Why does half of the galactic disc look brown?
- Thread starter Chaparral
- Start date
For the same reason that you can stare out your "canopy" at the star you're scooping fuel from, and you can see clearly on the night side of a planet: it's useful and it looks cool.
With the skybox, they enhance it quite a bit over what you'd actually see with the naked eye. Everything is brightened up enough to look like it's in color (most deep sky objects are faint enough that you can't see them in color - they aren't bright enough to trigger the color-sensitive cones in your eyes, so you only see with your black-and-white-sensitive rods), and the contrast is enhanced to bring out the fine details in the galactic structure.
Go camping somewhere away from artificial lights at a high altitude (so you're above a lot of the water vapor and turbulent air) and look up at the night sky. Let your eyes get used to the darkness, and you'll see the faint band of swirling light that's the edge-on view of our galaxy. That's pretty close to what you'd see from your canopy in the absence of visual enhancements.
With the skybox, they enhance it quite a bit over what you'd actually see with the naked eye. Everything is brightened up enough to look like it's in color (most deep sky objects are faint enough that you can't see them in color - they aren't bright enough to trigger the color-sensitive cones in your eyes, so you only see with your black-and-white-sensitive rods), and the contrast is enhanced to bring out the fine details in the galactic structure.
Go camping somewhere away from artificial lights at a high altitude (so you're above a lot of the water vapor and turbulent air) and look up at the night sky. Let your eyes get used to the darkness, and you'll see the faint band of swirling light that's the edge-on view of our galaxy. That's pretty close to what you'd see from your canopy in the absence of visual enhancements.
Actually, there are differences in dust distribution, but the issue you are dealing with is likely caused by your distance above or below the galactic 0 plane.
Go higher up-plane and it gets brighter and less brown. Presumably down-plane as well, but I've only been up-plane so far. What you're seeing are the dust lanes of the galaxy obscuring part of disc. It can get quite bright and distracting once you get out of the Bubble and head up or down.
Awesome responses - thank you all. However - when I examine these outstanding images, i don't see the "sidedness" i see in the skybox. In the images above dustbanding appears across the core of the disc. Is that because our relative position in the galactic arm is more or less in the center and not off the central disc?
In the process of traversing the bubble in the y axis does the location of the brown band in the skybox change?
I actually would not expect to see near the color enhancement we see in game. When I've looked through large (ish) optical telescope (0.5m) in our local mountains, the starfield presents to my eyes as a blue/grey white. I don't see the browns and tans.
In the process of traversing the bubble in the y axis does the location of the brown band in the skybox change?
I actually would not expect to see near the color enhancement we see in game. When I've looked through large (ish) optical telescope (0.5m) in our local mountains, the starfield presents to my eyes as a blue/grey white. I don't see the browns and tans.
Yep, that's exactly right on both fronts. You see the "sidedness" in game when you're away from the galactic plane, while the sun is pretty close to it. You're correct about the color enhancement, too. It just adds a nice graphical touch to the game. I always imagine that our canopies aren't just some transparent material, but that they process the image we see.
When you traverse the Y axis, you do see the position of the brown band change. It's subtle, because the band of navigable stars isn't terribly thick at the bubble. If you go to the core it's much more dramatic, both because of how bright the core is and because you can get a few thousand light years away from the galactic plane.
When you traverse the Y axis, you do see the position of the brown band change. It's subtle, because the band of navigable stars isn't terribly thick at the bubble. If you go to the core it's much more dramatic, both because of how bright the core is and because you can get a few thousand light years away from the galactic plane.
From high above, far below or way out on the edge of the galactic plane, you can see significant color variations from side to side. I had assumed these were due to the variation in distances, density between the arms and galactic dust.
Didn't I read somewhere that F D had to insert significantly more "dust" to stop the galaxy being too bright?
Yeah, I remember that being in a fairly long article about the game, relatively soon after the launch. Can't seem to find it now though. But DB remarked that they were surprised that they had to add more dust than how much was thought to be (at the time) in the galaxy, to actually make the simulation look like the real thing.
I would highly recommend heading away from the galactic plane near the core if you haven't done it before. There are some great views to be had! Here's an ELW I found.
The views also vary according to your position, I have for example travelled to the top stars above the bubble (I made a thread for that) and it looked something like this:
Compare that to the views above the core, it is really diferent.
Compare that to the views above the core, it is really diferent.
That's pretty cool. How far from the plane can you get in the vicinity of the bubble?
This was the thread were I discussed just that.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/367756-Records-above-and-below-the-bubble
According to Allitnil, the record according to my proposed parameters was HIP 62425 at 2029 LY. I have gotten to 1988 Ly above in HIP 62570.
Wow that's further than I thought it would have been. The bulge at the core isn't that much thicker really, in terms of reachable systems anyway.
Yeah, it is impressive, I hope jump ranges improve some more so that the Owl Nebula becomes accesible.
How far is that from currently-reachable systems?
IDK, I did try to go once but got stuck when I was 500 ly from it if I remember well. There some in between systems but they are very far from each other.
That will need a bit of a buff! But who knows, maybe one day.
The restoration of double neutron boosting wouldn't hurt either - feel free to give my engineering suggestion some support:https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ron-supercharging-via-FSD-experimental-effect #shamelessplug
The restoration of double neutron boosting wouldn't hurt either - feel free to give my engineering suggestion some support:https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ron-supercharging-via-FSD-experimental-effect #shamelessplug