All aboard the HypePlane for the rings video/kickstarter!

[INovaeKeith]

I forget if you told us or not; how old are you? For fun, I guess 29.

You’re correct, I’m 29.

Oh man, there’s a discussion that you can’t even have until you’ve defined “red star”! Since most stars that we’d call “red” in astronomy have surface temperatures somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2000K - 3500K, they actually give off light that’s similar in colour to a “soft” or “warm” light bulb. On the low end, the light actually resembles that coming from a sodium street lamp.

Actually 2000k - 3500k is quite orange, particularly when it’s a high intensity primary light source.

[hrobertson]

Please go for realistic colours!
Without colourful backdrops like EVE’s, I imagine the star colour will be the primary visual differentiator between systems.

I can understand artists wanting their textures to look the same in all situations but realism is a massive USP of the engine.

[LucasFIN]

All the above ^

[INovaeGene]

I can understand artists wanting their textures to look the same in all situations but realism is a massive USP of the engine.

Well, we do not want them to look the same in all situations, PBL ensures they look correct in all situations, that’s fine by the art team. However, when every asset in a system is a solid red/orange color due to the red dwarf star, you don’t even need textures, just a solid red material on all the models, that was the gist of the “discussion”

but even that wouldn’t look the same as having a red lightbulb or something. It’s still full spectrum light, just with a heavier emphasis on the red end of the spectrum.

This was my understanding as well, and that was part of my argument. However, I’m just not enough of an expert on the matter. A “red” star does not equal a room with a red light bulb from what I have read, but I am not a student of astronomy.

[hrobertson]

Well, we do not want them to look the same in all situations, PBL ensures they look correct in all situations, that’s fine by the art team. However, when every asset in a system is a solid red/orange color due to the red dwarf star, you don’t even need textures, just a solid red material on all the models, that was the gist of the “discussion”

I figured as much but said ‘look the same’ for the sake of brevity.
Surely different materials will have different reflectivity so bits will be darker/lighter and matte/shiny, not just plain block colour?

[INovaeGene]

I figured as much but said ‘look the same’ for the sake of brevity.Surely different materials will have different reflectivity so bits will be darker/lighter and matte/shiny, not just plain block colour?

I’d have to setup a demo and take some screens, maybe I’ll do that at some point in the future when I have time and start up a thread on the issue. The more astrophysically inclined community members can weigh in. From what I remember, I was not happy with what I was seeing, but did not have any ammunition to argue whether or not it was correct.

[hrobertson]

Would it be possible for this to be something that could be configurable in the engine?
So one could specify limits for how dominant the star colour could be. At one end of the scale all stars emit white light, at the other end they emit realistic light.

[gutza1]

@INovaeKeith has posted on twitter that the test recording is complete. They are tweaking a couple of things, but we may see the rings video recorded very soon!

[drzerg]

brown dwarfs could be very different - WISE J0855-0714 is 7.3 LY away from us. it have 225-260 K temperature and water clouds.

[Bentware]

Our star is yellow, the light we see is wight.
On a side note, I’m told out of the atmosphere the moon is brown.

[Kichae]

Our star is yellow, the light we see is wight.[/quote]

Our star is white. We see the light from it as white because it is white. The sun gives off full spectrum light centred on (and peaking in) the colour green, so it’s either white (because it’s energy distribution is symmetric around the centre of the visible spectrum) or it’s green (because it has a peak in the green part of the spectrum).

People only think it’s yellow because people generally only look at the sun at sunrise or sunset, when atmospheric scattering removes a large percentage of the green-to-violet part of the spectrum.

[quote]On a side note, I’m told out of the atmosphere the moon is brown

The moon is grey. Moon rocks range in colour between that of of weathered concrete to weathered asphalt.

[Runiat]

Our star is (…) green.

Huh. Now I know what I’ll say if ever asked to take a lie-detector test.

[INovaeKeith]

Bentware said:Our star is yellow, the light we see is wight.

Our star is white. We see the light from it as white because it is white.

At ~5500k it’s actually slightly yellow however after being attenuated by our atmosphere it gets shifted towards blue and its color temperature is ~6500k, which is basically white, by the time it hits the surface of the planet.

[Runiat]

At ~5500k it’s actually slightly yellow however after being attenuated by our atmosphere it gets shifted towards blue and its color temperature is ~6500k, which is basically white, by the time it hits the surface of the planet.

You do realise you’re discussing the properties of a star with Kichae?

[Japa]

This prompted me to do some tests.

Here’s a planet with earth-like atmosphere and water, but no plants.

Here is the same planet in the light of a red dwarf star:

And finally a blue dwarf:

I think this variation adds more to the game than it takes away.

[ThornEel]

Clouds!!
(I like clouds.)

Uh, what’s a blue dwarf? I’ve found some hypothetical class of stars that is what a red dwarf becomes at the end of its life, but the Universe is still far too young to have those. (Unless Infinity takes place near the end of the Age of Stars, but I doubt it, otherwise there wouldn’t be any yellow and white stars left.)
Or is it a name for the smallest blue stars, those right after Sirius-like white stars but before monsters like Sigma Orionis?

[Kichae]

A “dwarf” star is just what astronomers call a main sequence star. So, a blue dwarf star is a main sequence stars of spectral class O or B. There are also blue giant stars, which occur in stars more massive than the Sun after they reach their red giant phase (there are also orange and yellow giants, for those stars that aren’t quite massive enough to reach blue hot in this phase).

What you’re thinking of are black dwarfs. Black dwarfs are what remain after a white dwarf cools off. Red dwarfs are thought to become white dwarfs, just like the sun will, at the end of their lives.

[Japa]

Yeah, that was just a regular O-class star, just so we have both ends of the spectrum.

There are supposedly stars that are colder than red dwarfs, which would be more red than the orange shown in the picture, but those are arguably not even stars, per se.

[lolsparta4]

Wow, I’ve only been gone for a few weeks and all this stuff

[drzerg]

our universe is too young for blue dwarfs to exists.