I finallt implemented triple and multiple stars, and ran into "interface problem". More precisely, two problems. First, I will describe the structure of the system. Each star can be binary. In this case the star is reaplced with the barycenter of binary and two stars orbiting...
New appearance of stars: static procedural texture and atmospheric scattering. You can see the effect of mutual illumination in close binary systems (heating of the side of the star facing the companion, sunrise/sunset on the sun). Up close, the texture looks quite descent (excluding solar spots),...
I added a feature to the engine: if real (catalog) planet has only height map defined (like Venus and Titan), then the color map is being procedurally generated from it. I need a reverse feature also - if there is only a color map defined...
Gas giants with 7 cloud layers. All layers are rotate around the planet, from afar it looks like gas flows are moving in opposite directions. The screenshots show a consistent dive to the very "surface".Theoretically, if one make the atmosphere thicker, so that the horizon...
Fimally we have a good Moon textures! Data release from LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter), the device has a cool name LOLA (Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter). Before this there were silly small textures 2048x1024 for the entire Moon, or even fake ones. There are screenshots with...
New pre-release video. New engine features:Lighting effects: illumination of planets/moons by other planets/moons, solar eclipses, lens flare from the sun (actually old featrue). Attempt to animate Jupiter, if it works - I'll do the same for procedural gas giants (watch in HD). Solar system browser (2-dimensional). Procedural planets:...
Implemented a "browser" of a planetary system - a table of thumbnails of the system's planets and suns. Cells of the table are clickable: when you click on a cell, the object it describes is selected: you can go to it with G key and...
Just a bunch of screenshots of procedural planets with procedural textures (except clouds - Earth clouds are used; procedural clouds texture is not implemented yet)....
Working on procedural gas gaint textures. They are not animated yet. Actually animation is impossible with the current terrain engine, only as a moving layers approach (several transparent cluoud layers, moving relative to each other)....
Working on a more complex noises to generate more realistic terrain.Earth-like planet, noises: Fbm + distorted Fbm. Level of detail is up to 10 meters on surface. Detail textures are no applied yet.A moon, noises: FBm + Worley with crater function. The craters of successive...