100% Proof Planets have lost their colour. [UPDATED with official Dev reason and plan to improve]

[malenfant]

Please point me to the nearest human who knows how to create a galaxy. I want to shake their hand

Well, I've written realistic world and star generation programs that can potentially create a galaxy's worth of stars - I've even accounted for planetary migration to an extent. So hi . I do understand the processes behind planetary system creation and I'm writing as someone who's spent a hell of a lot of time analysing and figuring this stuff out already (see http://evildrganymede.net/wp/2014/02/01/gdw-2300ad-worldbuilding-system-part-2/ and http://evildrganymede.net/wp/2014/0...ad-worldbuilding-system-part-3-final-version/ for examples, albeit that's modifying an existing system).

 

[Minonian]

Please point me to the nearest human who knows how to create a galaxy. I want to shake their hand

Oh it's really simple! You just need to invent the laws of nature, throw in an astronomically huge amount of energy to the mix, and let mother nature alongside with time do the rest.

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Well, I've written realistic world and star generation programs that can potentially create a galaxy's worth of stars - I've even accounted for planetary migration to an extent. So hi . I do understand the processes behind planetary system creation and I'm writing as someone who's spent a hell of a lot of time analysing and figuring this stuff out already (see http://evildrganymede.net/wp/2014/02/01/gdw-2300ad-worldbuilding-system-part-2/ and http://evildrganymede.net/wp/2014/0...ad-worldbuilding-system-part-3-final-version/ for examples, albeit that's modifying an existing system).

I wonder... In theory is possible by based on our current knowledge about our galaxy reverse engineer a fractal seed which can create / show us the rest?

 

[ChrisT]

Go on Google, and type in "Solar System Moons", and see what you see. The majority of moons are either grey, or beige. Of course, there are some rather glorious exceptions. Searching for moons makes sense, as most Sol PLANETS are gas giants.

Its hard to say what the long term dev goals of Frontier are. I mean, forget about 2.4, whats planned beyond that. I guess as ever, there are different camps on players in Elite. Some want pew pew, some love to explore. I like a little of both. But I have to say, what I really enjoy is visiting virtual alien planets, and moons. The more realistic, the better. So Im all for more colour variety in planets/moons. But I guess we also have to accept, based on our system, that most rocky planets will just be grey, and pocked with craters.

Others, though, because of tidal forces, from a larger Planet, or really large moon (like earth) will have tectonics, and also maybe atmospheres. These seem to provide the most variety. Venus with its super yellow atmosphere, Titan, with its blue atmopshere, and what looks like water oceans. Io, with its yellow sulphur deposits. Every now and again, it would be really great to indeed find planets of this calibur of variety.

And I guess thats the crux. Having blue, green or purple plants, and some other colour craters is not going to cut it for me. Hopefully, Frontier are working on this. But just how many resources. Who knows. Maybe we just have to be patient on this, and look at the long game.

Personally, Id be more than happy to see less Headline features such as Multi-Crew, and more of a focus on raw asset generation, and planets types / surface features / assets. After all, Im sure we all really value the extra variety that has been added recently with station interiors (IMHO loooong overdue), and the mega-ships are another example of variety, that I really applaud. I'd LOVE to see more variety of the topology on planets.

For instance, I was checking out SC the other day, and they have a working deep cast mine system for planets, not sure if it was procedural, or hand crafted, but this kind of thing is exactly what we need. Would love to see mines like this on rocky planets, with large diggers, and a nice industrial looking star port, carrying ores out.

You know scenery, it really improves the feeling of ED being a living galaxy. But I guess its hard, as Headline features are possibly a little easier to market, and get more £££ in for development. Tricky....

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Please point me to the nearest human who knows how to create a galaxy. I want to shake their hand

Vladimir Romanyuk@SpaceEngine - http://en.spaceengine.org/

 

[frostypaw]

For instance, I was checking out SC the other day, and they have a working deep cast mine system for planets, not sure if it was procedural, or hand crafted, but this kind of thing is exactly what we need. Would love to see mines like this on rocky planets, with large diggers, and a nice industrial looking star port, carrying ores out.

They really don't. You can't even approach their singular planet or moons yet. They just fake a lot of videos

 

[cmdr_Sisko]

I agree, this has made exploring even more dull than it already was. What gives ?

 

[Alec Turner]

I agree, this has made exploring even more dull than it already was. What gives ?

This gives ...

My apologies for not responding sooner, this issue has been on my list to chase up for a while. The reason for the difference being observed on the rocky worlds is the change to the new material system - in theory this is more accurate as it uses the chemical properties to determine the colour (obviously I'm simplifying a bit here!), however the problem is that those colours were based on Earth standard colouration for those materials, and most of those are beige/brown rather than the colours you might observe in the myriad of other possible conditions. We're currently working on a more flexible material system, and this will necessitate a fresh balance pass on these. That's not going to be in 2.3 though.

Michael

FD go for "gameplay" for turreted combat and people complain. FD go for "realism" with planets and people complain. Go figure!

Only joking really - it does show that they ARE trying to please us but that it can be a hard task sometimes.

 

[TinyPwny]

What people fail to realize is that these exciting images you see of other planets are not really real colour images. CCDs used onboard space bound instruments typically are not the same as those used in commercial cameras. Instead they shoot in monochrome. It gives them more dynamic range. Using a filter wheel, images using calibrated filters are then taken with the same CCD. The colour images are then assembled using these images. The bright contrasts of colour, with the rather garrish cream and red image of pluto are not really a 'realistic' representation either. The near true colour image is.... beige...

Europa... is muddy white with beige/brown lines
Ganymede... beige and dark beige... some interesting patterns on the surface but still... beige largely
Callisto... beige with brighter speckles of light ejecta.

Sooooo not sure what your point was really? For a criticism of an attempt to be scientifically accurate, you appear not to understand the science at all.

Seems like the world has been playing too much world of warcraft, too obsessed with bright colours...been looking at too many instagram filters to realise that reality isn't as vibrantly in your face as all those pictures you like to look at.

Im all for some more variation, some bigger and busier surface features... but still... rocks are generally pretty beige last time i checked. Now we do need to consider the science that went wrong as the devs said, but still, if you want things to look bright and colourful... it is really the wrong game

Well, if we're going the fully realistic road, let's make the nebulae in E: D largely invisible to the naked eye too, right? Because the nebulae we've got in-game now are largely modeled after false colours / broad spectrum information as well. Also, let's remove every planet of which we haven't got proof it exists, because the current state is unrealistic. Etc.

 

[2plex]

Vladimir Romanyuk@SpaceEngine - http://en.spaceengine.org/

He updated his website to http://spaceengine.org/

 

[bmad]

He updated his website to http://spaceengine.org/

Never seen space engine before. Impressive indeed.

 

[frostypaw]

Well, if we're going the fully realistic road, let's make the nebulae in E: D largely invisible to the naked eye too, right? Because the nebulae we've got in-game now are largely modeled after false colours / broad spectrum information as well. Also, let's remove every planet of which we haven't got proof it exists, because the current state is unrealistic. Etc.

This so very much this - realism is great but the game isn't realistic already in a lot of ways. It's more a sort of realism+plus and in that context I think boosting the colour range a little is more than justified. The planets should be interesting, just as the nebulae shouldn't be almost entirely a barely visible dull red.

Now I don't want that to sound like an argument for NMS sky psychedlia just surfaces more like the photos of Pluto than the strictest truecolour renderings resulting in so much beige - rather a rainbow of not-quite-beige.

 

[Eros]

Re : Mengy
To be fair contrast is something that I completely agree with you on 100%, the level of contrast on the planets is somewhat lacking, and would increase the depth perception when approaching, and make the planet more interesting, even if it is just different contrasts of beige.

Absolutely on the numbers.

My comment about understanding the science was made to reflect how extreme some views and replies get on the forums, that and often the apparent application of popular sci-fi or public science in the belief that it is the real picture. Iv HATED that stupid red pink image of Pluto the moment i saw it, because if there is one thing we have known for a long time is that, those dwarf planets are not super reflective... it being presented as this gleaming cream coloured object with a bright red region just... ugh...


Re : TinyPwny

Technically yep, also 100% true, the nebulae would appear for the most part as washed out haze (white rather than coloured) aaaaaaand would fade out of view the closer you got I would be personally happy with that. LOL Many others wouldn't be, so for now we do some hand wave about how the canopy glass enhances everything.

A great feature that has been mocked up would be exactly that... that if your canopy was busted, looking towards a star would give you an insane amount of white glare... adding the colour loss at least to nebulae would be another neat thing to do also... that and the rich brown colour of the milkyway, which too wouldn't quite be as obvious as it is now.


BUT ultimately, we do have to strike a balance between realism and aesthetics... here as Mengy pointed out in his reply to me, is one side of the coin where pushing to more realism would give us a more aesthetically pleasing solution over what we have currently... THEN there is the other side of the coin from TinyPwny where going for realism would totally spoil the aesthetics.

Overall lots of great points

 

[dannysquid]

To do the atmospheric worlds they'll have to find techniques to create such a huge range of colouration and landscape types that the original rocky worlds are probably best revisited then. We don't want them endlessly noodling around with existing features when later features can feed into the old.

 

[Ra'Kaan]

What people fail to realize is that these exciting images you see of other planets are not really real colour images.
...

This guy gets it!

99.999999~% of all space images we see anywhere are composites.

 

[playfuldreamer]

Real-color images of the planets and moons in our own solar system have been shared multiple times in this thread. If I read one more post about how 'hurr durr the images of colorful planets are edited,' I'm going to airlock myself.

 

[Ziljan]

This so very much this - realism is great but the game isn't realistic already in a lot of ways. It's more a sort of realism+plus and in that context I think boosting the colour range a little is more than justified. The planets should be interesting, just as the nebulae shouldn't be almost entirely a barely visible dull red.

Now I don't want that to sound like an argument for NMS sky psychedlia just surfaces more like the photos of Pluto than the strictest truecolour renderings resulting in so much beige - rather a rainbow of not-quite-beige.

Just to reiterate, the realism debate was settled about 20 pages ago. Frontier acknowledged that their attempt to make it more realistic resulted accidentally in making it less realistic (ie beige). A fix for better realism with non-beige accurate colors is incoming.

Let's wait and see what we get. If it's Technicolor nonsense, we can sharpen our pitchforks again. I'm sure Frontier will do their best, and we'll be ready with more feedback for a future update

 

[ChrisT]

They really don't. You can't even approach their singular planet or moons yet. They just fake a lot of videos

Well, Im not vouching for if what they showed was "real", I mean, none of it is "real" until people can freely play it eh? I was more interested, in that they had realised that rocky moons and planets need "something" for us to look at, and they had widened their possibilities to open cast mines. I mean, its a pretty obvious one eh. Rocky moon, rich in ores?

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This guy gets it!

99.999999~% of all space images we see anywhere are composites.

All color images are composites. It just depends on where the compositing is done. Decent red green and blue sensors, producing separate RGB images, and the comped, are perfectly valid. Its kind of how our vision works, its how TV images are produced, its own olde fashioned colour film works. All colour images have to be composed from the primaries, either for light (RGB), or pigments(RYB).

 

[frostypaw]

Just to reiterate, the realism debate was settled about 20 pages ago. Frontier acknowledged that their attempt to make it more realistic resulted accidentally in making it less realistic (ie beige). A fix for better realism with non-beige accurate colors is incoming.

Let's wait and see what we get. If it's Technicolor nonsense, we can sharpen our pitchforks again. I'm sure Frontier will do their best, and we'll be ready with more feedback for a future update

Oh I know - I'm happily waiting, just responding to that guy's post and saying I hope they err on the side of colourful and interesting because it's frankly prettier and there's a precedent what with the nebulae and all.

 

[malenfant]

All color images are composites. It just depends on where the compositing is done. Decent red green and blue sensors, producing separate RGB images, and the comped, are perfectly valid. Its kind of how our vision works, its how TV images are produced, its own olde fashioned colour film works. All colour images have to be composed from the primaries, either for light (RGB), or pigments(RYB).

It's also worth pointing out that the spacecraft that take the pictures of the moons and planets that we have sometimes don't actually have red, green and blue filters in their cameras (because they're not the best combination for science). Voyager often just took pictures with the orange, blue and violet filters so colour composites made with those filters wouldn't be true colour (orange goes in the red channel, blue goes in the green channel, and violet goes in the blue channel). However, when doing science on them they are at least photometrically (and sometimes radiometrically) corrected.

Either way, the objects in our solar system are undoubtedly more colourful and varied than the objects in Elite Dangerous. I think it's the lack of variety in surface features that's really making everything look identical, not just the lack of variety in colour.

 

[Ziljan]

Oh I know - I'm happily waiting, just responding to that guy's post and saying I hope they err on the side of colourful and interesting because it's frankly prettier and there's a precedent what with the nebulae and all.

Yeah as an astrophysics degree holder I'm not in love with the overly bright nebulae that are still visible especially when there are dimmed foreground stars. But point taken, they are taking some license, but having planets that should appear grey to the human eye suddenly turn beige, green and purple seems like going beyond creative exaggeration and into the realm of NMS fantasy. Yes other planets with oddball exotic colors may exist, but we should assume that planets behave according to the laws of physics and chemistry and proceed to a color palette from there.

In short I think we're in total agreement