[1.1.2][1-1-2] May 13-2016 EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements

[Superfluous J]

rbray89,

Do you use the city texture for all views? Like, if I was outside Minmus' orbit and could somehow see Kerbin in enough detail, would I see the little roads still? Do you ever show the splotchy image I made in the game?

I ask because I'm brainstorming ideas for the texture redo, and if you don't use the base texture I think I can do some pretty awesome stuff.

[rbray89]

the detail texture is universally applied at all distance on your main texture (that's why the lights seem to twinkle). I was considering adding a distance limiter though to ensure that at certain distances the main texture would not be visible. There is a distance at which point the alpha drops to zero after you are so far away, but I haven't really put in the time to test it out.

[Superfluous J]

I've been playing with my idea and it's not really working anyway. I was trying to simulate several cities and towns connected via road.

I'm just gonna toss a Hail Mary here and ask a question I'm sure the answer will be "no" to: Is there a way to allow a SVG file instead of PNG to define where lights are? Then I'd have control down to any level what is lit or not. I could define a city with a couple blobs, a highway with a wavy line...

[Gryphorim]

I've been having a weird bug, where the clouds on kerbin would render as a uniform grey overcast. does anyone have any idea what's going on here?

[rbray89]

I've been playing with my idea and it's not really working anyway. I was trying to simulate several cities and towns connected via road.

I'm just gonna toss a Hail Mary here and ask a question I'm sure the answer will be "no" to: Is there a way to allow a SVG file instead of PNG to define where lights are? Then I'd have control down to any level what is lit or not. I could define a city with a couple blobs, a highway with a wavy line...

Not that I'm aware of. I wouldn't be sure how to pass something like that into the shader... that being said, it is an interesting point. I could create a mesh of city "points" connect them with vertices, and then perform line and vertex rendering on them. I'll give it some thought.

[DasBananenbrot]

on one of your exanple pictures it seems you can see the cloud layers from the ground but I can't see them from the ground ....Is there anything I am doing wrong?

[Tw1]

I actually removed the lights before there were road details put in. I never thought to put some back now. I'll play with it in the rework of the light map I'm going to be starting soon.

I'm going to put an an opinion to the contrary. I like having space around KSC, and seeing it as I go up. Please don't put city lights there.

Another thing I'd suggest is beefing up the Kerbin city area more- the whole tip of the peninsula could be lit up, an the city to the north of KSC, which currently looks bigger, ought to be turned down.

This mod makes Kerbin so much more real looking.

Now, just got to get those cities looking as good as the coulds.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Tw1

[Superfluous J]

I'm going to put an an opinion to the contrary. I like having space around KSC, and seeing it as I go up. Please don't put city lights there.

Another thing I'd suggest is beefing up the Kerbin city area more- the whole tip of the peninsula could be lit up, an the city to the north of KSC, which currently looks bigger, ought to be turned down.

I was hoping to put a single pixel at KSC (or maybe a 3x3 pixel area) so you could pretend you could see the little roads around the buildings, but othewise not have any lights on the artificially flattened area. It didn't look right so I scrapped it. In fact, I'm having trouble making any change to the method of creating cities in the current framework that looks better than what is currently there.

I'm leery to light up that entire tip, though I may do what I did in the peninsula north of the KSC Continent and run lights around the shores. I think from almost KSC all the way around, with more at Kerbin City will look nice.

However, I'm hoping we can change the way we define the cities. The granular nature of using a raster image is really limiting how nice I can make the city maps look. No matter what I do it ends up looking like squares. That's why I was asking about using a vector graphics format to draw the map.

[NathanKell]

First, a chant of praise for the continuing excellent improvements you're making, rbray89!

I did notice something, however: all your non-power-of-two textures will be scaled up to the nearest power of two, so the 1200x1200 ones will be taking up double the space they would if they were 1024. I'd suggest either using the full 2048x2048, or downscaling slightly.

That might have something to do with the memory issues someone mentioned.

Also, the cloud textures themselves--they have both color and alpha. But I thought you were using the detail images for cloud color?

[Tw1]

However, I'm hoping we can change the way we define the cities. The granular nature of using a raster image is really limiting how nice I can make the city maps look. No matter what I do it ends up looking like squares. That's why I was asking about using a vector graphics format to draw the map.

I agree, the squares aren't the best. Vector graphics would be great.

Yeah, the whole tip may be a bit much.

Even with it just being a little patch over KSC, it will still become visible when you are quite low. Currently, the patch over Airfield Island obscures it at night. I'd rather see the airfield, as much as I like my city texture.

Speaking of that, this is my latest experiment all version:

Going to try higher density dots next time.

One last thing- many areas of the cities look washed out when near the ground. I might try adding more colour.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Tw1

[rbray89]

on one of your exanple pictures it seems you can see the cloud layers from the ground but I can't see them from the ground ....Is there anything I am doing wrong?

Running with the realism mod that resizes kerbin?

Edited November 3, 2013 by rbray89

[rbray89]

First, a chant of praise for the continuing excellent improvements you're making, rbray89!

I did notice something, however: all your non-power-of-two textures will be scaled up to the nearest power of two, so the 1200x1200 ones will be taking up double the space they would if they were 1024. I'd suggest either using the full 2048x2048, or downscaling slightly.

That might have something to do with the memory issues someone mentioned.

Also, the cloud textures themselves--they have both color and alpha. But I thought you were using the detail images for cloud color?

The texture blending is a simple multiplication. Color is taken from both detail and the main texture.

[rbray89]

I was hoping to put a single pixel at KSC (or maybe a 3x3 pixel area) so you could pretend you could see the little roads around the buildings, but othewise not have any lights on the artificially flattened area. It didn't look right so I scrapped it. In fact, I'm having trouble making any change to the method of creating cities in the current framework that looks better than what is currently there.

I'm leery to light up that entire tip, though I may do what I did in the peninsula north of the KSC Continent and run lights around the shores. I think from almost KSC all the way around, with more at Kerbin City will look nice.

However, I'm hoping we can change the way we define the cities. The granular nature of using a raster image is really limiting how nice I can make the city maps look. No matter what I do it ends up looking like squares. That's why I was asking about using a vector graphics format to draw the map.

Yeah, I was thinking about that myself. Still not sure what can be done really, aside from possibly using another detail texture as a clipping texture possibly.

[rbray89]

I agree, the squares aren't the best. Vector graphics would be great.

Yeah, the whole tip may be a bit much.

Even with it just being a little patch over KSC, it will still become visible when you are quite low. Currently, the patch over Airfield Island obscures it at night. I'd rather see the airfield, as much as I like my city texture.

Speaking of that, this is my latest experiment all version:

Going to try higher density dots next time.

One last thing- many areas of the cities look washed out when near the ground. I might try adding more colour.

Looks great. I'm really glad you came along with your city detail. Between you and 5thHorseman I think we have a great city-planning team

[DasBananenbrot]

Running with the realism mod that resizes kerbin?

Nope, I am not using the rescaled Kerbin mod.

[Overlord]

Right now the folder can just be deleted. That is interesting. Usually if people don't want both, they don't want the lights

Lets just say I like clear skies Thank you!

[Umlüx]

i love the look of eve with this mod. the look on the surface with the thick clouds above and no visible sun is simply eerie and stunning at the same time. feels much more like a unfriendly, crushing atmosphere than before.

[rbray89]

Nope, I am not using the rescaled Kerbin mod.

Try fast forwarding...

[DasBananenbrot]

Try fast forwarding...

While fast forwarding I could see the cloud layer ... So there is no problem, I probably just looked at the sky with a bad angle so I couldn't clearly see the clouds....I feel a bit like a idiot now

Aaaand almost forgot: Thumbs up for this awesome mod , I waited all the time for something like this

[rbray89]

While fast forwarding I could see the cloud layer ... So there is no problem, I probably just looked at the sky with a bad angle so I couldn't clearly see the clouds....I feel a bit like a idiot now

Aaaand almost forgot: Thumbs up for this awesome mod , I waited all the time for something like this

No worries... I made it so that there could be blue sky and cloudy days.

[Mekan1k]

I tried to get the lights removed, and it just lit up half the planet.

[Mekan1k]

Or, to be specific, after removing the folder with the lights in it the rear half of kerbin appears to be covered in glowing white cloud....

[rbray89]

Or, to be specific, after removing the folder with the lights in it the rear half of kerbin appears to be covered in glowing white cloud....

You also need to remove the city lights plugin, sorry about that. Gamedata/BoulderCo/Plugins/CityLights.dll

[rbray89]

Does anyone know a good way to generate bump/normal maps? They can be added into the config like the other textures, but i need to figure out how to make them. I only have gimp at my desposal.

[NathanKell]

Some new cloud textures, a bug report, and a suggestion.

Clouds: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yigd9ia740mq4ur/CloudsTextures.zip

It has two 2048x1024 (actually 1/2 the memory footprint of your textures, because of the upscale of non-power-of-two textures) cloud textures, and a new detail texture. (Although I don't see much affect from the detail texture in game...)

The clouds are from NASA's Blue Marble set; the detail texture was some more work in PS based on yours (a few more octaves of clouds).

Bug report: the way you currently handle texture offsets is just to constantly add to them on update. That means, once sufficient time has passed in any given scene, the UVs start getting precision errors. You need to do the equivalent of a modulus operator: check if offset > 1 and remove ((int)offset) from it, for each axis, after you add your speed to it.

Suggestion: Configurable scale for the citylights detail texture, just as there is for detail textures for clouds. I even wrote the code for it to make sure it works; you're welcome to use it if you like.