@Astrobe That's a great idea, I will take a look and see if I can make that happen. I am unfortunately quite busy at the moment but once I catch a break I will try to test this.
I took a look myself; while the shader for the particles can be changed (as in the KeeperSky OXP [1]), the rest is hard coded in the engine. The other thing one might be able to change is the texture for the dust, but one cannot change it on-the-fly.
[1] for users of this OXP (which was released relatively recently but is not in the manager) removing the transparency near the rings would achieve some sort of effect, but others wouldn't see anything.
Sorry for the late replies, I have been super busy lately since I rellocated to a different country and I still don't even have wi-fi home, so I don't expect to be posting too much in the next weeks. But concerning the latest comments, while I do appreciate all feedback and input you guys post here, I do have to say that some ideas are a bit too much in my opinion. Oolite is by far not a realistic space engine (planets are too small when compared to the ships, distances are utterly unrealistic, etc.) so, for me, the rings are simply eye-candy stuff and nothing else. That is not to say that incorporating new cool effects is out of question, but physics-based complicated effects that require a lot of work/reading/coding will not get top priority on my list of things to do. Concerning the colours, I am quite satisfied with how the rings are looking, to be honest. I am still planning some improvements, for instance I want to make the granular texture/holes ratio at close range to be proportional to the colour intensity of the ring gradient, so that brighter lanes are actually denser in grains.
@Astrobe I still didn't have a chance to take a look at the space dust shader, but I was afraid it wouldn't be too easy to incorporate it here. I will see what Keeper did on his OXP.
@Cody Hmm, that's really disconcerting... I wonder how could this be solved at all, to be honest. A possible fix, but which would really make the new rings far inferior would be to limit the outer diameter of the rings to a value smaller than the distance of the station, so that a station is always out of reach of the rings. But I wonder if there is any way to always position the rings plane object in a non intersecting angle with the station. If anyone has any hints or advices, I am all ears.
@Cody Hmm, that's really disconcerting... I wonder how could this be solved at all, to be honest. A possible fix, but which would really make the new rings far inferior would be to limit the outer diameter of the rings to a value smaller than the distance of the station, so that a station is always out of reach of the rings. But I wonder if there is any way to always position the rings plane object in a non intersecting angle with the station. If anyone has any hints or advices, I am all ears.
Maybe ensure that the inner diameter is LARGER than the distance to the station? Seems more plausible somehow.
Incidentally, I couldn't tell from the picture, but is the nav beacon also in the plane of the rings? Seems like they wouldn't want to do that for visibility reasons etc...
@ffutures That's a possible solution, but given the size of the planet and the distance to stations, that would probably lead to rings being very thin or super extended out. Right now most of them should look like Saturn when it comes to proportions. I will think on what to do but I am afraid this won't be an easy fix...
@Cody In what system and galaxy did you take that shot, by the way?
I probably don't know a thing here, but isn't the station already there, when you add the ring? If so, it's just maths to rotate the ring for a few degrees.
I probably don't know a thing here, but isn't the station already there, when you add the ring? If so, it's just maths to rotate the ring for a few degrees.
And all pretty simple until you get to the shaders for the shadow cast by the planet on the ring.
It'd be a lot easier to move the station by setting a new "station_vector" property for the system in planetinfo.plist
I probably don't know a thing here, but isn't the station already there, when you add the ring? If so, it's just maths to rotate the ring for a few degrees.
And all pretty simple until you get to the shaders for the shadow cast by the planet on the ring.
So the shadow is done with the shader and not the game's lightning engine. In that case, tilting is not the way to go.
It'd be a lot easier to move the station by setting a new "station_vector" property for the system in planetinfo.plist
Not a very dynamic solution , although the simplest one. You could also check, if the station would be inside the ring and then just not add ring to that system.
Cim's solution of supplying a custom planetinfo.plist with a new station_vector seems to be the easiest one to implement, but it would be a lot of trouble to manually check every system for collisions (or it would rely on reports to slowly add problematic systems, which is not ideal). Or is it somehow possible to tell whether a station is colliding with the ring's plane just by looking at the station_vector value? For instance, Ribior (the offending planet) has a station_vector = "-0.807 0.141 0.573"; and sun_vector = "-0.204 -0.494 0.846"; which does not tell me much about it (not without the planet's rotation vector).
spara's solution of not adding rings also would work well. Later he actually PMed me an even better solution of dynamically implementing what cim proposed, i.e. moving a station when a collision is detected (thanks for the detailed PM!). I will be testing this solution and if all is well I will add it to the next release.
But could someone clarify to me one thing about station positions in Oolite: are the stations always at the same position (angle and distance) from a planet or do these vary? Planets rotate and translate, so the question is whether the stations move with them and are always at the same relative position or not. If they are, then I think spara's solution should work really really well.
Thanks to you all once again, really appreciate all the help!
The stations don't move. The only problem I can see when moving the main station after it's been positioned, is that to my understanding, the lanes are set on population. So, again to my understanding, moving the main station a lot could end up in a situation where AI ships try to navigate to a station that's not there. But, if you move the station only a little bit, jut out of the ring, would probably not break anything. Please correct me, if I'm totally lost here.
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So the shadow is done with the shader and not the game's lightning engine. In that case, tilting is not the way to go.
, although the simplest one. You could also check, if the station would be inside the ring and then just not add ring to that system.