New feature for 1.5?

[dalmatian_fanatic]

I've been thinking, perhaps Celestia 1.5 should have a feature that renders multiple cloud maps(maybe 5 at the most), this would really give some depth to gas gaints(realistic & fictional)

[TheStressPuppy]

Since the current clouds are a larger sphere mesh with an alpha channeled texture it is possible to do, but i doubt the preformance hit would be worth it unless you have a really high end system. The gas giants in celestia by default have no cloud mesh at all (the planet map itself being its cloud deck). Someone has made a dynamic jupiter cloud add on (check celestia motherlode).


Maybe this should have been posted in the development thread

[SkyScraper]

Specular textures and normal maps for clouds are suported in celestia?

And where can they be found?

[selden]

Celestia v1.5.0 adds support for Cloud NormapMaps. e.g. with the Atmosphere declaration

Code: Select all

CloudNormalMap "normalmap.*"


Unfortunately, there is no support (yet?) for specular reflections.

I don't know of any that people have published, though. Someone else will have to help with that.

[TheStressPuppy]

What about multi layer clouds like the OP asked? Right now in the current version of Celestia you have your cloud mesh with texture, and its possible to do cloud shadows using overlay. Is there a way to add more than 1 cloud mesh a planet?

Looking forward to seeing normal mapped clouds

[selden]

One can add multiple layers by various "hacks" when using the current versions of Celestia:
multiple planets at the same location with only their cloud layers showing is one way. Another is to define your own spherical models with the same orbital parameters as the planet and map cloud textures on them.

Unfortunately, Celestia v1.5.0 still has a problem depth sorting transparent objects, so neither of these solutions is entirely satisfactory.