inteja Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 As @Wingnut asked for a sneak peak, here's my little celestial sphere demo (very much an early work in progress). WIP link: Celestial sphere What's the point you ask? If you want a realistic night sky then why not just use skybox textures of the Milky Way for which NASA have some great resources like here and here? Well I thought it'd be fun to generate it dynamically based on real star map data of the 5000 brightest stars (about the maximum visible by the naked eye from Earth under ideal conditions). The data (right ascension, declination, color, magnitude etc) is a subset of the Tycho-2 Catalogue. This gives me more control over how the stars are rendered (relative scale, brightness, color enhancement, blending with other skyboxes, star "twinkle" effect, constellation lines etc). Ultimately I'd like to get to the stage where I can dynamically generate hyper-realistic, bordering on surreal, skies similar to what you see in the best landscape astro-photography like that of Mike Taylor. To get a good result (be able to make out clear, crisp individual stars) using skybox textures, the resolution and resulting filesize and vram requirements need to be quite large, which isn't ideal for web deployment. This dynamic generation approach means I can use one very small texture to represent a single star, but at the cost of more triangles to render. The stars always look crisp and sharp. Ultimately I'd like to blend this with a very low-res Milky Way skybox behind, combine it with the SkyMaterial, add the moon and phases, day/night transition, geolocation and date/time support etc. I don't want a full astronomy / night sky app, just a drop-in super-realistic and dynamic sky for future projects. Ambitious I know, but I have an astronomy maths book handy and I've made some progress on that front already ... Dad72, V!nc3r, Wingnut and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babbleon Posted March 30, 2018 Share Posted March 30, 2018 I can see Orion on the demo! Amazing stuff. If you're looking for realism, then light pollution based on location would be good. inteja 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteja Posted March 31, 2018 Author Share Posted March 31, 2018 Added constellation lines (H A Reys scheme), better star texture and other tweaks. WIP link: Celestial sphere The Leftover, Arte and Wingnut 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aWeirdo Posted March 31, 2018 Share Posted March 31, 2018 Very cool inteja 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteja Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 "Twinkle, twinkle, little star ..." - just added star twinkle effect (atmospheric turbulence simulation). WIP link: Celestial sphere Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteja Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 Added configuration GUI - change: Number of stars (up to 5000 of brightest stars) Star scale Celestial sphere radius Star twinkle Show asterisms Asterism color Thanks @Deltakosh and all other contributors for a great WebGL framework and GUI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteja Posted April 2, 2018 Author Share Posted April 2, 2018 Added low-res Milky Way backdrop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 2, 2018 Share Posted April 2, 2018 Lovely! inteja 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V!nc3r Posted May 30, 2018 Share Posted May 30, 2018 Your project is very cool! Congratulations for all the work already done. You haven't mentionning the licence side of this: is it open source? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inteja Posted May 30, 2018 Author Share Posted May 30, 2018 Hi @V!nc3r , yes I'm planning on releasing as open-source soon. V!nc3r 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V!nc3r Posted May 31, 2018 Share Posted May 31, 2018 Great, that's so cool! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Leftover Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 Dayum! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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