Is it possible to bring in TLE data for satellites? I’d like to visualize a satellite constellation as well as do screen grabs of what the satellites see both one the earth and in space. I’ve seen the QMax plugin, but didn’t like that it used a “marble” with an earth texture vs. a tile server. Is there a way to mix the two? Use QMax for the TLEs and satellite motion and Cesium for the earth, as well as have other objects fly in between the satellite and the earth and be able to see those, but not have the other objects in an orbit.
I’m not familiar with QMax, and a quick search didn’t turn up much. But I imagine you could use both plugins together, just so long as QMax gives you the ability to disable the things you don’t want it to render and you can get it and Cesium to agree on the coordinate system. You should be able to set the CesiumGeoreference to “True Origin” mode, at which point the Unreal coordinate system (as far as Cesium is concenred) will be Earth Centered, Earth Fixed (ECEF).
Do you know Celestrack ?
https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/
Yes. Finding TLEs isn’t a problem. Getting multiple into Cesium in Unreal is the issue I have.
Hi Kevin,
I got the name wrong…MaxQ. It seems fairly useful, but it also seems like it was developed by people that haven’t used unreal too much. A lot of their interactive abilities are for running in the developer mode and not in a game mode. Anyway, I didn’t know if Cesium for Unreal has tried to work with it to see if both could work together.
-Brian
Hie,
Have a look at the Python lib tle2czml :
https://pypi.org/project/tle2czml/
https://github.com/r3lek/tle2czml
Kind regards
I dont think there is support for CZML files in cesium for Unreal (at least there wasn’t back in March of this year) which is why I’m having to combine it with another plugin.
You are right, sorry.
Nothing to be sorry about. You were being helpful. I’m surprised that CAML isn’t part of the Cesium to Unreal app. You’d think it would be. I read about the MaxQ app, and it leans on the NASA Spice code and seems to provide a bridge to get TLEs and other orbital elements into UNREAL. I think I may have to use both and do cut scenes between. I’m not sure if running both in one game build will be possible.
Based on a really quick glance, MaxQ’s IAU_EARTH coordinate system should align nicely with Cesium for Unreal when the CesiumGeoreference is set to “True Origin”. But no, I haven’t tried it.