Software question about orbiter game engine

[Beather]

Hello,

I'm a student studying game design, and while I played a lot of games in my life, Orbiter is unclear to me how it's engine renders the universe.

Could someone tell me more how it works?

The one thing that I especially wonder about, how are the planets rendered?
Are they all really really big DirectX spheres? Or custom coded in the engine? (if so, please give me more details)
What about the textures, is it one big texture UV all over a sphere? or
does it increase detail gradually depending on your position, like google earth?

Thank you for your time!
Nick

 

[Urwumpe]

For all about that question, I recommend you looking at the sources and documentation for the Orbiter Visualization Project. It is a part of the next version and separates the graphic front end from the physics simulation.

OGLA, an/the Open GL client for Orbiter, is pretty advanced and does a lot of nice stuff.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/orbitervis/index.php?title=Main_Page