Upcoming Feature - Parallax from Orbit

Release 3 will focus on finally adding Parallax to the planets from orbit! It's about time.

This has been the most requested feature ever since Parallax first released back when it only modified the terrain. The common complaint was that the planets from orbit looked blurry and lacked a lot of the detail that the mod brought to their surfaces, and that the transition from orbit to the ground view was jarring. No more!

Let's take a look at what you can expect from Release 3. There are a lot of pictures!

Edit: You can view the images in full res, full size [HERE] if you right click each image and open in a new tab.

The Vanilla 'Stock' System

The planets now use a new shader that handles their visuals from orbit. It handles everything - this includes the main planet textures, the detail textures that you'd usually only see on the surface, and the displacement. You'll notice that the planet meshes themselves will look much more detailed, as they now take advantage of tessellation much like what the surface shaders use.

This, combined with the planets' displacements being accurately calculated at runtime in-shader instead of being pre-generated (and usually wrong!) completely eliminates the orbit mesh from mismatching with the surface mesh, allowing for a seamless transition between the two.

This gif shows the transition from Orbit to Terrain views. Low quality - Patreon doesn't allow video embeds

Orbital Shadow System

You might have noticed that the planets don't cast or receive shadows from orbit normally, ignoring scatterer's eclipses. This was actually a surprisingly difficult challenge which is in part why this post is later than I'd have liked! I had to write my own shadow system (a fairly basic raymarched shadow implementation) with approximate umbra and penumbra (fancy words for 'soft shadows') to get good looking shadows.

Soft raymarched shadows implementation, showing area light width ranging from 0 steradians (Image 1) up to 0.3 steradians (Image 4)

This produces some really nice views from orbit on planets of all sizes, but my favourite has to be the huge shadows produced by Minmus. Did you look at the picture of Kerbin at the top of this post? Did you notice the shadows? :)

The Other Planets

Now I get to show off some of the other planets and moons! Not all of them are complete yet so you can't see them all, but I only have a few more to do.

When remastering the planets for their orbit views I follow these rules:

1. Generate the physically accurate-to-terrain planet maps (albedo, normals, height) - See modders notes below

2. Apply the parallax surface textures to the planet's orbital appearance

3. Where applicable (Bop, Tylo), fix misalignment of planet maps with their surface. Ever noticed that Bop and Tylo have crater colouration where they don't have craters?

4. Don't alter terrain (Eeloo may be an exception to this - it's just that boring)

Dres, our favourite non-existent dwarf planet.

Dres looks much crispier now. I wanted to keep its base textures mostly the same - the only difference I've made to them is a slight darkening of the craters to make them stand out more.

Jool's iciest planet 'Vall'

Vall was tough. A common theme you'll notice with these revamps and comparing them to the vanilla planets is I am working with mud balls and horrible amalgamations. I can pretty them up but I can't work miracles!

The 'Jool 5' Killer - Tylo

Looks a bit weird, perhaps a tad unfamiliar? Vanilla Tylo is a mess of textures that don't match up to the terrain at all. I've fixed this and added subtle radial streaks to some of the craters. I think the remaster stays true to what Tylo aims to be while keeping it fresh.

Whatever this is ('Pol')

I mentioned this in a previous dev note, but Pol was by far the most difficult moon to get looking crispy without being an eyesore. In Release 2 Pol uses a baked texture and the old vanilla shader, but now we can have the unfortunate ability to gaze upon it with Parallax applied.

Duna's best friend, 'Ike'

Ike's smooth marble cliffs and dark grey regolith make the moon stand out more from the others, I really like how this one turned out. Ike's colouration doesn't match its terrain, but I feel like this is the one case where this actually works in its favour so I've kept it. There are no misaligned craters, just dark blemishes on its surface.

Gilly

I thought I'd throw in Gilly at the end for fun. It's just an asteroid, nothing special, but it's a lot less blurry.

When Can We Expect This?

I'm aiming to have Release 3 ready by the end of February if all goes to plan. I have a few more planets to complete, some code cleanup to finish off and lastly a couple minor bugs to squash. Of course, take February with a small pinch of salt in case anything goes wrong or life gets in the way, but around then is my target.

More?

There will be some other minor features/changes in Release 3, such as the fix for flickering objects using low density or range values. Beyond Release 3 I will also be looking into Mac support for the scatter system and seeing where that leads me - but I can't promise anything yet.

Leave your feedback in the comments, any concerns you may have or questions you want answered, and I'll get around to them over the next few days!

Modders Notes

There's a new texture exporter coming with Release 3 that will eclipse Kittopia's exporter. This is already available for anyone (mostly Kopernicus modders) HERE. It accurately builds and exports the base planet terrain in the form of colour, normal and height maps true to the real geometry. No more guessing. And it's multi-threaded.