#Old rotating disk animation desk series#

The computation pass computes the geodesic (ray-tracing in a warped space-time) while also integrating the brightness and opacity of the accretion disk, and stores the result in two (low-res) textures: a deflection vector, and an integrated disk brightness/opacity.

SpaceEngine renders black holes in two passes: a low-resolution computation pass, and a full-resolution upscaling pass. Kerr black holes already use this technique, as was mentioned in a previous blog post. But things are even more complicated, since we also have to integrate light rays in a warped space-time! This is the only way to correctly render objects (like the accretion disk) near the event horizon.įortunately, the solution for the performance issue is trivial: simply render the volume at a lower resolution. This volume contains procedurally-generated and animated noise, which are used to create the shape of the hot plasma “clouds” rotating around the central black hole. Volumetric disks require more powerful hardware, since the shaders have to integrate the emission and opacity of multiple points of a volume along a ray. Previous versions of SpaceEngine (starting from 0.980) had flat, two-dimensional accretion disks: this was a “fast and cheap” solution, and worked even on lower-end PCs. Implementation and Quality/Performance Settings

Please note that everything you see below is still a work in progress – it is very close to what you will see on release, but the final version will likely have some additional tweaks. In this post we’re talking about volumetric accretion disks.

#Old rotating disk animation desk series#

Today’s blog post is the last in a series of posts describing the new features in our next major update, which we are calling “General Relativity”.