04
Mar 2011
Star surface
New appearance of stars: static procedural texture and atmospheric scattering. You can see the effect of mutual illumination in close binary systems (heating of the side of the star facing the companion, sunrise/sunset on the sun).
Up close, the texture looks quite descent (excluding solar spots), but from a distance it is strongly aliased. This is how upper lod textures are generated. I don't know how to fix that for now.
For solar spots, I need to implement 3D facula, diverging from spots all directions. And prominences, and update the solar corona to a 3D effect. But this is for later versions, once 3D clouds being implemetned.