Re: [Celestia-developers] Stars as point sprites

[Chris L. <cl...@ww...>]

>
>> Eventually, we should use point sprites to render galaxies as well.
>
> And other objects that can best be drawn using some form of volumetric
> rendering, like nebulas, magnetospheres, etc.
>
> I'm rashly assuming this functionality will be available in CMOD meshes.

I've almost got the change complete for stars, and it does help
performance quite a lot when many stars are displayed. I see performance
jump from 100fps to 120fps on very fast Athlon64 X2 4400 CPU. Gains on
slower processors should be much more significant.

This change does not affect CMOD meshes, but that's a very good idea. We
could add a sprite primitive type to CMOD files. I can think of all sorts
of uses in addition to the ones you mentioned--volcanic plumes, meteor
trails, simulated light flares on spacecraft models, rocket exhaust, ...

--Chris