I wonder about those appearing shadows too. They are in all the videos. It seems you can see real shadows just when you come close to the object.
Link please? Do you mean the fact that the detail level change of shadows is sometimes visible? Where some canyon walls are illuminated? I think thatâs just because shadows are very expensive to calculate. When the game is optimized, the situation might be better.
Also, relevant to the conversation: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic
Itâs like hearing Hellionâs lasers when in space 
but I totally agree with this kind of cheat, itâs necessary for a funny gaming experience on a space arean shooter.
For the link Iâm searchingâŚaaaand Iâm not findingâŚ
There are plenty of areas where itâs a lot brighter. Also in this video there are a lot of shadows which suggests the sun is pretty low in the sky, in other words it was taken near the day/night transition.
You also have to take into account that images canât be directly compared ( even IRL ones ) because of HDR, different camera exposures etcâŚ
Look at those IRL images of Mt. Everest for example:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Or that, from wikipedia, view from Everest, which pretty much perfectly matches what you can see in that video above:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050306.html
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I had no idea the sky was that black when viewing from the top of Everest. Nice to learn something new everyday.
When viewing the clouds from space as you approach the atmosphere, the image below does show those little cloud spiky bits, some like lumpy towers. I think its those little bits that also give you a sense of scale.
As I said it depends on the camera settings the image was taken from. If you increase exposure itâll appear more like normal daylight. So thereâs a wide range of pictures in google where the sky ranges from darker to brighter.
Do you know what it looks like with good eyes as the camera 
?
I might be misinterpreting what youâre saying but Iâm going to give it a go.
Cameras are actually terrible eyes. They struggle with exposure and focus levels where our eyes naturally do it for us. Since we have to manually decide on what settings to use with a camera, you could have many different looking pictures of the same place using different settings. Longer exposure youâre going to absorb more light so, on everest, you might see a more blue atmosphere simply because youâve given the ccd or cmos more time to absorb photons. Alternatively, if itâs a quick exposure youâre more likely to see what the human eye sees since the scattered light doesnât have time to saturate the pixels and make it look blue instead of the inky blank that it should be.
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I donât understand the end ; what should be blank ?.
I was wondering what parameters (exposure, focus level etc), and so what image (the brighter or the darker) is the closest of what I could see with my own eyes ?
Iâm no biologist so I canât really tell you. Iâm not even sure if we know those âvaluesâ. The human eye uses a ton of feedback loops so its amount of exposure and focus is constantly changing. It can react to changes across many orders of magnitude in intensity which is better than most(all?) cameras we have today as far as I know.
all.
@Skyentist you overestimate the cleverness of my asking
I wonder : if you and I climb the Mont Blanc, then will the sky look blue or black (saying that we both have good eyes with no problems on colorsâ nuances) ?
Also, the human eye is capable of adapting to local illumination values in addition to the global one, so it is better at not being blinded by bright parts of the image.
This is something the devs were experimenting about for a bit, IIRC, but it has never been done in game engines for a reasonâŚ
I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt
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and this makes you clever 
As far as I can tell, the sky is still blue at 10 km high.
If you´re in an airplane above the cllouds and look outside, it still looks blue.
yeah thank you thatâs my point too. Thatâs why I wonder if it is because of the star space position or/and because of no objects (like volumetric clouds) giving me the real scale, or because of an issue in the engine (but it is less probable).
Maybe itâs all about the position of the star and its properties. Is it a sun-like star with all its caracteristics ? what is the average distance between the moon and it ? Even if the brightness doesnât change quickly with the distance it may still be a reason ?
I think if you played the proto and kept speed relatively realistic to todayâs standards, transitioning from space to moon, you would absolutely get the sense of scale 20min in.
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Iâll answer to this in approximately 2 years (if not delayed :))
Could always try to get one of the pre-alpha or alpha testers to do a ânormal ground to space transitionâ video 
Iâm sure someone would like to do it.
It has to do with the density of the atmosphere at certain altitudes. The sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters blue wavelengths emitted by the Sun. If youâre high enough, there isnât enough atmosphere(IE, itâs not thick enough) to scatter any of the light, so you see whatâs really there - the inky black.