Dodecahedronal atmospheres

[Valiant70]

Planets are dodecahedrons, but for some reason the atmospheres are spherical. This makes it look like one is at higher altitude near plate edges, which is weird. I think it would work better to shape atmospheres like the planets they surround.

If a dodecahedronal atmosphere doesn't look good from orbit, just make it look spherical from the outside and render its density inside with a dodecahedron-based calculation.

 

[jstenholt]

One more complaint to level against the planets as they are.

 

[Groovrider]

I struggle to see any improvements that can be made that aren't just optimization. Most of the other suggestions seem to involved making them separate instances or just out and out murdering PCs with massive spheres made from voxels.

Making the atmosphere a dodecahedron would mean giving it hard borders like a planet rather than radiation from a point like a star. I can't see that helping performance.

 

[Ithirahad]

Groov, it's not an optimization, it just will look less weird if the altitude for the planet atmosphere rendering was calculated relative to the dodecahedron surface rather than the (spherical) proximity to the planetary center. As it stands, the closer you get to the edge of a planet segment the thinner the atmosphere appears.