So this is interesting. Apparently there’s a few artifacts on Saturn’s rings. Instead of trying to explain i suggest you visit the whole post on reddit. Including the coments ofc:
I wonder if this will make it in-game 
Pretty cool
Artist’s impression:
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That looks quite awesome, I don’t really expect it to be in the game but it is undeniably cool.
I really hope it does make it into the engine at some point, though. It looks great.
Wow this is news. Very interesting thanks for sharing!
the thing about rings is, they aren’t made of big rocks. their mostly dust(rocks car sized and smaller) and gasses. they aren’t perfectly round either. the gravity from other planets and its moons change their shape.
btw, this is really cool, is sure hope it is in the game.
“Color is used to represent information about ring particle sizes based on the measured effects of the three radio signals. Shades of red indicate regions where there is a lack of particles less than 5 centimeters (about 2 inches) in diameter. Green and blue shades indicate regions where there are particles of sizes smaller than 5 centimeters (2 inches) and 1 centimeter (less than one third of an inch), respectively.”
In other words, red has stuff larger than 5 centimeters, green has stuff smaller than 5 centimeters and blue has stuff smaller than 1 centimeter.
Ring Particle Composition and Size
“The primary composition of the rings is water ice; it is quite pure and predominantly crystalline, to the sensitivity level of the measurements”
That paper has a bucketload of detailed technical information about the rings. Of particular interest is table 15.1, which spells out particle sizes per ring. The largest objects across the rings seem to have about a 5 meter radius. If I understood the bits I read correctly, figure 15.5 shows how the vast majority of particles are small. As you increase particle radius by 10^1, you decrease the particle population by 10^4. It seems that the great bulk of the mass of the rings is in small particles (as you increase particle radius by 10^1, you increase volume by 10^3).
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This would mean that rings aren’t made of big asteroids like it showed in the first concept video but actually are just a cloud of tiny particles, pebbles at most with only the inner portion of the ring having anything bigger than pebbles?
Maybe as the devs develop the clouds for planets they could use that same system to general proper rings with diffuse clouds or particles instead of a layer of solid building-sized asteroids.
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So this is why there was this “fog” in the recent video that wasn’t in the 2010 one.
That said, we are working with a sample of 1 element there. There are also the smaller rings around the other giants of the Sol system. And are there studies about what kinds of rings could exist around exoplanets?
We only have a couple of planets in our solar system with rings (and iirc an asteroid), very small sample size. We are aware of the composition of Saturn’s rings, but decided to do something a bit different for the moon with rings we showed in the demo.
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It was to show the tech rather than making it realistic, I get it.
But physics are the same everywhere so it’s safe to assume that rings look similar everywhere.
There are different stages to ring formation/dissipation. Also, it’s not safe to assume anything tbh with the scope of the universe, IMO anyways.
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Physics may be the same, but the environments are different. The region around an Earth-sized planet within which a ring can possibly form is really quite small, and close to the planet. Such a ring wouldn’t be stable over very long periods of time, particularly without shepherd moons. A (relatively) short lifespan is going to mean larger asteroids.
the main reason Saturns rings are mostly smaller particles is due to the extreme gravitational forces from the planet. their are several moons within its rings. as in JB47394 posting you can see large black area in the rings. the only reason its rings haven’t vanished totally is b/c they are being resupplied by its moons(as their being torn apart) @Frag physics are the same but not all planets are the same. earth has rings too. rings of trash that we put up their in the form of satellites that are no longer working.