Dark side of planets

[Obsidian Ant]

This is something that Frontier are working on changing.

Currently the dark side of planets brighten up in an artificial manner when you approach the dark side. Partially this is for gameplay reasons, and partially it is to simulate ambient light. However the current method for this system is essentially a temporary measure and is far from ideal.

What is being worked on by Frontier, is a system that will actually calculate light based upon the local star field, and use the correct level of ambient light to illuminate the planetary surface. This means that some planets will have some pretty dark surfaces on the dark side. It also means that closer to the galactic core, then these dark sides of planets will be a lot brighter.

No idea when this new system will be introduced though. There is a quote somewhere, where one of the devs explains all of this - but at the moment I don't have it to hand.

 

[LJITimate]

As Ziggy pointed out, the darkness should be related to the planet's location in the galaxy and the related star desity.
And as Ziljan confirmed, this is already the case.

I do see the point, that the dark side could in fact be a little bit darker in "our" (the human bubble) region of space.

However, the usual expectation of pitch black nights on planet surfaces comes (obviously) from our own experiences here on earth. Nights here can indeed be pitch black - but only, if the night-sky is overcast and there is no moon and no stars visible at all. Clouds are an atmospheric effect, though and planets we can land on in ED don't have one.

A night with clear sky, on the other hand, can be really bright even here on earth, especially in regions with little pollution. I remember one holiday trip, where we camped in the middle of the Sinai desert (one of the best holidays in my life! ). The moon wasn't there, but the light of the stars alone made it very possible to see and orientate! A newspaper probably would have been not possible to read, but a child's book with nice big letters would. And this is on a planet where the atmosphere (clear, but still present) did still filter some of the light.
Now imagine an airless planet!

Yes, there should be complete darkness in ED.

But applying this demand to each and every planet's night side would not only harm our ability to play the game, but also wouldn't be physically correct!

having what the already have under an eclipse isn't pitch black but its really dark. I would be happy with that if we go for complete realism

 

[UnhappyDev]

Is it maybe just that the effect of our eyes adjusting needs to happen more slowly? And a bit less.

It's the stair-step way that the artificial brightness kicks in. Typically I find myself orbiting round the the (still) dark side of the planet and then suddenly.....mah imurshun man!

 

[LJITimate]

This is something that Frontier are working on changing.

Currently the dark side of planets brighten up in an artificial manner when you approach the dark side. Partially this is for gameplay reasons, and partially it is to simulate ambient light. However the current method for this system is essentially a temporary measure and is far from ideal.

What is being worked on by Frontier, is a system that will actually calculate light based upon the local star field, and use the correct level of ambient light to illuminate the planetary surface. This means that some planets will have some pretty dark surfaces on the dark side. It also means that closer to the galactic core, then these dark sides of planets will be a lot brighter.

No idea when this new system will be introduced though. There is a quote somewhere, where one of the devs explains all of this - but at the moment I don't have it to hand.

good to know they are working on it and in such depth as well, I expected it to just be one brightness level as it would be easier.

 

[verminstar]

The game "teases" which just makes the situation look even more unreal. One gets close and it looks dark...gets closer and its still dark happy days they fixed it. Then it just sorta "dawns" so suddenly, it looks even worse. Dont like this feature one little bit but I can understand if others do from a game point of view...the realism aspect doesnt wash because of that "teasing and insta dawn break" effect, so make it an option.

I remember when dark sides were truly dark...added several layers of much needed atmosphere to how the game felt. Now its just a shadow of its former self, metaphorically speaking ^

 

[babelfisch]

This is something that Frontier are working on changing.

Currently the dark side of planets brighten up in an artificial manner when you approach the dark side. Partially this is for gameplay reasons, and partially it is to simulate ambient light. However the current method for this system is essentially a temporary measure and is far from ideal.

What is being worked on by Frontier, is a system that will actually calculate light based upon the local star field, and use the correct level of ambient light to illuminate the planetary surface. This means that some planets will have some pretty dark surfaces on the dark side. It also means that closer to the galactic core, then these dark sides of planets will be a lot brighter.

No idea when this new system will be introduced though. There is a quote somewhere, where one of the devs explains all of this - but at the moment I don't have it to hand.

IIRC they already take the galaxy background lightning into account but it's calculated wrong at some point. You can see this in Ziljan's example above. This is what they want to fix. Could be wrong though...

 

[Hedyn Brand]

Give us stronger lights on our ships!

I was on a sabotage mission a few days ago (like I frequently am), located on the dark side of a planet. I couldn't see anything without lights, and I could barely see a walls right in front of me with them on. The base I was trying to get to was near the top of a spiky mountain with no landing spots outside its perimeters, and no terrain where it would be possible to drive or fly an SRV without it being destroyed in the process (I have four - I tried). I ended up landing IN the base and doing my splosion thing, then speeding out, as usual, like I was on fire. Because yet again I was.

Can't we at least get ship lights as strong as a typical light found on a construction site? This piddly pen light attached to our ships are a joke. It's probably somewhat related to ambient lighting in general.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

IIRC they already take the galaxy background lightning into account but it's calculated wrong at some point. You can see this in Ziljan's example above. This is what they want to fix. Could be wrong though...

I don't believe the lighting is directly calculated at the moment. There is a dev post explaining this, I will see if I can find it.

 

[JW667]

Well at times the lighting is really unrealistic.

Yesterday I visited Quent's Base in Sirius. While I'm on the planet's surface I am blinded by the lenseflare of the neutron star, however it's dark on the planet itself.

 

[Ashnak]

Give us stronger lights on our ships!
...
Can't we at least get ship lights as strong as a typical light found on a construction site? This piddly pen light attached to our ships are a joke. It's probably somewhat related to ambient lighting in general.

Not sure about this.

Get into a reasonable mining ship, go into a dark ring (in the planet's shadow), turn on your lights and then check at which distance the surface of an asteroid becomes visible.

Now try this with a construction site light (or a stadium floodlight).

The problem becomes even more obvious in the SRV, it's ye olde 1/r². If you want to have light in the distance, you'll go blind close up (if you're lucky)/set your own pants on fire (if you're not). What we should have is a floodlight drone . Something like a skimmer (or smaller), equipped with a powerful (small ship type, maybe Vulture) light that will follow your SRV and provide a floodlight wherever you go.

Heck, I can go out today and buy a drone that will follow me (or, easier, the remote control) around and take pictures of me without any human intervention, and judging from the various surface POIs, it should be no problem for an SRV to carry a pair of skimmers.

 

[Hedyn Brand]

The problem becomes even more obvious in the SRV, it's ye olde 1/r². If you want to have light in the distance, you'll go blind close up (if you're lucky)/set your own pants on fire (if you're not).

This planet was pitch black though. Unnaturally dark, like a cheap sci-fi set, at any distance from objects to light up. The terrain made it a hellish place to run sabotage in any lighting conditions though.

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Here's the previous response on this subject from Frontier:

Certainly! So I don't want to get into the design side of things that's not my area, however I will say traditionally we're against giving the players the option to experience the game in a very different way to other players, having an unofficial option to disable the backlight would I think alter the experience quite a bit!

However back to the original question...... The current system is not what we consider finished, it's a cludgy fix to the problem of pure black lighting on the dark side of a planet, which yes is correct but isn't fun from a gameplay POV, people can't really see what they're doing and ultimately avoid those areas. At some point we'd like to implement a better solution which is more complex but accurate...

To give you an idea of how we light things at the moment; in addition to the main star we use the background as a "lighting map", the background map is essentially the galactic plane (and the planet your on if your on one) To create the effect we have now we artificially boost that map when your on the dark side. However clearly in some cases (around the core or nebula) the background map can be boosted far too much giving you that nasty flat look, as well as the opposite where the galactic plane is non existent and there's nothing but almost pure black which leads to very little change. The correct approach is calculate the luminosity of the stars around you in simple quadrants and make sure the lighting map reflects this. Once that's done we'd decrease or remove the boost and planets would get the right lighting all over, planets in the core would be almost day lit all the time and for planets near the rim you'd see a marked difference between a night side that faced the core vs the night side which faced out of the galaxy.

Hopefully that makes sense?

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ace-Textures?p=4637099&viewfull=1#post4637099

We would like the dark sides to be playable without a radar mode essentially. We'd expect a greater degree of variation in that lighting though as I said planets facing out from the core would be almost black whilst planets further in would get more light. In the core there would almost be perma-day from the brightness of all of the stars constantly shining down upon you.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ace-Textures?p=4637099&viewfull=1#post4637099

 

[Ozram]

Someone posted this on Discord. The have it set on a toggle with a third party app. Why don't we have something like this as standard fare?
Here's how that looks without it:

 

[babelfisch]

Here's the previous response on this subject from Frontier:




https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ace-Textures?p=4637099&viewfull=1#post4637099



https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ace-Textures?p=4637099&viewfull=1#post4637099

Yes, this is the post I was talking about too. But I see how it doesn't say exactly what I understood when I first read it

 

[Obsidian Ant]

Give us stronger lights on our ships!

I was on a sabotage mission a few days ago (like I frequently am), located on the dark side of a planet. I couldn't see anything without lights, and I could barely see a walls right in front of me with them on. The base I was trying to get to was near the top of a spiky mountain with no landing spots outside its perimeters, and no terrain where it would be possible to drive or fly an SRV without it being destroyed in the process (I have four - I tried). I ended up landing IN the base and doing my splosion thing, then speeding out, as usual, like I was on fire. Because yet again I was.

Can't we at least get ship lights as strong as a typical light found on a construction site? This piddly pen light attached to our ships are a joke. It's probably somewhat related to ambient lighting in general.

Long post! Basically (as I'm typing in a screen) short answer is lighting is very expensive, it's one of the most expensive parts of modern rendering. Increasing the number of lights or the overlapping of multiple lights really hits the frame rate. One of the most expensive parts of the game is actually the station tube lights, they suck up a lot of time. Increasing the range of the ship lights would be really awesome but sadly prohibitively expensive. We certainly tried running them further out and in fact the distances did get pushed when we shipped season 2 but not to the level your thinking of.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ace-Textures?p=4638453&viewfull=1#post4638453



(Looks like we need Matt to post more on this forum, he has made some quality posts!)

 

[dognosh]

My Avatar is in protest of 2 unwanted "features".

 

[shadragon]

Yep, I don't like the artificial brightening either. Imagine the sunrises we would get if the dark side of planets really were dark.

IT IS NOT ARTIFICIAL, it's what happens when your eyes adjust to the environment.

Making a planets surface black when surrounded by 60 billion stars in the galactic core is artificial. Every Elite graphic setting on every platform has a gamma adjuster. Use it to make it as black as you like.

 

[dognosh]

IT IS NOT ARTIFICIAL, it's what happens when your eyes adjust to the environment.

Making a planets surface black when surrounded by 60 billion stars in the galactic core is artificial. Every Elite graphic setting on every platform has a gamma adjuster. Use it to make it as black as you like.

He can't, gamma slider darkens/brightens everything

 

[UnhappyDev]

IT IS NOT ARTIFICIAL,

So ambient light on the 'dark side' of planets is correctly calculated?

 

[Obsidian Ant]

IT IS NOT ARTIFICIAL, it's what happens when your eyes adjust to the environment.

Making a planets surface black when surrounded by 60 billion stars in the galactic core is artificial. Every Elite graphic setting on every platform has a gamma adjuster. Use it to make it as black as you like.

Matt inson, Head of Technical Art actually confirms that the brightening of light as you approach the dark side of a planet is indeed "artificial". Frontier haven't implemented the correct version yet...

So ambient light on the 'dark side' of planets is correctly calculated?

It's not correctly calculated yet. As Frontier have confirmed, the current implementation is artificial.