Author Topic: OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!  (Read 31650 times)

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Offline Turambar

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
somehow i dont think we can do render-to-texture effects like force push until Bobbau gets shaders up and running, and even then, im not sure if it would be supported
10:55:48   TurambarBlade: i've been selecting my generals based on how much i like their hats
10:55:55   HerraTohtori: me too!
10:56:01   HerraTohtori: :D

 

Offline Cobra

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by DaBrain
I'm not too fond of spherical explosions anyway. I like the cinematic look. ;)
(Star Wars SE: ANH)


now that is a good shockwave. ;7
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Hmm... I've got an idea but I cannot and I have no time to learn to do it.

I'm sure this will demand a relatively high-end system, though. But.

WHAT IF you'd put *many* of these 2D plane shockwawes together starting from the same point but on different angles? I'm not sure how much memory one single shockwave uses, but it would be a hell of a cool thing to see. Plus, the shokwave art would not have to be that big and colourful then...

Like, one shockwave per 5 degrees? That should definitely be enough to give it a spherical look, especially from a bit of a distance. Plus, if you like the "cinematic" look better than realistic, you could add a larger and more visible shockwave on just one plane.

This 5 degrees gap would use 72 shockwaves per explosion... :wtf:  Which is a *bit* much. But I don't really know how much resources a single shockwave uses when it is rendered in-game. Also, if the amount here is too great you could increase the gap anle to, say, 10 degrees, which would "only" require 36 planar shockwaves to create a pseudo-spherical shockwave.

Please tell me whether this can even be done - well, it obviously can be done, but is it reasonable thing to do, will it demand too much memory/processing time?  ... And another idea; why not make a ship's subsystems explode separately, ora, or at long ships have two or three hull shockwave startpoints, so that the resulting shockwave is roughly shaped along the ship? I guess it'd be safer to stay with fewer shockwaves for that idea, though...

And one final question; can these explosions be used on The Babylon Project? Because they'll not be much of use for me otherwise... Do they require some original FS2 files or do they only work with original FS2 ships or something?

I also noticed that this particular conversation had been abandoned for a *bit* of time, hope I can reactivate it - or please tell me where these guys continued the converstion.

Thank you.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2005, 05:42:49 pm by 3189 »
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Offline StratComm

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
The problem is that doesn't work well when you're not coplaner to any of the major axes (say, if you were looking at it from an isometric perspective, more or less) as you'll get gaps in coverage but will see the segments.  It would be better to have concentric shells, each mapped with a different texture (don't get your hopes up, that'd be a total resource hog) than to try to fake it with planer waves.
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Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by FireCrack
Shockwaves dont travel at the speed of light...



Mmmh, this is where I must say something now!

It actually is, and must be, possible for a shockwave to travel at the speed of light. Otherwise shockwaves would have a bit of a hard time to travel through the vacuum of the space havin about 3 to one proton per cubic metre...

However, in gas clouds a shockwave can be seen if there occurs, for example, a supernova nearby. The electromagnetic radiation sphere emitted by the explosion heats up gas when it hits it, resulting with visible glow emitted by the gas. And, the radiation sphere proceeds through the gas cloud at c, the speed of light.

Unfortunately this information is not very useful for the effects designer. A shockwave has two stages; the mentioned growing spherical pulse of electromagnetic radiation, and mechanical shockwave. What we see in FS2 has two explanations: Either it does not happen in space, or the damaged ships leak enough gas around them to make the shockwave visible, and what is more, affect ships inside the gas cloud.

It would not be very useful to have a shockwave travelling at the speed of light - unless a single occasion.

On nebulas there is plenty of gas everywhere (well, actually there wouldn't be, but FS2 is'nt so physically accurate anyways). So, the electromagnetic pulse generated by exploding ship could possibly generate a flashlight phenomena on the nebula; it would for a brief moment, a fraction of a second, make the gas around it emit for range of few dozens of kilometres... I also think that the explosions we see are way too dim, if you think about it physically.

You should first see a *bright* flash of light when the reactor goes off-line permanently and perhaps the reactor fuel (especially anti-matter) would be quickly consumed in a reaction that would release a significant amount of energy.

After that, you coud see the effect of the mechanical shockwave at surrounding gas, and in the middle of the explosion you might see some particles of debris, but most of the debris would actually fly away from the explosion site, possibly knocking off some fighters or even cap ships.

But it's still a great game. Who cares if the explosions look like traditional bombs, when they practically CAN'T look like that?

... I'm sorry, what happened? Um... I see my evil side took over there writing that... reading too much physics is not alwaysgood, I can see...
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm
The problem is that doesn't work well when you're not coplaner to any of the major axes (say, if you were looking at it from an isometric perspective, more or less) as you'll get gaps in coverage but will see the segments.  It would be better to have concentric shells, each mapped with a different texture (don't get your hopes up, that'd be a total resource hog) than to try to fake it with planer waves.


That's what I actually thought too... making it so dense that no gaps would be visible would be pointless as it would probably require a Cray XT3 ore equivalent to run smoothly... You would have to make three sets of these shockwaves: one rotated around x, one around z and one around y-axis... Which would raise the amount of shockwaves in one explosion to at least 3x36=108, and it probably still wouldn't look good...

Besides, the planar shockwaves are cool too, as demonstrated here.
« Last Edit: October 21, 2005, 06:07:40 pm by 3189 »
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Offline StratComm

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by Herra Tohtori



Mmmh, this is where I must say something now!

It actually is, and must be, possible for a shockwave to travel at the speed of light. Otherwise shockwaves would have a bit of a hard time to travel through the vacuum of the space havin about 3 to one proton per cubic metre...

However, in gas clouds a shockwave can be seen if there occurs, for example, a supernova nearby. The electromagnetic radiation sphere emitted by the explosion heats up gas when it hits it, resulting with visible glow emitted by the gas. And, the radiation sphere proceeds through the gas cloud at c, the speed of light.

Unfortunately this information is not very useful for the effects designer. A shockwave has two stages; the mentioned growing spherical pulse of electromagnetic radiation, and mechanical shockwave. What we see in FS2 has two explanations: Either it does not happen in space, or the damaged ships leak enough gas around them to make the shockwave visible, and what is more, affect ships inside the gas cloud.

It would not be very useful to have a shockwave travelling at the speed of light - unless a single occasion.

On nebulas there is plenty of gas everywhere (well, actually there wouldn't be, but FS2 is'nt so physically accurate anyways). So, the electromagnetic pulse generated by exploding ship could possibly generate a flashlight phenomena on the nebula; it would for a brief moment, a fraction of a second, make the gas around it emit for range of few dozens of kilometres... I also think that the explosions we see are way too dim, if you think about it physically.

You should first see a *bright* flash of light when the reactor goes off-line permanently and perhaps the reactor fuel (especially anti-matter) would be quickly consumed in a reaction that would release a significant amount of energy.

After that, you coud see the effect of the mechanical shockwave at surrounding gas, and in the middle of the explosion you might see some particles of debris, but most of the debris would actually fly away from the explosion site, possibly knocking off some fighters or even cap ships.

But it's still a great game. Who cares if the explosions look like traditional bombs, when they practically CAN'T look like that?

... I'm sorry, what happened? Um... I see my evil side took over there writing that... reading too much physics is not alwaysgood, I can see...


Actually, by definition shockwaves cannot propogate through a vaccuum, if you want to get literal with it.  There'd be no shock, as there's no medium to move.  What can happen is that a wave of high-energy matter can expand rapidly enough to form a shell of outward-moving particles, which in turn create the "shockwave" effect we're so used to seeing as it is their collisions with an object that would effect it.  Given that the surface of the shockwave is particulate matter, and not pure energy, it would by definition not be able to travel at the speed of light.
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Last edited by StratComm on 08-23-2027 at 08:34 PM

  

Offline CaptJosh

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
The part of the explosion that does move at cee has already passed through you or been absorbed by your radiation shielding by the time the debris from the explosion hits you.
CaptJosh

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Offline Herra Tohtori

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by StratComm


Actually, by definition shockwaves cannot propogate through a vaccuum, if you want to get literal with it.  There'd be no shock, as there's no medium to move.  What can happen is that a wave of high-energy matter can expand rapidly enough to form a shell of outward-moving particles, which in turn create the "shockwave" effect we're so used to seeing as it is their collisions with an object that would effect it.  Given that the surface of the shockwave is particulate matter, and not pure energy, it would by definition not be able to travel at the speed of light.


That depends on what do you want to call a shockwave.

Practically, in interstellar nebulaes there simply are not enough matter to convey mechanical energy via wave movemet. Still we can see shockwaves created by supernovae. These larg-scale shockwaves are nothing more but simply gas emitting the energy of electromagnetic pulse from the supernova (and later, of course, particle radiation including expanding gas, protons, neutrons, electrons, positrons, helium4 nuclei and such staff). The emitting zone moves outwards from the explosion, creating a shockwave-like effect.

However, both this c-speed part and slower particles pack quite a punch. Actually this latter phenomenon is strong enough to create more dense concentrations of gas in the previously homogenous gas cloud. These concentrations can then form whole new stars, so this phenomenon is really a great-scale one. The initial electromagnetic radiation is responsible of the initial brightness of the supernovae, and it fades away rather fast, while the later matter-based slower "shockwaves" last longer.

On FS2 or any other space simulation, this would only be useful in nebula missions. The emitting energy from the explosion would make the surrounding nebula glow for a brief moment, then the glow would move away at c. That's what I meant with a "flashlight-effect".


Quote
Originally posted by CaptJosh
The part of the explosion that does move at cee has already passed through you or been absorbed by your radiation shielding by the time the debris from the explosion hits you.


Yes, but the part moving at can last a bit of time, and you'd still see the fotons emitted by surrounding gas, creating a short-timed overall (or ambient) lighting boost. You would certainly have no time to see the radiation zone, moving at c, but you could see it's consequences. It would increase the temperature of the gas around it, and hot gas would start to emit fotons... creating a visible glow, for a brief moment of time.

Supernova can overcome it's mother galaxy in brightness during first few days. While the ship's energy source cannot be nearly as energetic, it should still create a visible glow on surrounding gas in nebula for some time. If there is no nebula in the mission, there would not be this glow. Simple.

Then come the particles (electrons, positrons, helium4 nuclei, neutrons, protons and stuff like that) and then comes the debris aka pieces of molecular matter hitting you.

Depending of the power source of the ship, it would certainly create different type of explosions. For example, fusion reactors would actually have severe problems trying to explode. The density needed for a hydrogen bomb to detonate can only be achieved by putting fusion materia (primarily tritium and deuterium) inside a fission bomb, which compresses the hydrogen enough so that it can fuse into helium and release energy. Reactor technology is somewhat different; the fusion must actively be fed to make it continue. Fission reactor could actually reach critical mass more easily, but there are few space ships using this primitive technology, eh?

Anti-matter and subspace/hyperspace energy sources create explosions more like these described. Anti-matter fuel must be kept away from matter actively. If this system suffers damage and becomes unable to do this, the resulting energy burst has the energy of 2mc^2, where m is the mass of anti-matter released.

Even small amounts of anti-matter annihilated with matter release *significant* amounts of energy, as you probably know... This would be in the form of gamma radiation, which could create a glow effect very much like mentioned before. Then the glow would die away, revealing some debris of the ship. Subspace/hyperspace tap energy sources could behave similarly; when the tapping mechanism becomes damaged, it could create a local energy overflow, released in explosion.

Btw, here are some images of shockwaves created by radiation zone travelling through space and making the gas glow. As I said, the initial superior brightness of the supernova becomes from the electromagnetic radiation making nearby gas glow, while the later particle radiation travels slower and creates a much similar phenomenon in a smaller scale, and the slowest and latest, but not least, comes the high-speed gas colliding other gas molecules and creating the longest visible effects in space.

All these are results of the explosion, but I don't know if you like to call them all "shockwaves". They can all cause damage to your ship... but practically none of these would even be seen as shockwaves we see on FS2. Alla of them would have such speed that in small range such explosion would only produce the bright glow, and parctically a *very* small time interval would be between that and gas and other particles hitting you.

The only way for such shock waves to be seen in FS2 would be wighting on an athmosphere. But as I said, I don't really care of that while I'm playing FS2 - the flight model is not newtonean and thus has no resemblance to real life physics, so why would the rest of the game have?;7

It's more important that it looks good and is fun to play in this occasion.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2005, 11:24:22 am by 3189 »
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Offline CaptJosh

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Looking at those images I can't help but think that if you were close enough to have seen the initial explosion, you wouldn't be around to talk about it anymore.  As for may comment about the part of an explosion traveling at the speed of light, I somehow forgot about the light itself. Dunno how.
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Quote
Originally posted by CaptJosh
Looking at those images I can't help but think that if you were close enough to have seen the initial explosion, you wouldn't be around to talk about it anymore.


Yeah... They managed to describe it almost right in the finale of the original FS2 campaign - except that you would not notice that increasing humming voice, because the radiation from the star would certainly not incrase steadily during dozens of seconds AFAIK. It would just be a single flash ripping you into atoms along with your fighter.

But yeah, first comes the radiation, or light if we want to say so, but visible light is only one part of it. Much more energy is delivered via röntgen (x-ray) and gamma rays.

But could it even be possible to make the surrounding nebula "glow" after an explosion? Only method of doing this is changing the ambient lighting briefly, but can it be changed during mission?

That would be cool, a sudden white flash in the nebula, which would then fade away to normal lighting durin 5~10 seconds, depending on the size of the explosion... Hmm, this might be worth a thought, eh? It would give the explosion a slightly more "real" taste... first you'd see a bright flash of light, then (if you were close enough) you'd "feel" the matter hitting your craft damaging it.

Btw, the radiation itself ought be enough to damage your hull if you were close enough to explosion's centre. Your craft could literally melt, or even better be vaporized...
« Last Edit: October 22, 2005, 08:51:07 pm by 3189 »
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Offline CaptJosh

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OMG I got it working!!! SUPER-3d-SHOCKWAVES!
Depending on the distance and radiation shielding, the pilot might be killed while leaving the craft intact. Though with energy shields, this isn't as much a problem as it might be.
CaptJosh

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