Sounds like a nightmare problem. Loading 270,000 objects isn't trivial
no matter how you do it (I'm assuming you are going to model each as a
sphere?). And clipping distances are going to drive you nuts. So I
guess I'd say you need to define how far someone can see (how far before
a star is so tiny it shouldn't be displayed) and relate that to the
scale you want to use. Positioning them would be a nightmare for normal
floats using 1 unit = 1 meter so I'd plan some other scale (1 unit = 1
lightyear?).
- John Wright
Starfire Research
Corysia Taware wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of modelling something really big and I'd like some suggestions
> on how this might be done. The model is of the 270,000 stars in the
> Hipparco's and Tycho catalogs. I'm inspired by the OpenGL program Celestia
> (www.shatters.net/celestia) and have been peppering the author with "How did
> you do that??" questions.
>
> The immediate challenges I see are to:
> 1) figure out how to load 270,000+ objects in an intelligent way. Should I
> load them all up? Or only those stars that are visible from the current
> viewpoint?
> 2) decide what scale to use? The Java3D specification says that 1.0 == 1
> meter, but is that realistic when dealing with objects that are light years
> apart?
> 3) determine a clipping distance. Is there any overhead by setting a really
> big back clipping distance when there isn't any models in between?
>
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