day/night cycle?

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ckob
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:56 am

day/night cycle?

Post by ckob »

Hi I am new around here but getting pretty far along with irrlicht, I would like to create a day/night cycle where the sun and moon would rise and set much like real life and also cast shadows off the various models I have. Could someone point me in the right direction of a tutorial or tell me what I can do? I have used search a few times and found nothing.
TreyOne Games
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 12:44 am

Post by TreyOne Games »

i would(but im still a noob myself) using a timer within your program that will change as needed...meaning basically....the "sun" and "Moon" light

i know u want the easy way...but with that type of level....u have 2 get 2 that level of programming and most people dont want to give away there gems :(

also it is useless for most programs ...because most game players dont relize day or night changing ...useless its a very good game...and even on that note, its a waste 9 times outta ten because by then u should be at another level so i would just use a timer 2 change the direction of light at times needed(on light 1 off on light 2) even then that might be 2 much overhead for most computers :( (included with regular game play)
Sachiel7
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:24 pm
Location: USA

One idea...

Post by Sachiel7 »

Well, one idea would be to have the user setup their timezone in the game/program (if you want it to match their current day/night conditions), and reference the system time.
What I would do is store the system time in military format, as a four value integer (ie, 0000 is midnight, 1300 is 1:00 pm, etc) and have it rollover after 2359. (or let the clock do it)
I would next add a billboard image of the sun to my scene, and attach a very bright light to it. (or large radius)
(there have been a few other threads regarding emulating the sun's lighting effects, but I haven't any links at the moment. Basically, it eats up FPS quickly)
Then, do the same for the moon. Set them across from each other-ish
Now, you'll still probably have to do something fancy with your sky, I would reccomend setting up a skybox and changing the texture for each hour.
Finally, you reference your time integer and set the sun/moon to rotate around the enviornment based on the time.
I'm sure there's a better method, but this one would probably yield some interesting results.
-=Sachiel7=-
bitplane
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Posts: 3204
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2005 3:45 am
Location: England
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Post by bitplane »

emil's magic2d library has skybox fades for day and night cycles.
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... php?t=9666

nobody's made a 'proper' skydome for irrlicht yet, you know with day, night, sun, moon, stars, clouds, fog, rain, etc. to do it properly would be a huge task. here's some links though
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... ight#51246
http://www.flipcode.com/articles/article_skydomes.shtml
http://www.vterrain.org/Atmosphere/
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Post by Guest »

thank you ill check into this.
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