Friday Facts #411 - All about asteroids

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-411

[Akontio]

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!

[Terrahertz]

Nice work, as always

So are there only 3 Types of Asteroids in general? Makes mentioning them in Factoriopedia for each Planet quite redundant. As you presumably always need all of them.

But I guess this is a little suprise for later.

[Ghoulish]

Great read! It's always interesting to see how much work goes in to doing something.

[mward]

It seems that the axis of rotation for every single asteroid is aligned vertically (straight into the screen). I wonder what process in space causes this to happen?

[Daniel1]

This is the most disappointing FFF by far. There were some where maybe we didn't agree but most people overall like the updates, me too. However whoever made the decision to spend time on making asteroids look better really made a bad decision. Personally I'd rather have white squares for asteroids and the game released one hour earlier than this. .. ..... At least give us the option to turn off the space dust. PLEASE.

Keep up the great work.

[djarb]

The asteroids and dust clouds look great! But having the stars moving in the background is not even close to realism, unless the space platform is flipping end over end. It's kind of distracting once you notice it.

[EvanT]

It seems that the axis of rotation for every single asteroid is aligned vertically (straight into the screen). I wonder what process in space causes this to happen?

Actually that is quite common. the rotational axis of celestial bodies within a solar system get quite similar over the eons.

[Grob]

I know it helps giving the impression of movement, but having "stars" moving in the background is very un-realistic...

[SnowZyDe]

Modders will make their asteroids in the form of broken ships and satellites it will be more interesting

[Grob]

It seems that the axis of rotation for every single asteroid is aligned vertically (straight into the screen). I wonder what process in space causes this to happen?

Actually that is quite common. the rotational axis of celestial bodies within a solar system get quite similar over the eons.

This is untrue.
What is quite similar is the axis of rotation of the body around the star. But the axis of rotation (and rotation speed) of any body around its center of gravity is usually very different.
Example on the planets of our solar system : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhJrpzsKEXo

[mmmPI]

Waow ! The images helps a lot on this one to attach a meaning to the different words Very interesting read ! keeping the video serie as a bonus for later !

It took me the time to understand the last sentence, to also notice that on the last video the shooting stars disappear when the speed is slow and re-appear when speed is fast, it's not only the trail length changing. It felt to me at this point there was so many things going on to create the illusion that some of them started to no longer be noticeable on their own, like a realistic blend. Though, since it took long, i started to wonder if there could be another step where some asteroids are given a pseudo randomized rotation speed to add even more of those things that create the illusion. Re-reading the explanations to try and see where it would be added made me doubt i understood what is the red overlay in the video before the last one. Maybe it will be better after seeing the videos.

In depth explanations are the best to read again

[BrainlessTeddy]

The final image looks really cool and probably even better ingame. And I loved reading the in depth explanation of every step you took.

There's one thing I'd really love, to put more perspective on the vastness. Make the stars presumably in the background slower. And furthest of them like not moving at all. Maybe the occasional distant nebula hahaah. But even without the nebula. [Edit:] That would make the space feel so much more vast between the planets your traveling. And the contrast would be pretty carzy to look at. The smoke and asteroids making you feel you move extremly fast but the stars and maybe nebula making you feel like you haven't moved. [/Edit]

The cherry on top would be to put sprites of the planets or the sun every now and then in the background and have the distant stars and nebulas fade when you move "over" a planet or the sun. But thats just wet dreaming.

[Upserter]

As always I appreciate the effort that has gone into this, but I have to say the end result looks a little... busy?

Also, has it been explained how movement between planets will work, as in how much time will the platform be moving for?

[Brathahn]

space.jpg (44.92 KiB) Viewed 7429 times

[Soheil]

where are the big asteroids you showed us in the previous FFF?

[Ddiwair]

Love this week's FFF! My thoughts are...

1. Can you make the sprites get bigger and smaller to mimic 3-D motion (the direction of motion of the asteroids currently is such that they all move in the same 2-D plane which doesn't look quite right)? I.e. would making the asteroid sprites get bigger/smaller make it look like they were moving towards/away from the screen?
2. The smaller asteroids should spin faster (and larger ones spin slower) so as to give a impression of rotational inertia.
3. Similarly, smaller asteroids should move (translationally) faster (and larger ones less so) to give an impression of (translational/linear) inertia.
4. The axes of rotation should *mostly* point in the same direction, not randomly half and half. i.e. *mostly* rotating clockwise (or anti-clockwise).
   It's hard (and not necessary) to explain why this is, but just think about how all the planets in the Solar System rotate the same way EXCEPT venus.
5. Lastly, in my subjective opinion the metallic asteroids should be smaller, the carbon ones larger and the oxide asteroids medium sized to convey varying densities and give yet other visual indicator as to which type of asteroid is which. A massive lump of metal being the same size as a massive lump of carbon doesn't seem quite right. Think about the relative abundance of elements.

[adam_bise]

The rotating asteroids do look good, but they are still only rotating on a 2D plane. I guess they are way less complicated than 3D models. But I wonder if mimicing 3D rotations in 2D sprites is possible with some clever texture wrapping trickery? How would you figure the outline without a 3D model? Hmm.. not sure you could do that. Wait.. Factorio engine is not even capable of 3D models is it?

EDIT: Apparently, there might be a way using fourier transforms.

[MeduSalem]

The asteroids look really nice with good amount of depth, highlights & shadowing. ^^


That said for the foreground I feel like there is a bit too much going on. The dust clouds are fine.
But speck trails are something that personally feels a bit turbulent to me because of the trail blur. Blur effects always make me feel like that. So I would turn it off if there was an option for that.

There's one thing I'd really love, to put more perspective on the vastness. Make the stars presumably in the background slower.

Agreed.

The background should probably move way, way, way slower. If not even almost completely static. Because stars are light years away so unless you travel extremely fast, it would not feel like background stars move at all. They are almost like a fixed point of reference through shear distance.

Further away asteroids in the asteroid field would move at the speed shown in the clips, but not the stars.

It seems that the axis of rotation for every single asteroid is aligned vertically (straight into the screen). I wonder what process in space causes this to happen?

Limitation of it being a 2d sprite & game. They can't rotate in all 3 axis because it would require a 3d object. And faking it in another way would probably be costly and annoying to implement. ^^

So planar rotation of all objects is how physics work in Factorio. xD

[Ext3h]

The metal asteroids don't look right...

It looks like you used the specular lighting for di-electric materials (input color * absorbtion factor = output color) instead of the correct formula for metallic (input * material color = output color). For metallic , both diffuse and specular use the material color. For non-metal, specular doesn't use the material color.

The metal patches should give bright flashes in the color of the corresponding metal whenever the specular highlights hit, unlike the organic and ice where the highlight is always white-ish.