Hi.
Ehm. So i start a blog. My plan is to do what the tile says. The actual status is behind the github in my avatar. I don't plan to sell something, i am rather following what many others do, bringing some virtual realism into gaming. Inspired by projects (that all are well beyond my abilities !) like Orbiter (hail the probe !) or KSP, open source Pioneer, or the awsome work "Space Engine" and others.
I will deliver images one i have something more to show off than i have dropped in various forum posts. Atm, i struggle with the transformation of double precision to a shader understandable format, with a method described in the book "3D Engine Design for Virtual Globals" by Cozzi/Ring. A great resource for this kind of stuff.
Pretty soon i will not be consent any more with simply rendering real world height data because i expect to overtake reality soon (well, there is only data for Earth, Moon and Mars anyway). Then virtual worlds must be put into service.
Here is my initial brainstorming for the forces that shape the surface of a solar system body. The goal is to identify parameters and find a naive algorithmic solution. I just post the initial thoughts, maybe (hopefully) it catches interest, maybe not ?
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Simplifications: no plate tectonics, no hydro- or cryosphere, no atmosphere, no biosphere, or else this would lead too far too soon. Must have room to improve ?
Then i would assume:
- Mass and elemental composition determines shape and differenciation.
- Number of surface craters depends on time, though most form in the early phases of a solar system.
Bigger ones earlier, smaller ones later.
- Primordial heat, heat transport and radiation will lead to temperature and density differences ...
- ... leading to interior convection ...
- ... which can result in lava flows, burying surface features.
- When cooling and solidifying has given enough "structural integrity", volcanic edifices can arise ...
- ... or, depending on ?, plate tectonics can start.
- Uplift here must have subsidence there.
- Uplift equals crustal thinning, eventually tear, subsidence equals sedimentation.
- Small impacts will erode and supply regolith, ...
- ... as will the accretion of dust and erosion through radiation and particle bombardment.
- Surface dust and small particles can be gravitationally transported, or spread by impacts.
- Ad- and cohesion will define the slopes necessary for movement.
- While primordial heat leaves the body, the heat budget is more and more dominated by radiogenic heat and surface solar irradiation.
- Eventually, circumstances allow,
Example:
https://erode.evsc.virginia.edu/mars.htm
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Yep, so that was the "about this blog" and "blog post number one" all in one.
As a first step to generate height maps on my own i started incorporating the algorithms of libnoise (c) by Jason Bevins, under the LGPL v2.1 or higher. It has never been easier to get noisy. Mapping a texture to a sphere or near spherical body is trivial, But when it comes to 'Oumuamua shaped o…
So, i made a video about where my project is now. Sorry for the bad quality, it is my first video from screen and i haven't wasted time on tweaking things.
It shows my implementation of continuous distance dependent LOD (after F. Strugar). 4 tiles (correctly stitched together if i may say :-…