Triangle Strip and Perlin Noise.

generate perlin noise texture. lets say each frame you move the offset (the pixel you read from that texture ) by vec2(acutal_pixel + 1, 0.0);

since its perlin noise you should have a smooth move from one pixel to another. now imagine you have a 256 length tri strip ribbon. (and your texture is 256x256 now y dimension on texture reponds to the vertex from the start of the ribbon so vertex at center of the ribbon will read perlintex texel on vec2(time, length(ribbon_start, vertex_pos) / 256.0);

if you define your texture as being repeated you dont need to zero time if it exceeds (1 or 256) this will give you demanded shape that is changed over time. now the thing is

you do that in vertex shader (you read the texel from perlin texture) and move your vertex by perlin tex value * some factor since its from 0..1

Instead of step 3/4 you can use geometry shader with either lines or triangles as input primitives. In latter case you can recalculate normals without sending them back to cpu/ram. In former case you may generate bands mesh on the fly. In this case aurora is represented as a concentric line_strips, in vertex shader you animate line vertices with perlin noise and then in geometry shader you generate a triangles and normals.

And btw take a note that bands should move along the Earth, i.e. in its polar coordinates.

Instead of step 3/4 you can use geometry shader with either lines or triangles as input primitives. In latter case you can recalculate normals without sending them back to cpu/ram. In former case you may generate bands mesh on the fly. In this case aurora is represented as a concentric line_strips, in vertex shader you animate line vertices with perlin noise and then in geometry shader you generate a triangles and normals.

And btw take a note that bands should move along the Earth, i.e. in its polar coordinates.

I think I get it more or less. About moving the bands along the earth, do you mean that as the earth rotates, the bands should relatively rotate around the poles too?

Also, from what I understand, Geometry shaders store the data of a triangle, and not a mesh. Is it any way possible to calculate or manipulate vertex normals in the geometry shader for smooth shading just like show in the image in the OP?

Instead of step 3/4 you can use geometry shader with either lines or triangles as input primitives. In latter case you can recalculate normals without sending them back to cpu/ram. In former case you may generate bands mesh on the fly. In this case aurora is represented as a concentric line_strips, in vertex shader you animate line vertices with perlin noise and then in geometry shader you generate a triangles and normals.

And btw take a note that bands should move along the Earth, i.e. in its polar coordinates.

I think I get it more or less. About moving the bands along the earth, do you mean that as the earth rotates, the bands should relatively rotate around the poles too?

I meant that every time you offset vertices using Earth tangent you add small error (see right half of a picture bellow). This error may not be too noticable in this case it's fine to use tangents. Otherwise you can either track distance between vertices and center of the Earth, either use polar coordinates to eliminate the errors (see left half)

http://i.imgur.com/oL026VG.png

Also, from what I understand, Geometry shaders store the data of a triangle, and not a mesh. Is it any way possible to calculate or manipulate vertex normals in the geometry shader for smooth shading just like show in the image in the OP?

You can use adjacency primitives to calculate vertex normals.

In case of line_adjacency primitive driver feeds geometry shader with the following data:

(previous)--->(A)--->(B)--->(next)

Care should be taken with first and last vertices to avoid the gaps in bands due to how OpenGL treats vertices of adjacency primitives.

Thanks for replying! I think I get it now about moving the bands along the earth. About the lines_adjacency primitive, I haven't used it before, so I have very little experience with it. Do I have to specify the adjacent vertices in the point list through an index buffer or by specifying GL_LINES_ADJACENCY, OpenGL itself would give me 4 coordinates per primitive?

Thanks for replying! I think I get it now about moving the bands along the earth. About the lines_adjacency primitive, I haven't used it before, so I have very little experience with it. Do I have to specify the adjacent vertices in the point list through an index buffer or by specifying GL_LINES_ADJACENCY, OpenGL itself would give me 4 coordinates per primitive?

Sorry for the delay. You dont have to specify adjacent vertices manually (except maybe the first and the last vertices), just specify GL_LINES_ADJACENCY and OpenGL will do the rest.

Sorry about the late reply as well. So you're saying my first and the last vertices would actually be actually some dummy value. When the first line adjacency primitive is sent to the geometry shader, it sends it as [v0, v1, v2, v3] where v0 = dummy number. Is that correct?

Also, I looked a bit into perlin noise for vertices. What I couldn't figure out was, how would I animate the vertices with the perlin noise so that it looks smooth? For that, whatever noise is at v0 in the current frame, I was the same noise to be at v1 the next frame, and v1's noise goes to v2 and so on. The starting and end vertices get new noise values each frame. That way I think it would look like a smooth animation.