I agree strongly with everything you said, minus the flashlights. I think some types of light could do with what they are right now - weapon flashes, for instance. It would be amazing to sit away from a battle and see your shadows cast on the asteroid behind you, but it's not really necessary, and wouldn't really be worth the extra CPU time, I think. "Flashlights" could work along the same principles - the ship just lights everything up in an area in front of the ship, in a conical shape rather than a spherical one.

The local star, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. That's a large enough light source to make shadows actually matter. It's the main light source, after all.

Talvieno wrote:I agree strongly with everything you said, minus the flashlights. I think some types of light could do with what they are right now - weapon flashes, for instance. It would be amazing to sit away from a battle and see your shadows cast on the asteroid behind you, but it's not really necessary, and wouldn't really be worth the extra CPU time, I think. "Flashlights" could work along the same principles - the ship just lights everything up in an area in front of the ship, in a conical shape rather than a spherical one.

The local star, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely. That's a large enough light source to make shadows actually matter. It's the main light source, after all.

By "flashlight effect" I mean something like head lights. The flashlight effect would come in if the pilot of the ship had the ability to move the direction of the light around. (like a flashlight)

This is called a spotlight in most computer imaging applications.

So, anybody else find themselves noticing the lack of area shadows that last update? (Particularly when Mr. Parnell flew behind the planet)

True, with shaddows enabled, that system should have looked a bit more like saturn in shaddow.

N810 wrote:True, with shaddows enabled, that system should have looked a bit more like saturn in shaddow.

We don't even need shadows from ship/station lights, just the main light source. Everything would instantly be 200% prettier.
Disclaimer: arbitrary number is arbitrary.

ohhhh... apparently this is a real pic of Saturn from Cassini. (in infrared)
Edit: Source was NASA's page. "NASA-images-Saturn-and-its-rings-harnessing-Cassini-spacecraft-650x406.jpg"
Edit Edit: hmmm maybe it's just another "artist impression" picure from NASA..?

It's not. Not sure where it's from, but that's a fake, sorry. :\ I know somebody labeled it as real, but it's not.

edit: I'll clarify.
First off, there are no space dust clouds in real life. Second, Cassini-Huygens went in between two of the rings, in the safest spot it could find - it never went anywhere near the outer edge. Third, that's not Saturn - Saturn has bands of colors, not that... rocky/swirly stuff. Then, the shadows on the planet are all wrong - Saturn is a gas giant, so the atmosphere ought to be the same thickness all the way around - there should be a very clean shadow line. The uniformity of the far edge of the "rings" is also something unrealistic, as is the fact that the "space boulders" are so cleanly shaped - realistically, they ought to be pitted and marred from constant collisions. Another point is that they're far too close together. Realistically, the rings are made up mostly of finer particles and baseball-sized pieces - not all just large boulders.

I agree it's pretty, though. This one is real:
Edit edit: You're right, it could be just an artist's impression from NASA. It's not a real photo, though.

The easy rule for that sort of pic is, If it has pretty colors it has been 'enhanced'

Pretty much, yeah. Real space isn't generally pretty. It's... empty.

I would suggest only having planets and ships cast shadows, if shadow rendering becomes a problem. Planets are really the only thing that would cast really large shadows anyway. Ship shadows are useful primarily for flight.

Keep in mind most of the hubble pictures are composites and false colors as well.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_th ... /index.php

It's not "shadows," per se, but remember how some of us complained after the last video that relatively small / distant objects were causing the light of the local star to be extinguished?

Yeah... not so much any more.

Early in the video you can see that distant asteroids no longer make the star blink (though I think they may dim the light slightly). But it does blink when a foreground object (Josh's ship) passes between the star and our viewpoint.

Looks great!

Flatfingers wrote:It's not "shadows," per se, but remember how some of us complained after the last video that relatively small / distant objects were causing the light of the local star to be extinguished?

Yeah... not so much any more.

Early in the video you can see that distant asteroids no longer make the star blink (though I think they may dim the light slightly). But it does blink when a foreground object (Josh's ship) passes between the star and our viewpoint.

Looks great!

It does! It looks amazing. Doing that with planets needs a bit of work, but it should be a relatively minor fix.

Again my naivety, but could the billboarding that Josh is using for LOD be used to create shadows?

Hyperion wrote:Again my naivety, but could the billboarding that Josh is using for LOD be used to create shadows?

There woild have to be shadows in the first place for making them billboardable.

As a billboard is more or less "render thing, make a screenshot of it, display screenshot in place of the thing".
And in order to make a screenshot of something you have to render it first