Ultimate space simulation software

 
Mr. Abner
World Builder
World Builder
Posts: 695
Joined: 08 Jun 2017 17:05
Location: Mississauga

Physical simulation of the space engine

11 Mar 2019 00:15

Is there a FOV that shows actual scale?
That depends on the size of your monitor and how far away your eyes are from it. Basic trigonometry.
It's 13.5 in tall and I'm about 25 in away from it.
Edit: Sorry, my mistake. After a quick flight in SE, it does indeed appear that the FoV is from top to bottom of the screen, not left to right. The formula below still works, but use the monitor height rather than the width. I have edited were appropriate.

-----------------------


I believe S.E. displays FoV from side to side, so width of the monitor counts, not the height.

You have two right-angle triangles — from the center of your eyes to the middle of the monitor would be the "adjacent" side, from the center of the monitor to one of the side edges either the top or the bottom (or half the width height of your monitor) would be the "opposite" side.

Opposite over adjacent gives you the tangent of the angle between the "adjacent" side and the hypotenuse (which is from your eyes to the edge of the monitor).  So ((arctan of half the width height of the monitor divided by the distance from it) times two) will give the angle from your perspective from one side of the the top of the monitor to the other bottom. Set the FoV to that value, and your monitor should be the equivalent of an actual window into the SE universe.
:)

------------------

So in your actual case, 13.5/2 = 6.75

6.75/25 = 0.27

arctan 0.27 = 15.1096

Times 2 = 30.2192 degrees.

I hope I haven't made an embarrassing error in my math. ;)
 
ethos
Observer
Observer
Posts: 5
Joined: 07 Feb 2019 18:42

Physical simulation of the space engine

11 Mar 2019 16:25

[quote="Mr. Abner"][quote="ethos"][quote="Mr. Abner"]
That depends on the size of your monitor and how far away your eyes are from it. Basic trigonometry.[/quote]

It's 13.5 in tall and I'm about 25 in away from it.[/quote]
Edit: Sorry, my mistake. After a quick flight in SE, it does indeed appear that the FoV is from top to bottom of the screen, not left to right. The formula below still works, but use the monitor height rather than the width. I have edited were appropriate.

-----------------------


[s]I believe S.E. displays FoV from side to side, so width of the monitor counts, not the height.[/s]

You have two right-angle triangles — from the center of your eyes to the middle of the monitor would be the "adjacent" side, from the center of the monitor to [s]one of the side edges[/s] either the top or the bottom (or half the [s]width[/s] height of your monitor) would be the "opposite" side.

Opposite over adjacent gives you the tangent of the angle between the "adjacent" side and the hypotenuse (which is from your eyes to the edge of the monitor).  So ((arctan of half the [s]width[/s] height of the monitor divided by the distance from it) times two) will give the angle from your perspective from [s]one side of the[/s] the top of the monitor to the [s]other[/s] bottom. Set the FoV to that value, and your monitor should be the equivalent of an actual window into the SE universe.
:)

------------------

So in your actual case, 13.5/2 = 6.75

6.75/25 = 0.27

arctan 0.27 = 15.1096

Times 2 = 30.2192 degrees.

I hope I haven't made an embarrassing error in my math. ;)[/quote]


Do you need to convert from inches to cm first?
 
Shaggy
Observer
Observer
Posts: 13
Joined: 30 Aug 2017 13:30

Physical simulation of the space engine

11 Mar 2019 16:53

[quote="ethos"]
Cool, thats much better. Is there a FOV that shows actual scale? Meaning if I was far enough away from Mercury in real life to appear a certain size to me, the Sun would be accurately be shown in size and scale as well?[/quote]

I think that would be FOV of 0. ;) That's because you can never have Mercury being closer to camera in same scale as sun being farther from camera unless you use ortographic view. As all the 3D games (with exception of some RTS or other top-down view games) SE uses perspective, not ortographic view.
 
Mr. Abner
World Builder
World Builder
Posts: 695
Joined: 08 Jun 2017 17:05
Location: Mississauga

Physical simulation of the space engine

11 Mar 2019 17:27

Do you need to convert from inches to cm first?
Not at all. Trigonometry is really all about ratios. As long as the linear measurements are both in the same units, the ratio of the two will still be the same.

As for actual scale of Mercury and the Sun... if you mean as they look from Earth, then the FoV doesn't actually matter, just make sure you are about 1AU from the Sun. At that distance, the relative size of the Sun and Mercury will be as seen from Earth. You can then use the FoV as a zoom.

If you mean you want to see how big the Sun will look from Mercury, then set the FoV as described above, park yourself on Mercury, and break out the sunglasses. And cold drinks. And sunblock.
 
User avatar
longname
Pioneer
Pioneer
Posts: 380
Joined: 13 Apr 2017 07:20
Location: ∞/The Multiverse/The Universe/Local Cluster/The Milky Way/Orion Arm/Sol System/Earth-Moon/Earth/UK

Physical simulation of the space engine

14 Jan 2020 10:29

Is there something "off" with the scale of things? For example I'm trying to recreate the transit of Mercury as seen in this actual image.Image

however is SE, if I move away from Mercury far enough to make it appear as small as that in the image, the Sun is only slightly larger than Mercury is. Am i doing something wrong?
That picture was taken from Earth. Zoom into the Sun using Shift+LMB.
[dah<500,26>dah<180,14>dah<180,21>dah<500,19>dah<180,26>dah<500,21>]
 
User avatar
Mosfet
Star Engineer
Star Engineer
Posts: 1770
Joined: 24 Oct 2016 11:34
Location: Italy
Contact:

Physical simulation of the space engine

03 Jul 2020 10:07

This forum is terrible at preventing spam.
It doesn't help a lot if you quote the post, don't you think?
"Time is illusion. Lunchtime doubly so". Douglas N. Adams
| My mods: http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=80 | My specs: Asus x555ub - cpu i5-6200u, ram 12gb, gpu nvidia geforce 940m 2gb vram |
 
nbella91
Observer
Observer
Posts: 10
Joined: 10 Sep 2019 20:38

Physical simulation of the space engine

14 Jun 2021 12:32

I have a question regarding some of the features in SpaceEngine.  The gravitational lensing around black holes looks spectacular!  Is the effect solved using GR (specifically Schwarzschild Spacetime) or is it just a very good approximation?  I imagine it isn't a Kerr solution as the shape of lensing effect does not change if you change the spin of the black hole.  Any insight would be much appreciated!
 
User avatar
SpaceEngineer
Author of SpaceEngine
Author of SpaceEngine
Posts: 1125
Joined: 17 May 2016 22:16
Location: Saint-Petersburg
Contact:

Physical simulation of the space engine

15 Jun 2021 17:29

It is a very good approximation based on general relativity solution :) More specifically, it is approximation of Schwarzschild black hole potential by Paczynski and Wiita (1980):

F = -G * M / (R - Rg)[sup]2[/sup]

It is not a Kerr metric approximation, so spin is ignored. We still didn't find easy to implement (and fast to render!) Kerr solution. Probably it is way to complex for real-time graphics!
 
nbella91
Observer
Observer
Posts: 10
Joined: 10 Sep 2019 20:38

Physical simulation of the space engine

15 Jun 2021 20:46

It is a very good approximation based on general relativity solution :) More specifically, it is approximation of Schwarzschild black hole potential by Paczynski and Wiita (1980):

F = -G * M / (R - Rg)[sup]2[/sup]

It is not a Kerr metric approximation, so spin is ignored. We still didn't find easy to implement (and fast to render!) Kerr solution. Probably it is way to complex for real-time graphics!
Thank you very much for the response!  A few of my professors (with whom I shared some video I captured in Space Engine) were curious if it was a full solution or approximation.  Admittedly, none of us thought of the Paczynski and Wiita potential!  We all agreed we have not seen such detailed and accurate lensing before that runs so smoothly in real time!  I agree that Kerr would be very difficult (if not impossible) but, hey, maybe one day our computers will be fast enough to handle it!  Keep up the excellent work!  I always recommend this software to all of my friends and colleagues (it's the best educational tool out there)!
 
User avatar
DoctorOfSpace
Star Engineer
Star Engineer
Posts: 1363
Joined: 22 Aug 2016 15:04
Location: SpaceX Mars Colony
Contact:

Physical simulation of the space engine

15 Jun 2021 23:24

I agree that Kerr would be very difficult (if not impossible)
This is something I have gone into quite a bit and tried figuring out with Duke but optimizing the Kerr metric requires assumptions for angles outside of equatorial and this gets very complex very fast, almost as complex as the metric itself.  That complexity adds to render time.  I still think there is a way to make some rudimentary form of it, but the Kerr metric is a nightmare.
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X @5Ghz - RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 - GPU: MSI RTX 40​90 GAMING ​TRIO 24G
Quando omni flunkus, moritati
 
A-L-E-X
Galaxy Architect
Galaxy Architect
Posts: 3498
Joined: 06 Mar 2017 20:19

Physical simulation of the space engine

16 Jun 2021 02:27

I agree that Kerr would be very difficult (if not impossible)
This is something I have gone into quite a bit and tried figuring out with Duke but optimizing the Kerr metric requires assumptions for angles outside of equatorial and this gets very complex very fast, almost as complex as the metric itself.  That complexity adds to render time.  I still think there is a way to make some rudimentary form of it, but the Kerr metric is a nightmare.
Doc, I would love to see the famous Kerr Metric and ring singularities since it has been postulated that they may contain a wormhole into other universes (with two horizons, with the other universe inside the inner Cauchy horizon.)  Do you think something like this could ever be implemented in the program?
 
A-L-E-X
Galaxy Architect
Galaxy Architect
Posts: 3498
Joined: 06 Mar 2017 20:19

Physical simulation of the space engine

16 Jun 2021 02:30

It is a very good approximation based on general relativity solution :) More specifically, it is approximation of Schwarzschild black hole potential by Paczynski and Wiita (1980):

F = -G * M / (R - Rg)[sup]2[/sup]

It is not a Kerr metric approximation, so spin is ignored. We still didn't find easy to implement (and fast to render!) Kerr solution. Probably it is way to complex for real-time graphics!
would love to see ring singularities and an inner Cauchy horizon and perhaps even the conjectured pathway to another universe that may be part of the Kerr Metric!
 
nbella91
Observer
Observer
Posts: 10
Joined: 10 Sep 2019 20:38

Physical simulation of the space engine

16 Jun 2021 17:54

I agree that Kerr would be very difficult (if not impossible)
This is something I have gone into quite a bit and tried figuring out with Duke but optimizing the Kerr metric requires assumptions for angles outside of equatorial and this gets very complex very fast, almost as complex as the metric itself.  That complexity adds to render time.  I still think there is a way to make some rudimentary form of it, but the Kerr metric is a nightmare.
I'm sure you've looked at Kip Thorne's paper on rendering the Kerr black hole for the movie Interstellar (link here if you haven't: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... 2/6/065001).  Thirty minutes to an hour to render a single frame!  Obviously, each image was IMAX quality (given that it's a movie they didn't have to worry about rendering in real time) so that would add to render time but, still, 30 minutes using 10 CPU cores!  My laptop would burst into flames!
 
A-L-E-X
Galaxy Architect
Galaxy Architect
Posts: 3498
Joined: 06 Mar 2017 20:19

Physical simulation of the space engine

17 Jun 2021 00:07

I agree that Kerr would be very difficult (if not impossible)
This is something I have gone into quite a bit and tried figuring out with Duke but optimizing the Kerr metric requires assumptions for angles outside of equatorial and this gets very complex very fast, almost as complex as the metric itself.  That complexity adds to render time.  I still think there is a way to make some rudimentary form of it, but the Kerr metric is a nightmare.
I'm sure you've looked at Kip Thorne's paper on rendering the Kerr black hole for the movie Interstellar (link here if you haven't: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... 2/6/065001).  Thirty minutes to an hour to render a single frame!  Obviously, each image was IMAX quality (given that it's a movie they didn't have to worry about rendering in real time) so that would add to render time but, still, 30 minutes using 10 CPU cores!  My laptop would burst into flames!
I find that resolution reduction to 720P is very helpful in keeping max settings and even making 12 hour videos :)
 
User avatar
DoctorOfSpace
Star Engineer
Star Engineer
Posts: 1363
Joined: 22 Aug 2016 15:04
Location: SpaceX Mars Colony
Contact:

Physical simulation of the space engine

17 Jun 2021 15:00

I'm sure you've looked at Kip Thorne's paper on rendering the Kerr black hole for the movie Interstellar
And for the movie they still settled on a similar rendering technique to what SE uses, non-Kerr and nonrotating.
CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X @5Ghz - RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 - GPU: MSI RTX 40​90 GAMING ​TRIO 24G
Quando omni flunkus, moritati

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests