Planetary LOD system [with runtime]

[MasterD]

I've written a thesis using Irrlicht as underlying 3D engine. The topic was a planetary renderer which incorporates into the main application (Yet Another Spaceshooter) and is capable of visualizing arbitrary planets without heavy precomputations (not at the same time, though).

For everyone interested in in-depth knowledge of how this works can have a look at my thesis document, available here. I'm happy to discuss the aspects of this LOD system, either with this forum, the YASS forum or by email at the_masterd(-humansknow-)gmx.de.

An impression is given by the following screenshot, as well as the several videos at my youtube account: http://youtube.com/kohlschnitzel (don't ask for that name )

A runtime version is available, see this post here.

This image shows the scattering best, but the thesis' main focus is geometry level of detail.

[FuzzYspo0N]

Hey man.thats great stuff right there.im definately gonna check it out tomoro,and take a look at the videos etc.

Great from what i can read / see

[MasterGod]

Wow, nice.
Looks very cool - I can't wait to run this.

[ultramedia]

Yep, looks light years beyond what I've been able to do... nice to see someone getting something going in irrlicht... looks great

[sjb]

Very nice MasterD. This looks just like what I'm trying to do, and as I understand I've taken the same approach as you, which is encouraging

And the scattering looks beatiful, gonna check out the videos aswell!

EDIT: Reading your paper now... :applause:

[MasterD]

The work is currently being integrated into the main application (YASS) and irr 1.5. A playable version is currently not available, but a planet viewer (which is the game's editor). So, for every one wanting to take a realtime view:

http://yass-engine.de/downloads/thesis-bin.zip
Please read on, as I don't have additional instructions with that .zip!

Requires: Win XP, Up to date Direct X and a Shader 2.0 compatible video card.

This app crashes occasionally, but it's mostly when exiting, so that's not too bad, imho.

Additionally, for Vista users:
Afaik the planet does not show up on vista, and I currently don't have a Vista dev-box, so I can't fix it directly. However, if you like, please try and report to me, when it showed up on vista.

Instructions of how to run:
Start main.exe
Hit F9 and wait some sec's, some information will pop up in the left panel (Wait for that).
Hit F6, followed by F1 (loading and starting a 3 minute camera flight).
Hit ESC anytime to dis/enable GUI.

If you're tired of watching and want to take over the control:
Hit F2 to stop camera flight anytime.
Hit space to dis/enable mouseview.
Use numpad +/- to adjust flight speed (if you're up in space it may take several "+" to see yourself moving).
Use QWES (move) + AD (roll) + RF (fly up/down) to control the camera.

[MasterM]

Beautiful simply beautiful, how did you do the light around earth?

[MasterD]

You got some nice nick there

As posted elsewhere:

One Shader for the ground, two for the atmosphere, no postprocessing / HDR stuff

All explained here (read the references if you want to know more about scattering)
See http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGem ... ter16.html