Dyson Sphere, a star system substitute?

[Guest]

As all ST fans are aware, the Dyson Sphere is a large ball built around a suitable star, with habitable surfaces on the inside. Access to the inside requires flying a ship thru a doorway or portal.

In one episode of STTNG, the crew of Enterprise-D found such a sphere and find a long lost friend from TOS, Scottie.

I proposed in another thread that perhaps within the new ST Universe mod for VS, that a Dyson Sphere be implemented, replacing a typical star system.

Within this Dyson Sphere could be landing docks and stations, much like a planet or starbase, but with far more of them within the sphere itself. Maybe even have orbiting stations at various locations inside the sphere. Accessing the sphere would be via a port or doorway that opens with the same "request to dock" command, or simply have the doorway constantly open.

I am not sure how this ST Universe mod will reflect the timeline of the series and movies (up to the current "Nemisis"), but the sphere could be a combined effort of all ST Universe species, sort of like a joined effort similar to our own ISS efforts. (International Space Station)

I have begun to extract models and information from the game STTNG-A Final Unity, which also has a very large Dyson Sphere. This sphere was constructed by the ancient Chodak, and is sought by all species of the ST universe, including modern Chodak. This could be implemented as part of a mission to seek out the device and to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. (???)

Any thoughts?

[Guest]

19 views and no one has posted anything?

I guess no one is interested in Dyson Sphere's or including them into the new ST mod.

Thats ok, once this mod is published I intend to add them to my copy. I will post pics when available.

Peace and long life.

[dandandaman]

I don't think it's that no-one is interested....it would be quite cool I think it's just that there is probably not going to be a practical way to have a good one in VS anytime soon (as it would, probably, depend on a terrain engine).

Of course, if you can get a good one going I'm sure it would be most welcomed by the ST modders

Dan.a

[peteyg]

A Dyson sphere would be not too hard to make, and put in a system. The single biggest problem with it would be the fact that since it would be so big... assuming that the inside is made up of maybe 4096 squares (random estimate), and that it will be about 1 AU in radius, and that each square uses the same 1024x1024 texture... each pixel would be about the size of planet Earth.

The big trick will be the UV mapping. We just have to unwrap it into a BUNCH of squares, and then place all those squares on top of each other in the map. Then we make a tileable texture, and put it on. I guess worst case scenario, the pixels are absolutely enormous. But maybe we could make the detail level acceptable.

[pincushionman]

I say make the sphere, then make EACH "SQUARE" a separate subunit. The lowest LOD is a single quad (or 2, if we need both sides, but with our engine we may not).

Then we use our LOD-ability to our advantage by having building- and tower-kinda meshes pop in as you get close. These would be separate from the big quad, and would only become visible when you get real close. It should be fairly convincing, ESPECIALLY on the inside of the sphere.

Furthermore, you can tile the UVmap. Just make the quad fill the typical UV-square and then scale it up about 800x in UV space. Having a 1024 square repeat millions of times across a single facet should be just fine in this case.

Now, to save storage space, we take advantage of subunits. Each longitude sector can be exactly the same. Each latitude division must be a different subunit, because they have to change shape. So instead of storing a subunit for each sphere face, we only need to save subunits corresponding to a single strip of units that goes from pole to pole, and then repeat that strip of subunits around. Furthermore, we can say that the south hemisphere units are just the north units rotated 180 degrees, decreasing our storage reqs again by half. This has the advantage of letting us make incomplete Dyson spheres, or possibly letting us blow out sections of the sphere !

The building and tower meshes should also be their own subunits, so they can be common between the different latitude sectors; each latitude/longitude sector would be a big quad mesh with a unique distribution of a hell of a lot of little buildings and tower subunits that would only become visible when you get close. No one is gonna notice repitition around the sphere because it is gonna be so friggin' huge.

And the big quad can be LOD-ized too, to provide a mesh with a hole in it so you can get in. But most of the detail should come from the assortment of building meshes.

How does that sound to y'all? Yes, it's gonna take a lot of RAM.

[hellcatv]

cool

[SomeNick]

And if it gets too much of a trouble to do or implement, if no right way is foudn around it, we can still make a space background look like the interior of a dyson sphere. Of course this would have the problem we would actually never "reach" the other side of the sphere, cuz it is a background picture. But still can be a star system with its sun and many planets, stations, etc. We can simulate the opening of doors by making a big gray (metalli looking) sun in another system, and when the player gets there, can "jump" in to the dyson sphere, which is nothing but another star system, in VS terms.

[SomeNick]

And here I get my 50th post