Animated Skies

Discussion and information relevant to creating special missions, new ships, skins etc.

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drakeraider
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Animated Skies

Post by drakeraider »

First of all, I may have missed it, are there any animated skyboxes for Oolite? Is that even possible? Are there animated image formats it supports?
I could only find the "natural skies", but it's very static and a little low res for my typical taste, so I frequently just use the vanilla for that.
another_commander
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by another_commander »

Do you have an example of animated skyboxes you can point me to? I am not entirely sure what you are referring to here.

Have you tried ZygoUgo's cinematic skies OXP? It makes space very pleasing visually (but no animated skybox as far as I can tell).
drakeraider
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by drakeraider »

That's the one I meant, yes, not Natural Skies. But it feels a little... blurry to me, which might just be a symptom of being spoiled with other games. Would it be easy to upscale, and does the engine support like a GIF format or something for graphics? If it supported animations in any way, I could possibly rebuild that OXP myself to to that. I was thinking with like flickering stars and nebulas that curl a bit like clouds. (Not super realistic, I know, but it would look nice in engine)
another_commander
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by another_commander »

drakeraider wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 3:49 pm
That's the one I meant, yes, not Natural Skies. But it feels a little... blurry to me, which might just be a symptom of being spoiled with other games. Would it be easy to upscale, and does the engine support like a GIF format or something for graphics? If it supported animations in any way, I could possibly rebuild that OXP myself to to that. I was thinking with like flickering stars and nebulas that curl a bit like clouds. (Not super realistic, I know, but it would look nice in engine)
The engine supports only png, so no animated gifs or anything like that. Additionally, the skybox is rendered as a display list of existing textures for stars and nebulae. It is not exactly a background image. I am not sure if what you want is doable, but something "close enough" could maybe be achieved with clever use of effect entities and shaders. That's where I would look at first.
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cbr
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by cbr »

Perhaps an animated png apng would work?

Image

Perhaps not in every theatre.
drakeraider
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by drakeraider »

I actually thought about APNG, but I wasn't sure on engine limitations in that regard. If the system works, that'd be amazing. Oolite with 4k animated skies would be mindblowing.
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Re: Animated Skies

Post by another_commander »

APNG is not supported with the current libpng we use in Oolite. Sorry.
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