Re:WebGL Realistic Earth with Carl Sagan quote
by biot on Wednesday April 22, 2015 @12:56PM
(#9421759)
This quote is great, but the visual ruins the context of a pale blue dot. From [0], the reference was to the Voyager probe taking an image of the Earth from near the edge of the solar system and the Earth appears as a dot less than a pixel in size.
From that perspective, seeing majestic images of the Earth larger than life and in your face is contrary to what Sagan was saying. With the outstanding visuals in this demo, one might get the sense of a majestic world full of opportunity, worthy of building armies to conquer and spill blood for each chunk of land; the very antithesis of his point of how tiny and insignificant our world and the people on it are.
Re:WebGL Realistic Earth with Carl Sagan quote
by mmastrac on Wednesday April 22, 2015 @11:21AM
(#9421067)
That was great. I would have loved to have watched with a virtual Sagan narrating -- I heard his voice in my head the whole time.
The lightning on the dark side of Earth was a neat effect. Might want to consider flickering it randomly rather than flashing it to make it feel a little more realistic.
Re:WebGL Realistic Earth with Carl Sagan quote
by seanalltogether on Wednesday April 22, 2015 @12:44PM
(#9421670)
Nice work, I've been putting together something like this as well in my spare time, been trying to nail down the right shaders to handle the atmospheric glow as well as morphing cloud layers as they move. Trying to see how possible it is to come close to this effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh11kcDhfM
From that perspective, seeing majestic images of the Earth larger than life and in your face is contrary to what Sagan was saying. With the outstanding visuals in this demo, one might get the sense of a majestic world full of opportunity, worthy of building armies to conquer and spill blood for each chunk of land; the very antithesis of his point of how tiny and insignificant our world and the people on it are.
The real pale blue dot: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blu...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
With a bit of technical details and ideas of where the project is headed here: http://blog.buschnick.net/2014/02/webgl-earth.html
The lightning on the dark side of Earth was a neat effect. Might want to consider flickering it randomly rather than flashing it to make it feel a little more realistic.
Well done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
No JS errors in console either when clicking "begin".
webgl thing, okay for a mist shrouded sphere. technically worth approximately nothing though... :)