Invisible Black Hole

Hi, just wanted to ask if there is a reason why Black Holes cant be seen on the main screen, and if there is a way to fix that.

-UselessJerry

Comments

  • Because I never figured out a way to make them look non-ugly.

    I wanted to "warp" space around it, but I never managed to do that (especially complex when there is more then 1 black hole within visible range)
    As actual black holes are not visible directly, but only because they bend space/time.
  • ahh ok
    it can be sometimes a bit confusing when you sudenly die because of something literally invisible :P
    but still thx for the reply
  • 100% to blame on Science ;-)
  • edited April 2017
    As actual black holes are not visible directly, but only because they bend space/time.
    Well, strictly speaking if you are close enough to see the distortion, its already very hard to withstand the gravity (way before the event horizon is reached). But to really take acount to all those weird effects, relativistic physics would have to be added to the engine

    But of course, EE is not really science-heavy: dense nebulas/asteroid fields, no space-flight-physics, and of course being on a 2d plane ;-)
    So a rough estimate should be good enough.

    Question: how difficult would it be to show some objects as plain sprites instead of 3d models? A black disc with some generic, blurry, half-transparent star-rings around it might do the trick.
    I just made some quick tests in gimp using an EE screenshot, and at least on that static image it does'nt look too bad. But of course in motion that could be different.

    btw.: My idea was inspired by http://www.tempolimit-lichtgeschwindigkeit.de/reiseziel/reiseziel1.html (in german, but at least the images might be interesting for non-german readers nevertheless)
  • of course i know that black holes aren't actually visible, and it wouldnt be a problem for me if there was just a mere black disc as a representataion of it.
    Its just that its like not existing. No bend light, no consumed star, not even just black and that was my actual issue
  • Rendering objects in space as sprites isn't that hard. It's what the new planet/sun objects can do already. So if someone has a decent graphic for a black hole, we can put that in until we have something better.
  • edited April 2017
    Good to know! Haven't look into the whole planets feature yet. Quite cool!
    (Sidenote: maybe the examples would look more natural with immovable planets,slower moon rotation and the sun being part of the skybox?)

    I played with the example script a bit, unfortunately it seems you cant just replace the star with a black hole picture, as the atmosphere texture is used for it, and here the brightness-value also determines the transparency. So the black disc a the center is not visible, only the outside ring - which works at least from the distance. On the other hand, setting the planet's texture to black looks already quite interesting.
    Unfortunately, combining both don't work, but it's good enough to do some further testing/image composing. I guess I will post some pictures within the next days (And maybe also a ticket on github for organization purposes)
  • image

    From left to right: based on painting with a star-like-brush, simple black planet, based on the EE StarsFront File.
    As mentioned above, the transparency dont work as I wanted too, ideally the center should be completly black.

  • The transparency can work with black with some code changes. It's setup for additive blending right now.
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