Better planet/moon visibility at distance after initial load

[Proply]

Initially I find planets/moons relatively easy to find, they are bright sprites that appear to move relative to the the background stars when travelling at many times c. The problem I have is that once you get close enough and the object is loaded it often disappears due to the loaded object being small and dark. Even worse, once objects are loaded it seems that if you fly far away the initial bright sprite does not return. This makes it near impossible to find the other four moons from a five moon system, for example, as they remain incredibly small and dark indefinitely as long as you stay in-system. This isn't realistic, as due to their proximity they should be some of the brightest objects in the sky. My suggestion would be to have the brightness of objects turned right up upon loading until they are fairly close so they remain easily visible once the initial sprite disappears, and to have that bright sprite effect return when you get far enough away so that you can reacquire objects easily. Object loading could could benefit from happening bit earlier also, I often see a small bright sprite turn into a much larger planet as I close in which is quite immersion breaking.

 

[Eidenm]

Yes it needs tweaking. Sometimes it works really well like on earth-like worlds where the transition from dot to planet can be seamless and quite impressive. That seems rare though and usually the transition is a bit iffy and sometimes as you found quite jarring. For the darker planets and ones where you face the dark side the dot needs to be darker and transition smoother (load the planet and fade out the dot sooner).

I've also found like you that the dot brightness can become dimmer for no apparent reason, usually when you travel around the system to other parts and get further away from it. It can get very hard to spot when this happens.