Saturn

[pangloss]

Don't go to the light Carol Ann, stay away from the light...

In addition to the spectacular Saturn display, this looks like the basis of a real-world nightime plugin. With orbital position, planetary inclination and time/date, this could show the actual illumination of the planets in real time. Plus, I could tell if it's dark outside my house or not.

[bull]

Goooo Pat getting a few problems with 0.7 though, hard to explain, but the ring shadows seem to be in the wrong place, I'll attach a screenshot,

[patmurris]

the ring shadows seem to be in the wrong place...

Thats really odd... pangloss sent me a similar screen shot.

The 'wrong' shadow is in fact the equatorial border of the half sphere on which the ring projection is drawn... I had the same artefact, but solved it using various alpha blending, so it should not be there anymore - and i dont have it anymore myself !?!

One thing thats odd is that the rings projection is supposed to have something like a 50% transparency, but on both your screen shot and pangloss's, the projection is definitely not blended... which is probably related to the equatorial artefact still being visible.

I'm not sure why it doesnt work for you...

Did you use the Saturn_Rings.png that came with 0.7 ? It has been tweaked on the edge too - in relation with similar artefact at the bottom border of the projection - which seems to be ok on your screen shots though.

EDIT: I was using an early version of Saturn add-on. I just installed the 1.0 from the link in the first post and now i get the same artefact... when the Images/Tiled layer is on. Investigating...

[withak]

It might depend on the video card as well. The Radeon 7500 card in my laptop does WW just fine, except for all the fancy alpha blending options that were added to the imagery layers last fall sometime.

[patmurris]

Planetary Rings 0.7b - fix

That should be it : Planetary Rings plug-in 0.7b (Zip 303k)

I fixed the opacity bug with quadtile layers and included pangloss extensive variations of saturn ring textures. I also unsaturated a bit the default saturn rings

[patmurris]

Planetary Rings 0.8 with still more accurate shadows

Morning delivery of Planetary Rings plug-in 0.8 (Zip 303k).

More accurate rings shadow on main body and inverted 'underlit' side of rings :



Getting really close to the real thing... see PIA07772.
Still missing that blue glow though
EDIT : sorry for the constant post of updates... i always pretend its the last touch up but i cant let it go - blame the Cassini mission and all the wonderfull pictures they bring us

[basbakker]

Still missing that blue glow though
EDIT : sorry for the constant post of updates...

It's called perfection..

[Guest_Jim_*]

It's called perfection..

Or obsession depending on who you ask, but if I could write plug-ins as nice as this and keep finding ways to improve upon them I'd double my current number of posts in under a month .

[patmurris]

Some fixes on the rings shadows

Afternoon delivery of Planetary Rings plug-in 0.8b (Zip 63k).

• Fixed the main body shadow over the rings that was kinda 'floating' above the plane.
• Unlit side of rings doesnt show inverted colors anymore when shadows are off.
• Removed Pangloss ring textures at his request - to avoid multiple sources and updates confusion.

[Beansprout]

Stunning

[patmurris]

Planetary Rings 0.9 - blue glow and more settings

Morning delivery : Planetary Rings 0.9 (Zip 64k).

• Added a blue glow effect.
• All light effects are now settings options for each world - so some of them can be turned off when not appropriate.

Saturn 'dark side'

Is this the last version
EDIT: oups, forgot the link on the above zip...

[bull]

Aww the last version, looks great though