Rings with everything!

[FluffyFreak]

Even asteroids have rings :)

Rather reminds me of the Earth with Saturns Rings.

[impaktor]

That "Earth with saturns rings" is just the thing one would like to experience in a space game like Pioneer, I think. scientifically correct, but alien worlds.

[FluffyFreak]

At the moment "SystemBody::PickRings" only operates on gas giants and give 50% of them rings with a base colour similar to one of those from our our system (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus).

It would be fairly trivial to extend it to support rings on everything else, or just terrestrial worlds with no moon(s) or space stations.

Problem I can see arising from this are that we don't allow that mixing of spacestations and gas giants which avoids the two conflicting.
Also the current system is really designed for gas giants and could do with a bit of work to improve it so that you transition from the ring geometry at a distance, fading in geometry for big asteroids, fade out ring geometry for particles / models of dust grains etc.
The current system is ok from a distance but it breaks down when close as it is an infinitely thin slice of goemetry.

[FluffyFreak]

Something like this branch I just made, but with the ability to remove the rings if their are moons/orbitals perhaps?

[robn]

Rings that "exist" would be awesome. Then we could mine them for ice. A long demanded feature :)

[robn]

"rings with things", cute.

Could just push the minimum orbit out to (outer ring radius + fudge) (when rings exist, of course). Do the rings fall within their body's reference frame? If so, then that should almost fall out for free. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't and were entirely a visual effect.

(I used to know this, but its been too long - can't keep the entire codebase in my head anymore!)

[FluffyFreak]

Yeah doing rings for planets might need some work because currently its a bit of a lemon!


:D

[impaktor]

Distant exoplanet hosts giant ring system

...and if Saturn had rings that big, it would look like this from our humble abode:

[FluffyFreak]

That would be cool to see in game.

Y'know my rings-with-things branch is just this minute up to date if anyone is interested in working on this stuff?

There's always the chance to improve it, maybe even write up a simple asteroid generator?

Place moons into the rings to clear them out and have proper gaps? Many things that could be done with just a little effort.

[impaktor]

I've looked at the diff, and I'd like to help, alas, I have about zero knowledge on OpenGL or any kind of rendering, and I really should be working on other things, not related to Pioneer. Arrgghh! Procrastination!

Also, I found this: #1404 that was never merged. I assume you've seen it.