[Release] System Features: Rings

[another_commander]

Oh yes, this is so much, much better. Great stuff.

[gsagostinho]

Oh yes, this is so much, much better. Great stuff.

I'm really happy with that, thanks for the feedback!

[Cody]

Yes, much better! Still getting moiré patterns at some distances, but the shadowed rings are now fine (though a little 'solid-looking' when flying through them).

[gsagostinho]

Still getting moiré patterns at some distances, but the shadowed rings are now fine (though a little 'solid-looking' when flying through them).

Yeah, that comes from the colour gradients. unless the ring would have a single colour (which would look dreadful) then some moire patterns will appear. I also would love to have the ring become a bit transparent the closer the player is to them, but at the moment that is not possible so we need to live with that

[Cody]

<grins> Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make beringed planets appear beringed on F7.

[gsagostinho]

<grins> Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make beringed planets appear beringed on F7.

I would love to have that as well, but that would be tough! I think that would perhaps be possible is to add a string "This planet has a ring." to the planet description. Once I am done with all the work in progress I have right now I will see if I manage something

[Astrobe]

Wouldn't the F7 screen and the popping problem mentioned in the screenshot thread be easier to fix if rings were implemented in the core game?

This feature and the P3D stuff would be good "advertisement" material for 1.85/1.86 launch.

[gsagostinho]

@Astrobe If the devs want to use any of my OXPs or part of them in the core game, I would be flattered.

By the way, I should be uploading an update for the rings in a couple of days. I have cleaned a bit the shader code and I also have a new feature: when one approaches the planet atmosphere (for PlanetFall, for instance) the rings get bluer similarly to the skies.

[gsagostinho]

Version 2.3 has been released:

- code cleanup.
- rings fade into blue when entering the atmosphere (such as when using PlanetFall).

Screenies: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oufhv4gou9zf ... iVDFa?dl=0

[gsagostinho]

Question: would anyone be able to point me to the piece of core code that handles the sky colour transition when coming closer to a planet? I noticed that the sky is blue on the illuminated side and black on the dark side, but on the terminator there is no smooth transition. Perhaps an orange dusk/dawn could be possible Anyway, I would be quite interested in taking a look and messing around with it.

[another_commander]

Question: would anyone be able to point me to the piece of core code that handles the sky colour transition when coming closer to a planet? I noticed that the sky is blue on the illuminated side and black on the dark side, but on the terminator there is no smooth transition. Perhaps an orange dusk/dawn could be possible Anyway, I would be quite interested in taking a look and messing around with it.

Check out - (void) update:(OOTimeDelta) delta_t in OOPlanetEntity.m. There is this TODO comment there:

Code: Select all

// TODO: properly calculated pink sky - needs to depend on sun's angular size,
// and its angular height on the horizon.

and some commented out code that's supposedly generating pink colored sky, but I've never tried to actually test it.

[gsagostinho]

@another_commander I see, so that's core hardcore C, not GLSL stuff. I will take a look at it but that's very likely above my current skills

[gsagostinho]

Important note: I have update all my OXPs to the in-game extension download manager, so I am removing the links from all my posts. Please use the manager and report here any issues.

[gsagostinho]

Version 2.4 is available at the in-game extension manager and should address a visual glitch present with certain ATI drivers.

[RockDoctor]

While dealing wiht a bug in another OXP, I came across an issue which I suspect was with "Rings".

Ah, this doesn't look right. (struggles to remember how to do links to screenshot). Try this.. The loss of subtle shading doesn't bother me - maybe my graphics card can do better, but I just don't care. But losing half of a planet - that's odd. The starlight terminator is shaded OK, but is the planet truncated along a radius from the star?
More odd effects . I installed an update to the "Rings" oxz yesterday, and this looks like a broken ring to me.
Anyway, fly on and not worry about that. It's the rings, I'm sure of it - especially since I now see that I've got both version 1.2 and 2.4 of "System Features : Rings" installed. I thought the Add-on Manager would deal with things like that.

I'm guessing that my laptop doesn't have a shader (enabled), and this truncation of half of the planet is being done by the ring code trying to do things which it can't do. According to the System Info Applet (Fed25) I've got an "Intel® Bay Trail" graphics chip. Is that shader-capable?
Shouldn't the code detect if there's not a shader (whatever one of those is) and fall back to the code that was working in version 1.x of the add-on?