[PLUGIN][ALPHA-10] City Lights and Clouds on Kerbin/Others

[deadshot462]

Awesome! Keep up the development.

Edited October 10, 2013 by deadshot462

[Superfluous J]

Okay I think the map is pretty close to done. Here it is in a reasonable size, black background:

I'd love to see it in-game. (hint hint) What format/size/etc would you like?

[Tw1]

My thought is that Kerbals live primarily in the areas around KSC and the "Europe" kind of place just to the North, and also on those rivers. They do however live everywhere on the planet so every area will be dotted with lights, even if very lightly.

It looks dense because I started where it IS dense. Most of the map won't be nearly so lit. Especially all the mountains and that huge desert on the continent west of KSC will be quite barren. And what I believe is rainforest on the biome map.

I always imagined KSC was a fair way away from the Cites. That would be a sensible choice. If there are no major cities around, we can test rovers and rockets and whatever without worrying about the noise, pollution, and other more literal impacts on our neighbours. It's nice to have large, empty area to play around with.

I get the impression it was chosen because of its location on the equator, and built in an otherwise lower populated area.

Kerbin city would the major urban center to the south, with smaller, less towns in the planes around KSC, and more cities to the north, and northwest.

So I suggest removing the big splotches there.

I'd like to see the cities spread around a little more. For the looks, and balance.

Kerbin is a small place, it doesn't take long to get around the whole thing, as shown by people who've driven to KSC 2.

So I imagine Kerbals would spread about a little more.

Perhaps there could be two other areas chosen to be highish density.

Afterthought: I could probably whip up a low density town model, of you like. Kerbals seem to like shapes like hexagons more than squares, so I might use that. But not for a week or so.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Tw1

[rbray89]

Okay I think the map is pretty close to done. Here it is in a reasonable size, black background:

I'd love to see it in-game. (hint hint) What format/size/etc would you like?

haha, PNG or TGA is good. Any reasonably large size should be good (2K+). It looks FANTASTIC BTW.

[Superfluous J]

I always imagined KSC was a fair bit away from the Cites. That would be a sensible choice. If there are no major cities around, we can test rovers and rockets and whatever without worrying about the noise, pollution, and other more literal impacts on our neighbours. It's nice to have large, empty area to play around with.

I agree with the general area around KSC, especially because it'll be the most obvious oddity when you're lifting off if there's a huge splotch of light right there that magically fades in from nothing.

I'd like to see the cities spread around a little more. For the looks, and balance.

Kerbin is a small place, it doesn't take long to get around the whole thing, as shown by people who've driven to KSC 2.

So I imagine Kerbals would spread about a little more.

Perhaps there could be two other areas chosen to be highish density.

I'm not 100% sure. I'd like to see it in-game before I go too crazy. That said, I can't seem to stop fiddling with it and have expanded "Cairo" (where the river is lit up) and "Istanbul" (the area on the far eastern side of the map). I'm eyeing "Manhattan" (southwest) and even "Seattle" (north of the crater) for further expansion. All the names are because that's where I got the light splotches from on the Earth map I'm using I also defined more the shore on the western side of the "Mediterranean Sea" that runs up the west coast of Kafrica and ... uh... Keurope.

Oh, and I added more lights to the crater. I want to keep it somewhat pristine but it's so hard to resist.

Afterthought: I could probably whip up a low density town model, of you like. Kerbals seem to like shapes like hexagons more than squares, so I might use that. But not for a week or so.

I appreciate the offer but I'd really like my final product to be made by me, for reasons.

[rbray89]

Good News! My updated shader fixes the lighting bug! I'll be posting a new vid once I get my hands on that sweet, sweet texture from 5thHorseman.

[Superfluous J]

rbray89 said:

haha, PNG or TGA is good. Any reasonably large size should be good (2K+). It looks FANTASTIC BTW.

Thanks!

I uploaded a 2048 wide png to [defunct site link removed by moderator]. It's not exactly what I posted above, it has the changes I mentioned where I beefed up some more areas a bit. I'm quite happy with it my own self.

Oh and this made me laugh:

5thHorseman said:

I can mock something up quick and tweak it this weekend.

"This weekend" is apparently Wednesday and Thursday

[rbray89]

5thHorseman said:

Thanks!

I uploaded a 2048 wide png to [defunct site link removed by moderator]  It's not exactly what I posted above, it has the changes I mentioned where I beefed up some more areas a bit. I'm quite happy with it my own self.

I'm aligning the texture up as we speak! (This could take a while.)

5thHorseman said:

"This weekend" is apparently Wednesday and Thursday

This happens WAY more than I'd care to admit.

[Superfluous J]

I'm aligning the texture up as we speak! (This could take a while.)

HURRY I'm more excited than Christmas. No actually take your time, make it awesome.

BTW let me know what you have to do to the texture and I'll do it next time before I send you any updated textures. I'm sure I'll be fiddling with this thing for weeks.

[rbray89]

HURRY I'm more excited than Christmas. No actually take your time, make it awesome.

BTW let me know what you have to do to the texture and I'll do it next time before I send you any updated textures. I'm sure I'll be fiddling with this thing for weeks.

No, I didn't have to do anything... I just added some GUI code to adjust it. My co-ordinate system is phase shifted by 1/4 it seems.

[rbray89]

oh, and there a Game Object folder in the source link if you want to give it a go yourself Once the scene loads, select the Generate button to perform the magic. This will be automated in the future, but for now it is nice for debugging.

[rbray89]

I'll post an update tomorrow morning. The video is being uploaded as we speak.

[Superfluous J]

oh, and there a Game Object folder in the source link if you want to give it a go yourself Once the scene loads, select the Generate button to perform the magic. This will be automated in the future, but for now it is nice for debugging.

I may just be too dumb for this. I can see the file, and even see the gamedata folder and subfolders, but whenever I try the download link Google tosses up a 404 page.

I'll post an update tomorrow morning. The video is being uploaded as we speak.

Sweet. Looking forward to it. I'll be back in a bit, gotta go F5 your YouTube page for a while.

Edited October 11, 2013 by 5thHorseman

[Leberschnitzel]

that looks nice!

[Tw1]

I'm not 100% sure. I'd like to see it in-game before I go too crazy.

Agreed, testing is best. But I mean it to come with a reduction of the density in the KSC continent. Given Kerbin's small size, that's quite dense area, and it seems a little odd that they have a whole planet, but only the one highly populated region. But lets see what it looks like first.

I appreciate the offer but I'd really like my final product to be made by me, for reasons.

Fair enough. The procedural cities I've seen so far all look really blocky, limited to grids, and pretty boring. It would be good of there were more house like things, with pitched roofs.

1 minute example model:

Not sure how the procedural cities system loads things, but kerbtown does it like a part file. You could use model nodes to load the same model several times in different positions, saving memory, if it works like that.

Edited October 11, 2013 by Tw1

[Superfluous J]

Now that I've watched

I must say I really, really like the "overpopulated" areas far more than the unpopulated areas. I need to add lights to all the things, it seems At least to some of the peninsulas you tend to fly over during orbiting. It looks weird to have lights near the shore but not right on it. People (and I presume Kerbals) build along shores first and then build inward.

But wow that looks awesome once its in orbit.

[Autochton]

Re. the population levels of the area around KSC, it might be instructive to look at a few major launch sites: Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, and Centre Spatial Guyanais at Kourou, French Guiana.

To start with the latter, Kourou was a small town when the CSG was founded near it, and has grown rapidly. French Guiana is not exactly a population density capital of the world, but Kourou is actually one of the denser areas in the country. So while there are places around it that have higher populations (the cities of neighboring countries will likely overshadow its night time light output). CSG is located at ~5â°N, so is very close to the Equator. French Guiana is mostly jungle further south, so operating a space center further south, away from the coast, is complicated beyond the normal level by logistics, as well as by needing to overfly other countries to achieve eastern-bound orbit. Kerbin Space Center matches the location of this space facility best, being smack on the equator.

Baikonur Cosmodrome is literally located in the middle of nowhere. The nearest built-up area of any kind is a non-descript railhead called Tyuratam, and the city of Baikonur is some 200 km away. Otherwise, you pretty much get black on a night map - bare Kazakh steppe. Being located at ~45â°N is not fantastic for equatorial launches, but is about as far south as is practical within the bounds of the former Soviet Union.

Kennedy Space Center is further south than Baikonur, at ~28â°N. It is at the southern end of Florida, near some major urban areas (Miami, Jacksonville). It is different from the two others in being very close to such major urban developments (Kourou is only populous by Guinanan standards, and Tyuratam is all but deserted). This gives it excellent logistics, and given the launch direction, it's pretty much all water downrange. In many ways, Kerbin Space Center seems to match this positioning best - an eastern coast, major sea downrange for eastward orbit trajectory.

Whether you look to CSG or Cape Canaveral for an example, I think the result will be good. Baikonur is a bad fit for the standard space center, but matches KSC2 well (out in the back of beyond, continental).

[Dizzle]

I really hope this goes somewhere.

[Tw1]

Now that I've watched

I must say I really, really like the "overpopulated" areas far more than the unpopulated areas. I need to add lights to all the things, it seems At least to some of the peninsulas you tend to fly over during orbiting.

It does look awesome! Looking forward to seeing this from my Mun Base.

The way you've got a few different patterns happening really adds to it. I still think the megacity thing to KSC's north west could be turned down a bit, and some others boosted up a little more.

The lights are further away from KSC than I expected.

I not sure about the one right above the KSC- the center itself won't create that much light. Perhaps shift it back a little, to represent towns between coast and the Mountains?

On the subject of cities on coasts- it depends on how the place was settled. If the settlers came from inland, the coast may be less populated. There is the fact that the sea beaches are nice places to live, but I'm hoping kerbals had the sense to not over urbanise all their coasts.

It's nice to have empty space- don't add too much!

What program are you doing it in, just out of interest?

Edited October 11, 2013 by Tw1

[CaptRobau]

Why are night lights in the video white, while 5thhorseman's are like RL more yellowish?

[MOARdV]

This looks pretty good. One suggestion I would make, based on the shader snippet you posted earlier. Currently, it looks like you're using the standard lighting equation (NdotL), but inverting the value, so the lights turn on when NdotL = 0, which means the sun is right on the horizon. IRL, people tend to turn the lights on before the sun sets, so maybe apply an offset and scale to NdotL before you use it. Something like

half NdotL = dot (s.Normal, lightDir);
NdotL = (NdotL - 0.1) / 0.9;

Assuming I didn't do my math backwards, that ought to turn on the lights while the sun is about 6 degrees above the horizon, which corresponds to about 20 minutes before sunset on Earth. I don't know how it'd look, but it might help light up the cities near the terminator.

[rbray89]

I may just be too dumb for this. I can see the file, and even see the gamedata folder and subfolders, but whenever I try the download link Google tosses up a 404 page.

Hmmm... the zip download is giving you trouble? Just tried it and it seems to work...

[rbray89]

Why are night lights in the video white, while 5thhorseman's are like RL more yellowish?

That was the color of the texture provided. This can/will be tunable to peoples liking in the final version. I have a color mask in the shader that can be easily applied.

[rbray89]

Now that I've watched

I must say I really, really like the "overpopulated" areas far more than the unpopulated areas. I need to add lights to all the things, it seems At least to some of the peninsulas you tend to fly over during orbiting. It looks weird to have lights near the shore but not right on it. People (and I presume Kerbals) build along shores first and then build inward.

But wow that looks awesome once its in orbit.

I do like how it looks, though I think the texture needs to be higher res to make the lights less "bloby"

Also, what do people think about a cloud layer?

[Nazari1382]

would look much better as a more yellow/orange color instead of pure white: