Full sized planets for Unity3D -- interesting?

I am very Interested in this for one of my future projects

Where do I buy?

 

This project with the source code you can buy here: http://etereo.com.br/index.php?pg=prebuy
Really worth every $ in my opinion .

 

Going to buy as soon as I can get it

 

Interesting! A couple of questions:

- What are the current problems causing slow performance on Macs?

- Will your system scale well to iOS, or is it likely to perform quite slowly on iDevices?
- How much/what is currently incompatible with iOS?

Depending on your answers, I may well support your work with an early license.
Cheers!

 

Look, this is actually a wild extension, with almost all parameters exposed, with no ranges and no cappings, so it requires a lot of experimentation as it is now. Some will find it too gross, some will find it amazing because of the full liberty to experimentation.


Thanks,

imerso

 

imerso you are doing great work as always and am thrilled with the updates each weekend. I do have a feature request though to add to the todo list. I was wondering if it'd be possible to add a ratio variable which is multiplied to every math formula as appropriate..

For instance you could call it scaleRatio and it would then privately be divided by 100 then multiplied across the other variables thus being able to make the planets 20% their current size or even 200% if one so desired. The default value would be 100 being a 1/1 ratio. My problem at the moment is that the scale is far too big for my project.. It would be nice to shrink the planets across the board if need be. Of course I'm not sure how this would effect the appearance do to the complexity of the project, just thought it might be something worth considering.

 

How well structured and commented is the code?

I would say this is crucial as the complexity of your project means that in order to be able to leverage it it has to be readable and relatively easy to adapt.

Would any of the current customers like to weigh in? Is it professionally written and commented...?

TIA!

 

That could work nicely, will put it in the TODO list, thanks.

 

Just a recent image:



Of course all planets are freely visitable.

 

This is not particularly helpful. What I am asking is whether there are any implementation details which limit it to PC? How many draw calls is it? Does it rely on custom shaders which do not perform well on mobile? How customizable is the level of detail? Could I make one simple planet and get decent frame rate on an iPhone4 for example? Has anyone tried running a simple planet on any mobile device?

I am happy to contribute to a mobile port depending on what work is involved.

I am very interested in this product if and only if it works on mobile.

 

I am wondering about coordinates. Could each planet have a coordinate system or will coordinates be global space so to speak?

 

Hi there,

I just want to say thanks very much for this tool! - I just purchased it, and can't wait for it. I found your techdemos on youtube and they brought me here to Unity.

I'm totally inexperienced in game design but I have a picture in my head, and so far your tool+unity is the closest realization of what that picture should look like.

Rmorph.

 

If you mean latitude/longitude coordinates, this is not directly supported yet. Not too difficult to implement, though. If you mean just local cartesian coordinates, that is already built-in supported by Unity3D, so a very easy task.

[]s

 

Very thank you! Hope you like it. Good luck with your game project!

Reposting a recent screenshot from Etherea1 for Unity3D here:



As you already know, all planets are fully visitable in realtime.

 

Imerso, will you add the feature of scattering meshes on the planets?
Otherwise I see the plugin not very useful for most of the people around here.
Sure, when you make all inputs accessible, a good programmer can add this function himself but I think this would be the "killer feature" for your plugin to sell.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't find your plugin so useful as it is now (even if it is for sure a great achievement) because empty planets are of no use (usually) for a game, but I would probably buy it in the future if I would be able to edit single planets by adding scattered meshes by typology based on height and frequency and some other parameters.

 

Question - If I purchase the Code on your site will i get access to the full Unity Package and code when it it released on the Asset Store?

 

megmaltese: this is already in the Todo list, so there are plans for that, yes.

 

HeadClot: definitely yes, you'll get access to the full source-code plus an online repository where you can easily update your source-code, which also includes the Asset Store final version as well -- and its updates, of course.

 

Great, man, I'm going to have a decision about an old concept of mine...

 

I am quite disappointed that none of my questions has been answered this far. I understand this is a one-man undertaking, but I am not going to license an unfinished package without getting at least some basic answers to important questions. Not very good marketing, Imerso.

 

according to my knowledge that is I'm currently learning my way aroudn Unity and the scripting languages and as an exercise, i'm making a little demo application where you can control a spaceship orbiting a planet. I was wondering if it is possible to use a realistic scale?

Size isn't too much of an issue, as the Earth has a radius of 6000km, and i can set the (currently spherical, as I haven't done any modelling yet!) spaceship to have a radius of 1km.

However, the mass of the earth is ~6x10^24, and I'm having trouble working out how to specify this? RigidBody's seem to have a maximum mass of 10000 units? (although as I've done my own gravity model, I can use my own mass value in a script easily enough). I also need to specify the gravitational constant, G=6.7x10^-11.

Obviously, I don't have to use real units, and from a gameplay perspective, realistic scales might not be a lot of fun. But i'm trying to simulate this as a learning exercise, so I might as well try and be as accurate as the engine allows me to be! And watching a satellite trace out elliptical orbits is quite satisfying!

 

Hello,

Sorry to hound on the scaleRatio thing more but while testing the latest changes I wonder if because the scale is so large right now you get some of the jitters when slowing down near the terrain. Also, when a planet is in the distance there seems to be some flickering artifact issues, it may be simply floating point rounding errors do to the large numbers? 75000 doesn't seem to be too outrageous but I do remember when I created my first planet orbital scene in unity I used a rather large scale and got all kinds of crazy errors and visual jitters that I couldn't account for. When I made my planets 1 unit in size and then scaled smaller objects in the 0.00000 range it seemed to work well. i.e. use 0.0 - 1.0 for objects less than a planet and 1-10000 for the vastness of space.

To those who are wondering about this project it's a beautiful piece of work and is quite possibly one of the most cutting edge tech's being explored in Unity right now.

 

There is no real reason for not running under a Mac, the only one is that I don't own any Macintosh, so there is a tiny incompatibility in the current code that prevents it to run in Pro mode under Macs. So, as a workaround, I am suggesting people to enable the Indie path to make it run under Mac today. I just need some hours with a Macintosh to fix that and it'll run 100% under Mac.

Android and iOS are another story, compared to a PC they are very slow and limited, BUT even then, with enough time (I would say a full week) it is perfectly possible to simplify and optimize some of the code to the point of getting it fully Mobile compatible and still at interactive speeds.

 

I am quite happy to announce that Etherea1 is available right now in the Asset Store!

http://u3d.as/content/vander-imerso-nunes/etherea1-ethereal-planets - USD 150.00

Of course, pre-buyers have always the latest source-code as well, the same in the Asset Store, and have granted access to the main repository.

Many thanks for your support!

 

A realistic scale is possible in size (like 1 unit = 1 meter, eg earth radius = ~6378000 meters), and that looks awesome, but then there is no Editor support for such scales (you can't see nor can manipulate a planet of this size in the Editor). That is perfectly possible if you create the planet in runtime...

Current built-in physics won't support such a mass, I guess, but I will prefer to investigate a bit more before giving you a definitive response about this subject. You will probably need to adjust scales or simulation speeds to bring it to the supported range.

From a simulation point of view, realistic scales and speeds are incredible. From a gameplay point of view, you would take hours to barely explore a single planet, but you can, if you wish. =)

 

The jittering is related to floating-point precision problems, and start happennig when we are very close to the ground. I will be providing a definitive fix for that in a few days, but right now if you lower a bit the maximum split depth you can alleviate the jittering.

This is related to the outer atmosphere zfighting with the landscape from too far. There is a number of ways to fix that, I'll be discussing this topic in the next days as well.

These are common problems which happen all the time and we need to adjust and tune until we get the best overall quality. There are still no definitive solutions for zfighting and all the other precision problems.

But I will try to start a mailing list discussion in a few days about all these issues you're bringing here, as you are perfectly right to question. Please give me just a few days more to finish that docs I promised and add some lacking features to our current system, then I promise to discuss these topics in more depth.

Very very thank you for the kind comment!

 

Bought this from the Asset Store,
In it's current form, I think it is not worth $150. It's simply not usable. Flashing textures on the planets and serious lag issues when approaching the surface. Also the surface Lod changes are insanely jumpy. Applying Surface collision completely kills performance. Perhaps it is not suitable for Unity3D. Sorry but version 1.0 get's the thumbs down from me.

 

From a completely outsider perspective I can somehow understand what you are saying, there are still some problems. But you can take it from me, I follow the progress of etherea quite some time, and I am programming nearly as long as I can think back: imerso is probably one of the most talented people around here, he is working very hard to micro- and macrofix the code, give it a little more time. Your paid money will most probably be worth it shortly.

 

I completely believe in your feedback. I will try to comment below but I'm not questioning the feeback by itself.

First, you need urgently to get access to the online repository for source updates, please send me a PM with your email address to get invited and download the updates.

Yes, the sample needs more polishing. Just for better understanding, could you tell me which hardware have you run that under?

LOD distance is configurable per Planet, maybe I should have configured that better in the sample. I will do that in the next update.

The online repository source has threaded collision which alleviated a lot of this problem with Physx performance. Also, I'll be adding a quicker alternative collision detection, but you're right again, the version in the Asset Store was not even near good on that.

I still think it is, but it really needs more polishing.

Thank you for the feedback.

imerso

 

When a new message is posted here I get an email and when I dont visit the forum instantly I miss out on a lot of comments in the thread. Shame, should be configurable to always emailing.

Anyway, I can say it is very good structured objectoriented (C# only!) code. I can see a lot of comments in nearly every function, also instance variables are nicely commented. Having studied informatics I can say imerso must have undergone at least the same level of professional software engineering education, plus probably has a lot of self teached knowlegde. Were there other questions which were not answered?

 

I never posted a WebPlayer before, but here is one:

http://www.etereo.com.br/WebPlayer (~8mb)

So, now you can check how it looks like if you are considering supporting this extension which is still in its infance.

Thanks,

imerso

 

Sorry, it appears to still be extremely on macs. The geometry or the planets is extremely weird and spiky and the shaders are garbled. Would you care to elaborate on what exactly the problem is?

 

This version is currently not compatible with Mac. There is one shader which does not run, and although I think it would not be that hard to fix, I don't have access to any Macs where I can debug and fix that. So yes, it's Windows only for now.

 

Doesn't look weird for me.

 

OK - but does this explain the extremely spiky meshes for the planets? Currently there is both garbled textures and erratic meshes when running on a Mac.

Are you doing displacements in the shaders or are you generating real meshes runtime - or both?

 

Attached an image of what it looks like when you get closer to one of the planets. It is not visible until you get closer.

Mac Pro w. ATI Radeon HD5770

 

NOTE: this is not currently compatible with Macs.

I never posted a WebPlayer before, but here is one:

http://www.etereo.com.br/WebPlayer (~8mb)

So, now you can check how it looks like if you are considering supporting this extension which is still in its infance.

Thanks,

imerso

 

I will be fixing the current Mac incompatibility as soon as possible. Currently there is a preliminar support for Macs through the Indie path, which is unfinished but more compatible.

 

OMG objects with planet gravity... man you are a genius.
Can't see time to have scattered buildings and trees on surfaces, this plugin is going to become a best seller.

 

This is cool man good work. Framerate gets a bit choppy though at planet level. I am running an I7 920 @ 3.8ghz and 3 way GTX 285's. Is this for super high spec computers only?

 

is it possible to make the atmospheric scattering like Sean O'Neil ?
http://www.sponeil.net/

 

MacBook Pro 13" 2010 version with 320M, looking fine:

EDIT:
only the brown planets have weird geometry for me.

 

Currently the Etherea1 atmospheres are easier to use, but the current demo has them broken/weird. Have used Oneil's before and will consider bringing it back again.

Thanks

 

Just one more interested fellow here...very cool work.

As mentioned (thinker?) a long time back in the thread, this would become truly incredible if it could also generate the world's details. Forests, deserts, tundra, etc- all rich with details, plants, and animals native to those terrain types. That would be quite something

 

Color me impressed. Keep it up.

 

Awesome work! Unity's answer to the Infinity engine.

Although, call me simple, but I had a really hard time getting around with that control setup.

 

I did as well :/

 

Hey Imerso i send you a pm. and replied on the other thread.

I have a problem with the terrain of a planet. Its just a big sphere without any details. Attached is a image of what i am talking about.
I didn't attached any textures on the planet, otherwise it was hard to see what it was generating.(looks like text)

This is also happening in the sample scene that was provided with this package. I also looked into the manual, and changed the two scripts in the engine folder. But i am still having the same problem, do you or anyone else know how to fix this?

I also tried to create a new project, but that didn't helped either.


Cheers,
Darryl

 

I am not 100 % sure but i think i know whats the problem. If i see correctly you are using Unity Indie well if i remember this plug-in is set as Pro edition so you need to change it to the Indie version everything is written in the documentation that imerso provided .

 

Ah man, sorry guys... i forgot to put the if true in the other ones.(was rushing it through)


Now its working! Thanks.