SpaceSimCentral

Do you remember the clouds on the original Frontier? They looked a bit crap, right enough, but I vividly recall the first time I saw Earth from space, and I saw spiralling cloud formations (cyclones, weather fronts)You can't see it very well in this screenie, but it's the best I could find:I really want to see more detailed clouds than this from space. Like this, from Celestia:This was done using a transparent sphere with cloud textures, which is nice and clean.Once in the atmosphere, you can maybe add some volumetric clouds:(this is the link for the Blender script which creates these - I wonder if you can do this easily and with little overhead in realtime in the Pioneer engine?)I reckon with a combination of the two, you could get some really realistic-looking cloud effects.

Marcel wrote:
I have this strange feeling that you're going to get an award for Norway.
Haha "Come now, or you will be late."

So that's what you really look like!

Mars has got a new outfit on:[attachment=670:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-04-17 09-47-01-09.jpg][attachment=671:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-04-17 09-42-03-96.jpg][attachment=672:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-04-17 09-11-10-87.jpg]

Now that's a terraformed Mars! Lovely outfit, but in that last pic I can see Uranus.

Great pictures! Thanks s2odan.And Marcel--that last comment made my day.

tinge of green here and there on mars might work

The moon... New gas giant colour stuff:

Great work! The Moon is spectacular. And I thought the gas giants looked good before...but wow!

Here's a replacement to the really slow terrain with canyons used for Europa:

Something I've been testing out, it is Starfield changes per system based on system seed, some constellation stars and scaling star intensity by distance to a body that would emit or reflect light so stars will be brighter far away from objects than they are in orbit of a planet:

I like that idea a lot!

Dude, that is totally un-physical ;)Keep starfields the same brightness and let HDR do its job
s2odan wrote:
Something I've been testing out, it is Starfield changes per system based on system seed, some constellation stars and scaling star intensity by distance to a body that would emit or reflect light so stars will be brighter far away from objects than they are in orbit of a planet:

Well I must admit that I forgot HDR did all this when I first thought up the idea It was only after I had finished it and started some testing that I turned on HDR and suddenly realised that this was pointless Although maybe not entirely, as we could easily have this effect in the regular shaders by passing a value through, and not have it require HDR.

Oh well, I probably won't be able to see any of this anyway until I get a better computer. I'm thinking of Birds of Prey, anyone remember that one? If you flew the X-15 you could get high enough for the sky to darken and the stars would come out. It looked pretty awesome for the time on my Amiga. It really gave an impression of the altitude.

I bought BoP for the Amiga as well; we loved dropping the X-15 and timing how quickly we could get it to smash into the ground, and at what speed (hey, I was only 11 years old)I do recall the sky darkening. I also vaguely recall the curvature of the earth being visible - am I remembering that right?

starfield seed works i like that idea, gas giants looking good to

sorry i been inactive recently guys i was hoping to get some stuff done but no matter (life took over) lolseems yall have been busy in my absence to ..nice worki been trying to get to grips with blender and im trying to help mpiremall.net create a wrestling game (my number one vice im afraid lol) but i do wanna start contributing to pioneers epicness soon enough (perhaps you need textures then im ya guy lol)im also still trying to design some destroyers too lol ( i remember i stated it before)

Neptune and its angry spot [attachment=819:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 03-46-28-30.jpg][attachment=820:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 05-59-16-32.jpg][attachment=821:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 05-59-32-55.jpg]

Tweaks to the volcanic terrain:[attachment=823:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 18-33-58-77.png][attachment=822:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 18-34-31-72.png][attachment=824:pioneer-msvc-9 2011-07-08 17-53-30-10.png]