Мар 02 2013

Star browser

I implemented the "Star browser": it gets a list of stars in a certain radius from the camera (your current location). Some properties like distance, spectral class and luminosity are returned by engine immediately. But most interesting properties - number of stars in a system,...

Мар 01 2013

Export textures menu update

Above is an updated export textures menu. It now exports the diffuse texture and normal map as an RGB image, and specular texture and bump map as a grayscale image. No more RGBA images with alpha channel, which are too complex to understand for someone....

Дек 25 2012

Oblate stars and planets and binary shader cache

Today's updates:Automatic clearing of the cache when hardware is changed Saving compiled shaders binaries to the cache and fast loading Preloading all shaders at startup (optional) Oblate planets and stars, automatic calculation of oblateness Gravity darkening of oblate starsThe OpenGL 4.1 has a long-awaited function implemented - getting binary...

Дек 05 2012

Ship model cache and other updates

Latest updates:The [End] button rotates camera horizontally in respect to planet surface Importing ship models in OBJ fromat with materials and multiple textures Cache for textures and modelsSo I finished the cache for (ships) textures and models. Now it is possible to use models that share the...

Ноя 11 2012

Real-time secondary lighting color

As you've probably noticed, SE doesn't take into account the color of the planet when it calculates the illumination of moons, and vice versa (except for real planets - planet script have the parameter 'Color' for this purpose). Now I've fixed this. The method is...

Ноя 09 2012

Color banding artifact fix

Fixed color banding artifact on landscape and especially on the water. Normal-and-height textures now store more precise height and less precise normals, but changes in lighting is not noticeable. Texture format now is:R - normal X G - normal Y B - height low byte A - height...

Окт 29 2012

Aurora

I've upgraded the particle system to implement aurora. As comet tail, aurora is based on axis-aligned sprites, animated in the vertex shader. Every sprite is rendered as a long oval while viewing it from the side, and is round while viewing from the top or...

Окт 26 2012

Comets

I've been working a few weeks on implementing comet tails. They are based on axis-aligned sprites, animated in the vertex shader. This mean that the sprite is rendered as a long oval, while viewing it from the side, and is round while viewing from the...

Окт 21 2012

Galaxy rendering update

Using Solaris's textures for dust sprites, I've upgraded galaxy rendering. Now the galaxies are using texture atlas with 8 tiles - 2 for emission sprites (glow) and 6 for absorption sprites (dust). I've also made some optimization, reduced the sprite vertex size twice, so now...