atgc-part-jet-engine: create a 3D model for the engine

[jbilcke]

the jet engine should have a simple, polygonal (but hollow) cone-like shape. this can be achieved using an extruder.

Optional:

add trails, whose length and color would be correlated with the power

there are two kind of trails: the immediate flame trail, and the long vapour trail which can last over kms

actually implementing realistically looking trails is quite complicated, because we would need particles, shaders (for the halo and the "hot blur" effect), and a way to make it follow the emitter object, also fade particles after some time (or maybe they would have their own physics, eg. be dismissed by a fake/random wind)

Also, it looks like there is some kind of cool "pulse" (EDIT: seems there is a word for it: shock diamonds ) effect on some real-life engines:

nevertheless, the action is set on a virtual exotic planet, where physics and colors might be different, and also we want to keep our vector/tron-like look, so we have plenty of room there to tweak and simplify the appearance of the trail for performance and aesthetics reasons. For instance we could use a simple sprite for the jet trail, that would never deform or leave particle behind.

[jbilcke]

maybe we can convert something like this to video textures for the sprite? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeGidtk6t2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DacGl9drefg

[jbilcke]

maybe could be a starting point:

http://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_particles_shapes

[jbilcke]

heat haze distortion effect: new article: https://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17593 old article: https://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15285 simpler: https://github.com/LaurentGomila/SFML/wiki/Source:-HeatHazeShader