New accretion disk method (WORK IN PROGRESS)

[Cham]

Drop a couple of high resolution pebbles in there, and you may have a very nice view

[Dollan]

Can you post an example ssc file? The original ssc testbed has a bunch of symbols in it which, for some reason, my computer cannot recognize.

There are some *great* possibilities with this stuff!!

...John...

[eburacum45]

Two possibilities I can think of, for use in the Orion's Arm Universe; a spherical dyson swarm (which at the moment I have modelled using thousands of tiny tetrahedra, but it is still much too grainy) and a dyson swarm made of nested tori, as suggested by Bob Jenkins
Bob Jenkins has a page about his concept here
http://burtleburtle.net/bob/scifi/dyson.html

the OA image I have made for the 'nested tori' concept is here
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/5873/jenkinszg4.jpg
and for a spherical dyson swarm I have made this image
http://www.orionsarm.com/civ/dysons.jpg
but a particle based image would be so much better.
Could a non-flattened torus be possible?

Jolly nice for making T Tauri stars, too.

[Cham]

GRAVITY TURNED MAD !







An early attempt at introducing tidal waves and turbulence in the rings. The perturbation has a much too strong amplitude.

[ElChristou]

GRAVITY TURNED MAD !

Indeed...

[Cham]

Another experiment : Thick shell of dust. Preparing for the first true 3D volumetric nebula (planetary nebulae at first). Of course, this is just a preliminary. I'll add all sorts of thickness variations, colors, cold dark clouds, etc. Can't wait for Chris's implementation of sprites for the fuzzy and continuous rendering...

[Fightspit]

Can you reproduce a star which explode

[FaLLeN_SOuL]

how do i install the files you provided in the zip?

[ajtribick]

That's pretty cool... looks like it could come in handy for modelling star systems containing dust rings, e.g. Beta Pictoris.

[Cham]

how do i install the files you provided in the zip?

Just put the "test" folder in your "extra" directory. That's all. Select "Test 0" in Celestia then go.

[Cham]

El Christou had a great idea to use one of my ring models to reveal the asteroids belt in the solar system, without a mess of labels/orbits :



The only problem, is the luminosity/opacity of the model at long range :



We really need an option, in the SSC or in the CMOD file itself, to tell Celestia to add a decrease of luminosity or opacity over distance. Then all sorts of things would be made possible with this technique.

[eburacum45]

Wow! this is just what I want for the Bob-Jenkins-type Dyson swarm effect; thanks, Cham!

[buggs_moran]

This would also be really neat as an Oort cloud representation. Perhaps this and the asteroids could be something that could be turned on and off somehow? Maybe a toggle in the menu? Chris?


edit: as particles in a ring system as well

[Hungry4info]

Wow, very nice indeed!
This paves the way for a debris disk add-on. I've been putting rings around model-less planets at the centres of stars to simulate disks for a while... but this is better by far. As the person before me said, ring systems would be a good idea too. The current saturn-rings.png could be used like a template, much like how galaxies are now with 1.5.0. From viewd afar, Saturn's rings would look "normal", but close up, you begin to see the individual dots. It would probably take quite a few, but still, this has obvious applications to ring systems.

[chris]

CMOD files now support point sprites, which should be ideal for this sort of work. There is a new primitive type sprites which can be used in conjunction with the new attribute pointsize. texture0 of the current material becomes the sprite image. Here is a very simple example cmod with three point sprites:

Code: Select all

#celmodel__ascii

material
diffuse 1 0 1
texture0 "flare.jpg"
end_material

mesh
vertexdesc
position f3
pointsize f1
end_vertexdesc

vertices 3
0 -1 -1 0.5
0 1 1 0.1
0 -1 1 0.1

sprites 0 3
0 1 2
end_mesh


When using sprites in a cmod, the pointsize attribute must be present in addition to the position. The units of pointsize are the same as for vertex positions.

--Chris

[Cham]

Now I'm extremellly excited ! Too bad I have to go to work right now !

Please Chris, I also need an option to make the CMOD's luminosity (emissivity) variable with position, so the model can fade away with distance. Anybody (with or without OGL2) should be able to use that option (while sprites are usable with OGL2 only). That way, many new addons would be possible, of various types (with AND without sprites).

[danielj]

Everything is very nice,but WHICH computer will be able to handle SUCH COMPLEXITY?
I think we will need at least a dual core,2GB of RAM and a 512 MB video card like the Geforce 8 series.So I expect that will take at least 1 year to such things to become reality,because the only thing I can change in my computer until the half of 2008 is a LCD monitor and maybe another HD of maybe 400 GB.ONLY THIS!
Another thing that worries me is that Celestia is each time more DIY and almost NO complex addon had been launched in the last months.It??s a lame that we??ll have only the basic package and the rest will be YOUR PROBLEM.If you can??t understand Computer Programming Language,you will have NOTHING AT ALL...

[unnecessary message quote deleted ...s.]

[rthorvald]

Everything is very nice,but WHICH computer will be able to handle SUCH COMPLEXITY?

This is not something that will give your machine much trouble. In fact, it??s much more memory-efective than defining each point as a separate model (like the way stars or asteroids are done, and your machine can draw them just fine).

Another thing that worries me is that Celestia is each time more DIY and almost NO complex addon had been launched in the last months.

Danielj, we have been here before. Complex addons are far between because they are a lot of work, so it takes a lot of time to create them. I have Add-Ons in the pipe i have worked on for years, for example. I know of others, too, just from reading the forums.

This isn??t a paid job. It??s just fun... And so it is done in people??s free time. If you are lucky, sometimes someone will actually publicize something you might like. Of course one can turn out tons of crap in a couple of hours, but you would not like that... So stop complaining and just be grateful when you find a gem.

- rthorvald

[selden]

Daniel,

The point-sprite function, which is new to Celestia's CMOD model file, is not all that new in Celestia. It's the same thing that's used for drawing Celestia's galaxies, but now it is available for Addon creators to use. Point sprites also are used by most 3D computer games to do things like fog and smoke. I suspect you may have a few games like that already

[ajtribick]

You know, we could just produce material and develop so we cater to the most low-end system out there, but then Celestia would be something like this:

Code: Select all

You are in the Solar system at a distance of 1 AU from the Sun. You can see the Earth.

> TURN LEFT

You can see the Moon.

> GO FORWARD

You are next to the Moon. You can see the Mare Tranquillitatis.

> GO TO ALNITAK

You travel across the light years of space to Alnitak. You see an O-type supergiant star.