[blowfish]

Still doesn't look as good as a background bitmap.  And I've experienced weird clipping problems with planets viewed at a large distance.

[haloboy100]

Well, hey...Freelancer used models for planets, and I think it worked beautifully.
They used a pathetically small scale as well, though. Which really ticked me off. No wonder you never found a destroyer near a planet, because it's almost as big.

[Kszyhu]

Independence War II also used modelled planets, but they were looking jagged even from great distances involved. (which was acceptable back then). Anyway, IMHO planet models should only be used when fly-by is possible.

[Dragon]

I seen very beautiful planets in X3 Terran Conflict (my father plays it ,I only played X2 and I never had enough patience to build buissness empire and buy something bigger than Osprey ,one Cattle Ranch and Power Plant).
I'm sure that SCP should handle planets with this quality ,they look even better than skyboxes.
I know that X3 have quality setting ,plantes with moving atmosphere and cloud shadows on surface show only on highest one ,so in my opinion introducing something like that to SCP should prevent slowdown on weaker computers. You can ,for example ,make two LOD planet and use .tbm to swith between them. (those who have low-end computer will use .tbm that only allows LOD1 to be shown and those with high-end use the one that makes planet to show LOD0 ,including such things like moving atmosphere).
Of course for planets that don't need flying around them we can still use skyboxes.

[haloboy100]

Well, I don't think it's a question of if we should use them, but rather how well we could use them.

[Dragon]

I'm sure that we can get very good effects using 3d plantes if only some modeling masters (Aldo_14 ,Esarai ,Stratcomm ,Steve'o ,Brandx are the examples) would get intrested in making planets.
I'd like to see planet models similar to X3 ones ,Trek ones would be good example if thy wasn't undersized.
I think planet models are far more flexible than skyboxes.

[haloboy100]

I think they would be much better (if done well), if only for the sake of being dynamic.

[General Battuta]

They seem inferior in every situation except in cases where you have to move relative to the planet.

[Herra Tohtori]

They seem inferior in every situation except in cases where you have to move relative to the planet.

Err, if the engine supported procedural terrain generation, atmospheric effects and could actually render realistically sized planets, and supported orbital mechanics... it would be AWESOME.

But it doesn't. Realistically sized planets crap out the rendering engine, procedural terrain generation is not supported, and atmospheric effects are a pipe dream at best.

Ergo, skyboxes are better than 3D planets in FreeSpace Open. If the engine is built to support that kind of stuff from the get go... 3D planets would be quite vastly superior to background bitmaps.

Infinity engine does it pretty well...

Here are some samples.

Damn I hope that game is not aborted... it's so beautiful. 

[Angelus]

What we need, is a army of coders to support the SCP team, with helluvalot of time to re-write the FSO code, then we'll have that too.

How hard can it be to find any?  <--- rhetorical question

[Aardwolf]

Did anyone consider how long it would take a ship with FreeSpace speeds at the sort of distances we get in FS to move far enough relative to a realistic-sized planet to get any visible change in what it looks like?

[Dragon]

A mere seconds needed for autopilot cutscene.

[Dragon]

OK ,I uploaded trek planet models here: http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.549
The first thing I would like to see is one of them resized properly.
The second one are ,of course ,reskins.
Any reskin would be welcome ,it doesn't matter if this would be Mars of some kind of distant ,unnamed planet.

[Angelus]

I resized Kronos more or less properly ( earthsize +/- 20000m  ).

This is what it looks like:










In the second pic you can see the distance to the planet in the targeting box.
There's a second prob, besides the graphics issue, you can't come close enough to the planet,
which makes the point of having planet models pointless.
My ship was destroyed only 2 or 3 seconds after i took the second screen shot.

My guess is that the problems with the model are:

1. The engine doesn't like models that big
2. The model has 4 layers, which causes the problems with the texture


Do you have the model in 3DS format?

Maybe something went wrong during conversion so i'll try something different this time, but honestly i doubt that the result will be different.

[blowfish]

I thought there was a practical limit to the distance from the origin any object could be ... something like 600 km maybe?   Also, I've experienced graphical problems even with single layer planets when viewed at that distance.

[Dragon]

I unfortunately don't have 3ds files for it ,do you know who was involved in this?:
http://www.unimatrix01-fs2.de/13906/home.html
That's where they originaly were (this mod seems to be completely unknown here ,one Whitelight linked to it in discussion about Startrek to FS2 TC) .
I'm sure that:
A. You can be close enough to it.
I made a mission when you start as close to it as when playing Inferno.
There was no problems.
B. That's not because of distance or size.
Earth in INF works well ,I seen HTL Mars (From Cardinal's Spear) from a great distance with no problems.
C. The glith you saw is because of conversion.
I also resized one of those models (Earth) and got the same.
Not resized models aren't causing this problem.
I even posted sceenshot of this glith some time ago and that's why I asked you to properly rescale it.
Simple POF-COB-POF route will not do it "properly".
And distance in targeting box can be adjusted ,this happens always if you resize the model and use the same table.
EDIT: A new file appeard on the site since I last visited it ,you can download "Startrek_UPD" and get Bajor planet model ,It's not included in my pack.
EDIT2: I found an information that the mod is by Omniscaper and sent him a PM.

[Dragon]

Now I know why your ship was destroyed ,Angelus.
It was because of the built-in stray system ,I also had an encouncer with it ,but in a FS mod ,so command sent me a message that I has been considered deserter and I have to return to base.
I ignored it so a while after my ship was destroyed because of collision with myself. 
I already started a thread in SCP forum about flag for disabling this behaviour.
(are you sure that you didn't received any stray messages as well? They seem to be in BtRL.)

[Getter Robo G]

I asked the SCP team to increase the distance (or eliminate it entirely) years ago...

I was told it was unneeded and basically to go away...
Something along the lines of "No one will ever need a play area that big, if you do then you have poor mission design."


 

[Droid803]

It was already increased once.

Getting rid of it is unnecessary.
Noone wants to have to fly tens of thousands of clicks in a single direction a single mission -- That's just terrible mission design, because it would involve flying in a straight line for minutes on end with 64x time compression. Pointless. Even the largest of autopilot cutscenes shouldn't need an area larger than the one currently given, otherwise the length of it will be over 20 minutes - not anyone's idea of a good watch. I know I'd get bored and quit halfway through if I ever encountered something like that, and never touch the damn campaign again.

Don't do it, please. At least not until you get 256x time compression or something.

[Dragon]

OK ,no problem ,it turned out it was my mistake ,I just gave it too big distance. I wanted 100km ,I got 1000km. 
It's working now ,and I'm uploading it to FSMods.
Check out my new thread for planet landing concept.