How many polies has your moon, and how long did it take to run it through PCS ? My 30 Km planet take about 49 seconds to compile into a poffile (having 5000 K polygons and three LODS), and this time is quite high according to my experience. I have more complex models with more polygons and textures compiled in under 20 seconds, so I first thought the planet crashed PCS
It is has 5400 Polys (faces), a version rounder would be at 9600 Polys, however I set it to be always at LOD0, a Sphere is a Sphere and can is noticed from any distance thatn can be seen.
So, to implement other LODs, I would need to test and know, which is the distance where the planet start to be a thin point. Anyways a Sphere needs to be Anti-Aliased to be completely round, that's why I am using one with 5400 polys.
Plus other planets uses 2 or 3 sphere to make Clouds and atmospheres, so....the polycount can be a lot, even for a simple form as a sphere is....
P.S. Looks really great, that's the sort of realism that make things look even greater
That's the idea (and it looks great even without Bumpmapping for the shadows of the craters...)
Have any of you guys played Independence War 2 or Klingon Academy to get some ideas from how they approach these problems?
I War 2 has fully modeled solar systems with full 3d planets/objects/stars etc.
Klingon Academy has modeled out our Solar System and even allows you to enter planets atmospheres.
It sounds like none of ya'll have played these games - might give you some more ideas.
No, at least I don't have played those games, but I known them. The idea to of adding planets is just that, to add some matter to it, we already have the freespace so it's adding matter to give some kind of life to it...
Does FS 2 allow you to make a lightsource such as the sun be a 3d object? If so, great - do this, and then set it far out into the system and then you can orbit the planet.
No, actually impossible. There is no way of set a 3D light source, only the ones that can be used on the background, kind of 2D light sources.
Yaa, you can of course fly around the planets in I-War 2: EoC but gravitational interaction is not simulated, I think. In other words, you can hover on top of the planet as long as you wish, and the planets don't make ships' trajectories curves but they are in stead linear. So much of newtonian flight model...
The question here is about simply making things look like all the ships would orbit the planet on more or less same orbital parametres, and the easiest way to make things look like that would be to make the planet a 3D object and make it move around the mission area (and all the ships of course). Like bfobar said it.
Well, the somethings can be probabily simulated, for example entering in the planet's atmosphere can be made with the actual damage that models named "planets" do, and add a Shudder effect like the engine wash cause, so it gives the impression the Ship is begin burn by gravity, speed, and friction. What we would need is if we could set something like what happens with Missiles:
When you add a Weapon either Primary (laser mostly) or Secondary (Missile mostly), with a Negative Mass:, ex: Mass: -7,000,000. The effect made to the ships affected is the opposite, in exchange of us being hit away by the force of the explosion, we are being sucked in to the center of the explosion, like a Dark Hole.
Maybe if someone can do something with a really big Range of explosion, and the exact negative Mass, we could set a FirePoint into the Center of the Planet, and make and Invisible explosion, and tell the planet to lauch that Missile with a Speed of 0, that means it generates and explodes in the center of it, and start attracting everything to it.
The problem is that I don't remember how really was the Range setting for Missiles, right now...I'll try this it works for weapons of gravity kind, so it should work like gravity for planet's, if we make an invisible missile with also invisible effects, the effect and explosion should be constant, probabiliy 1 second would be enough for our ship to be moving with no stopping...(an infinite chain of "Child" Missiles should work...)
