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[cameni]

I've been implementing some atmospheric controls that can be used to change how the atmosphere scatters different wavelengths of light and to alter the sun color. It's not yet finished and there will be more on that later in a blog post. An interesting thing is that it can be also used to simulate a terrain lit by the Moon. Here are some screenshots for you to see how it looks like:





The colors aren't entirely right because there's no gradual desaturation implemented yet, that would simulate how the human eye perceives world at low light levels. It will be implemented as a post-process effect in the same place where the exposure is being applied, handling also the HDR adaptation.

A darker variant, as if just lit by stars:

[sniperwolfpk5]

Thx God. At least new images were released. I like the first one too much. It looks like i am walking at night with a little bit moon light

[SpaceFlight]

Niceness.  

By the way, will there be a day and night cycle in the demo?

[C. Shawn Smith]

Very nice .  Can't wait to see screenshots with an actual moon in there too.

[cameni]

At the moment you can set the position of the sun by means of setting day of year and solar time of day, but the planet doesn't rotate yet, so the sun is frozen. The only thing that is holding us from releasing the sun is that because of some optimizations it's caching some of the generated data, and there needs to be a system that will refresh the cache as the time of day changes.

[OGREMAN]

I Love it! Very Very cool...

[corona]

At the moment you can set the position of the sun by means of setting day of year and solar time of day, but the planet doesn't rotate yet, so the sun is frozen. The only thing that is holding us from releasing the sun is that because of some optimizations it's caching some of the generated data, and there needs to be a system that will refresh the cache as the time of day changes.

Cool, when thats in please release a video showing a sped up day-night cycle in a few locations ;-)

[ZeosPantera]

but the planet doesn't rotate yet, so the sun is frozen

I am so old school I didn't even contemplate the earth rotating in a game. I always assumed it would be the center of the universe and everything would rotate around it..

Mind Blown again.

[cameni]

Well, technically it's a matter of interpretation. In the end everything is transformed into the camera (screen) space, so the world rotates around you. It's a question of how the data are stored and manipulated internally. While you are on the planet it uses ECEF (Earth-centered, Earth-fixed) reference frame internally for referencing objects, so effectively it's the sun and stars that are rotating, but that's not important for simulation. Flying away would switch you to a solar system reference frame and so on.

[OGREMAN]

Well, technically it's a matter of interpretation. In the end everything is transformed into the camera (screen) space, so the world rotates around you. It's a question of how the data are stored and manipulated internally. While you are on the planet it uses ECEF (Earth-centered, Earth-fixed) reference frame internally for referencing objects, so effectively it's the sun and stars that are rotating, but that's not important for simulation. Flying away would switch you to a solar system reference frame and so on.

Through my interpratation (and I may be quite wrong here)! would this not create problems with using celestial references for navigation at night ... aircraft or ships at sea for example...? Certainly when Night flying in clear air most pilots will use the main constellations as quick references for navigational purposes... will that be available in the demo?

[cameni]

You always get the same visuals, whether it's the sun and stars that we are computing the rotation for, or it's the Earth that we are rotating. Our internal representation should not matter to you. When we implemented the stars, we actually went to identify some constellations to see if it's correct.

Of course it wasn't right then, so I had to tweak and debug it until there was Polaris that was not rotating as the night went by, and after that we could also identify some of the constellations.

[ZeosPantera]

From the sound of it Ogreman, movement will be relative to the player.. So when standing on earth it will be still and the entire universe will appear to rotate around it.. But when in space the universe will be still and the earth will rotate.

So constellational navigation through random variation will no doubt be forsaken without proper modulation so you better stop the hatin' on the good man creating or your gonna hear the making of a coder procrastinating...

after that we could also identify some of the constellations.

Perhaps something in the demo to highlight and overlay the constellations in the sky. Either with just connecting lines or those awesome 1940's Disney science films.

[Snook]

Is that a city blocked out in rectangular primitives in the background of the first shot?

[Abc94]

Night looks good!

Artificial light sources are still pretty far away on the list of things to do, right?

Is that a city blocked out in rectangular primitives in the background of the first shot?

I think that's Fractopolis.  

[Jagerbomber]

Is that a city blocked out in rectangular primitives in the background of the first shot?

I think that's Fractopolis.  

We're slowly getting closer shots of it.