Graphics and bitmaps - how is this one done ?

[Frank Kestens]

I've been breaking my head on the very realistic looking pictures and animations which are in the free trial simulator here :
http://universesandbox.com/
Especially in one of the files one can see Earth rotating from space without flickering , and even the dark and light sides go smooth into each other . It's also possible to hoover over the poles and look from every direction without loss of realism over even the slightest flicker .
I know the program is writen in Visualbasic and I was wondering PowerBasic can also do such marvelous animations .
Anybody has any idea how this might have been done ?

Reason I ask this is that I've writen a gravity simulator myself ( in PowerBasic) wich also displays rendering of planet surfaces. But contrary to the example above the surfaces are still now static by lack of know how.

[Patrice Terrier]

OpenGL

See either GDImage planet 3D demo.

or the BassBox plugin "Day one", that is maping moving clouds hover the earth proto planet, while HE is working hard to make it the gem of the solar system.

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[Chris Boss]

I checked the web site and the application is a dot.net app (requires dot.net 2.0) and also DirectX.

DirectX is likely doing all the hard stuff.

To produce simular quality would require either working with DirectX or OpenGL.

PowerBasic does not support either directly in its command set, but you can access them via the Windows API's for either one.

DirectX is a bit more of a pain, since you have to deal with COM, but there are great deal of helpful info on Jose Roca's online programming forums here : http://www.jose.it-berater.org/smfforum/index.php

OpenGL is a better option , IMO, since it is accessed via DLL's which is better suited for working with PB. Jose forums has into on it as well.

If you want something "out of the can" so to speak (already built for you as a component) I doubt you could do much better than Patrice Terrier's GDImage (see: http://www.zapsolution.com/DW/US/gdimage.html ) . Its a little "pricy", but well worth it if you are serious about quality animation.

The time it would take to learn DirectX or OpenGL, GDImage may be worth the investment just in the time savings.

It should be noted that compared to a dot.net (ie. VB dot.net) app, a Powerbasic/GDImage application would be "lean and mean" (small in size, fast in execution speed).

[Frank Kestens]

Graphic Animations

Thank you Patrice and Chris for the quick guide into this marvels .
Will take some time in order to pick up the right way to deal with it ...
BTW : I've downloaded the free trial demo of Patrice wich is actually what I'm looking for !
But a small inconvenience is that the animations show up with flickering bars . Maybe I don't have the right graphic card ? or haven't the right settings ?

[Patrice Terrier]

3D is very dependent on the graphic card quality.

It is very important to check for OpenGL 2.0+ compatibility.

Usualy on VISTA and W7 there is no rpoblem, because the graphic cards are using the latest technology. However you must also check for the settings.

I am currenty using a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT with 512 Mo of dedicated video ram.

GDImage and the BassBox plugins are using the same 3D API, however GDImage is also able to mix 2D and 3D graphics altogether as you can see this in the "Geek corner" there:
http://www.zapsolution.com/DW/US/gcorner.html
you can try "Jumper" and the "AeroGL" demo, see also "The cube", "Image3D" and "Custom".
And if you use VISTA; then try "Crystal", it is 3D simulation that doesn't use OpenGL nor DirectX.

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[Patrice Terrier]

Forget to say, that you can download the latest "BassBox" version there:
http://www.zapsolution.com/DW/US/bassbox.html