SkyControl (as many of you know) is a sky simulator for jME3.
To mark the start of a new (broader) phase in SkyControl testing, I’ve posted a video which discusses and demonstrates recent changes. The video also provides a behind-the-scenes look at how SkyControl works: [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE4wxgBIkaw[/video]
I apologize about the sound, which starts faint and only gets fainter. If it’s an issue, try the close captions.
very nice.
also would be nice if we could add rotating spheres, something like near planets, with custom calendar provider (or how its positioning stuff called? to make them float around and rotate)
@eraslt said:
very nice.
also would be nice if we could add rotating spheres, something like near planets, with custom calendar provider (or how its positioning stuff called? to make them float around and rotate) :)
Does your use of “we” imply that you wish to collaborate with me a co-developer of SkyControl?
it would be super to have such futuristic sky
so how much more work should be done to have rotating planets like those?
Thats not a sky, you can do this by usinga secondary viewport with the alrge scale scene and render it as a background quad in jme.
The good looking thing is as always mostly the assets, and a little bit a few grafical effects.
how much more work should be done to have rotating planets like those? :)
I suck at estimating software work, and estimating is particularly tricky in the absence of clear requirements.
Assuming lit materials work as expected in Bucket.Sky (something one could easily test) I imagine the biggest hurdle would be creating a pretty texture for your rotating planet/moon/spacestation.
Congratulations @sgold, this is looking really fantastic. Is the sun a quad texture like the moon is? I used a volumetric shader for mine, but it draws some fps of course, so I was thinking about trying your SkyControl to see the difference I get in terms of fps. Also I was really impressed with the new clouds. They look so realistic! Very impressive.
@pspeed said:
Does it bother anyone else that those huge planets in the sky, so close to the planet we are on, don't seem to be affecting the tides even a little? :)
I mean, the moon is pretty tiny and has a pretty big effect. These planets should be causing huge tidal waves (note: tidal wave != tsunami).
@pspeed said:
Does it bother anyone else that those huge planets in the sky, so close to the planet we are on, don't seem to be affecting the tides even a little? :)
I mean, the moon is pretty tiny and has a pretty big effect. These planets should be causing huge tidal waves (note: tidal wave != tsunami).
Yeah I agree, it feels completely unnatural…I guess that’s to hint the user “Look you’re not on earth”…
@polycoda said:
Congratulations @sgold, this is looking really fantastic. Is the sun a quad texture like the moon is? I used a volumetric shader for mine, but it draws some fps of course, so I was thinking about trying your SkyControl to see the difference I get in terms of fps. Also I was really impressed with the new clouds. They look so realistic! Very impressive.
Thank you.
The sun and moon are both ordinary colormap textures, but I mix them into the dome material instead pasting them onto separate quads. Come to think of it, quads would be simpler and have less distortion, so I should try that.
The default cloud texture is from t0neg0d’s SkyDome. It’s tough to improve upon.
@pspeed said:
Does it bother anyone else that those huge planets in the sky, so close to the planet we are on, don't seem to be affecting the tides even a little? :)
I mean, the moon is pretty tiny and has a pretty big effect. These planets should be causing huge tidal waves (note: tidal wave != tsunami).
The amateur astronomer in me gets annoyed when I see this, yes, but someone could cleverly “explain” that this isn’t water but something a lot more dense and, as such isn’t affected as much as water would (yes, it would still be wrong, but a tiny bit less). I think what bothers me the most is the puny blast those meteorites make when they hit the surface, because at that speed and size? Yeah, MUCH bigger holes and explosion and debris flying all over the place.
I’ve given more thought to putting the sun and moon on their own geometries. The main difficulty I see would be finding a way to (during the day) blue the dark portions of the moon without revealing the stars.
The frag shader in SkyControl distinguishes between stars (which are not visible by day) from objects like the moon (which are). Putting the moon on a geometry separate from the clear sky obscures this distinction, so to get the moon right you’d need two billboards: one behind the blue and one in front of it. This looks to me like more trouble than it’s worth.
This also suggests to me that the best way to do a rotating planet would be to render it to an off-screen framebuffer.
between stars (which are not visible by day) from objects like the moon (which are).
Technically stars can be seen during the day, but only the most luminous of them can overshine the star which you’re orbiting (think supernovae, some comets, etc). Also, technically, you could be on a planet orbiting around a low luminosity star and be able to see stars in the background. Problem here is that planet wouldn’t be “earth-like”. Would be pretty damn cold too.
Have you tried using skyboxes instead of spheres for the day and night skies? Would that interfere with the cloud layer?
As it is, it’s not possible to use existing tools that make skies. I have a great app to make night skies but it generates 6 images. Thus, unusable. :’(
Why use the guava lib? It’s used once in the whole project. It is really necessary?
Also, a link to where those libs can be downloaded on the repo’s main page would be helpful.
Thank you for this feedback.
Guava is only required if you want to run the GUI test applications such as TestSkyControl. Guava not used by SkyControl itself. If you delete the jme3utilities.sky.test and jme3utilities.ui packages, you can delete the Guava JAR from the list of libraries in the project properties.
Links to the JARs are already provided on the “Build” page of the project wiki:
@madjack said:
Technically stars can be seen during the day, but only the most luminous of them can overshine the star which you're orbiting (think supernovae, some comets, etc). Also, technically, you could be on a planet orbiting around a low luminosity star and be able to see stars in the background. Problem here is that planet wouldn't be "earth-like". Would be pretty damn cold too.
But anyway… Just saying it’s possible.
Yes, it’s possible to see stars during the day – not that I’ve ever done so.
For obvious reasons, SkyControl is oriented towards Earth and Earth-like worlds. The more you deviate from that, the more customization you’ll need to do.
On Earth, the sun and moon are so much brighter than the stars that a realistic computer render would have them completely saturated before you could see stars at all. It’s very difficult to render a sky that looks “good” without sacrificing realism.
as “we” i meant entire jme community that will use your skyControl 
