Spin fast enough (colliding with things at stupid velocity helps) and shut the engine down. This is actually motion blur from rotation.
I found motion blur is well-done so far : discreet enough so it is only noticed on still frames.
Warp out, reach 299 999 km/s, shut the engine down.
Going at light speed for a couple of hours, I got so far the sun became pretty much invisible - at only a billion km, that’s surprising. Then again, an Earth-like planet at only 30 million km, it has to be a pretty dim star.
Note that the star at the left of the craft didn’t move at all in one billion km. (For the principle, I did aim the craft at a star anyway) Better maths-minded people may be able to calculate the minimal distance it has to be through parallax, but this is INS : it’s probably at a realistic number of light years away.
Also note that someone used an infinitely distant directional light source
Hmm. 1 solar flux ~ 1 solar luminosity / (1 au)2
30 million km = 0.2 au.
So, that means the star is only 4% the luminosity of the sun.
1 billion km = 20/3 au
The star should look (4/100)/(400/9) = 9/10000 = .0009 times as bright as seen from the planets. That’s the same brightness as the Sun seen from 25 billion km (167 au, or over 4 times more distant than Pluto).
So, it probably shouldn’t be completely invisible, but it also shouldn’t be particularly distinct compares to the background stars, either.
That’s going to depend on the resolution of your output. For argument’s sake, let’s assume it’s 1080p, with a field of view of 90 degrees. That means each pixel would represent 90/1920 degrees. That’s small enough to use the small angle approximation. At a baseline of 1 billion km, for a star to move less than 90/1920 degrees, it would have to be at least:
1 billion/x = 90/1920
x = 1920 billion/90 = 21.3 billion km away. That’s within the Kuiper belt. Much, much less than the 9.4 trillion km that make up a lightyear.
This confirms that we should have the necessary resolution to measure parallax though right? I’m going to fly out at light speed or warp or whatever as far as I can next weekend and see if I can find any. How far would one have to fly in order for it to move a pixel?
Edit: On second that scratch that. The only way to know that is the distance to star…which is the whole point /o\
Word of warning: the pixel may not move since I don’t think the skybox is updated based on player position. We know that it can be regenerated but it doesn’t sound like that is something the engine does automatically: instead that is a parameter for the given instance, so to speak.
(Yes, it is 1080p)
I thought it would be close, but not that close.
So if we need about 20 days at max speed to maybe see parallax from the closest stars, if the skybox is regenerated, well.
So this star should be a pretty low-end red dwarf, then.
…
After a quick glance around the contents of the Battlescape folder, I couldn’t find which light (if any) was the Sunlight for tests, alas.
It’s a dwarf star, yes, but it’s more middling than low-end. Based off of mass-luminosity curves, this star should have a mass approximately 45% that of the Sun. That makes it something like a K9 (cool orange dwarf) or M0 (high red dwarf) star, with a surface temperature somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3600 K or 3700 K (this means the star should give off a colour of light similar to “white white” fluorescent lightbulbs).
I’m pretty sure all stars are so bright, they would appear white to the human eye. So, don’t forget to add red, blue, and yellow stars to your enemies list
