My latest add-on to Celestia, a ssc file with orbital definitions for 7309 asteroids, allows to see clearly (albeit at a slow fps rate) the whole asteroid belt distribution. Fridger Schrempp (t00fri@mail.desy.de) has contributed this wonderful view of the asteroid belt where the albedo (brightness) of all the asteroids was increased by a factor of 10⁶. I'm sure this greatly demonstrates Celestia's ability to perform as a pedagogical tool... After all, who wouldn't feel threatened by all those tiny wandering rocks, any of which could wipe us from our quiet haven?

-----------------------------------------------------

More images by Fridger Schrempp

Fridger Schrempp (t00fri@mail.desy.de) produced these wonderful images, by experimenting with bump-mapping in textures, among other techniques. In his own words:

I thought it may be of some interest to 'Celestians' to see what can be done if --by means of the free GIMP program-- hires level maps of the earth (bumpmaps) and specular reflections via the alpha channel are combined in one DXT3 (4:1) dds file. In fact, even my clouds (2k) are bumpmapped. They get a nice 'fluffy' appearance this way.

[...] The earth texture with combined bumpmapping and specular reflection has 8192 x 8192 resolution and as 4:1 packed DXT3 file (including an 8 bit alpha channel) is 44.7 MB long. The hires level map of the earth is from the USGS DEM database. I reduced it with cubic interpolation from 10k to 8k size. Everything works smoothly even with my 32 MB GeForce 2 GTS card.

On Earth, the very detailed altitude differences together with the specular reflections in the sea are clearly visible in the two examples, Himalaya/India and Middle America/Venezuela, respectively. In the latter image also the 'fluffy' clouds are apparent ;-).

Note that Pluto nicely shows light reflections in the ice and a rugged surface texture due to bumpmapping.

Galery:

Page -1- Page -2- Page -3-