, Mars, etc, and facilitate "landing" on a planet. Past a certain level, people might start paging in more detailed URL-referenced info (perhaps hosted by shatters.net..?)

just a psycho thought..
Chris

[scratt]

I am currently looking at just this possibility...

[chrisgnicholas]

Excellent!

No doubt this will open a Pandora's box's of hyperlinking, but keep me posted on how it is going.

We want to be sure it fits well with what we are doing, so we can get there seamlessly from bags-o-geometry being assembled about the Home planet..

Chris

[scratt]

Can I ask what your project is?

[chrisgnicholas]

OSG planet, as per: http://www.ossim.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=3 ,
although we probably have a lot to learn from the astro community about generalized coordinate systems.

[scratt]

Interesting. I have been working with VTerrain and Open Scene Graph for some time...

[hank]

Looking briefly at the sources, I see things are generally based on octrees and OpenGL. I was just wondering if it is at all conceivable to "export the universe", as it were, to OpenSceneGraph (http://www.openscenegraph.org) format, and leverage that whole wunderworld.

It might be simpler to embed OSG in Celestia, perhaps using this approach.

- Hank

[scratt]

Thanks for the input....

Could you be a bit more specific with the link though..

That just points to a lot of FAQs..

Cheers,
scratt

[hank]

Thanks for the input....

Could you be a bit more specific with the link though..

That just points to a lot of FAQs..

Cheers,
scratt

I'm not sure why the link doesn't work. It should point to "faq_34", but immediately reloads to the top of the page. You'll have to look for this question:

Q: Can I use OSG within an existing renderer?

in the list of FAQs.

- Hank

[scratt]

Ooops my bad!

My web browser stalled about 1 byte from the end of the file so it did not jump down to the FAQ you were referring to. It did it a couple of times and I am afraid I did not read the URL properly.

My bad. Sorry!

EDIT: Although if you just click that link I think the OSG site resets it's frame preference and then reloads at the top of the page. Well that's on OS X Safari, anyway! So that explains my confusion - At least to me!

[scratt]

If anyone is interested I have now integrated OSG into Celestia for my own use. I have done it in a few different ways and have some feedback that may be usefull..

Thanks to Hank for the pointer to the OSG faq as that is pretty much the basis I used... Although it has to be said there are some really funky OpenGL depth problems that need to be addressed before you get predictable results!

I am also going to look at using OSG to draw the entire Celestia experience at some point, but that is an ongoing project and won't be ready for some time...