Rendering whole planets in real time

[Martin]

http://selectivegamers.com/content/view/666/144/

[apomb]

absolutely astonishing! that must require a crapton of horsepower to even show those visuals, the scaling, the cloud cover, definately droolworthy, thanks for the link Martin!

[Cervantes]

Indeed, that's pretty awesome. I only had a problem with two things:

1. Descending to the surface of the planet went really fast. Why don't we see a real bird's eye view of an entire continent?
   
2. When on the surface of the planet, there was another planet, like Saturn, in the sky that was absolutely enormous. It looked super cool, but I'd imagine the gravitational effects would be huge. Perhaps this was really a satellite we were exploring though.
   

[Aziz]

Cervantes wrote:

When on the surface of the planet, there was another planet, like Saturn, in the sky that was absolutely enormous. It looked super cool, but I'd imagine the gravitational effects would be huge. Perhaps this was really a satellite we were exploring though.

What would you expect to see on the moon? You'd see the earth as an enormous enitity in the 'sky'. What keeps the moon from not surrendering to the Earth's gravitational pull is well, Earth's gravitational pull, coupled with the speed of the moon. The Earth pulls the moon towards it, while has another force (who knows the original source) in a direction tangent (perpendicular to the surface) of the earth. So as the moon tries to go by, the earth pulls it close. The moon is not closer, as the earth is trying to do, nor is it farther, as the moon is trying to do. It's called "freefall", and it's not actually falling. Take a string and tie something (with a little weight, like an action figure. Buzz Lightyear is perfect) and hold one end and swing around in a circle. Not the same concept, but almost. Good old buzz is trying to fly away in a direction 90 degrees to the string, but the string is pulling back buzz.

Forgive me if you already know physics o.o

[Cervantes]

Aziz wrote:

What would you expect to see on the moon? You'd see the earth as an enormous enitity in the 'sky'.

Cervantes wrote:

Perhaps this was really a satellite we were exploring though.

Aziz wrote:

The Earth pulls the moon towards it, while [it] has another force (who knows the original source) in a direction tangent (perpendicular to the surface) of the earth.

No, there's just the one force. Only one force is needed for centripetal motion, and that's the force towards the centre of the circle -- gravity, in this case. You're referring to the moon's velocity, which is not a force.

Aziz wrote:

Forgive me if you already know physics o.o

You're forgiven.

[Aziz]

Ohh by satellite I see now you mean a natural satellite (read: I'm used to people referring to satellites as only the man-made ones). Yeah, I get it. It didn't spark that if a planet's in orbit around another planet, that makes it a satellite and not a planet *doh*.

And I didn't specify so much detail, however you know more than I do so i probably should've busted out my physics notes. It's been about a year and a half since learning centripetal force . . . wait, nvm, half a year. It was Grade 12 physics (I think) Anyways, is there a playable demo or even more information on this? It looks pretty frikkin neat-o

[MihaiG]

very cool, wonder what the specs of the computer were, that rendered the planets (cant see the site right now)

any one know the specs?