Honestly, when I first glanced at it, I thought the one on the left was the real photo, until the space satellite in the right photo registered with my brain.

Fantastic jorb!

The more I visit this journal the more I want to cry. I feel so unproductive...

Stunning job!

Unbelieavable, it looks so real!

gorgeous, simply gorgeous

im still stunned by how you did get the measures right on how big mountains are compared to the planet's size.
it compares like the left picture actually IS earth.
really i would believe anyone stating it would be from nasa too.

i think the program/game will be very educative in developing our sence for the size of planet earth. when we find earth (the game's goal) i am sure everyone wants to visit it then :)

I'll go with the general tone of previous comments: beautiful [grin]

Although, only a minor nitpick - but it's quite obvious the way that your planet's horizon is a bright-white glow whereas the photo has a much softer blue->black gradient. Can't say it's a hugely important difference though!

Jack

the fake horizon is prettier though ;)

Rollo, are you saying Earth's horizon is ugly!? :o

Wow.... I gotta agree with Laz here.... O.o

Holy @#$*! That is jaw droppingly cool :D

If I actually hadn't tracked the progress of this project, I'd say you've been feedin' us NASA/National Geographic pictures and calling them screen shots. [smile] These screenies have been gorgeous lately, man. Awe-inspiring.

Quote:but it's quite obvious the way that your planet's horizon is a bright-white glow whereas the photo has a much softer blue->black gradient

Definately. I think that's caused by the simplified scattering model that i'm using. It normally requires you to integrate the air density along the ray path. I'm skipping that step for performance reasons (check out the article from Sean O Neil if you're interested about atmosphere rendering).

Quote:If I actually hadn't tracked the progress of this project, I'd say you've been feedin' us NASA/National Geographic pictures and calling them screen shots.

Yeah, i occasionally get a few comments of people on other forums who are sceptikal about this being real-time. The best form of compliment if you ask me :)

Amazing!

The one on the left looks oh-so-real. I don't think we even need clouds for that picture - looks great!

The thing with the horizon might also have to do with the position of the sun, which might be different angle from your picture and the nasa shot.

Anyway, I wanted to say that ever since i stopped programming I'm vicariously programming through you, because I always wanted to make a space MMORPG too - I just never got past a sphere with some (bad) atmosphere...

"Amazing"...wow that really is cool stuff.

Good work.

I was showing one of my friends some of your stuff, and he asked if it was real...

Quote:Yeah, i occasionally get a few comments of people on other forums who are sceptikal about this being real-time. The best form of compliment if you ask me :)

I certainly have my doubts [wink].

Looking great.

You may have answered this question before, but I couldn't find it, so here goes:
How close can you get to the ground without serious performance problems, mainly can you get down to a first person view (i.e. about 6ft or 2 metres)?
And if you can, how many tiles are likely to be on screen (or in the current display set, depending on the culling method)?

Quote:How close can you get to the ground without serious performance problems, mainly can you get down to a first person view (i.e. about 6ft or 2 metres)?

You can go as close as you want.. but there are some issues..

The terrain texturing resolution has been adapted for "spaceship flight", ie. the current resolution is adapted to a spaceship or a small vehicle flying at very low altitudes (a few tens of meters), rather than for a human. It doesn't sound like there would be a lot of difference, but actually there is. You need a resolution of a few centimeters per texel for a walking human. I'm using around 25 cm/texel for my terrain.

Although technically, nothing would prevent you from increasing the resolution. But in that case, you'd need to set a limit on the camera speed at ground level (~2 meters) so that the texturing queue doesn't fill up faster than it can be processed by the GPU.

Quote:And if you can, how many tiles are likely to be on screen (or in the current display set, depending on the culling method)?

As for culling, i'm doing frustum + horizon culling (horizon is the culling due to the curvature of the planet at the horizon). I've got 700 tiles before culling. After culling, that number should be reduced to one quarter, so around 175 tiles in view per frame.