Tag: graphics

Libvips is a good image processor

Libvips' resource usage and speed are unmatched, especially compared to ImageMagick.

2 minute read

Today I discovered libvips, a command line utility and library to manipulate and process images, and I am impressed. I’ve been using ImageMagick and its fork, GraphicsMagick, for as long as I have had to process images from the CLI, and they work well for moderately-sized images. But lately, I have been preparing virtual texture datasets for Gaia Sky and the sizes of my images have increased exponentially. Right now I’m processing 64K and 128K images on the regular (that is 131072x65536 pixels), and ImageMagick just can’t do it reliably.

Sparse Virtual Textures

A technical description of my implementation of Sparse Virtual Textures in Gaia Sky

20 minute read

Real time rendering of the Earth in Gaia Sky with surface, cloud and height virtual textures.

Real time rendering of the Earth in Gaia Sky with surface, cloud and height virtual textures.

Implementing proper virtual texture support in Gaia Sky has been on my to-do list for many years. And for many years I have feared that very item, as the virtual texture mechanism is notoriously complex and hard to implement. However, once working, they are very cool and bring a lot of value to software like Gaia Sky. In this post, I describe and discuss my implementation of virtual textures in Gaia Sky in detail, and provide a thorough examination of some of its most interesting points.

Procedural generation of planetary surfaces

Generating realistic planet surfaces and moons

12 minute read

I have recently implemented a procedural generation system for planetary surfaces into Gaia Sky. In this post, I ponder about different methods and techniques for procedurally generating planets that look just right and explain the process behind it in somewhat detail. This is a rather technical post, so be warned. As a teaser, the following image shows a planet generated using the processes described in this article.

Left: a wide view of a procedurally generated planet. Right: the same planet viewed from the surface.

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