I was curious about something that you don’t see that often: transitioning between an environment like a planet, to space and back.
I saw a game called Kerbal; where you build missiles and shoot them out into space, and it moved my curiosity. That game is interesting but I had in mind something much different; like exploration of the solar system (there is a very interesting product called Orbiter, I would like to achieve something like that) but from the inside of the capsule.
So 2 things basically hit me: how to generate planets, and how to actually approach them, moving from a space view to a planet view.
For the first issue, I read about procedural generation of assets; which seems to be a feasible way to generate geometry, altho I haven’t found anything Unity specific (plus would be great to use actual NASA maps for the planets, instead than randomly generated ones, but that’s a different issue).
The second left me a bit baffled, since I can’t really figure out the logic behind such action: do you replace the planet with various LOD, as soon as you get closer? I’ve seen some examples done in XNA, but nothing in Unity so far.
Has any of you tackled such issues? Looks like there are not too many simulators or arcade, which perform such activity (I remember only Kerbal and an old game called Elite 2…which was running on ancient 286 machine?), so I assume that it is really complex (or really easy, so anyone can do it other than me ? ).
Any suggestion would be more than appreciated; or maybe there is already something on the store that does what I am trying to do? I use C# btw, if that matters.
another similar product is etherea. there are also 2 threads about it in the forum. i own both but don’t want to make a suggestion as i can’t know your requirements.
for the overall space looking stuff you can use space graphics toolkit. carlos has mentioned in his thread to maybe include a lod solution somewhen but i don’t know if this is still true. and i also don’t know about the procedural generation capability of this one.
edit:
and jesta has worked on a solution using advanced dx features but afaik the work is on halt due to little demand for dx 11 only.
edit 2:
have seen that space graphics toolkit has a dynamic lod now.
I’ve check Etherea on the store and it seems that it fits the bill but for small planets; once you go on larger scale seems that the computational power required to run that (plus the logic for the game, plus the graphic for the ship and everything else, like space effects, debris and such), would be too much to be usable on any lo-mid range rig. Plus it requires Pro.
Space Graphics toolkit seems very interesting; it has both the LOD planet and the space stuff to make a complete scene, but it seems to suffer from the same issue of Etherea (altho for different reasons): you can make small planets but it seems that you cannot make big planets without going to affect the overall look, once you get very close. I was reading the thread here on the forum, and seems that the author decided to go for a generic feature, leaving to each user the duty to implement the LOD once you get closer. I would love to have a single solution that gives me peace of mind and allow me to focus on the application logic. I will check with the author to see if he has plans for implementing a more detailed LOD once you hit the surface of the planet. I like his package, and saves me the purchase of another space package, to make the generic scene around the planet.
So far I like Planetary terrain the most; it just has a lot of popping while changing the LOD as you approach; but I assume that it is just a matter of playing with the settings? Also the atmosphere height should be configurable I guess, so you can avoid to show that “shell” effect while you go in and out of the atmosphere.
I thought that there were no packages specific for that feature, but it seems that there are already 3 to choose from (or more, if you use others I would love to know about them…the search on the store is pretty much of little help, since it returns a ton of results that has nothing to do with planets LOD and such )
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