Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Off Topic => Topic started by: Jagerbomber on September 18, 2011, 05:22:01 pm

Title: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: Jagerbomber on September 18, 2011, 05:22:01 pm
 8)
What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ#)
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: Redrobes on September 18, 2011, 07:11:29 pm
Heh - I was going to post this too. Has some excellent reference to the sun coming up in the atmosphere that is hard to come by. Its disappointing in that it doesn't continue to animate the fly after the suns up but I guess it whited out.

Anyone know why there is that light line above the atmosphere ? Is that some kind of gradient refraction like a optic fiber sending the light around the earth ?
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 18, 2011, 10:08:09 pm
Anyone know why there is that light line above the atmosphere ? Is that some kind of gradient refraction like a optic fiber sending the light around the earth ?

It's the station's lights reflecting off either the camera lens or the window (if it's a bubble window).  Pretty sure it's the camera lens though, since it appears they're using a fish-eye lens.

Scratch that ... I can see the solar panels are in front of it.  The description says "Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy"
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: Redrobes on September 19, 2011, 11:45:56 am
But does that ionosphere glow ??? Or is it getting the light from the sun and if its the latter then how is it doing that if the atmosphere underneath is unlit. Has the ionosphere got particles in it that reflect the sunlight where the layers below do not or is the light being bent through it to reach the ISS ?
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: cameni on September 19, 2011, 03:13:07 pm
Hmm, hard to say how much in there is an artistic touch. Definitely a high sensitivity and color corrections and denoising. Here's one of the original photos http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS028&roll=E&frame=29679 (http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS028&roll=E&frame=29679)

It also looks a bit weird to me, the planet is as if lighted by a reflector on ISS itself, with the darker regions around the borders. I would actually like to see how the human eye perceives it, and no other color effects applied.
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: C. Shawn Smith on September 19, 2011, 09:57:31 pm
But does that ionosphere glow ??? Or is it getting the light from the sun and if its the latter then how is it doing that if the atmosphere underneath is unlit. Has the ionosphere got particles in it that reflect the sunlight where the layers below do not or is the light being bent through it to reach the ISS ?

I've actually put in a question about this particular facet of the video to a member of The Planetary Society.  I'll post when and if I receive an answer.

I'm pretty sure much of it is raw video, just from the look of it.  Going to download the video and pull a few frames into Photoshop in the next few days to see if I can uncover any color correction or filters being applied.
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: Jagerbomber on September 20, 2011, 12:27:36 pm
http://www.weather.com/weather/videos/news-41/top-stories-169/stunning-images-captured-from-space-21938 (http://www.weather.com/weather/videos/news-41/top-stories-169/stunning-images-captured-from-space-21938)

Also, I'll take this time to ask a question instead of making a new thread.  I can't remember the exact details on your best resolution you have (at least for the US), but would this help get a better resolution?
http://seamless.usgs.gov/about_elevation.php (http://seamless.usgs.gov/about_elevation.php)
There's 3 NEDs on the left side... under "Elevation" obviously.

I know they've got 1/3 arc second data at my house and it looks pretty good according to this map, though pixely.  :P
http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm (http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm)
It's funny because it looks more accurate than the low amount of data points they use for the road overlay on this map.  :P

There's also other stuff like tree canopies and stuff.

I don't know what files are needed or exactly how to get them, but there's a FAQs page with a lot of info.
Have a look around the website, but it seems to me like it's kind of all over the place (or a little difficult to navigate)... then again I don't know what I'm doing.  :P
Title: Re: Outerra will look like this at night eventually, right?
Post by: cameni on September 20, 2011, 05:27:21 pm
Yes, for US there are generally better data available. For things like simulators we would use these 30m data, together with other 30m datasets that are available for many mountainous areas in the world (where you generally need a better resolution).

Not sure about the higher resolution data though - there must be quite an interference with tree canopy and buildings, and it may become increasingly difficult to merge it with other 3D data, requiring a lot of corrections.