Oolite Bulletins

I downloaded FarPlanets 0.3 and got these log errors. No files with similar names in the OXZ, either. Is there some other OXP you're using for the textures? EDIT: The issue with Jupiter is likely to be an OpenGL limitation: the depth buffer is finite in size, so at about 1.4 radii from the centre of the planet, the centre of the planet goes outside the far plane of the OpenGL camera (which is at 10^8 metres). On my system, that makes it appear transparent with respect to the starfield: on yours it may make it disappear entirely.

Increasing the far-plane distance from the camera is possible, but to fit Jupiter on properly you'd need the far plane to be at over 10^10 metres, which would give horrible display problems even on 32-bit depth buffers. There are multi-pass rendering techniques which can be used to solve that, but they're probably not worth implementing since in normal play nothing is visible at anywhere near that sort of distance.

Yes, I will publish a texture pack soon, but a fallback texture is used if not found the nice ones regardless from this messages and the problem is the same. Now I found that a half-transparent atmosphere is remain if the center of the planet are in the view but disappear when I turn the center out of my view.

Edit:

I found the atmosphere is remain only if I use windowed mode where my screen ratio is 4:3. If I wide this window then after a point the atmosphere is gone and artifacts remain only far before I reach 16:9 so I never see it in fullscreen mode due to it is wide. If I turn off shaders then everything is the same.

Moreover my netbook which use Intel Atom CPU and Intel graphics the Jupiter is never gone but the poligon dance is persistent in both machines If I go enough near.

Lave texture pack is done in my box using as high quality as possible: 9 pictures take 110MB.

I did see the polygon dance on Jupiter (and none of the other others) here. I suspect the objects are just too big for the game engine.

I just ran this and this is awesome Norby. Finally it looks like we are going to get the best of both worlds. Frontier Elite 2 distances and Elite gameplay without the jousting matches.

Great, keep doing what you are doing please.

dertien wrote:

Great, keep doing what you are doing please.

Thank you, I am on it.

cim wrote:

I did see the polygon dance on Jupiter (and none of the other others) here. I suspect the objects are just too big for the game engine.

It seems to be there is a formula where the dance happen: exactly over 14000km and within 40*radius from the surface. I got these very round numbers when tried many round radii in my machine. In my netbook the inner border was at about 12000km and the outer exactly at 14000km. So I think the largest usable radius setting without dance is 12000000 / 40 = 300000 which is about the size of Mars. It is enough for me to make planets until no request to make gas giants also.

The polygon dance also happens on earth, not as you get very close to it. Haven't checked the distance.

I have a little question Norby,

What line in the shipdata.plist or the shipyard.plist exactly triggers the possibility for a ship to buy the Micro-G torus ?


I have a lifter with 3 tons which can mount it, but the Moth cannot and it has 6 tons of cargo space.Where exactly can I add mass to a ship so it can mount the drive and make it visible between the purchasable equipment?

Thanks

It is not related to the cargo space, but the whole mass of the ship must be over 30t. Moth is 20t only which mean it is a small escort ship and not enough room inside to fit this strong drive into. In my theory small ships are transported in carriers if needed.

The more strong FTL drive require 130t mass, like a Cobra III. I invented the 30t and 130t limits in [wiki]ShipVersion[/wiki] to make differences between ships based on sizes and I use these consistently in my OXPs.

The mass of a ship is calculated from the volume of the ship model, but there is a density key in shipdata.plist which multiply it. So if you have an enough good background story to why this small ship is Micro-G capable then set density=2 to increase the mass to 40t and you will be able to use it. It mean that this ship is in a larger class so if ShipVersion is installed then NPCs will get more bonus equipments also. You must decide that Moth is a small fighter or it is a middle sized ship like Cobra I.

The mass of a ship is calculated from the volume of the ship model

Okay now I understand how this works. I just couldn't figure out how the Lifter and the Moth (both non canon ships) would allow and not allow the usage of the Drive. I must say you make some mean ass oxp's

There are some ships that I don't want to give the option of installing a drive, and I just needed to know how to do that, thanks for clearing that up. The Lifter for one is such a ship. It would not be logical that the lifter would be a more spaceworthy craft in comparison to the Moth and the Gnat. There is little difference in the size of the Mamba and the Moth for example. They are both fighters and should be capable of moving in system pretty quickly even if it's a large system, like it is in this oxp.

I want small ships to have no witchdrive or micro-g torus at all (just a regular torus drive to save time between witchpoint and planet, because in my opinion that is what they are built to do):

- Worm, Lifter, Orbital Shuttle and Transporter (Non combat/small parcel/limited cargo and passenger class)

So if I can put in a parameter in the shipdata.plist file with which I can control that, It's fine.

What I also like now is that I can finally see how many metric tons the ships are that I designed, cool.

Thanks for the heads up Norby, I wouldn't have figured this one out on my own.

[wiki]FarPlanets[/wiki] is updated to v0.4:

- Famous systems has far planets, textures are in the FarPlanetsFamous OXZ (many thanks to Cheyd for the hosting).
- Fuel Tanks are added to reach planets farther than Pluto (for example Sedna in Lave).

- Increased acceleration and maximum speed with double equipments.
- Harder break at masslock: velocity is limited to Injector speed.
- Planet radii are limited to 3000km to avoid dancing polygons.
- Names of stations for extra planets start with far planet name.
- Max. distance in 1.77 is reduced to 10000km.

Wow, great to see it progressing!

Thank you! Now I am working on new planets. I got permissions from some authors of Celestia to reuse their works and started to use texture generators:

MaPZone


L3DT


Genetica

Looking good Norby

[Following this post in the Screenshots thread]

Here are two links:
- the blend file (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-H82 ... FpWR2pwQ2c) that can be used to generate planet textures
- a zip file with a HTML ReadMe file and images (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-H82 ... lQ4U3hUOXc). In the blend file there is a text only version of the ReadMe file, as well, but the images in the HTML file might provide a faster accommodation curve, depending on one's Blender knowledge.

Couple of extra comments:
- don't left click in the 3D View window, or the UV/Image Editor. Left click originally changes the position of 3D cursor. Selection is done by right clicking.
- the generated textures are cube mapped (this avoids the nasty pole distortion the "latlong" textures expose)
- the blend file can be used to generate the 2048 (or more) textures you wanted. The most challenging part is to come up with enough gradient variations for different planet types and also define a way (shouldn't be that hard) to procedurally generate the crater-ed barren planets/moons. The horizontal distortion for the gas giants should also be trivial.
With proper animation settings (i.e. changing various texture parameters frame based), each frame of the animation would become a different planet texture.