Re: [Celestia-developers] Exposing displacement mesh to Addons?

[Selden E B. Jr <se...@le...>]

Chris wrote

> Is this really that useful?  My thinking is that it's just as easy for
> someone to use 3D modeling software to create a 3DS or cmod mesh with the
> displacement map applied.  However, if there are strong arguments for
> adding displacement maps to Celestia, it's quite easy to do.  (The GeForce
> 6xxx series even supports displacement mapping in hardware through a
> feature called vertex texture fetch, though Celestia wouldn't need to use
> it especially for static height maps.)

My thinking, perhaps mistaken, was that applying a displacement map
to Celestia's builtin spherical models would be a relatively easy
implementation that'd be usable by people who aren't skilled with 3D design.

It isn't obvious to me what format the data should be, though: 
a greyscale bitmap might be the most "approachable", but a list of 
floating point numbers or a DEM file probably would provide the most
flexability and precision.

I also was hoping that doing it this way would simplify providing support
for VTs, high resolution surface texture images and the other drawing
features which work with spherical objects but not with Mesh objects.

s.