SOL: State of the Project and Release?!#??

[G'th]

Run that through the Latin setting in Google Translate if you don't know what the title means.

SOL will continue development until it is finished finished to my satisfaction. No releases until then. 

Current works in-progress:

-Mars and its Moons. 
-New Vibrance version for Earth based on  real-time imagery from the Himawari-8 satellite 
-Refinements to Earth's cloud dynamics aimed at improving performance. 
-ongoing heightmap tweaks and adjustments for Moon and Mars. (earth too probably)
-Duna-ified Mars for Vibrance version (Potentially also a secondary option for a Blue Sky Mars, for those who want to play in a universe where the conspiracy theory that NASA was hiding what Mars actually looked like was true) 
-Global Dust Storm Mars (I want to aim to just have this happen naturally via Dynamics, but it might not work out that way; we shall see) 

Mars (so far):

Edited October 9, 2022 by G'th

[Birdman31]

Now this is epic

[TheLoneOne]

Wonderful my guy! hope this time it goes better for you! I will keep tabs on this.

[G'th]

Re-did the whole thing after finding a rather terrible error. 

[SpaceFace545]

Glad to see you're back. Is the earth stuff still a part of this?

Edited June 25, 2022 by SpaceFace545

[G'th]

2 minutes ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Glad to see you're back. Is the earth stuff still a part of this?

Yep. Got some cool stuff planned for it. 

[SpaceFace545]

7 minutes ago, G'th said:

Yep. Got some cool stuff planned for it. 

Siiiiick

[G'th]

Just now, SpaceFace545 said:

Siiiiick

yessir. 

Basically atm I'm wanting to nail down Mars so I can start posting my alt-history w/illustrations and then I'll be swapping between that and this. 

Surface is damn near perfect though I'm still getting blocky terrain, though considerably less than previous attempts so its definitely progress. Scatters will be touched as well, and then we'll move on to the weather. 

Really want to figure out how to get a blue sunset. It almost goes there but isn't quite as blue as it should be, but atmosphers still WIP anyway soo

[FinLights]

This is gonna be epic  You're doing some amazing work here 

[G'th]

Amusing as it looks, I don't believe Valles Marineris is quite this extreme of a canyon. For reference the bottom of this thing was about 10km below the top. 

But, despite the overwhelming extremity of the canyons, thanks to @R-T-Band @OhioBob I was able to resolve the blockyness to my satisfaction (While also managing to retain even more detail), so now its just a matter of tweaking the heights so it uh, isn't quite this bonkers lol. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by G'th

[TheLoneOne]

13 hours ago, G'th said:

Amusing as it looks, I don't believe Valles Marineris is quite this extreme of a canyon. For reference the bottom of this thing was about 10km below the top. 

But, despite the overwhelming extremity of the canyons, thanks to @R-T-Band @OhioBob I was able to resolve the blockyness to my satisfaction (While also managing to retain even more detail), so now its just a matter of tweaking the heights so it uh, isn't quite this bonkers lol. 

tbf you would be surprised how it looks from the bottom I've been to the grand canyon and its bonkers how deep it actually looks. its just its gonna look strange given the surface texture, parallax might be something you wanna look into using here.

[G'th]

5 hours ago, TheLoneOne said:

tbf you would be surprised how it looks from the bottom I've been to the grand canyon and its bonkers how deep it actually looks. its just its gonna look strange given the surface texture, parallax might be something you wanna look into using here.

True enough, and apparently the actual lowest points in Marineris is around 7km deep, so its actually not that far off lol. 

[G'th]

Olympus Mons is just, wild. 

And here's a lander for a sense of scale. 

[Adiri]

Looking good! Can't wait for release

[TheLoneOne]

On 6/28/2022 at 6:36 PM, G'th said:

Olympus Mons is just, wild. 

And here's a lander for a sense of scale. 

looking good, will be def installing ksrss again when this releases

[G'th]

A look at the two options for Mars:
TrueSight

Vibrance:

Technically speaking, both are true color, as Mars has a peculiar annoyance in that the colors vary depending on how much dust is in the air, which is why Mars in "true color" photographs range from the bright Duna-ish red to the more pale yellow brown. 

And here's the new Earth, which greatly improved terrain, as well as the new Vibrance version of earth:

True Sight:

Vibrance:

And here's some up close looks for True Sight. This is at 180km in altitude:

 

Edited July 2, 2022 by G'th

[TheLoneOne]

idk if this just looks way better today and its a major change or mabye its just me being high on the new meds im trying as of last night, but your doing realllllly good on this dude.

[G'th]

Just now, TheLoneOne said:

idk if this just looks way better today and its a major change or mabye its just me being high on the new meds im trying as of last night, but your doing realllllly good on this dude.

Probably both. 

I mean, look at this bruh. This is Vibrance at 120km in height. This is just, bonkers lol. 

[TheLoneOne]

9 minutes ago, G'th said:

Probably both. 

I mean, look at this bruh. This is Vibrance at 120km in height. This is just, bonkers lol. 

im not high this really does look amazing, you even captured how spain actually looks from orbit correctly i think usually people think its just green but no its a bit more similar to how Morocco's terrain looks!

[G'th]

If we can't tell, I am having just a grand old time with the new version of Earth. 

[Doc Shaftoe]

Ha ha, very funny G'th. Stop trying to pass off actual orbital photography as a KSP mod.

Jokes aside this looks stunning. Those earth textures are absolutely mind-blowing! I never thought I'd see a KSP screenshot that looked that good at a 120Km orbit. 

I was impressed by the clouds in the old dev thread, but these screenshots have convinced me that you've transcended simple EVE configs to reach a level of cloud-fu wizardry the community has never seen before.

[G'th]

Figured out how to get Mars' sunsets working correctly, and also tuned the atmosphere to be as close as I could get it to the real. 

[G'th]

And some adjustments to the cloud system. Much better performance, though some old features are going to have to be redacted. Unfortunate but as they were tiny details anyhow not too much is lost. 

[FinLights]

Good lord man, just beautiful, amazing what you're doing with KSP

[Rutabaga22]

Would you mind explaining what this mods is? I can't seem to find a description.