Oolite Bulletins

Thank-you (and I will share - the world should see your efforts!)

Great job, submersible! Thanks for those beautiful planet textures.

Any plans on Galaxy 3?
That's where I am now and probably have to stay for some time to level up for Thargoid Plans, TCAT missions before jumping to G4 for Xeptatls Sword.

Just cast your vote . I'll get thru them all eventually. Presently Gal5 has the most votes of the unreleased. Don't loose patience though - I have some donated CPU which manages to chew through a galaxy render in one evening (the upload/download of the output is sometime taking longer).

pagroove wrote:

Any plans on Galaxy 3?
That's where I am now and probably have to stay for some time to level up for Thargoid Plans, TCAT missions before jumping to G4 for Xeptatls Sword.

pagroove wrote:

to G4 for Xeptatls Sword.

Xeptatl's Sword begins in G5... I think.

I did try it out but again the Famous Planets Textures are overwritten by the Povray's. I did give you full permission to convert my textures to cube maps and integrate and even distribute them into your package. At least on my computer the script that should prevent that the planets from FP are not overwritten is still not working.

Sorry to be a nuisance but this is only valid for Galaxy 1/2. So maybe the easiest solution is:

1. to take my textures (you have full permission for that)
2. resize them as you see fit
3. convert them to cube maps
4. copy the converted cube mapped Famous Planets textures into your packages for Galaxy 1 and 2.
5. redistribute the packages for galaxy 1 and 2.

In this way I can:

1. discontinue Famous Planets as a texture planets.
2. continue the series a descriptions package providing planet descriptions.
3. Maybe draw some cities on some of your textures (see the city planets in Famous Planets like Teread, Xexedi and Ceinerxe).

Of course I can as an alternative give a description to the existing Famous Planets 2.5. users that they must simply copy the textures from Famous Planets into the Povray texture directories for Galaxy 1 and 2 but then they are not cube mapped. Either solution is fine form me and I don't want to bother you with this problem too long.

EDIT: But the reason I keep getting back at it is because they where hand drawn ( at least most of them).

That said. EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT (x 1000) work. Great textures and great details!
Only missing indeed:

- arctic worlds
- city worlds
- volcanic worlds

Maybe some Venus like worlds (not gas planets but planets with a hazy atmosphere)
- Some storm worlds could be cool.

pagroove wrote:

I did try it out but again the Famous Planets Textures are overwritten by the Povray's. I did give you full permission to convert my textures to cube maps and integrate and even distribute them into your package. At least on my computer the script that should prevent that the planets from FP are not overwritten is still not working.

Well this is embrarassing. Further examination reveals that not only is the base OXP scripting for Povray Planets not working as expected... I am baffled that it works at all. In spite of this - it still appears to co-operate with FP 2.5.1 as installed here. Weird.

pagroove wrote:

Sorry to be a nuisance but this is only valid for Galaxy 1/2. So maybe the easiest solution is:

1. to take my textures (you have full permission for that)
2. resize them as you see fit
3. convert them to cube maps
4. copy the converted cube mapped Famous Planets textures into your packages for Galaxy 1 and 2.
5. redistribute the packages for galaxy 1 and 2.

I intended to follow this up at a later date. Since the rendering can happen un-attended it works well with my current time constraints, while using planettool and gimp to convert and embed FP2 is essentially a manual process and is time-heavy.

pagroove wrote:

In this way I can:

1. discontinue Famous Planets as a texture planets.
2. continue the series a descriptions package providing planet descriptions.
3. Maybe draw some cities on some of your textures (see the city planets in Famous Planets like Teread, Xexedi and Ceinerxe).

Of course I can as an alternative give a description to the existing Famous Planets 2.5. users that they must simply copy the textures from Famous Planets into the Povray texture directories for Galaxy 1 and 2 but then they are not cube mapped. Either solution is fine form me and I don't want to bother you with this problem too long.

Adding some additional settlement/civilisation detail is something I would like to do. Drawing them on might be a pain - since often whole continents are covered with clouds.

I'm also thinking about descriptions... or possibly using heuristics to decide some of the texture characteristics based on the Oolite description. My first idea was to rig a website for people to contribute descriptions for the different planets, vote on the various contributions and allow those to be downloaded as a separate OXP. Still some way off on that one!

pagroove wrote:

EDIT: But the reason I keep getting back at it is because
they where hand drawn ( at least most of them).

That said. EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT (x 1000) work. Great textures and great details!
Only missing indeed:

- arctic worlds
- city worlds
- volcanic worlds

Maybe some Venus like worlds (not gas planets but planets with a hazy atmosphere)
- Some storm worlds could be cool.

All these types are up for grabs and I already have some ideas of how to achieve these things procedurally in povray. PLEASE post any inspirational images or creations - they're really helpful.

I've definitely been enjoying using PP in Galaxy 2.

EDIT: never mind; read your post again. I'll edit this to make a bit more sense

Regarding using heuristics on planetinfo to inform the generation algorithm, I do the same with New Cargoes to set up a lot of the import/export details. It might make sense, if and when you use planetinfo heuristics, that we use the same heuristics for the factors that might both affect trade goods and be visible from orbit.

Well this is embrarassing. Further examination reveals that not only is the base OXP scripting for Povray Planets not working as expected... I am baffled that it works at all. In spite of this - it still appears to co-operate with FP 2.5.1 as installed here. Weird.

That's strange. could you look which version of the FP script you have then? I did download (to be certain) the latest version of the script by Svengali posted in the FP2.5 thread.

It then only plays nice at Lave ( I see the FP lave version) But all other planets (Zaonce, Leesti etc) are replaced by a Povray Planet.

I intended to follow this up at a later date. Since the rendering can happen un-attended it works well with my current time constraints, while using planettool and gimp to convert and embed FP2 is essentially a manual process and is time-heavy.

Ok thanks! glad its on the todo list then.
EDIT to ADD: I've just downloaded planet tool and if you want I offer to do the conversion work so you can concentrate on the rendering.
Is that a good idea?

My first idea was to rig a website for people to contribute descriptions for the different planets, vote on the various contributions and allow those to be downloaded as a separate OXP. Still some way off on that one

What I did for FP is to expand on the existing Oolite description (not replace it completely exempt maybe on some planets like Xexedi an Theraed).

Already started converting the FP textures to cube maps. Work is progressing well. Hope to offer you the cube mapped texture set soon.

Conversion of the FP-textures to cube maps done. Also sorted them in a Galaxy 1 and a Galaxy 2 dir. Now renaming the textures to the same naming that you use in your texture packs.

Conversion work of Famous Planets textures to cube maps done. You have a PM.

My old laptop had trouble with the new textures and I had to take them out, not surprising really as it's almost antediluvian - BUT I saw the new textures on a full shader system with a projector! Oh my giddy aunt! They are absolutely fantastic especially on a 3 metre wide screen Felt like I was going to fall out the cockpit.

First screenshot from the wild posted in Screenshots by cim https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 70#p165054

I'm enjoying the scenery in Gal4. Some of the planets looks a bit meh, but only by comparison to the gorgeous ones with interesting coastlines and clouds and things. There's an appreciable hiccough when launching or jumping, but nothing lethal.