Gaia Sky 3.6.3

By tsagrista on

📢 Gaia Sky 3.6.3 available now!

Features

  • Add on-demand loading of JSON datasets to particle groups, which enables having thousands of extrasolar systems to explore.
  • Add script to translate a NASA exoplanet archive VOTable to the Gaia Sky JSON format.
  • Replace CPU-based procedural generation with GPU-based implementation, which is orders of magnitude faster.
  • Improve layout of procedural generation window.
  • Improve cloud color and atmospheric fog density randomizers.
  • Use normal map when elevation type is ‘None’ in procedural generation.
  • Add initial amplitude to noise parametrization in procedural generation.
  • Surface generation presets (Earth-like, gas giant, rocky planet, etc.), and hide noise parameters in collapsible pane.
  • Add procedurally generated texture resolution to configuration and preferences window.
  • Add procedural generation button to camera info interface.
  • Move ‘save textures’ of procedural generation to a parallel thread.
  • Divide procedural generation in 4 consecutive frames. Add emission generation as an extra (optional) channel.
  • Add ‘systems’ component type, to contain all extrasolar planetary systems.
  • Automatic DPI scaling to support multi-DPI configurations.
  • Add new graphical presets (low, medium, high) to settings dialog. These presets are sets of settings that are applied all at once.
  • Change antialiasing settings from only type to type and quality in the configuration file.
  • Add tooltip with hotkeys to cinematic camera checkbox.
  • Improve camera velocity display units in camera info pane.
  • New splash image based on NASA exoplanets.
  • Enable multiple lights (and also point lights) for cloud shader. This is necessary for the NASA exoplanets.
  • Add ‘refreshRate’ to orbit objects to control how often they are updated (if needed), add button to camera info interface to refresh the orbit of the selected object.

Bug Fixes

  • Relativistic shaders define their own helper functions.
  • Broken anchor in readme file.
  • Error computing next focus and closest body positions.
  • Restore elevation-aware planet traversal.
  • Artifacts in atmosphere shader when SSR is active.
  • Adjust maximum reach of point lights.
  • Improve single star selection code, especially when close to stars.
  • Regression where orientation lock stopped working altogether.
  • Adjust frequency and lacunarity randomizers so that more strucutre is always present.
  • Crash during initialization when model is set to randomize.
  • Tooltip background width incorrectly computed.
  • Remove call to pack() in constructor.

Performance Improvements

  • Enable fast-math usage by default, and remove old, unused trigo scaffolding classes.
  • Improve performance of recursive grid shader, which was very slow due to the background fill (with interpolation), and the animation. Animation is now removed.

Build System

  • Upgrade bundled JRE to 21, minimum language version to 17.

You can get this release in our repository.

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