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Ice crystals and halos
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| midtskogen | Date: Saturday, 24.11.2012, 14:51 | Message # 1 |
 Star Engineer
Group: Users
Norway
Messages: 1674
Status: Offline
| First, I have to congratulate on a beautiful piece of software. I was a few years in the game development industry 20 years ago, and this is precisely what I dreamt of making (within the technical limitations at that time). I was allowed to create a 3D engine, which I designed to work on a hierarchically structured world with procedural mechanisms. But the dull games to use the engine didn't have the need for all that. Having discovered Space Engine I will now buy myself a decent PC (I've had to use the computer at work to try it so far) 
Anyway, have you considered adding optical phenomena in the atmospheres like halos? I suppose it could be implemented as an extra semitransparent layer (relative to the light source and the ground) in front of haze or (more or less transparent) clouds. Different types of crystals present in the clouds determine what types of halos would be present, and in alien atmospheres with crystals not just made of water, there could be interesting sights. There are many examples on Les Cowley's Atmospheric Optics site including simulations of halos possible on other worlds. I think Les can be talked into generating bitmaps for such exotic halos with his halosim software (which also can be downloaded).
Some ideas on how things might look on other planets: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/oworld.htm
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
Edited by midtskogen - Saturday, 24.11.2012, 17:10 |
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Sunday, 25.11.2012, 02:11 | Message # 2 |
 Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Hi midtskogen! The halos can be handled by 3D clouds system, some of them handles it very easy. Or it may be made as a screen-space post-processing effect.
The site you linked is very interesting, thanks!
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| Aaron | Date: Sunday, 25.11.2012, 08:25 | Message # 3 |
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Space Tourist
Group: Users
United States
Messages: 39
Status: Offline
| I haven't seen any recent threads discussing atmosphere lately, so I figured I'd tack onto this one. Have you given any thought to optimizing the rendering of cloudmaps a little more?
I have been researching methods that might lend itself well to implementation in SE based on what I can guess about the way things are rendered, and thought this set of articles might be helpful. They even mention rendering halos and other scattering effects.
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Publications/2006/BNL06/
If you've already come across them, then oh well...
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Sunday, 25.11.2012, 15:00 | Message # 4 |
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Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| Quote (Aaron) If you've already come across them, then oh well...
Yes, I have.
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 20.12.2012, 15:45 | Message # 5 |
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Star Engineer
Group: Users
Norway
Messages: 1674
Status: Offline
| We had a wonderful display of halos (22 and 46 degree), a tangent arc, sun dogs, a sun pillar and even the rare Moilanen arc today.
One of my webcams was filming and I've made this timelapse. I hope to see something like this in SE sometime. 
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| Ayceman | Date: Thursday, 03.01.2013, 19:00 | Message # 6 |
 Space Tourist
Group: Users
Romania
Messages: 24
Status: Offline
| Yes, it would be interesting to see this implemented. There is this wonderful piece of art made in Blender that shows these optical effects on Enceladus through plume particles:
It's here on deviantart.
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| Disasterpiece | Date: Thursday, 03.01.2013, 21:03 | Message # 7 |
 World Builder
Group: Users
United States
Messages: 640
Status: Offline
| Wow, someone should make a lens flare like that.
I play teh spase engien
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| Duke | Date: Thursday, 03.01.2013, 21:29 | Message # 8 |
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Space Pilot
Group: SE team
Antarctica
Messages: 88
Status: Offline
| I think when forms of such lens flares can be calculated dynamically in shader then they will be implemented in SE.
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| midtskogen | Date: Thursday, 03.01.2013, 21:40 | Message # 9 |
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Star Engineer
Group: Users
Norway
Messages: 1674
Status: Offline
| Different halos can be made with HaloSim. I encourage anyone with the time and skill to try it out for SE. For testing purposes results could replace the lens flare, but there are some critical differences. If the camera rotates, so will the halos (unlike lens flares). Also, nearby objects could (mostly) be in front of the halos. For proper realism, the halo bitmaps must have the right size. The halos, sundogs and arcs only appear at certain angles away from the light source.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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| FastFourierTransform | Date: Saturday, 24.05.2014, 20:23 | Message # 10 |
 Pioneer
Group: Local Moderators
Spain
Messages: 542
Status: Offline
| I really would love to see that halo in Titan's clouds.
And many other extraterrestrial halos created by different atmospheric crystals and conditions.
Atmospheric Optics it's a very interesting topic. I think it would be great to implement also a close related phenomena called The Glory. Also inspired by the fact that this effect is different in different worlds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(optical_phenomenon)
Here is a photograph, taken by the Venus Express mission, of a Venusian Glory. You can see by the simulation that the glory looks quite different from those created on our planet
Here's an explanation of how to simulate realistic glories if you are interested in this.
It would be amazing to see this kind of things on the first installment of SpaceEngine. It is a demostration of scientific accuracy and well documented space planetarium (and maybe game). At the end this kind of details are going to make the real difference. Because exploring exoplanets can be more complex and diverse than we even imagine.
Edited by FastFourierTransform - Saturday, 24.05.2014, 20:43 |
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Saturday, 24.05.2014, 22:00 | Message # 11 |
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Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| This is very cool, but very complex effect. SpaceEngine now even don't model composition of the atmosphere, so this is must be first task to do.
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| midtskogen | Date: Sunday, 25.05.2014, 08:15 | Message # 12 |
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Star Engineer
Group: Users
Norway
Messages: 1674
Status: Offline
| I think SE can do this sufficiently well by using precomputed textures either taken from the atmospheric optics site or calculated with HaloSim. Of course, SE nevertheless needs to model an atmosphere composition of sorts to determine what kind of crystals and associated halos could exist. SE could probably get away with a lot of cheating here, though. And SE needs to do improved cloud simulation so the halos could appear in plausible situations.
I picked my avatar to reflect my wish for halo support in SE and I haven't changed it since 2012 keeping it as a subtle reminder.
NIL DIFFICILE VOLENTI
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