Outerra forum

Anteworld - Outerra Game => Terrain & terrain data issues => Topic started by: Ramjet on January 14, 2014, 10:48:48 am

Title: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: Ramjet on January 14, 2014, 10:48:48 am
Hello. I know this is not something that would be high on the priority list, but I was just curious if there were any plans to implement an accurate night sky into outerra at some point.

It is something movies often neglect, and since we have this wonderful representation of earth being developed, and talk of interplanetary travel, I thought it would be nice to be able to stargaze, constellation hunt, or to look up and see the milky way cutting through the night sky, for example :)

It could also help serve as a navigation tool, which could make for some interesting gameplay settings/ideas.

Thanks for your time.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: ZeosPantera on January 14, 2014, 02:07:05 pm
I am pretty sure the sky is 100% accurate. The star are just very very small and faint.. Lower your FOV way down and look up!
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: cameni on January 14, 2014, 02:16:03 pm
Unless there's a bug, the night sky is already rendering real stars - we are using a database of real stars there.
What's missing is a better way of rendering the magnitude range (some halos), and the bodies of our solar system.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: stonelouse on January 14, 2014, 04:12:54 pm
you guys are awesome. neil degrasse tyson sends his love! :D
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: Ramjet on January 14, 2014, 05:49:41 pm
well call me impressed. I just hadn't realized it and *assumed* that you hadn't.

I'm rooting for your continued success and progress.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: Ramjet on January 18, 2014, 12:18:42 pm
I'm not sure that this would be useful to you or not, but it is a nice (free) program. If you download the catalogs in the program, there are over 200 million stars mapped.

You can see with/without atmosphere, etc, etc, etc... If nothing else, might be a useful reference when you start adding additional layers to your night sky.

Or, if you just like this kind of thing, it is a cool program for that as well :)

http://www.stellarium.org/ (http://www.stellarium.org/)
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: Turcik on March 12, 2014, 07:08:43 am
Yes, +1 for Stellarium, I've just signed in on this forum do suggest it. By the way, you are doing an awesome job with this engine, it has a HUGE potential.

Oh hell, i've misspelled my nickname, it's Turcik not Trucik. Maybe a moderator could modify it? Please?
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: PytonPago on March 12, 2014, 08:30:38 am

... i like how solarium has the multiple layer structure to show different age/society constellations whyte some little info about them.  Wonder if someone tries that on OT ... and an telescope mod, to look at heavenly bodyes a little closer.  :)
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: HiFlyer on March 12, 2014, 10:05:32 am
Unless there's a bug, the night sky is already rendering real stars - we are using a database of real stars there.
What's missing is a better way of rendering the magnitude range (some halos), and the bodies of our solar system.

I had read something like this a few weeks ago, and went into Outerra to take a look.

The problem I noticed then is that even if the stars are all there, there are so many of them that the familiar constellations were lost in all the glitter. Even from ground level, the atmosphere wasn't lessening any of them to invisibility or near invisibility, so even knowing intellectually that the stars are in their right positions doesn't lessen the instinctive feeling that the sky is "incorrect"

Its very hard to find any constellations, unfortunatly.  :P

Not a biggie, but you will almost certainly have to address it, eventually.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: ZeosPantera on March 12, 2014, 01:49:15 pm
Lower your FOV it may help as it will put less on the screen at once. I know from having a CRT and my brother having his LCD like everyone else that the stars when moving disappear on "modern" displays. I can track them fine on a CRT but the whole sky goes black if the pixel lag is even slightly off.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: PytonPago on March 12, 2014, 02:23:03 pm
Atmospheric distortion of close-by looking stars. Or something like that its called - too low sources get distorted close to nothing, but close by or a bunch of them aether appear as one or makes nice halos - or the milky way. Now i dont know, if a simple "appearance distance" to each other function for this would work well, as the wavelength spectrum of the stars has some part of it too (dwarfs or neutron-ones have a large difference there and atmosphere has some play to it too - also, else wave-lenght fields need some color information - but im not sure if anyone is going to try build an IR, UV and radio-range observatories in OT - might be more actuall when inter-planetary stuff is made for satellites alike - still a thing for people like hardcore NASA staff being nerdy after work), doe, it may be of interesting result. Problem is, you need to somehow define the intensity of each star-light, but may be taken from the star-map texture pixelage. Also, if done for actual frame FOV and magnification, it may give up nicely for lens focusing effect - where, when you look whyte an telescope, this effects fades accordingly to the magnification, giving you the sharpness of it. (there is some limit due to atmosphere/space dynamics, humidity/particles in vision slope and temperature playing whyte the magnetic field motion, but setting some well set max and min on that distortion effect is all it needs for a simple approach). ...
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: PaulMoffat on March 14, 2014, 04:39:53 am
So technically if someone tells me to get lost I can go navigate by the stars at night in Outerra :)
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: PytonPago on March 14, 2014, 08:10:36 am
So technically if someone tells me to get lost I can go navigate by the stars at night in Outerra :)

You still need that circular math-board thingy.
Title: Re: Accurate Night Sky?
Post by: John514 on June 30, 2014, 07:48:11 am
you guys are awesome. neil degrasse tyson sends his love! :D

You are not Mr. Tyson, are you?  ::)