[Bobboau]

I 'spose you could make a skybox with all the nesacary rotations

[FreeTerran]

well i try it if i got the compile working untill the "error spawning rc.exe" error isn't fixed i can't do anything

darn....

[StratComm]

Yeah Omni, it's not just the sun.  The entire lighting would have to change dynamicly, as though you were in an environment with a 30 minute day or something.  And from the perspective of Freespace, well, you're not in orbit very long.

I just think about games which do have rotation on their planets.  The Armada games do, and it looks stupid (in fact, one Earth model, not sure if it's the normal or Borg variant, rotates backwards).  Hegemonia has them too, but no one is going to call space in that game realistic-looking.  Those are the only ones that come immediately to mind.  If the planet in the background of the Halo title screen does, well it's a gas giant and that can be excused.  But rocky planets should NEVER have visable rotation from a location where the sun is fixed in the sky, and that is the only way to look at it.

[phreak]

i figuring of doing some sort of tech demo with atmoshpheric entry and exit.  i've been swamped with homework so i doubt it gets started (or finished)

[RandomTiger]

Since you are talking about planets..

Who can get alpha transparrency working with planets and who cant? Any who cant please try this TGA planet from the first non training mission and see if it works:

http://mysite.freeserve.com/thomaswhittaker/c_code/freespace/planetf.rar

[TopAce]

What's Blikweite?
The planet atmosphere is similiar than the athmosphere in Imperium Galactica 2.
By the way, who could use an Earth planet in FS2? TWVP?

[Solatar]

Well, TVWP will need a Mars, Earth, and Luna one for sure if we use them, but I think we've got some kickass backgrounds from Lightspeed.

[TrashMan]

Blikweite = (blik - view, weite - distance) = view distance

[FreeTerran]

hehe perfect translation trashman

[Lightspeed]

it's "der Blick" though. CK.

[Omniscaper]

God bless NASA. Thanks to them, I birthed my UBER Earth!!!








It has eight 2048x2048 textures for the earth and clouds have another eight textures of same size. I'm not sure if this is an efficient way of handling textures, but using a single spherical mapped texture didn't produce the level of detail that tickled my fancy.

My only problems with this version are the texture seams and shading issues with specular. What are the best settings for auto-facet? I toyed with a number of settings which all still produce a faceting effect with the speculars. I really wanna keep the water shine.

The model is 45,000 meters in diameter as to keep it within clipping distance when far away and is composed of 2 5k poly spheres (60 sides in truespace)

Any help or suggestions for better auto-facet settings,  texture handling and seam reduction would be appreciated.

[J3Vr6]

Is that in Freespace???  Let's see your star base next to it...

[Omniscaper]

You calling me a fraud!?

[Bobboau]

for that model your going to want to go full smooth, and wow that's a lot of texture space, yeah, that's gona be about a gig of video ram (just did some calculation, that number isn't mear speculation)
actualy 2 gigs for the clouds too

[Omniscaper]

Really!? It was actually playable on this crappy Geforce4MX P4 2.56ghz of my uncle. Then again I did us DDS for all textures. Using JPG was a nightmare.

[Lightspeed]

I dont like it so far. There's flicker lines in the model, and you can easily spot the texture edges.

And the oceans look really fake

[Bobboau]

oh, if your useing DDS then it'll be less, a lot less, probly take up the same amount of space in your card as the file does, what's there total size

[Omniscaper]

Thats why I post up screen shots here, need extra input to really make it the Earth. The specular map I used was a simple silhuette of the continents and a grey ocean. I didn't use speculars on the last model. Perhaps I should give the grey some more OOMPH.

All the DDS textures = 85mb, I'm still gonna add to the speculars, so it will get higher.

[J3Vr6]

I think it looks sweet., then again I can't see it in game.  Do the clouds move or no?

[Omniscaper]

There is a slight rotation on the clouds. I put a rotation of 500 on the POF. Its very slow, but just enough to notice motion.

I had an unconventional idea in regards to "faking" a speed boost away from the planet. It takes quite awhile just to circle the darn thing nevermind leave orbit. I was thinking about using LODS that are quite smaller than the actual model. It will obviously not be a smooth transition as you get further away, but it was just a thought.