Topic: Quasi-Dynamic Sky(Space) Box

[Rosencrantz]

Ok, I had an idea that's probably way in the future in terms of development, but I think it might add some extra "Hey that's cool!" factor.

How about a quasi-dynamic sky box. What I mean by this is that we figure out how each solar system is related to every other system in terms of distance and spatial orientation. Then we figure out what the universe looks like from that solar system. Same thing with other galactic entities.

for star in systems
  project [systems - star] onto star.unitsphere
  project [galactic_objects.nonstars] onto star.unitsphere

So say that you're going from one system to the next. When you arrive at the new system you can look behind you (or effectively behind you depending on how the new system is oriented w.r.t. the old system) and see the star you just came from.

[Recon]

you should check this out, it looks realy good.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia

Personaly I think the starfield in precurser at the moment is to random and has to many visable stars. Less stars and not as random/evenaly placed would make changing view point seem more real.

As for celestia, also gives a good idea of the distances involved in any relistic solar system. Something that should be looked at when designing a space game. Space is BIG, VERY BIG, a lot of thought has to go into gameplay and how you going to get around the time/distance issues. If you have ships that can move fast enough to get around a solar  system in any resonable time they going to be going to fast for and other interaction.  (took applo 15 days to get to the moon and back). Spaceships out running lazer's anyone  :o 

So you eather put your solar system on a serious diet or invent a in system warp drive ( warp drive got it's own game issues, not much fun if every fight ends with the loser warping to safty at the last moment.
 
Anyway, to get back to topic, I like the idea. See it implemented in celestia , It's not a CS project but very nice to look at.

Regards

[Caenus]

Actually, the starfield isn't random at all.  I made an image file of a starfield and it was used as the 6 sides of the skybox.

[Morgul]

We have a (partiall implemented) 'starfield mesh' that we plan on using to do the sky in the future. Basically, we'll feed it accurate star information from the HYG Database (link: http://astronexus.com/node/34). This way it will do exactly like what's described here.

[Recon]

Not sure if you have seen this, came across it as i was looking around the CS site.

http://community.crystalspace3d.org/tiki-list_file_gallery.php?find=&galleryId=5&offset=10&sort_mode=created_desc

called Starfield Mesh

Description
This is the updated starfield mesh object I wrote that can import in the raw data from the HIP catalog and still run fairly smooth on an ok machine.

Why recreate the wheel, Have not actualy loaded it but sould like you should check it out as it's opensource.

Regards

[Morgul]

That's what we were planning on using, until CS changed, and this mesh no longer works. Rewritting it will take a bit of time, but iirc it shouldn't be too hard.