Brighten the moon's surface

[Andy S]

Hi again

If I stand on the moon, the surface is very dark, it could be at least 10 % brighter.
And from a distance I only see our real life bright shining moon as a tiny dark grey dot.

Would it possible to build a automatic brightness program or something, so when you are a far
away from the moon that it's surface is as bright as in real life? and you can see it even from the
Eath? And then when you gradually fly closer to it , it gradually darkens so it its stays alright to
look at?

Just an idea.

Cheers.

[canadave]

I totally agree with this.  The moon looks really dull.  Another thing I notice is that from Earth orbit, if I look towards
Jupiter or Venus, I don't see brilliant points of light like I should.  This is something on my Orbiter wish list!

Dave

[Russell King]

My understanding is that this would be a DirectX issue. I've only just begun to learn DirectX, but what I do
understand is this:

All objects are made of triangles and bitmaps. A 2-D square would be two triangles back to back and on the same
plane. These triangles are made of vectors and, without getting technical, there are two ways to feed this data into
DirectX depending on whether the triangles share a vector (ie, a paper fan) or not. These triangles are then
assembled into a 3-D object, painted with the bitmap, illuminated and sent to the video card. It's the illumination part
that I think affects this. In DirectX, you set up lights, camera(s) and objects. The lights are placed in 3-D space with
vectors and you can set up what type of light there is (point, spot, flood, etc) and its color. DirectX is what determines
where shadows and reflections fall. The math formulas for figuring how somethings reflects light is incredibly complex.
In order to do it accurately, the frame rate would suffer greatly (one frame per minute?), so DirectX approximates it.
In a normal 3-D game, most distances are very short. You know, like lobbing a grenade over that sandbag wall.
Cutting your distance in half doesn't affect reflected light very much as long as you are at the same angle. However,
when you are talking the huge distances involved in space travel, the errors from DirectX's approximation start to
build.

That's my personal theory about what's going on. DirectX doesn't vary the amount of reflected light based on
distance in order to get faster frame rates because most 3-D games don't have a viewing distance of more than 1km.

Russ

[DanSteph]

the stars as venus in game (and in Orbiter) are rendered as point in a sphere
that suround the camera at a distance of.... 2-20 meter. (depend of the code writer
it could be 100 meter but more distance bring nothing more)
This "sphere" is drawed last after all other objects.

(second possibilities they are just point drawed onto the screen surface like with
a pen)

DirectX does the light fading calculation it's not hard (square root of distance)
but as the star aren't "3d" object directx has nothing to do here.

I think you could enlight a bit the starfield and make it look better while playing
with Orbiter's parameter for stars light, Harmsway have a tutorial about this.

In the case of the moon what is hard for directx is to compute a "glow"
but modern machine and latest directx (9) is capable to compute great light
effect as reflexion, refraction and more. Anyway this is useless for the moon,
we need glow

This below was my second game project ten years ago (programmed on a p66 or p133 don't recall)

The stars are about 2 meter from the camera....




Dan



Post Edited (03-29-04 20:53)

[Krytom]

How many game projects have you done, Dan the God of OrbiterSound?
How come a load were never released?
We would love to see them, even if not completed. I know about CSS and that looked promising so why not the
others. I know you are busy but, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaase.

[DanSteph]

mhhh let me think..

The first one was a 3d sail simulator (p66 no picture it was fun cause you can fire the row gun)
the second was the 3d space simulator, planned to be a kind of elite (picture in last post and below) (p66-133)
it was a nice project with fractal ground on planet that was different for each planet and more than 1000 planet in
the galaxy (picture below of one planet) there was also a space part a la "elite" (this project part disappeared in a
crash disk)

yes you can turn and zoom the galaxy with the mouse



This show some of the 1000 planet's name that where generated by
random function (but gave always the same name when launching the game )
(the picture show only names that contain "let")



an example of hot but low gravity planet, there was many kind some flat, green, blue etc etc
the ground was generated while given 15 number only (color, style of the terrain)





the third was Combat Sail Simulator  that you know.

Beetween those there was some project aborted....

About trying them forget it, CSS ran in a big bug with latest 3d card (that disgusted me after
all the work I've done) the sea disappear on modern card and the first two run on
Ooooolder 3d card only. (voodoo)

You know what is my problem ? I'm too perfectionnist and that kill my huge project.
Anyway one day I will succeed

Dan

"1000 planet.. pfff in 1995....    and I wonder why my projects crash "



Post Edited (03-30-04 01:40)

[canadave]

LOL great looking screenshots, Dan...why the heck don't you become a professional game designer??

By the way, I think the stars in Orbiter are fine in terms of brightness--it's the planets, specifically, which I have a
problem with.

Dave

[reekchaa]

Those are Amazing 1995 Screenies, Dan!

Interplay would have paid you $100,000 per year to develop for them back then (when I was with them).  We kept
interviewing enterprising demo developers every day, looking for another 'Descent'.  
...And that kind of programming was all I really was interested in when I was getting bored making was StarTrek &
Fallout character graphix.  I Start out as a Programmer (Pascal & Basic), changed up to 3D artist, got stuck in middle-
management, ruptured some disks in my back... now an out-of-work admirer again.

And I totally know what you're talking about... If it can't be PERFECT, why even try?    Oh, Youth!

[DanSteph]

reekchaa wrote:
> And I totally know what you're talking about... If it can't be
> PERFECT, why even try?    Oh, Youth!
>
>

Right in the target Reech'

My main problem and I must make here a confession, is that I'm in fact... disabled.


yes


It miss me 2-3 harm more, one alternate brain for current boring problem (eating, walking, etc)
and you won't believe: ... I must also SLEEP and lost some precious time every day.

It's a terrible problem for people like us to be such disabled...

Keep em' good work

Dan