Quote: "You can also use Billboards with planet textures for asteroids / planets in the distance, just like you would trees around you on a terrain. The closer you are to the billboard, you would fade the object of the planet, or asteroid into view FROM BEHIND the billboard. The closer you get to the billboard you would move the object through the billboard and once you get to that midway point, you would delete the billboard and you would have the physical planetary object in its place that you can interact with. "
I agree adding 3D backdrop object is great and really improves visuals. Especially when you can see perspective changes. When you move across the level they provide depth to the background.
Quote: "The illusion is what your after, and centering the sphere around the camera is how you keep the stars at a distance. Then you can make other spheres / objects that can have planetary / rock-like textures. Moons and stars and other rocks like-asteroids can be actual objects. Use the FOV as well as other commands to create the illusions to fake the vastness of space. You can generate textures that have some color to it to make cloud-like nebulae. See, the nebula can be set at extreme distances at specific spots randomly. As you move your camera around you can simulate the clouds moving around. Same with the other planetary objects. The further away an object is, the smaller it gets.. eventually it will go behind your sphere. When this happens.. unload the object by deleting it. This keeps your memory foot print down."
I'd agree with this only if this was either a space game or some sort of infinite scrolling terrain style game. If the game world is just some elaborate fixed area or arena then it's probably best to use a cube mapping shader. It will ensure that the sky sphere never appears to get closer. With this you can set it up to cover the entire playable area, in a fixed position. You can even set it to span a very far distance out from the playable area.
Distance Clipping is a problem. If you move the sky sphere with the camera then anything too far away, falling outside of the moving sphere, is going to pop out of view. If you use a fixed position for the sky sphere then if the far side from the player is too far away the camera might not render that far if you used
Set Camera Range. Generally you can plan your scale and distances to avoid this.
The bottom line is, with all this billboard and backdrop populating, it's a good idea to be moving around as little as possible, and the code complexity will be less.
Quote: "Is there anyway to bypass this collision so the character doesnt collide with it? Due to this he just won't move at all while inside the sphere. Or is there another way of doing this sky sphere without collision."
You should be using Sparky's Collision plugin. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble, and it'll do this for you. There's only 2 or 3 commands that you'll need if you are doing simple collision checks.
