In the vein of this thread, I have decided to start an unofficial hype thread. Hype yourself up for the rings video/ post hype vechicle-related image macros, or have a war between the HypeTrain and HypePlane!
This was originally called “We’re in the home stretch - a test recording of the rings video has begun!”, but I have converted that thread into a hype vehicle thread. Remember, a hype vehicle is a vehicle powered by pure Hype(Derailing this thread is treason. Treason is punishable by flagging)!
There are stars, they are quite faint and you can’t see them due to the eye exposure being high from the bright objects in the foreground - just like in real life. For the record we have actual screen shots with stars as the 2nd image in the carousel on the landing page of this website ;). Also which atmosphere bugs are you referring to? As far as I can tell there aren’t any atmosphere bugs in those pictures.
I believe he meant that gap in the atmosphere below the ring. I would guess it’s the shadow of the ring? Although you can’t see the rest of the shadow.
You have no idea how much frustration you’re triggering right now. You realize that this is this is the #1 line of “evidence” from people who don’t believe the Moon landings happened, right?
I encourage you to find a photo of the daytime side of a planet taken from orbit that includes stars in the background.
This is entertainment @Kichae, there must be stars
Alright, on the blue planet picture it’s understandable, but what about the 2 Desert Planets pic? My gut is telling me that there should be some visible stars there?
See those bright, brown halves? Is it day time or night time on those? Are they over exposed? No? Then you won’t see any stars.
You have your choice of over-exposing the daytime side of the planets, or under-exposing the stars.
Here’s a picture of Neptune, taken from the night side by Voyager 2. This would have been a crescent view, except that it’s been over-exposed to the point that Neptune was just a bright, fuzzy, pure-white band of light. This is the kind of over-exposure that’s necessary to see a sky full of stars when there’s a bright, planetary body in view.
Neptune has approximately 3 times the albedo of the Moon, and it’s quite a lot larger, but it doesn’t look any larger in that picture (in other words, it’s angular diameter is about the same as the Moon in the night-sky) and at 30 AU Neptune receives… 900 times less light from the Sun than does our Moon.
Since I can see stars in the night-sky even when there’s a full Moon, I either have superpowers or the human eye can see more stars than a 37 year old light-weight camera.
Actually, the short answer is “it depends”. It depends on whether you’re looking at the bright object or not. In the case of looking at the Moon, if you’re actually looking at the Moon, you’ll be hard pressed to see anything but the brightest stars, and even those will usually show up in your periphery where your eyes are more sensitive to light. If, on the other hand, the Moon is just in your field of vision, but isn’t what you’re focused on looking at, you won’t have too much trouble seeing stars. The Moon, however, will look considerably brighter, because it’s being over-exposed on your retina (your iris will be more open, so that you can see the fainter stars which you’re concentrating on).
Cameras can do this too. We see this all the time when taking digital photography: Target the bright sky, and the foreground becomes dark and underexposed. Target shadowed regions, and you lose most of the detail in the sky.
For me, the answer to this question depends primarily on the art style.
In the 2010 tech demo, we saw the galaxy from inside a small, personal spaceship, controlled from a seat protected from the infinite void by a transparent canopy. If the fiction is that I am a human being sitting there looking out of a window on the universe beyond, I’d really rather expect to be able to see it as well as I can IRL - better, in fact, as I suspect a reliable alternative to glasses will be invented before FTL travel.
If the art-style has been modified to the more realistic “who the **** would put a window in a spaceship!??!?!?,” a more limited view would be more acceptable - admittedly, I again suspect that digital monitors will achieve higher aspect ratios than the human eye before FTL travel is invented, but it’ll be easier to suspend my disbelief on this point.
More important than either personal opinion or art styles, however, the real question is: can they make it happen in a reasonable timeframe. If achieving non-linear brightness requires rewriting DirectX from the ground up, I can do without.
I live in the suburbs, I’m hard pressed to see anything but the brightest stars regardless. I’d still be hard pressed to find any significant section of sky without any stars, though, which is why the completely black background just doesn’t seem realistic.
In games, unlike tools, perception is more important than realism.
Oh and I’m not entirely certain if “it depends” as far as Neptune is concerned. With 900 times less light from the Sun and ~3 times the albedo of the Moon a quick estimate is that Neptune would need an angular diameter of 8-9º to rival the apparent magnitude of the Moon, and even then the light from it would be spread out over a 300 times larger area of the retina. I mean it would certainly drown out some of the fainter stars, but bright stars and the atmosphere already do that.
Problem is … games mold perception. Making things because “my gut says it should be like that” only worsens the problem because this fiction is the only experience of space people get …
Most people think asteroid belts look like this for instance:
And that’s because media made them think that. Lets educate people.
But this isn’t realism vs fiction … this is camera vs eye. In the blog post about HDR Keith for instance said:
In practice the I-Novae Engine uses a default minimum aperture size of f/8.3 because our calculations more closely resemble a camera than an eye.
We had the exact same discussion in the past. I-Novae surely noticed it too and they know why they kept with the camera. A reason for that decission would be cool though @INovaeKeith , would be usefull to quote.
I don’t think that is the issue here @Lomsor, the debate is between showing the game through a camera or the eyes of the pilot. If you were there you would see stars, if a probe was there it would not.
