Interesting how differently people interpret "realism". This was really stark in the realm of games when resources were more limited - yet some games managed to be more immersive with blocky pixelated low-palette graphics than today's big-budget productions.
> the gas giant’s surface texture will be generated in realtime using a pixel
shader and a render-to-texture approach
It's fascinating to watch someone descend into a rabbithole, starting with an impractical, unbounded approach, finding ways to invite performance bottlenecks, and carrying on, and on and on, meandering towards... did OP eventually get this working?
I guess this is a difference between a project with real-life constraints, and a hobby. Let's use a pre-rendered, animated texture for the gas giant, and move on to the rest of the project - come back to cosplay Slartibartfast once everything is up and running.
I was thinking, maybe games were more immersive with lower fidelity because it left something for our imagination to do. And that made us more engaged.
> the gas giant’s surface texture will be generated in realtime using a pixel shader and a render-to-texture approach
It's fascinating to watch someone descend into a rabbithole, starting with an impractical, unbounded approach, finding ways to invite performance bottlenecks, and carrying on, and on and on, meandering towards... did OP eventually get this working?
I guess this is a difference between a project with real-life constraints, and a hobby. Let's use a pre-rendered, animated texture for the gas giant, and move on to the rest of the project - come back to cosplay Slartibartfast once everything is up and running.