[HN Gopher] Realtime Planet Shader: Interactive 3D planet animation
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       Realtime Planet Shader: Interactive 3D planet animation
        
       Author : rossant
       Score  : 253 points
       Date   : 2023-11-21 08:25 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jsulpis.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jsulpis.github.io)
        
       | stefanka wrote:
       | Looks beautiful
        
       | keyle wrote:
       | Very nice work. I feel the atmospherical light bounce is way too
       | strong on bodies that don't have atmospheres.
       | 
       | Also the lighting could have better default, with the sun
       | intensity cranked up and the shadow side almost pitch black, as
       | well as the universe darker (if we assume being blinded by the
       | sun reflection.
       | 
       | I've done a few of these in my time, I've never had such as nice
       | detail on the surfaces, it's very well done.
       | 
       | I would suggest also a default where the orbiting camera would in
       | fact move (in all axises), at the moment it's pegged to the sun
       | and perfectly aligned to the equator, which is not as realistic
       | as the rendering quality!
       | 
       | Of course that would involve the programmer to have to render the
       | sun too, as it would come in and out of the background.
        
         | mentos wrote:
         | I'd second the point about atmospheres. Was most apparent to me
         | on the moon but now I'm really curious to see Jupiter with 0
         | atmospherical lighting.
         | 
         | Incredible work! The game developer in me now wants to see you
         | slowly create a game around this. Really impressive how light
         | weight this is.
        
           | moribvndvs wrote:
           | There are controls to increase/decrease the atmospheric
           | density as well as sunlight and reflection intensity.
        
         | sneela wrote:
         | The sun intensity makes the planet look weirdly blurry to me.
         | Is that how it normally is? Is that how it's supposed to be?
         | Dropping the sun intensity to 0 made it look more crisp, which
         | is the way I like it.
        
           | swiftcoder wrote:
           | Without HDR you very quickly oversaturate as th light
           | intensity increases. Space rendering without HDR and
           | tonemapping is pretty rough.
        
         | rbanffy wrote:
         | > Also the lighting could have better default
         | 
         | Space requires better dynamic range than human eyes can
         | provide.
        
         | Thrymr wrote:
         | The angle of the lighting is also odd, from the upper right at
         | a higher latitude than the sun would be for Earth (or Mars, for
         | that matter). It's a bit strange to have the same artificial
         | lighting for Venus without an atmosphere, too.
        
       | huhtenberg wrote:
       | With the atmo removed should Mars be that red?
        
         | MarkusQ wrote:
         | Mars's atmosphere has nothing to do with its color. It's red
         | because the dirt/rocks are red. The atmosphere is so thin that,
         | except when it kicks up dust, it has little to no effect on the
         | planet appearance (in visible light).
        
       | otherjason wrote:
       | This looks very nice. One bug (?) I noticed was that if you drag
       | the Clouds slider all the way to 1.0, then the clouds disappear
       | altogether.
        
         | asah wrote:
         | For me, the "monitor" control doesn't work (bottom-right
         | corner)
         | 
         | (but *beautiful work* OP)
        
       | ale42 wrote:
       | Is it me, or the star sky background is mirrored?
        
         | cyxxon wrote:
         | Generally very nice, but for me the planetary texture looks
         | doubled, everything is a bit blurry and it seems as if the
         | texture is there twice, a bit offset against each other. Edge
         | Win10 64.
        
           | poulpy123 wrote:
           | same issue on chrome 119 linux
        
           | sneela wrote:
           | Try reducing the sun intensity to 0. That's what worked for
           | me as I noted in a comment above:
           | 
           | > The sun intensity makes the planet look weirdly blurry to
           | me. Is that how it normally is? Is that how it's supposed to
           | be? Dropping the sun intensity to 0 made it look more crisp,
           | which is the way I like it.
        
           | larschdk wrote:
           | Same here. If you flick the sun light on and off, much of the
           | surface shifts several pixels.
        
       | hermitcrab wrote:
       | Impressive work. How did you generate the clouds and terrain,
       | Perlin noise?
        
         | AStrangeMorrow wrote:
         | Wondering too. It does look like it though. It has that
         | noisyness / fuzziness that makes it sometimes a bit too random
         | compared to earth continents. I found that it works best for
         | earth like map simulations (with water basically) when combined
         | with some terrain physics (moving plaques of random sizes and
         | other geological elements) to generate the high level details,
         | and Perlin on top for the natural noisiness. For other planets
         | though it does great.
        
           | hermitcrab wrote:
           | Perlin noise (with octaves) can generate quite natural
           | looking terrain height maps. But it doesn't simulate natural
           | processes such as wind and water erosion and plate
           | techtonics. For example, plate techtonics tends to create
           | mountains ranges in lines (such as the Himalayas and the
           | Atlantic mid-ocean ridge) rather than completely randomly. So
           | I guess that is going to limit just how natural it can look,
           | especially over the scales that these natural processes
           | operate.
        
       | snorkel wrote:
       | Works on mobile browser too! Usually these type of demos don't.
       | Nice work.
        
       | JKCalhoun wrote:
       | Doesn't render for me on Safari, does on Chrome (MacOS).
        
         | rbanffy wrote:
         | Works for me, on Monterey and an x86 Mac Mini.
        
         | mthoms wrote:
         | Works for me in Safari.
        
       | carlsagat wrote:
       | Well done!
        
       | rbanffy wrote:
       | Venus in visible light could have been a fun joke.
        
       | JackFr wrote:
       | Beautiful, but clouds seem to be missing any cyclonic aspect.
        
         | hermitcrab wrote:
         | I am guessing the clouds are noise projected on a spherical
         | surface, rotating separately from the planet. It would probably
         | be quite complex to add coriolis force, and also slow things
         | down.
        
           | teaearlgraycold wrote:
           | You could have static cyclones with palette shifting to get a
           | good effect.
        
       | melagonster wrote:
       | >It runs at 60fps on my old low-end phone
       | 
       | guess I really need a new cellphone! this is amazing, I just
       | expected that my cellphone will become hotter and slower, and
       | then confused about why my cellphone still work.
        
       | b33j0r wrote:
       | I also work on this in my spare time, and this example is pretty
       | great! I'm still always stuck at cubespheres and not being able
       | to create content on the surface.
       | 
       | (You'd be amazed at how complex it is to create planets, and how
       | ungrateful a lot of us are to be confined to just one!)
        
       | smallstepforman wrote:
       | I've done something similar in my Zero Gravity game (long time
       | iOS project), where I had astronauts engaged in rag roll kung fu
       | in space, with a GLSL earth in the background with day/night
       | cycles. Just like Star Wars has sound in space, my game (as well
       | as the linked renderer) added ambiant light to see the unlit part
       | of earth. However, there is no ambiant light on the dark side of
       | the moon<-<-<- earth.
        
       | throw555chip wrote:
       | Pretty, seems to run efficiently in the browser.
        
       | amielucha wrote:
       | Now add Pluto.
        
         | hermitcrab wrote:
         | No longer a planet!
        
       | pmontra wrote:
       | It works great on Android Firefox, but... no zoom?
        
       | positus wrote:
       | Looks good, though a bit two dimensional. Is it possible to use
       | displacement or normal mapping versus bump mapping in a browser?
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-21 23:03 UTC)