Jane Turner
Volunteer Moderator
It is - I went there in Jan 2015 and thought I earned a horizons visit
100% Proof Planets have lost their colour. [UPDATED with official Dev reason and plan to improve]
- Thread starter Obsidian Ant
- Start date
I was actually just complaining about this very issue.
Its more than just colour too.
For example, when you have the cratered moon, there is almost always a huge impact crater. In about the same place. Every time.
The game used to be more vibrant and interesting when you start exploring a system.
Now its "Oh another orange cratered moon with a big impact crater" or "Oh another ice world with either purple, blue or green around the edges of the "channels" or "Oh look another grey/brown smugged world".
2.2+ for me has been a graphical warm, wet fart.
Its more than just colour too.
For example, when you have the cratered moon, there is almost always a huge impact crater. In about the same place. Every time.
The game used to be more vibrant and interesting when you start exploring a system.
Now its "Oh another orange cratered moon with a big impact crater" or "Oh another ice world with either purple, blue or green around the edges of the "channels" or "Oh look another grey/brown smugged world".
2.2+ for me has been a graphical warm, wet fart.
The problem is that it's being implemented in a really horrible way. I think what might even be happening is that what's in the skybox (i.e. milky way and nebulae) are illuminating the dark areas on planets, but because the sky is also being artificially brightened when you enter the dark side or even just approach the terminator the additional brightness is being doubly amplified and just ends up being too much. It's not just "light amplification in the canopy", the light itself is being amplified to the point that sometimes it's completely impossible to find anything that is actually in black shadow (which is what pretty much everything should be on the dark side of an airless planet).
This was a planet I landed on a while back that was really bad. The sun is not up at all. Both the planetary surface and the moon in the background should be in total darkness but there was so much light from the milky way in the skybox (which shouldn't be anywhere near this bright) that it made this weirdly illuminated scene. It simply should not be like this at all.
I think they either have to fix this or at least give us a slider in the graphics settings to limit it. I shouldn't have to go to the edge of the galaxy or way above/below the galactic plane to find a place that's actually *dark*.
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Another thing on that skybox illumination - it doesn't cast any shadows, which makes things look even more crappy. The ship in the screenshot above doesn't have a shadow at all, neither does the ship or any of the rocks in the image below (they're solely illuminated by the milky way). If the sun's up though, there are shadows.
The lighting system is as far as I'm concerned the weakest element by far in the game. It's just awful.
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The lighting system is as far as I'm concerned the weakest element by far in the game. It's just awful.
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I wouldn’t say it’s awful, the “sun up” lighting isn’t too bad IMHO, but it is terribly inconsistent especially in what are supposed to be “dark” places, and I feel like that really needs to be addressed.
Can't say it really bothers me but I suppose there are some oddities re: lighting and shadows and stuff. For example, errr, what is the shadow on the rings in this image?
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Of course it's the skybox illuminating the dark side. That's exactly what dark-adapted light amplification is, and how it would work. Just like the blue sky reflecting off a calm lake looks blue. And of course this casts no shadow since this is AMBIENT light (ie, homogeneous non directional light), not light from a single source. Knowing physics is key to understanding this I suppose. It's intuitively obvious to me and I didn't think it needed explaining.
If you ever been to a dessert at night with no moon, it is the same exact thing. There are no shadows only starlight and sky glow from light bouncing around in the atmosphere from the dayside. Yet the ground isn't black by a long shot. It's reflecting the soft glow of the whole sky.
Notice that the sky doesn't cast shadows on a moonless night because the whole sky is illuminated. Light and dark areas depend on the reflectivity of the surface material. Now one thing the game gets very wrong is how dim the moons are on the night side. They should be extremely bright, dazzling even, and be the primary light source casting shadows almost as if they were a sun, but quite a bit dimmer.
Here is the same nighttime scene but with a moon in the sky:
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I don't agree. This "amplification" does neither amplify light in general or lighten up shadows. Instead it lightens up the dark side of the nearest planet (or moon) and nothing else. That's why it looks so fake.
I would be happy to have an automatic (possibly adjustable) light amplification equipment in the ship and in the SRV. It should also do some compression to increase dynamic range (e.g. darken stars). On extreme conditions it should have some visual noise b/c physics. As it is, I don't have it.
Under a landed ship the ship itself obscures more than 90% of the skybox. There should be a clear but soft shadow under the ship.
BTW, in the "night, no moon" picture above the rock does cast a small shadow. The shadow would be much more obvious if the rock was standing on small "landing gear".
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Um, no. That's not how it works at all. The darkside skybox lighting is not ambient light - it's light from sources in the sky. The milky way is the light source in the images I posted, the bright part of the milky way is in a particular direction, so there should be shadows cast by it (granted, they should be softer shadows because it's from a wide area rather than a point, but they're still shadows). Softness aside, it's no different to having the moon up. Heck, even Venus or starlight on a moonless night casts shadows (I've seen this myself).
"Ambient light" is technically light reflected from other sources. The fact that you can see under your desk or table for example and that it's not completely dark is "ambient lighting" because it's light from an external source reflected from the floor and walls and other surfaces. In CGI that can either be done by raytracing or as an approximation just by increasing the minimum light levels, and ED is doing the latter based on what's above the horizon in the skybox.
Also, the photos you linked to are long exposure shots and have probably been tinkered with on top of that (as most photos seem to be nowadays) so they're not exactly the best demonstration.
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These are the same thing. The light reflecting off the planet is the light from the sky box which is coming from a 180 degree solid angle of the sky. And then reflected back up from a 180 degree solid angle from the ground in all directions. Ambient light the sum of all photons coming from directions regardless the source (emission/reflection). Hence ambient = skybox + ground reflection.
The photos are long exposure times of stacked photos which are equivalent to real time photo-multipliers with oversaturation processing and buffers, such as those used as "night vision" eyepieces or CCD objectives.
The milky way surrounds us in a 360 deg arc. Though it may seem brighter in certain directions, those directions are spread across ~80% of the galactic plane. Hence a lack of shadows. Look closely at the moonless pic above. There are no shadows cast on the ground or within objects, save those of ambient occlusion.
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Now that the beige planets issue has been officially commented on by the devs would any of you mind supporting a response on this issue:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-I-ve-BEEN-BEGGING-you-Please-Respond/?page=1
Much obliged for those that can help encourage FD to make a comment there.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-I-ve-BEEN-BEGGING-you-Please-Respond/?page=1
Much obliged for those that can help encourage FD to make a comment there.
That's a really unique sight. Where did you find it?Can't say it really bothers me but I suppose there are some oddities re: lighting and shadows and stuff. For example, errr, what is the shadow on the rings in this image?
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No, they're not the same thing. What is being simulated in the game is light that isn't from the primary star - i.e. light from the milky way and nebulae. Those are still distinct light sources. It isn't coming from a 180 degree solid angle in the sky, it's coming from specific parts of that 180 degree solid angle. And the brightness varies accordingly - if only part of the milky way is up then the skybox lighting is dimmer and less brown, if the core of the milky way is up then it's much stronger (comparable to sunlight) and very strongly brown tinted. And it doesn't even do that correctly because I've seen this effect while looking into the darkside regions of a planet from altitude, while the sun is still several degrees above the local horizon. The only time I've found anything close to darkness was when the milky way was below the horizon on the dark side of a planet that was far above the galactic plane (so there wasn't much visible in the sky at all there).
Light reflecting from flat ground isn't going be illuminating anything, it's going to go straight back into the sky. Nearby mountains might be illuminated by ambient light reflecting from the ground, but that's only going to happen if the ground is lit and the mountain isn't (e.g. because the sun is low and that part of the mountain is in shadow, but there's illuminated ground around it). And since these are worlds without atmosphere there's no gas to diffuse or scatter or soften that light either.
In game terms, all they're doing is artificially raising the ambient (as in the CGI term) light levels and making it the colour of whatever is in the skybox - that just increases the darkness uniformly. It's nothing like what realistic low-light illumination would be like at all.
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There are a few graphics tweaks, mostly to shadows.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/332399-2-3-The-Commanders-Beta-Changelog
The whole sky is filled with stars. Not just the galactic core. So yes the light is coming from a 180 deg solid angle. In order to cast a shadow there would need to be a well defined source. The galaxy is referred to as an extended object. This is not a defined source like a light bulb, this is a nebulous encompassing object emitting anisotropic but still omnidirectional radiation.
Of course this could be MORE realistic. But the basic idea that the dark side could be illuminated by the existing sky and result in different color based on that sky with no discernable shadow being cast is basically correct.
The only exception here would be if you were on at Beagle Point and the only source of light was the galactic core. The alignment would have to be just right to cast shadows, but it's conceivable. This kind of calculation would probably fry existing video cards however.
Yes, but the light from the galactic core and disc far outweighs the light from other stars in the sky - at least according to the game. The core/disc is still a relatively localised light source, so it should be casting a shadow (albeit a soft one given it's an area). The core/disc isn't a point source of course, but it's still light coming from a specific direction that is outweighing the much dimmer light coming from the other stars in the sky.
Well there's no real "colour" there anyway. Sure, the core should be filled with more red giants than younger blue stars (dunno if the game simulates this though), but realistically the illumination shouldn't be be brown like it is in the game. And nebulae shouldn't be bright and visible when up close to them either.
The way that umbral/penumbral shadows work is that the wider the angle of the object the smaller the umbral area is.
Light from other ambient sources would fill in the gaps of any remaining umbral shadow.
As for the color of the planet on the night side it's entirely due to the color of the sky. In some places (above the galactic plane) it's white light and most other places is reddened because of the Interstellar medium reddening the light behind it.