Accurate size of deep space objects if they were brighter

[Shishakli]

Saw this image on Reddit and got me thinking about how these structures would appear in ED. Considering this is how large they appear from Earth... imagine how immense they would be a few star systems over?

I'm now wondering if showing real life structures in our galaxy being accurately represented in ED is just wishful thinking now? IMO trying to do so would be immensely ambitious!

Spoiler

Sure surprised the hell out of me!

 

[Memnoch]

I look at the sky a lot and I have never seen those. I think I might need glasses!

 

[popuptoaster]

Wont make much difference where you are in our galaxy as far as how big other galaxies appear, the distance between them is massive compared to the size of the galaxy.

It's like looking at the moon from London and then going up to Edinburgh and having another look, it'll still appear the same size because the distance you have travelled is negligible compared to how far away it is.

 

[insanephoton]

I look at the sky a lot and I have never seen those. I think I might need glasses!

Most of them I haven't seen, but the light pollution where I live is pretty bad, but even I've seen number 1 (though the craters have never looked quite that dark)

 

[Shishakli]

Wont make much difference where you are in our galaxy as far as how big other galaxies appear, the distance between them is massive compared to the size of the galaxy.

LOL of course I was thinking more about the nebulae

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Saw this image on Reddit and got me thinking about how these structures would appear in ED. Considering this is how large they appear from Earth... imagine how immense they would be a few star systems over?

Sure surprised the hell out of me!

They're large, but not bright because they're so diffuse. The pictures you see around are taken from long integration times with huge telescopes staring right at them. That's why I get annoyed by space games that seem to think space is a colourful bonanza of brightly lit objects, rather than black, which it is. Get a bit closer and you might see something, but I'd rather Frontier kept it black with some texture for interest.

B (professional astronomer in previous existence - it's been a while so I shall bow to any more recent experience )

 

[drew]

They're large, but not bright because they're so diffuse. The pictures you see around are taken from long integration times with huge telescopes staring right at them. That's why I get annoyed by space games that seem to think space is a colourful bonanza of brightly lit objects, rather than black, which it is. Get a bit closer and you might see something, but I'd rather Frontier kept it black with some texture for interest.

B (professional astronomer in previous existence - it's been a while so I shall bow to any more recent experience )

I'll put on an Astronomer hat and beg to differ if I may.

The Orion nebula is diffuse, but at 1400 light years it's still mag 4, visible with the naked eye.

If you're in deep space at 0.5 light years away with no other significant light sources, the Orion Nebula would be a dramatic backdrop. Inverse square law.

Compare and contrast with the Tarantula nebula, which if you put it where the Orion nebula is, it would cast shadows on a dark night.

On the flip side, if you're in a system near a planet or sun, you'd likely see nothing at all.

It's all about the exposure levels.

Same reason as you can't see stars when you're standing on the daylight side of the moon, or looking out of the ISS at a bright illuminated earth. Your eyes simply can't handle the difference.

In the current alpha for instance, the 'red nebulosity' is nonsense, because there's a bright star in the vicinity.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Astronomy fight Okay, I'll accept your argument and raise you survivability. If you're going to be trundling between planets you won't be doing it in the Tarantula nebula, because of it's young age and the extreme nature of the stars within it. Likewise a lot of the interesting things we see in the sky (like the orion nebula, a star forming region) are interesting because they're so young and energetic, and not somewhere humans would be travelling. And I haven't tried, but I'd imagine if you got close enough to the Tarantula nebula for it to light up the sky like day, it would be sufficiently bright that it would wash out any interesting details, human vision being what it is.

Slightly different argument, I agree, but it does explain why you won't be seeing those kinds of sights through your cockpit window. Whether you'd make it back from a trip (and 1400 light years is a long way) depends on how Frontier handles hyperspace fuel capacity and travel time. Not going to stop me from trying, though!

B

I'll put on an Astronomer hat and beg to differ if I may.

The Orion nebula is diffuse, but at 1400 light years it's still mag 4, visible with the naked eye.

If you're in deep space at 0.5 light years away with no other significant light sources, the Orion Nebula would be a dramatic backdrop. Inverse square law.

Compare and contrast with the Tarantula nebula, which if you put it where the Orion nebula is, it would cast shadows on a dark night.

On the flip side, if you're in a system near a planet or sun, you'd likely see nothing at all.

It's all about the exposure levels.

Same reason as you can't see stars when you're standing on the daylight side of the moon, or looking out of the ISS at a bright illuminated earth. Your eyes simply can't handle the difference.

In the current alpha for instance, the 'red nebulosity' is nonsense, because there's a bright star in the vicinity.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[drew]

Astronomy fight Okay, I'll accept your argument and raise you survivability. If you're going to be trundling between planets you won't be doing it in the Tarantula nebula, because of it's young age and the extreme nature of the stars within it. Likewise a lot of the interesting things we see in the sky (like the orion nebula, a star forming region) are interesting because they're so young and energetic, and not somewhere humans would be travelling. And I haven't tried, but I'd imagine if you got close enough to the Tarantula nebula for it to light up the sky like day, it would be sufficiently bright that it would wash out any interesting details, human vision being what it is.

Slightly different argument, I agree, but it does explain why you won't be seeing those kinds of sights through your cockpit window. Whether you'd make it back from a trip (and 1400 light years is a long way) depends on how Frontier handles hyperspace fuel capacity and travel time. Not going to stop me from trying, though!

B

Nobody really knows what it would look like of course, and as for reasons to go there, other than the sight seeing there wouldn't be much point other than for scientific research into star formation. A nebula is mostly hydrogen, and there's much easier ways to get hold of that.

I'll be trying to have a look too though, so perhaps we'll meet up out there? (I might swing past the Pleiades first)

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Dejay]

It's all about the exposure levels.

I love the idea, anybody knows if ED will have HDR rendering? Then your cockpit view could change from one second to another when you turn away from a planet and into the night sky.

It would also be cool to have different vision modes and see other spectra, or maybe even magnetic fields / gravity wells as volumetrically rendered with a 3D line integration convolution. (Can be pretty when animated)

 

[Yaffle]

I think there's a whole thread on it, but if Drew went via hyperdrive to (say) Electra he would get there 600 years into the future from the observer's position. That hurts my brain. 600LY isn't much in a star's lifetime, but the tarantula nebula is 160,000 LY off, so may be very different when he arrives. That hurts my brain even more.

Moreover, it's reminded me that while watching OneVIGOUR last night I spotted an NPC called Electra, and I was trying to remember where the name came from. Seeing Drew reference the Pleiades reminded me.

Thanks Drew!

 

[drew]

I love the idea, anybody knows if ED will have HDR rendering? Then your cockpit view could change from one second to another when you turn away from a planet and into the night sky.

It would also be cool to have different vision modes and see other spectra, or maybe even magnetic fields / gravity wells as volumetrically rendered with a 3D line integration convolution. (Can be pretty when animated)

No evidence of it yet, but SpaceEngine does have an option for 'realistic exposure' already, so it's not implausible. It would be very good for 'realism', but it might offend a lot of peoples' sense of aesthetics. The problem being that folks generally expect to see stars in the background behind bright illuminated objects (stars, planets, even ships) because it's standard sci-fi film fare, which in reality they wouldn't be able to due to their eyes adjusting to the brightness of the object in the foreground. Stars are very faint indeed.

Thanks Drew!

My pleasure.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Shishakli]

No evidence of it yet, but SpaceEngine does have an option for 'realistic exposure' already, so it's not implausible. It would be very good for 'realism', but it might offend a lot of peoples' sense of aesthetics. The problem being that folks generally expect to see stars in the background behind bright illuminated objects (stars, planets, even ships) because it's standard sci-fi film fare, which in reality they wouldn't be able to due to their eyes adjusting to the brightness of the object in the foreground. Stars are very faint indeed.

Could we not put down that aesthetically pleasing view to "magic future cockpit glass" that alters the light exposure for the benefit of the pilot? Even to the point of giving us this kind of view when flying near a sun? (while changing exposures when facing away from a sun so that we're seeing a sea of stars and nebulae)

Spoiler

 

[Dejay]

Could we not put down that aesthetically pleasing view to "magic future cockpit glass" that alters the light exposure for the benefit of the pilot? Even to the point of giving us this kind of view when flying near a sun? (while changing exposures when facing away from a sun so that we're seeing a sea of stars and nebulae)

Spoiler

I'm all for cheating

 

[drew]

Could we not put down that aesthetically pleasing view to "magic future cockpit glass" that alters the light exposure for the benefit of the pilot? Even to the point of giving us this kind of view when flying near a sun? (while changing exposures when facing away from a sun so that we're seeing a sea of stars and nebulae)

Spoiler

You can put anything down to 'magic future cockpit glass"

The trouble is making it all consistent (which you can't really do, so you have to pick and choose). For example, in the Alpha, your cockpit glass can get complete blown away. What do you do then, suddenly introduce real exposure? Probably too much like hard work for the devs. It's a style choice at the end of the day.

It's the same as the old anti-gravity discussion. We want rotating space stations, so we decide there is no anti-gravity, but that means no inertial dampeners either, so we can't accelerate or turn 'very' rapidly or we'd kill the pilot...

David B has also (in the recent Edge article) indicated that anti-gravity isn't there for reasons of power consumption, which kind of makes sense until you release the utterly ludicrous amount of power it would take to fling a ship across light years of space. If you've been able to harness that, anti-gravity should be a breeze by comparison... etc etc etc...

It doesn't really make sense at all, it comes down to it being a game and making it fun. Realism can suck, and that's before I even mention the 'N' word.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Dejay]

The trouble is making it all consistent (which you can't really do, so you have to pick and choose).

It would look pretty cool going from looking at a daylight planet to looking at the stars and turning from black to a densely filled sky. It doesn't really have to be that consistent. Look at this timelapse video of IIS cameras above the nightside of earth.
It's actually part of the aesthetic of "hard science fiction". It's more varied. And it hasn't been done before. It's a "fresh" look for a space game.

Going to full glare or total darkness when cockpit glass blows away would be cool too.

The only thing that needs to be normalized is other ships. And you'd need float textures for some parts like color of planets and skybox.

Realism can suck, and that's before I even mention the 'N' word.

Ni?

 

[Cosmo Bozo]

I look at the sky a lot and I have never seen those. I think I might need glasses!

I'm pretty sure I saw the moon once....

 

[Shishakli]

The trouble is making it all consistent (which you can't really do, so you have to pick and choose). For example, in the Alpha, your cockpit glass can get complete blown away. What do you do then, suddenly introduce real exposure? Probably too much like hard work for the devs. It's a style choice at the end of the day.

You've thrown a lot of arguments at me there

There's be honest, I don't need it to be realistic, I just want the modern version of frontier's "wow" factor.

If we can just expect to see some nebula like colours in the sky and planets with rings and brightly coloured stars, that's going to look great with today's technology, but on the other hand isn't much more than what we saw with frontier.

If we can see and visit real space structures in game and they're as visually stunning as we've come to expect them, that'll be taking elite to the next level like frontier did.

If we can add another layer (I honestly don't see this happening but don't see any harm in imagining it) and have your view adjust exposure depending on what you're looking at so as to be able to boast "realistic representation of light levels", even more wow.

Would it work? Anything can be made to work with enough effort. Is it worth it? Not up to me to decide. Would it be cool? IMO, Hells yes!

 

[Memnoch]

I'm pretty sure I saw the moon once....

LOL Okay, apart from that one. +1 if I could!

 

[ToadMan]

From an aesthetic perspective this issue of nebulae has been a personal bugbear of mine since Freelancer and possibly before.

It seems like every Space Sim/setting takes place inside a disco. X is one of the biggest offenders for this and it killed my interest in playing the game (coupled with the tiny sector sizes). Even I-War was afflicted with it.

The great thing about the Elite series was the feeling they engendered of being somewhere remote. Space was dark (-ish), and it felt like you were alone, and a long way from safety sometimes. That really heightened the feeling of exploration, risk and reward.

Setting everything inside a yellow/green/blue whatever bowl as modern games do just seem to turn space into a playing field rather than an oppressive, cold and desolate environment.

From a technical perspective, humanity as it is has spent all of its existence in a place where space is largely black pinpointed with stars (at least as far as the naked eye is concerned). Outside of the glare of city lights, what we see from Earth is quite beautiful already - there seems to be no need to mess with nature and introduce artificially large and bright nebulae.

As has been mentioned to get as near to nebulae as some games portray would be very dangerous for humans - the ships would need to be very carefully constructed to survive. The level of protection required doesn't thematically fit with the average Cobra trader running between safe systems....

So I would vote for minimal nebuale effect in game - possibly limiting them to exotic parts of the game universe.

Toad.