Some quick previews... [Large graphics inside]

[buggs_moran]

Runar,

how did you do that light on the right? Is it 3d? I am most interested in the transparent glow around it...

[rthorvald]

how did you do that light on the right? Is it 3d? I am most interested in the transparent glow around it...

It is simply an emissive sphere with atmosphere. Here??s the code:

"Lamp" "Ran/Hroenn"
{
Class "spacecraft"
Texture "th_bubblelight.*"
Emissive true
Radius 0.1
Beginning 1174643.5
LongLat [ 0.1184 0.6596 4.84 ]
Albedo 0.99
Atmosphere
{
Height 1.04
Lower [ 1.0 0.6 0.2 ]
Upper [ 0.26 0.47 0.84 ]
Sky [ 0.40 0.6 1.0 ]
Sunset [ 1.0 0.6 0.2 ]
}
}

- rthorvald

[buggs_moran]

Thanks, that's what I figured. I wondered if you had figured out how to create a fuzzy object without using atmospheres... Oh well. Very nice looking. I see our evil friend, depth sorting, rearing it's ugly head where the sphere overlaps the mountain.

[t00fri]

I am also putting some effort into
developing the background
story for the scenario more. Now one can watch not
only nightlights spreading over time, but also places on
the surface developing and changing. Here??s an island
community about five hundred years up:
..
- rthorvald

Runar,

please don't kill me if I dare ask some "critical"
"piercing" questions about your beautiful image...

Unlike the previous image (Landfall) where everything
seems just perfect, it seems to me, something is not
quite right yet. The general atmosphere is great no
doubt. But to me the left hand part of the image looks
somehow unnatural. On the one hand everything is
detailed and sharp, but it neither looks like a photo nor
like a painting to me. It just has an artificial "computer"
touch in my view. It presumably is related to missing
"depth" impressions.


Cheers,
Fridger

[selden]

I suspect it could be made to look more realistic if Celestia supported casting of shadows by 3D models, fog and depth of focus effects.

Of course, one can import the models into a 3D rendering program to generate a picture that includes those effects, but it just wouldn't be the same...

[rthorvald]

Unlike the previous image (Landfall) where everything
seems just perfect, it seems to me, something is not
quite right yet. The general atmosphere is great no
doubt. But to me the left hand part of the image looks
somehow unnatural. On the one hand everything is
detailed and sharp, but it neither looks like a photo nor
like a painting to me. It just has an artificial "computer" touch in my view. It presumably is related to missing
"depth" impressions.

Yes - there are a couple of issues:
The buildings are too sharp and clean. I am working on this,
but getting rid of the effect will almost double the polygon count: i am
doing this here and there for spots that it will be natural to visit close up,
but not for general background: that must be up to the user??s mind and
imagination.

The city CMOD model is about 14 megabytes now, and i don??t dare
add the noise (semi-transparent overlay textures on top of the models
that dulls the color and introduces "dirt" on the surfaces) before the entire
scene is complete (there are going to be an airport in the middle of the
scene, and the final iteration - the fourth age - of the city will add more
buildings to the skyline).

The artificial look becomes apparent under certain lightning
conditions. I am working on finding a balance here between memory
issues and artistic neccesity... There are a cost to the visuals...

- rthorvald

[rthorvald]

Time to pick up on the preview series where i left off before the summer:
This is a Helium-3 mining plant floating in the atmosphere of a gas
giant. I??m sure some of you remember it from Ran II. All the models
and their individual trajectories are completely re-built. The most important new
"feature" is that the farm now has history... But that can??t be demonstrated
in a still picture. Also, the factories are now moving with the wind, very
much like flowers...



- rthorvald

[Dollan]

Runar, do you have any kind of written history for this system? It seems like you've put a *lot* of thought into it, and I can only say that, from a world building perspective, it would make one heck of a setting for some tales!

...John...

[fsgregs]

OK, Ran II is reaching EPIC proportions. In that light, I have a practical question.

I am using a Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT video card with the latest drivers and 128 MB of VRAM on my home computer. In my high school classes, my students are running Windows XP and an older Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 video card with 64 MB of VRAM.

Running Runar's Ran II add-on is taxing my home system, with frame rates dropping to under 10 fps. There is NO way I can run it at all on my school computers. It freezes the system entirely.

I've learned that there are optimum settings for video cards that maximize the frame rates for Celestia. Unfortunately, I do not know them. Would someone who is knowledgeable in this question please advise ... what are the proper Nvidia settings for my video cards to optimize Celestia? Specifically:

Antialiasing?
Anisotropic Filtering?
Ansiotropic sample optimization?
Ansiotropic Optimization?
Image Setting?
Force mipmaps?
Conformant texture clamp?
Extension Limit?
Trilinear Optimization?
Negative LOD bias?
Triple buffering?

Any advice would be great



Thanks

Frank

[chris]

OK, Ran II is reaching EPIC proportions. In that light, I have a practical question.

I am using a Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT video card with the latest drivers and 128 MB of VRAM on my home computer. In my high school classes, my students are running Windows XP and an older Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 video card with 64 MB of VRAM.

Running Runar's Ran II add-on is taxing my home system, with frame rates dropping to under 10 fps. There is NO way I can run it at all on my school computers. It freezes the system entirely.

I will be doing a performance analysis of Celestia soon in order to see if there are changes I can make so that giant add-ons like Ran II will work better. The huge number of textures could be the limiting factor.

I've learned that there are optimum settings for video cards that maximize the frame rates for Celestia. Unfortunately, I do not know them. Would someone who is knowledgeable in this question please advise ... what are the proper Nvidia settings for my video cards to optimize Celestia? Specifically:

For maximum speed:

Antialiasing? off
Anisotropic Filtering? off
Ansiotropic sample optimization? on (though it won't matter when aniso is off)
Ansiotropic Optimization? on
Image Setting? not sure about this one
Force mipmaps? off
Conformant texture clamp? whatever the default is (on i think)
Extension Limit? default (hopefully off)
Trilinear Optimization? on
Negative LOD bias? off (can make textures look crisper, but hurts performance because of reduced texture access locality)
Triple buffering? the default is probably fine. In your case, you may see some performance bonus for turning it off, since it frees up some additional memory for textures)

--Chris

[rthorvald]

Runar, do you have any kind of written history for this system?

I of course have notes, some of which are on the Ran II site. It is thoroughly planned, but not in a shape that is fit for public perusal. But i am planning to put up some additional material for the next version... Though not in the form you might expect

- rthorvald

[rthorvald]

Running Runar's Ran II add-on is taxing my home system,
with frame rates dropping to under 10 fps. There is NO way I can run it at all
on my school computers.

Frank, Ran III will perform *much* better than v2. That is one thing i am working
very hard at. Not only am i re-designing every 3d model, saving up to 70-80%
on filesizes/memory usage compared to the originals (I have learned a
few 3D principles since 2004), but the timeline is set so that not too many
can be visible at the same time.

Also, the textures are "smarter": i have used Fridger??s trick of different tilesizes
for different latitudes, and the VT??s will be done in *both* PNG and DDS so that
the user can choose.

Finally, the lay-out of the addon directory will be such that it will be easy to
"turn off" different parts of it for different sessions: events and places will be
grouped logically in diverse SSC dcuments that can be moved around without disturbing the whole.

In short, my overall target is that the entire thing must run reasonably smooth
on a 64 MB card. Of course, the actual filesize has grown to truly fearsome
proportions: the full package will come to about 3GB (including both DDS
and PNG versions).

I will be doing a performance analysis of Celestia soon in order
to see if there are changes I can make so that giant add-ons like Ran II will work
better. The huge number of textures could be the limiting factor.

That sounds great! I hope there are possibilities...

In this case, there is a total of 21 high resolution Virtual Textures and a multitude
of single 0,25k, 0,5k, 1k and 2k files.

- rthorvald

[LordFerret]

That view from Heimdall Crater is breathtaking! Very stirring.

[buggs_moran]

At some point wasn't there some talk of LOD changes in textures and meshes as you approach or recede from an object? I mean there is no reason to preload a texture for an object like Runar's city if you are visiting some other part of the planet.

Also, couldn't you use a celx script to preload each journey's textures?

[rthorvald]

At some point wasn't there some talk of LOD changes in textures and meshes as you approach or recede from an object?

That would have been very nice indeed, but this is not possible today.

Also, couldn't you use a celx script to preload each journey's textures?

That is a possibility. But i am not going to make pre-defined journeys. That is, there will probably be one, as a very short introduction.

-rthorvald

[rthorvald]

As for the Aegir factories, here is a view from space of this
location. The operation is overseen from the space station in the
foreground.


Further, the Hroenn city: after numerous efforts, i haven??t been able to
make a modern-looking city that looks natural; no matter what i tried, it
looked like a plastic toy:

there are a couple of issues:
The buildings are too sharp and clean

... I spent a lot of time on this, and in the end decided to change the
architecture. "natural materials" work much better. And why should it not
look old? At this point in the timeline, it is more than a thousand years up
from the Orion:

... It isn??t what i set out to do, but it works. The slightly "classical" shapes
is reminiscent of Alex Raymond??s 40??s scifi comics, and that is intentional.

- rthorvald

[fsgregs]

Runar:

It looks soooooo cool! You have created an amazing world here. I can't wait to explore the new Ran system.

Thank you for such a high quality effort

Frank

[bh]

Blimey!

[rthorvald]

Well, there was no methane oceans on Titan, but it was an interesting idea; there was no room for it in my titan add-on, but it is, here...

This is from the surface of one of Blodughadda??s moons.
BTW, Blodughadda (the blue planet in the sky) means something like "hair made of blood", in archaic norwegian - so the colors fit pretty well

- rthorvald

[fsgregs]

Runar:

Thanks to you, I now am collecting at least a month's worth of desktop wallpaper. Ran II is awesome!!!!

Frank