Source of the post Why is the simulation of the evolution of galaxies and stars labeled uncertain if possible?
Because stellar and galactic evolution is an extremely complex thing to simulate (requiring supercomputers in general) and the variety of results (many kinds of stars and galaxies out there) is so large that is difficult to implement that number of animations and renderings (even if they are not the result of an actual physics simulation). But Vladimir has shown time and time again that what looks impossible to code can eventually be coded, so be patient, we might see this one day.
Now that we are having texture updates for the Solar System I would like to remind about an old discussion we had on the possibility to extend the level of detail further and further. If I recall correctly SpaceEngineer thought of a solution, similar to that of Google Earth, involving the centralized storage of extreme resolution textures in a server and the ability to download them from it interactively and in real time. As the user points the camera to different parts of a planetary body the program would send queries to those servers and load the required portions of the surface. This would in principle allow for huge improvements in the user's experience.
I've just found an open-soruce software that does just that. It is called OpenSpace, and as you can see here it has this kind of aproach for Earth, Mars and many other objects
For Earth and the Moon they have also solved a problem associated with the representation on programs like Google Earth: where satellite and aerial imagery looks patchy at best with different light conditions, colors associated with different seasonal conditions and different quality of the image, all added side by side. In the Mars video you can see this problem. It looks weird from far distances. But they seem to have solved this quite well for Earth as I said, their textures are very nice and continuous.
Since the project is open-source (here is the code) I was wondering if this could be implemented easily on SE. Having LRO and MRO resolution textures for the Moon and Mars would be a great feature in the future.
Source of the post If I recall correctly SpaceEngineer thought of a solution, similar to that of Google Earth
If I recall correctly (and since I happened to be around in the old forums from the early days of SE development) the initial idea was to implement a procedural augmentation technique using a special refined algorithm to fill in the gaps of the catalog mesh data. This idea at some point was abandoned maybe / probably because of its complexity and difficulty (?). If this had been possible, no centralized server and thousands of GB of data would be required. Of course the zoomed in image of these bodies might have been a bit unrealistic compared to the real data but who would care. I wouldn't. But again I am probably an exception ..
This is hard work for sure. 4 different rendering algorithms should operate at the same time on different levels and the transitions might be the most difficult part of it all. But two of those things are implemented by now (the planet textures and small scale surface texture packs) and the algorithm for gathering real data from the servers is public because of OpenSpace. The procedural intelligent generation of the terrain in between those regimes is probably way more difficult than taking real data from the server (even if it requires internet connection which might be a small inconvenience for some users) because of the diversity and complexity of geologic features to be inferred from lower level details. If we get real data for higher resolutions we could potentially overcome the need for procedural augmentation since it would operate in such a narrow range of resolutions that it would be no longer needed; we could jumpt from server gathered real data to the small scale textures we have right now.
This at least could be reasonable for Earth, Moon and Mars. But for other object like Io, Umbriel, Triton etc... we don't have enought resolution in real data to fill the gap between server loaded real terrains and centimiter scale textures. In those cases procedural augmentation might be needed. Outerra does some of that and the algorithms are somehow explained, but here would have to develope a different algorithm to generate those extraterrestrial terrains from scratch (not an easy task).
Outerra has a 150 m detail texture for Earth that looks like this:
The rest of details are procedurally generated to this level of detail:
I would love to see more detailed textures on earth Possibly by implementing a procedural generation similar to outerra which procedurally generates landscapes in high res while using real map data for large geographical areas Although with everything else in SE it would not be used to its full potential as to not compromise performance
Now that we are having texture updates for the Solar System I would like to remind about an old discussion we had on the possibility to extend the level of detail further and further. If I recall correctly SpaceEngineer thought of a solution, similar to that of Google Earth, involving the centralized storage of extreme resolution textures in a server and the ability to download them from it interactively and in real time. As the user points the camera to different parts of a planetary body the program would send queries to those servers and load the required portions of the surface. This would in principle allow for huge improvements in the user's experience.
I've just found an open-soruce software that does just that. It is called OpenSpace, and as you can see here it has this kind of aproach for Earth, Mars and many other objects
For Earth and the Moon they have also solved a problem associated with the representation on programs like Google Earth: where satellite and aerial imagery looks patchy at best with different light conditions, colors associated with different seasonal conditions and different quality of the image, all added side by side. In the Mars video you can see this problem. It looks weird from far distances. But they seem to have solved this quite well for Earth as I said, their textures are very nice and continuous.
Since the project is open-source (here is the code) I was wondering if this could be implemented easily on SE. Having LRO and MRO resolution textures for the Moon and Mars would be a great feature in the future.
The new PBS series Planets showed the planets, their rings and moons in amazing detail from the Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons missions, can we incorporate that data into SE?
SpaceEngineer: Source of the post Modeling of asteroid collisions with lighting, explosion and the formation of the crater
SpaceEngineer: Source of the postSimulation of the collision, tidal or artificial destruction of the planets, formation of the asteroid belt and the dust disk around the sun, its further evolution
This week ESO released a simulation, made with OpenSPH (and visualized with OpenVDB), of the possible formation of Hygeia (the results are published in Nature). I find outstanding the fact that this is not only an animation but a physical simulation of the event:
This is also a beautifull simulation made a year ago (when this was still in its infancy):
I hope this continues to evolve to the point SpaceEngine can implement it for real-time rendering of Planetary and Asteroidal collisions.
Wow, those are incredible simulations. Surreal. Now I dream of seeing the Earth-Theia impact rendered this way as well -- presumably much harder than for asteroids, but maybe it will be possible in the near future.
My favorite bits of the MSFS2020 previews are the volumetric clouds and crepuscular rays. Now imagine that in space engine for Binary and Multiples systems
Specs: Dell Inspiron 5547 (Laptop); 8 gigabytes of RAM; Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz; Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit; Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 4400 (That's all there is )
I'm waiting for volumetric clouds and 3d water. After that update i wouldn't mind if it costs a 100€, i would pay it in a second. P.S when will this TODO list be updated?
SpaceEngine lacks shadows, this is very noticeable here This is one of the highest priority items to implement in future updates. Together with finishing the PBR implementation (Physically based rendering). It wasn’t completed for the 0.990 release, so all SE ships still use the old rendering method (though they have reflections now).
I am really looking forward to this.. Then we can start talking about volumetric effects, weather and other MSFS2020 eye candies .
..
)
