Brown Dwarf Geography
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Elenchus | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 00:53 | Message # 1 |
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| Hi guys, I was fooling around with Space Engine the other day and found something quite bizarre. I visited a Brown Dwarf orbiting a white main-sequence star, it's surface gravity was relatively weak at approximately 66g's and I think this had some pretty dramatic effects on the surface geography.
The first Brown Dwarf in question. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the coordinates, but I was able to confirm that Brown Dwarfs with less that about 100g surface gravity all show a variety of unique surface characteristics like this: This particular brown dwarf emits almost no light of its own, which makes it surprisingly photogenic. These sawtooth mountains stretch for thousands of miles.
My question is, is this merely a result of how the game generates terrain using fractals? At 100g's, I would assume these objects would be virtually flat, but some of these mountains are absolutely massive.
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Donatelo200 | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 00:58 | Message # 2 |
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| This is not really land as there is no true surface on a brown dwarfs. They are merely clouds but because of the way S.E. renders planets they are solid like terrain despite actually being clouds.
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Edited by Donatelo200 - Saturday, 24.01.2015, 00:59 |
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Elenchus | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 01:02 | Message # 3 |
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| Quote This is not really land as there is no true surface on a brown dwarfs. They a merely clouds but because of the way S.E. renders planets they are solid like terrain despite actually being clouds.
Interesting, but I already passed through two separate cloud layers to reach the surface. I know that Gas Giants have their "surfaces" rendered as flat, featureless plains (which is something of a shame, as the cloud formations would be breathtaking), but I suppose what you say makes sense. For reference, here are a few more pics higher up in the atmosphere.
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DoctorOfSpace | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 01:11 | Message # 4 |
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| Quote Elenchus ( ) Interesting, but I already passed through two separate cloud layers to reach the surface. I know that Gas Giants have their "surfaces" rendered as flat, featureless plains (which is something of a shame, as the cloud formations would be breathtaking), but I suppose what you say makes sense. For reference, here are a few more pics higher up in the atmosphere.
I pointed this out to Space Engineer already
I even edited a Brown Dwarf in the editor to show how a gas giant would look with such a "surface"
Depending on the lighting and atmosphere model in use when you fly along the surface of a brown dwarf like this it looks like a fluid.
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Elenchus | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 01:38 | Message # 5 |
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| Quote Depending on the lighting and atmosphere model in use when you fly along the surface of a brown dwarf like this it looks like a fluid.
Thanks for posting that pic. Would it be possible for the engine to show extremely varied cloud formations at this point? I was thinking along the lines of what your photo shows, but with multiple flowing layers of massive, syrupy looking clouds, with a liquid hydrogen ocean beneath. So then, I should point out that the surface temperature for the Brown Dwarf that I visited was only about 800 degrees Fahrenheit. This isn't beyond comprehension, since we know that Hot Jupiters have even higher temperatures, but what kind of medium would I be flying through at 800F? Very hot hydrogen and helium gas?
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DoctorOfSpace | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 02:01 | Message # 6 |
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| Quote Elenchus ( ) Would it be possible for the engine to show extremely varied cloud formations at this point?
Possibly, I don't know. It may be possible if the right information were added to the shaders or perhaps it would need to be added code side, in which case only Space Engineer could do it. I do know you can change the look of the gas giant clouds and adjust the flow patterns but beyond that I haven't done much with it. Nothing I have done to the shaders has enabled this surface effect on gas/ice giants sadly.
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HarbingerDawn | Date: Saturday, 24.01.2015, 03:34 | Message # 7 |
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| Gas giants actually did have surface cloud features like that in the previous version, I don't know why they don't have them now.
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