Lens Flare Plugin

[step]

So here it is, the canonical lens flare effect that every uber-cool 3D application like World Wind must have.

Unzip into Plugins/ folder and enjoy. Includes a small dialog box to fiddle with various flare parameters, although it is currently too dumb to remember the settings (sorry!).

It really likes having Atmospheric Scattering and/or Sun Shading enabled, because it looks slightly out of place without the sun. Also, due to the way I'm currently estimating the visibility of the sun (through a Camera.PickingRayIntersection, if you really want to know), the plugin sometimes gets a bit confused if you're close to the terrain.

Developed and tested with WW 1.4; won't work in 1.3 unless somebody else bothers to write the glue code. To the critics: only took about two hours to write, and I needed a break

[withak]

Wow, I thought I was joking when I wondered whether WW could do lens flare.


edit: It wouldn't work in < 1.4 because there is no sun position to use.

[TomServo]

WAY too much time on your hands Get to work on the downloader code!

[patmurris]

Well done step !

[patmurris]

Lens Flare plugin 1.1

Here is the Lens Flare plugin 1.1 (Zip 79k)
Unzip in your Program Files/NASA/World Wind 1.4/Plugins/ folder.

I added some 'colored' flare textures and extended the number of sprites for more subtle or complex effects.
Settings are now saved.


Default settings with 8 sprites. Brightness slightly enhanced to better show the effect on this static screenshot.

Well... this is wasting cpu somehow, i know... but it surely catches the eye when you want to show off WW

[bull]

you are great.

[patmurris]

Sunrise has become quite impressive :

Sunrise over Mount Everest, Nepal.

[patmurris]

Lens Flare plugin 1.2

Here is the Lens Flare plugin 1.2 (Zip 102k).

Now comes with seven presets from 'simple soft' to 'outrageously bold' (see below)

[Efrain]

I see the flare effect is drawn even if there is some terrain blocking the sunlight path (tried to view the sunset at mount Everest and the sun glow was painted on the face of the mountain just as if the sun rays could traverse the rock). Can this be solved by changing render priority parameters? Or it needs code rewriting?

[patmurris]

The occlusion test is limited to the planet sphere with no terrain for now and doesnt work in all situations.

[bhealy]

I really love this, but...does anybody know if this code can be ported or has been ported to the latest version of Worldwind for Java ? (1.2) ???