Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: oliacym on June 12, 2013, 04:51:00 am
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Hi everyone, thanks to all the fine tutorials, resources and tools on this board, I finally managed to make something basic. I'm fascinated by skyboxes, so I made this one, it's basically a Dyson Sphere, although the scale is closer to a Globus Cassus. It started as a box shape, but the gunflash was making the surfaces light up, breaking the illusion, so I made it into a sphere instead, which actually makes for a better effect anyway. Hope you like!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/84lba4tby7qq6r4/dyson-sphere.rar
EDIT: Nearly forgot, I didn't make the texture itself, it came from here: http://dic.academic.ru/pictures/wiki/files/76/Land_ocean_ice_cloud_hires.jpg
However, any texture of 2:1 will work with this skysphere, which might be easier for some people to work with than a skybox, I dunno!
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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That's either a very small Dyson sphere, or a few very large continents :P
It started as a box shape, but the gunflash was making the surfaces light up
Hang on, did you place this as an actual object in FRED? For the record, skyspheres/skyboxes are defined by using the "Skybox" field in the background editor. Placing them there will ensure that they're not subject to lighting in any shape or form, and that the player cannot travel outside of them.
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That's either a very small Dyson sphere, or a few very large continents :P
Yeah :) I always wondered in a true Dyson Sphere, whether you'd even be able to SEE the other side, somehow a smaller shell ends up being more visually relatable. So maybe Globus Cassus is better after all!
Hang on, did you place this as an actual object in FRED? For the record, skyspheres/skyboxes are defined by using the "Skybox" field in the background editor. Placing them there will ensure that they're not subject to lighting in any shape or form, and that the player cannot travel outside of them.
Oh really! Well I was using someone else's retextured skybox before, so that might be a factor. I was loading it as a skybox in FRED, as you say, so that's weird. Some of the surfaces were definitely lighting up from my gunflashes. Although I think the "No lighting" checkbox wasn't ticked.... is that what was doing it you think?
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That would be the cause, yes.
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On the face of it, that does make a lot of sense :) I think I remember why I unticked it actually, the whites were coming out too bright. I'll tone down the whites in the texture I think, experiment a bit. Many thanks!
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I don't know whether you're actually capable of doing it, but what would be really cool is if you could alter the textures to fit the Globus Cassus idea better. We have a lot of very beautiful starscape backgrounds already, but there's a distinct lack of genuine Sci-Fi sense of wonder type structures (See also: Strike Suit Zero backgrounds)
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Oooh, interesting! Like kinda a megastructure aspect of some kind... yeah, good idea, I'd like to move that way next, so I'll give something like that a go, but it's all a bit scary still, I've just started with the 3d modelling, which I think I can use for very large background items maybe, like make a render then put it on the skybox texture. I've been reading about them struggling with the Death Star on the Star Wars TC board, and it got me thinking about things like using Skydomes and the like to partially interact with these enormous structures. Will have to see what's feasible and what is mad dream :p
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To turn it into a real Dyson Sphere, one way to do it would be to place the perspective really near one surface, place a sun in the middle of it and a kind of a fog. Too much work in the textures probably though.
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Indeed.
Also, given the general issues with habitable Dyson Spheres (like, gravity, for example), I really prefer smaller megastructures, like Ringworlds or Orbitals, or planets with SF bits attached (Like an orbital elevator, or visible large-scale construction).
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ringworlds have pretty massive issues too though, like the fact that unlike spheres they're not even neutrally stable
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Yes, but they're believable enough to be able to invoke sufficiently advanced technology. A dyson sphere (NOT a dyson swarm, which is another really cool thing to try to depict), on the other hand, not only requires an unbelievable amount of raw materials to construct, but also an unbelievable amount of tech to invert the surface gravity so that people can live on the inside. I dunno, my sense of disbelief cancelling mechanisms don't seem to be able to handle that much insanity :P
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Indeed.
Also, given the general issues with habitable Dyson Spheres (like, gravity, for example), I really prefer smaller megastructures, like Ringworlds or Orbitals, or planets with SF bits attached (Like an orbital elevator, or visible large-scale construction).
That gravity argument never really got into me one bit. Clearly, a civilization that is able to mount a friggin Dyson sphere (which might need more material than the whole inner planets of the solar system can provide themselves) would be able to solve the otherwise basic problem of stabilizing the damn sphere so it won't fall into the sun.
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I was more referring to the minor issue of making things stick to the inside :P
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It's a good discussion though. I'd say that the Dyson sphere is the ultimate efficient solar reactor.
Also, Jupiter-brains and so on.
I was more referring to the minor issue of making things stick to the inside :P
Making it rotate would be unbearable on the materials? Probably, don't remember that bit.
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I was more referring to the minor issue of making things stick to the inside :P
I always wondered - if you made the shell sufficiently massive and dense, would it exert enough gravity on the things inside to keep them fixed without the need for spin?
Now, an Alderson Disk... that's another problem altogether...
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It's a good discussion though. I'd say that the Dyson sphere is the ultimate efficient solar reactor.
Also, Jupiter-brains and so on.
I was more referring to the minor issue of making things stick to the inside :P
Making it rotate would be unbearable on the materials? Probably, don't remember that bit.
It would also make the internal structure pretty weird, what with the need to provide surfaces perpendicular to the centrifugal force and all.
I always wondered - if you made the shell sufficiently massive and dense, would it exert enough gravity on the things inside to keep them fixed without the need for spin?
Unfortunately, no. The gravitational force of a spherical object can be modelled as originating from a point in its exact center; in this case, it would act as if it came from the star that the sphere is built around.
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actually no; with the shell theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem) you can show that a dyson sphere exerts absolutely no gravitational force anywhere inside it; this also means that it has no overall gravitational interaction with the star it's built around
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Making it rotate would be unbearable on the materials? Probably, don't remember that bit.
In practical terms yes, but also in practical terms it's a Dyson sphere and the materials science involved is already very, very trololololololol, so...
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actually no; with the shell theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem) you can show that a dyson sphere exerts absolutely no gravitational force anywhere inside it; this also means that it has no overall gravitational interaction with the star it's built around
Huh. Did not know that, thanks for bringing it up.
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Aw man, now we have to rely on gravity generators :( Guys, I'm concerned this Dyson Sphere thing isn't going to get off the ground.
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Making it rotate would be unbearable on the materials? Probably, don't remember that bit.
In practical terms yes, but also in practical terms it's a Dyson sphere and the materials science involved is already very, very trololololololol, so...
More importantly, your atmosphere is all going to accumulate in the equatorial region, meaning that the inhabitable region is, for all intents and purposes, a Ringworld.
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Making it rotate would be unbearable on the materials? Probably, don't remember that bit.
Making it rotate would give you maximum gravity near the equator and zero gravity at the poles. Which would definitely make life interesting, but perhaps not very practical :) Also, what Phantom Hoover said.
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I guess there'd be a ton of different industries in a Dyson Sphere, and not all of it would be for habitation. A good chunk of the surface would be automated to serve the needs of those living in the 'Hab Zone' at the equator. A lot of the surface would likely be used for energy collection in any case, so maybe living space restricted to the equator is for the best?
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I don't think you realise just how little of the sphere's surface area is actually usable. A quick calculation (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sqrt%282*1AU*5km+-+%285km%29%5E2%29) shows that the strip on a Dyson sphere the size of Earth's orbit within Earth's inhabited pressure range is about the width of Jupiter -- which sounds like a lot, but that's about 0.02% of the total surface area. For energy collection, a swarm would be better in every way; for any kind of industry, the added complications of gravity and a rotating reference frame would probably make it not worthwhile. The short of it is that a Dyson sphere is utterly, utterly impractical; but that's been known for a long time.
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I think that the complications of gravity and a rotating reference frame are probably child's play for a civilization with the technology and resources to build a Dyson sphere. Hell, if you're building a Dyson sphere, it's probably because you have a very specific need and already have those problems solved for whatever industry is moving in before you even start construction, else you'd have just covered every rock in the system with antimatter factories and built your ExxonGalactic palace elsewhere.
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I also think that what we are thinking when we utter "Dyson Sphere" is just a really cartoonish, simplified version of what it would actually be like. Despite the all correct problems that Phantom Hoover detects in the simple design we have in our heads, it's still true that the core principle of the Dyson Sphere is how to get the full power output of a Sun.
The only real question that makes the DS "impractible", "impossible" or "stupid" in my head is if there's a much better way to extract energy from the universe other than collecting it directly from stars. I'm not saying there is not, but if there isn't, then it would be built. It would probably not spin the way we think, it would probably be much more complex than we can even imagine, it would probably solve many "intractable" things with surprising efficiency and simplicity, etc.
Although I feel that any renderization of an actual Dyson Sphere in any sci-fi setting that I've seen never really captured the real scale of what it really means. ST:TNG's take on it is pityful, absolutely cartoonish (looks like a huge room with a strange light bulb at the center), without followup (I mean, for a civilization to have built up this thing millions of miles of radius long, it means this civ is by far the most advanced in ST universe, and still after the Enterprise goes away, not even one further mention of it is done. No one cares about any riches that can be extracted from such an advanced ruin! It's mind boggling).
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I think the main point I'm getting at is that there is no real reason to build a solid Dyson sphere rather than a swarm -- it's orders of magnitude harder to build, far harder to maintain, and all its supposed additional uses beyond energy collection are better served by other structures.
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Funnily enough, Dyson's original pitch for the sphere was a lot closer to the swarm proposal.
On topic: It would be an interesting addition to the game, the likes of that goddamn interesting grid level from hell that's in directional eclipse. Just because it's not scientifically possible (like, say, freespace :p), it does not mean we should not have it. There is always some sort of technobabble work around. Like the sphere being symbolic of flipping off nature by a civilization that has advanced beyond our understanding of reality and it's engineering.
Just the idea of a skybox being all planet makes it an interesting addition to the community's assets. :nod:
Addition: You could work this idea into something like, the Shivan homeworld or dimension or whatthefrakever.
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I think the main point I'm getting at is that there is no real reason to build a solid Dyson sphere rather than a swarm -- it's orders of magnitude harder to build, far harder to maintain, and all its supposed additional uses beyond energy collection are better served by other structures.
Oh sure, I agree, my point is even beyond that, that what would eventually be built wouldn't really be describable as "Dyson Swarms", "Dyson Spheres" or Statites or Bubbles or whatever. It would be absolutely strange, mind bendingly counter-intuitive and downright obscene to our 21st century scientific sensibilities ;).