Will we eventually get gas-giant atmospheric flight?

Agrar Therenus

Agrar Therenus
As in in just the upper layers of the atmosphere. One can imagine some rather impressive visuals with just an endless cloud deck going down as far as the eye can see.

Might it also herald the return of Jupiter-like refuelling? Even Neptune's atmosphere is mostly hydrogen.


What are the chances of volcanism on the initial rocky worlds? I would very much like to land on Io and observe the immense activity; or maybe take a trip to Enceladus' tiger stripes and watch the geysers. I expect I'm dreaming though, unfortunately I think it's rather more probable all the initial planets will be geologically lifeless.
 

Switchback

S
Braben talked about scooping from gas giants during initial development, procedural clouds etc and there was some concept art I believe. I would hazard a guess that gas giants will be next on the list then rocky with atmospheres being very last due to the complexity of creating repeatable but differing city scapes.

As for geologically active, I think it's already been mentioned.
 
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-zalamander-

Z
Switchback said:
Braben talked about scooping from gas giants during initial development, procedural clouds etc and there was some concept art I believe. I would hazard a guess that gas giants will be next on the list then rocky with atmospheres being very last due to the complexity of creating repeatable but differing city scapes.
Click to expand...

David mentioned it here with video preview of the cloud generation technology (about 04:30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBvpd3_Vqk
 
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dannysquid

dannysquid
Switchback said:
Braben talked about scooping from gas giants during initial development, procedural clouds etc and there was some concept art I believe. I would hazard a guess that gas giants will be next on the list then rocky with atmospheres being very last due to the complexity of creating repeatable but differing city scapes.

As for geologically active, I think it's already been mentioned.
Click to expand...

It depends on whether "rocky worlds" includes ice planets, metallic worlds etc...

I think gas giants will be pretty tricky. I know there's been a video of procedural clouds, but it didn't look good enough to me -- like flying through a fuzzy minecraft level! Clouds are hard to do. Particularly if you can see them from space and then want to seamlessly go up close and through them.
 

Agrar Therenus

Agrar Therenus
dannysquid said:
It depends on whether "rocky worlds" includes ice planets, metallic worlds etc...

I think gas giants will be pretty tricky. I know there's been a video of procedural clouds, but it didn't look good enough to me -- like flying through a fuzzy minecraft level! Clouds are hard to do. Particularly if you can see them from space and then want to seamlessly go up close and through them.
Click to expand...

Obviously, it would work in very much the way rings work-- until you actually arrive in the 'system', a far more simple rendering is utilised. It'll be as 'seamless' as the very clear stages of ring rendering models as you approach. I'm not sure what the distance is from rings until the full render kicks in, is it something like 100km?
 
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