Active Skybox

MrVibrating

MrVibrating
Flying across Mulachi to Clark Terminal - a journey in excess of 20 minutes, at a max speed of >1,000 C (>6,000 LS), i was struck by the inactivity of the sky around me...

I know a lot of work has gone into the adaptive skybox drawing already - DB's obviously quite proud of it, in his interviews - however, once rendered, upon entering a system, it remains static - just a dead bitmap.

Hit similar speeds in SpaceEngine or Noctis and the starfield comes alive with depth-dependent parallax scrolling... the stars separate out and move independently, fanning outwards and around you, like in so many sci-fi film sequences.

Doubtless it's a big ask, nonetheless if we're gonna be hitting these kinds of speeds it's a conspicuously-absent effect. It'd also make such >20 min journeys that bit more interesting, if not thrilling..

Also it'd heighten the impression of galactic seemlessness, countering the 'rooms in space' feeling.

IIRC this should really become increasingly noticeable around 100 C and above..
 

Janichsan

J
You are aware that the distances you travel within a system is just a fly speck compared to the interstellar distances? The parallax you would have from travelling from one side of a stellar system to the other is so minute, you would never be able to perceive it without precise measurements.
 

SquidgyB

SquidgyB
Also to consider - have you ever tried mapping out a large system "manually" with just a basic discovery scanner?

You *rely* on the fact that distant stars have no parallax and that local planets and stars move over the starfield (although very subtly in some cases).

I believe that this is physically correct, if not very "filmy".
 

norcus

N
When you move 0.22ly (Proxima Centauri) you would think that nearby stars (5-10ly away) would shift a little against the skybox. Maybe they do? Not sure if the skybox really is fixed for each system.
 

MrVibrating

MrVibrating
- to both replies above - like i say i was struck by the difference of how the sky reacts in SpaceEngine, when at similar speeds. Mulachi - a binary - is the biggest system i've yet traversed, and at upwards of 1,000 C you'd really expect to see some motion in at least some of the closer neighboring stars - especially when a near one is directly adjacent to a far one.

A 'feature drift' like this only arises because ED is a victim of it's own success, to some extent... i'd imagine that as DB originally envisioned it, with in-system jumps instead of supercruise, this wouldn't have been an issue. Nevertheless, now that we HAVE these high speeds, the disparity is there.

For scale, rememeber that Voyager 1 is only 17 LS away, out at the heliopause. We're talking 6,000 LS to cross Malachi, though.. so "one side of a stellar system to the other" is a very subjective measure... for a small system, crossed in minutes at maybe 200 C, you might get away with it. But on a 20 minute trip at over 1,000 C... like i say, it's conspicuously absent.
 

MrVibrating

MrVibrating
norcus said:
When you move 0.22ly (Proxima Centauri) you would think that nearby stars (5-10ly away) would shift a little against the skybox. Maybe they do? Not sure if the skybox really is fixed for each system.
Click to expand...

Exactly - i'm not suggesting great sprawling streaks across the sky, but on a long SC your eyes are drawn to the only scenery there is to look at - the forward view -and you'd expect to see conjunctions and even lensing effects between stars appearing adjacent but actually separated by large depths.
 

Janichsan

J
norcus said:
When you move 0.22ly (Proxima Centauri) you would think that nearby stars (5-10ly away) would shift a little against the skybox.
Click to expand...
They would move by about 0.3–2 arc seconds. That would be noticeable – if you look very, very closely.
 
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MrVibrating

MrVibrating
My mistake - 17 light hours away.. (thanks for the corrections).

And yep, just tried 1,000 C in Space Engine and not much happens... even looking really really closely. Background motion isn't noticeable till you hit lightyears / sec... soo, forget i ever mentioned it, i guess.
 

zzzornbringer

zzzornbringer
MrVibrating said:
My mistake - 17 light hours away.. (thanks for the corrections).

And yep, just tried 1,000 C in Space Engine and not much happens... even looking really really closely. Background motion isn't noticeable till you hit lightyears / sec... soo, forget i ever mentioned it, i guess.
Click to expand...

i think it's also a technical issue that you see only the planets of the current system you're in actually move when at appropriate speeds. but they actually do but only for the system you are in. anything outside your current system is static.

actually, i didn't even know this until i discovered my first star manually. it was just a red dot and i never thought i reach it but after a few seconds with like 100c, the star started to move and became bigger very slowly. eventually my ship decelerated and i stopped in front of the star. this was my first exploration and it blew my mind that the planets and stars within a system are all actually physically there.
 
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Ixnatifual

Ixnatifual
The skybox is dynamic, but is only redrawn when you hyperspace. So if you hyperspace from a system to another, the skybox will change to correctly reflect its appearance based on the new system. But if you spend hours (days?) flying to the system in supercruise, the skybox will still look as if you were in the previous system.
 
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MrVibrating

MrVibrating
Don't think you even CAN fly between systems without hyperspacing, which is kind of the same point i was making..


The way Space Engine does it is SO much cooler! I'd really hoped E4 would do things the same way, or at least provide a convincing illusion of doing so.
 

Ixnatifual

Ixnatifual
Agreed. You can technically reach the point where the distant star would be if you supercruise to it for long enough, but the system won't actually load. I hope they will do it at some point.
 

StayFrosty

StayFrosty
Aside from the skybox, the game could still actually render the nearest stars, thus providing a slight movement. But that still would be a little addition for a quite specific case where the problem isn't so much the lack of movement, but how boring and long it is to supercruise.

Supercruising speeds are the real problem to fix.
 
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