The White Guardian

I can add them for you if you'd like, just tell me what and where.

@OhioBob I may have found something that can boost the realism of atmospheres in KSP further (also tagging @GregroxMun here because I think this might interest him) Looking at the calc sheet AtmoModel.xlsx I see that the Molar Mass is defined to be constant throughout the entire atmosphere, which is okay with the given atmosphere composition. In reality however, molecules are distributed throughout an atmosphere based on their mass, lighter molecules receive a weaker gravitational pull and are thus found more commonly higher up. Here is an example from Earth's atmosphere: Name Range (m) Composition troposphere 0 - 10000 N2 O2 Ar CO2 Ne He CH4 NO Kr Xe H2 stratosphere 10000 - 75000 N2 O2 CO2 H2O O3 Ar ionosphere 75000 - 1000000 N2 N O2 O NO H exosphere >1000000 H He N2 O N Exact fractions are not given in the 'Composition' tab because I was too lazy to convert the volume percentages. As you can see the more massive noble gases are only found in the troposphere with the exception of Argon because it is much more commonly found in the atmosphere of Earth when compared to the other noble gases such as Krypton, Neon, Helium and Xenon. Molecules get lighter and lighter as altitude increases. So, what am I proposing? I suggest creating a new curve that is not used by KSP and used only when creating the atmospheric model. As you can see in the table above, it gets pretty close to a FloatCurve if the composition is converted to average molar mass. So basically defining ranges for the atmospheric layers and specifying their average molar masses to create a FloatCurve, turn that into Polynomials and enter that curve into the spreadsheet. This will create atmosphere composition variation by altitude, the molar mass slowly changing as more and more lighter molecules begin to filter in. I shall test this idea soon to see how it behaves outside of a theory, and if it produces an atmosphere that behaves nicely. Given the fact that the pressure at these altitudes is very, very low, the final effect may not be that noticeable, though it's pretty cool to be able to define whole atmospheric layers such as an ozone layer (stratosphere) and, once you get the hang of the sheet FloatCurve.xlsx, becomes surprisingly easy to make.

Use EITHER geeASL OR mass OR gravParameter, not a combination of them. Right now KSP has no idea which one of the two to pick which results in the planet having an invalid mass, thus all orbit-related calculations fail. So, kick out either mass or geeASL and it should work. You also seem to be working with a rather huge planet here (twice the size of Kerbin) that has a surprisingly low gravity for it's size (a fifth the gravity of Kerbin), is this intentional?

I'm interested in what that game is about, but also how you make a game as it's something I'd love to do myself at one point, but to the point: kopernicus. There has been an update adding new ring shaders, although there is a strange bug with the shaders, if they are applied to more than one set of rings, it will appear on only one set of rings, all other rings with shaders applied will simply disappear. There is a new PQSMod called MeshScatter - specify a scatter in a similar fashion to LandControl, then provide a 'concentration map'. Similar to a heightmap, the 'whiter' the greater the concentration of that scatter. I have written an example code by looking at the PQSMod loader code. Other than that there have only been bugfixes if I remember correctly.

@Gameslinx (I just realized you changed your forum name) I do use the scatterer tool but for some reason I keep getting strange overlay issues. According to @Galileo it's something with the... post-processing if I remember correctly. No idea what stuff I need to alter to fix that.

That stuff is epic! Can you tell me how you create those amazing scatterer models? I can get scatterer to work, but it doesn't ever look as good.

I disagree, gas giant textures cannot be created from PQS. Here's what I would do: 1 open the texture in Photoshop or GIMP 2 With the rectangular selection tool, grab the left half of the image, copy it to the clipboard then press delete, and paste the copied half into a new layer. 3. Swap the positions of the left and right halves, then merge the layers down. 4. The texture issue should be obvious now. At this point you can edit it out manually.

That black hole is absolutely PERFECT Good lord... I'm truly at a loss for words. Deep respect for this, man.

There is a note in the config inside the INSTANTIATOR folder crediting you. I thought @Gamel0rd1 already informed you? Nevertheless, I was already looking for you regarding INSTANTIATOR, would you consider releasing it as a separate mod? I'm personally looking into the possibilities of creating a galaxy-like texture with this (although I would never release a thing using INSTANTIATOR without getting your permission) and the possibilities are amazing, from accretion discs to customized rings to whole galaxies, it truly is a marvelous piece of technology capable of amazing things, that's why I'm asking. I do think the textures @Gamel0rd1 uses are original, I recall him showing me some in-development screenshots of him tweaking with the edge of the ring texture, but then again I didn't take a good look at Kargantua's textures so I can't be certain.

Nice! You may also be interested in the mew PQSMod added in the latest Kopernicus release - MeshScatter Thomas' explanation: This means that you can create 'biomes' with custom scatters.

Update! The purple planet in the screenshots has had it's cloud settings tweaked to work with Scatterer better. - Improved color and alpha settings provide a nice blend-in with Scatterer's dense atmospehere. - The surface is now slightly visible from orbit. - Detail texture tweaking to make it less repetitive. - Terrain is now less dark (35% light reduction versus the old 75%) Beauty screenshot:

Yes. MeshScatter places the specified scatter using a map as reference, allowing for in-depth creation of biomes without those annoying LerpRanges.

Alright, here's what I made of it: MeshScatter { materialType collide = false science = false Experiment { } Material { color = 0.4,0.4,0.4,1 mainTex = BUILTIN/lunar cliff face mainTexScale = 1,1 mainTexOffset = 0,0 } scatterName = Rock00 seed = 12345 maxCache = 512 maxScatter = 20 map = FILEPATH mesh = BUILTIN/boulder minSubdivision 1 countPerSqM = 1 verticalOffset = 0 minScale = 0.15 maxScale = 2.5 castShadows = false receiveShadows = false enabled = true order = 100 } Functions mostly like LandControl's scatters, save for the map, minSubdivision and countPerSqM. I don't know what minSubdivision means, I'll have to experiment I suppose, but countPerSqM seems to be 'count per square meter' which could mean the amount of scatters per square meter. Just me logging what kind of value every parser requests. Boolean -> true or false. Integer -> no decimals (like Octaves in Simplex mods) Double -> decimals That sort of thing.

Alright, already documenting MeshScatter, so far I found this: MeshScatter { materialType collide (Boolean) science (Boolean) Experiment { } Material { } scatterName (string) seed (int) maxCache (int) maxScatter (int) material (StockMaterialParser) map (MapSO) mesh (MeshParser) minSubdivision (int) countPerSqM (float) verticalOffset (float) minScale (Vector3Parser) maxScale (Vector3Parser) castShadows (Boolean) receiveShadows (Boolean) } I'll be writing an example code in a minute, hang on.

Sweet, I'll get to testing MeshScatter. Is there an example configuration for the mod available somewhere, or at least a framework listing the parsers it needs?

Should be possible, as long as you don't have any spacecrafts in the systems of Sarnus, Urlum, Neidon and Plock. Eeloo will also shift positions.

Yes, in fact. They are still far from finished, though.

Localized temperatures can differ. Because of the albedo, the ice sheets may be significantly colder. Ice reflects 75%-95% of all the heat it receives, so...

Technically Sennim is covered in Mercury and Cyran's 'Hydrogen ocean' is a byproduct of the extreme pressure, but yeah, there is an ocean of Hydrogen.

That would help a ton! Thank you!

It's not out yet. Click on the rightmost banner in my signature, that's the troublemaker. Besides, I can't go knocking at your door whenever I have this problem again, I need to learn how to fix it myself eventually. Still, thanks a lot for the offer.

That's because of their conversion. You'll need a dedicated image editing program, photo viewer doesn't know how to open uncompressed DDS textures. Do you remember how you fixed this? I've been getting the same issue several times with attempts at adding Scatterer support and I can't fix it because I don't know how.

Don't. Trust me. (Skip to 2:12 for the gas giant part)

As I'm busy modeling their atmospheres, I can safely say that you're looking for Niebos, Sonus and Volux.