Project Orbiter Galaxy

[donatelo200]

It strikes me as odd though that the cloud textures take up two times the space of surface textures...

It's normal though. Cloud textures i think are just more dynamic than surface textures. The only acception is when the surface texture has reflectave propartys or has night lights.

 

[Artlav]

I know, and expected the problem. I was still a bit shocked by how long level 8 textures need for export. I thought it shouldn't take more than an hour...

They shouldn't. Here it takes about ten minutes per planet per cpu.
I might be able to optimize it a bit, but not by far.

It strikes me as odd though that the cloud textures take up two times the space of surface textures...

Cloud textures are transparent, so there are more bits per pixel.

 

[jedidia]

They shouldn't. Here it takes about ten minutes per planet per cpu.

Well, let's not forget it is running in a parallel thread, so it's not getting as many cycles. And I was talking about exporting the whole system, which usually has something like 20+ bodies total, so I think the individual texture doesn't take much longer than 10 minutes.

Cloud textures are transparent, so there are more bits per pixel.

ah... I thought they were alpha-channel only.

 

[jedidia]

Back again, here's a screenshot showing the problems with high level cloud textures. Any ideas what could cause this, Artlav?

 

[eveningsky339]

Back again, here's a screenshot showing the problems with high level cloud textures. Any ideas what could cause this, Artlav?

I'm but a humble simpleton without much experience in this matter, BUT... If I were to venture a guess, something goes awry when applying this texture to coordinates...

 

[donatelo200]

I'd reckignise those textures from anywhere. It's spaceway planet style tex. I love them. No idea what causes that but it could be just that the textures are normally used in a different format or somthing like that.

 

[jedidia]

I'd reckignise those textures from anywhere. It's spaceway planet style tex.

That's probably because its one and the same texture generator

 

[donatelo200]

Well that would explane it. Just not used to it being Hires without 3D terrain. Well they look good. Cloud tex seems to be off though.

 

[jedidia]

Version 0.6 is getting a bit delayed due to a few problems that need fixing, but majorly because I'm currently logging some flighthours betatesting the orbiter Navigator (they're dyrely needed too, I'm running in danger of loosing my Orbiter license... :shifty. I think it's definitaly worth it, because the navigator is going to be one hell of a thing, allthough it's currently still somewhat unstable. I think I can still make a release of v.0.6 until november, but we'll see...

 

[jedidia]

Good news, I finally got the interface sorted out. Everything working, except for one minor bug that is easy to workaround, although I guess I'll get asked about it by tons of users that will be too lazy to read the known issues list...:lol:
All in all, it took me a lot less to get this going than I expected.

Also fixed a memory bug that had to do with pre-defined systems, and made a minor update to the moon generation, the moons around gas giants now have a much more probable mass (i.e. much lower in average than it was before, with more massive planets having potentially more massive moons).

Now I got that atmosphere density issue from StarGen to fix...

---------- Post added 08-23-10 at 03:35 PM ---------- Previous post was 08-22-10 at 09:07 PM ----------

Artlav helped me to fix the cloud texture problem. The fail was strong with me on this one, turns out that setting minCloudResolution to anything other than 1 is not so good an Idea!

Also, I'm looking for somebody to give me a hand. No programming skills needed! It would be a great help if somebody could get me exact data on the moons of Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune (only those contained in the default orbiter installation). I'll need that data to finish up the file for the solar system, and it's a tedious task. If somebody was willing to take it from me, I could concentrate on the more important stuff.

data I need is the following:

semi-major axis
eccentricity
axial tilt
mass
radius
surface atmospheric pressure (if aplicable)
average surface temperature
temperature range: night/day temperatures, and the extremest temperatures that can occur on the body
albedo
orbital period (days)
water, cloud and ice covering percentages (if aplicable)
radius of the core
atmospheric composition (if aplicable)
sidereal period (hours)

Now, I know I can look this stuff up somewhere on the internet by googling a bit, but that's exactly the point. If someone could search that data for me and post it here (if possible a complete set for every of the mentioned bodies) that would probably save some 5 to 6 hours of work to find all the stuff. Please DON'T POST LINKS unless the link contains all of the information above. I have no trouble finding factsheets, the time consuming task is picking all that data together from various sources, so if somebody else could do that for me, I would apreciate it very much!

 

[donatelo200]

Io.
semimajor axis421,700 km (262,100 miles)
radius1,821.3 km (1,132 miles)
Core radius 900 km
equatorial diameter (Earth=1)0.286
mass (Earth=1)0.015<
mean density3.53 g/cm3
surface gravity (Earth=1)0.183
escape velocity2.56 km/s (9,216 km/h, 5,728 mph)
orbital period1.769 days (1 day 18 hr 27 min.)
orbital eccentricity0.004
orbital inclination0.05°
axial periodsynchronous
albedo0.63
surface temperature-135°C (-216°F) with hot spots of 27°C (81°F)
surface compositionSulfur / frozen sulfur dioxide

 

[jedidia]

Maybe yellow isn't quite the right color since I have a bright forum skin, but thank you very much any case! :tiphat:

I noticed that I forgott to mention sidereal period above, I'll correct that. So as I see it you got that missing, and axial tilt. If you could get those too, that would be great. And if you're feeling up for another one, please be my guest!

 

[donatelo200]

Io's sidreal period is the same as it's orbit witch is 1.769 earth days or 42 hrs 27 minutes and 21.6 seconds. It's axial tilt is 3.12 degres witch is the same as it's parent planet Jupiter.

 

[jedidia]

Thanks a lot!

 

[jedidia]

Textures are more or less in, Artlavs working out some problems with the generation library, from Orbiter Galaxy side everything is pretty much set up, except for the altitude limit. I'm looking for a formula to calculate a meaningfull value for that...

Currently expanding the scenario switch to include docked vessels, then I'll have to go on and make the thing UCGO compatible. Not much use to travel to another star if you can't take anything with you, isn't it?

 

[donatelo200]

What do you mean by altitude limit. The atmosphere? Well it's good to know it's getting close to the first orbiter related beta. Also UCGO compatibily will be a nice touch.:thumbup:

 

[jedidia]

yes, the atmosphere altitude limit. I have to give Orbiter a cut-off altitude from where it doesn't have to calculate the atmosphere anymore, and since I suck at math it's not very easy for me to come up with meaningfull figures yet.

the first orbiter related beta

The release will still be labeled Alpha I'm afraid, since I'm far from feature complete. It should run more or less stable though, at least after a patch or two...

---------- Post added 08-27-10 at 03:25 PM ---------- Previous post was 08-26-10 at 09:12 PM ----------

Docked switching works, the focus vessel now takes all docked vessels over into the new system. That doesn't aply to vessels that are docked to vessels that are docked to the focus vessel, though. I'm afraid Izack will have to leave his giant stack at home...

 

[Artlav]

That doesn't aply to vessels that are docked to vessels that are docked to the focus vessel, though. I'm afraid Izack will have to leave his giant stack at home...

That's a critical feature! The best of interstellar ships are likely to be docked stacks.

I don't see how it can be that hard to add anyway. Why recursing thru docked tree won't work?

 

[T.Neo]

The best of interstellar ships are likely to be docked stacks.

That depends on how you define "docked". They'll probably be assembled in orbit, but permanently (or semi-permanently, like the ISS). And I can imagine visualising an addon as a docked stack in Orbiter to be troublesome (it's better just to code it as a staged vessel or something like that).

Of course, interstellar spacecraft better be carrying dedicated landing craft, and there's always the issue of spacecraft like the one Izack is using.

 

[Izack]

It's fine; I rebuilt the thing with Universal Cargo Deck anyway. I assume that, since it wasn't mentioned, there are no problems with attached vessels?