Discussion Trees for Orbiter

[misha.physics]

Just to have a separate thread about trees for Orbiter. It can relate both to:

1) OpenOrbiter development (searching and testing the better way to implement trees in the future Orbiter development).
2) An addon for trees for OpenOrbiter (and for Orbiter 2016 too).

It doesn't mean I have good ideas about trees for Orbiter, but you might have them, so feel free to share them here if you like.

The first simplest and obvious idea I see is a low poly tree mesh with a good texture like:



The pictures were taken as an example from the Internet.

 

[Urwumpe]

I wouldn't limit this to trees, but also to rocks and boulders on other planets.

And, for some research food, this one seems like a nice compromise solution, if a dedicated forest renderer is needed:

https://inria.hal.science/hal-00650120/file/article.pdf

 

[LordCroussette]

I wonder why the graphics engine doesn't render meshes behind transparent textures (unless in specific circumstances) when it has no problems rendering the terrain. There must be a good reason for it. I'm not a programmer though, so I have no idea where to begin looking for an answer.

I think fixing transparency so everything behind always render no matter how meshes are ordered in a file could greatly improve meshes and base making in my opinion. I could finally replace my janky-a** Quebec trees with actual trees! x)

 

[dgatsoulis]

This has been fixed in OpenOrbiter. You just need to flag the meshgroup with 0x20.


Here it is without the flag (FLAG 0) -Base MESH, so it gets loaded before the vessels.

Canaveral.cfg
MESH
FILE Tree
OWNMATERIAL
POS 6851.61 0 -2367.58
ROT 10
SHADOW
PRELOAD
END




Here it is with the flag (FLAG 0x20)



Even the shadow is perfect.

 

[dgatsoulis]

A quick and dirty grove creation.
Not a huge impact on the frame rate (280 without the mesh. 265 with it) In the center, you can almost make out a DeltaGlider.

 

[N_Molson]

Awesome guys!

 

[LordCroussette]

This has been fixed in OpenOrbiter. You just need to flag the meshgroup with 0x20.
View attachment 38115

Here it is without the flag (FLAG 0) -Base MESH, so it gets loaded before the vessels.

Canaveral.cfg
MESH
FILE Tree
OWNMATERIAL
POS 6851.61 0 -2367.58
ROT 10
SHADOW
PRELOAD
END


View attachment 38117

Here it is with the flag (FLAG 0x20)

View attachment 38118

Even the shadow is perfect.

Damn, epic!

 

[n72.75]

It figures that I assumed this was going to be a thread about data-structures...

 

[jacquesmomo]

In my add-on "Kourou-CSG" there are 2 examples:

Some coconut trees near the main CSG building


A small tree near the ELA4 site

 

[misha.physics]

You just need to flag the meshgroup with 0x20.

Sorry, where should it be flagged? In Blender, or in a base *.cfg file, or somewhere else?

Sadly, I don't have enough time to try it now, but I'd like to try it later.

 

[LordCroussette]

Sorry, where should it be flagged? In Blender, or in a base *.cfg file, or somewhere else?

Sadly, I don't have enough time to try it now, but I'd like to try it later.

I believe that's how: open the mesh in notepad and add "FLAG 0x20" in a mesh group like this:

 

[misha.physics]

Thanks so much! I must try it.

 

[misha.physics]

FLAG 0x20

So, this flag was added for OpenOrbiter and it works perfectly. Is there a limit on the number of meshes that will be transparent for each other? Are there some other flags added in OpenOrbiter? Will they be mentioned in the OpenOrbiter documentation?

I've tried it with @Pipcard's addon:



And added a blue area around the island, it looks better than without it:



It seems to be a good idea to try making such fictional neat islands.

 

[misha.physics]

Maybe we can use a low poly tree mesh with leaves textures on the transparent background (see below an example). It could look volumetric and nice.