As you may be aware, one of the things that motivates me in my exploration voyages is the study of, and the hopeful discovery of, extremely rare galactic phenomena: things like trojan planets, or ELWs in highly eccentric, comet-like orbits. Also on my list of fantastic beasts are two very rare varieties of Gas Giant: the Glowing Green Giant and the Glowing White Giant.
Or at least, there were two rare varieties of gas giant; now there is only one: for with update 3.0, GWGs have now been "normalized". They no longer glow like they used to.
First, some context: GWGs were Class V gas giants that were extra hot: they usually were found as the first planet in very close-in orbit to either a neutron star or hot O or B class star. They had temperatures above 9000 K - hotter than the star they orbited, in some instances. And they glowed bright white, even brighter than the star they orbited. If you got up close to them, your ship would take on a washed-out cartoonish appearance in the super-bright glare of reflected light from the planet. There were four known GWGs, mostly in the Core regions and along the Neutron Highways. This thread contains the record of the discovery and exploration of the Glowing Ball of Kyloall. This thread depicts the Fleasi GWG. I was planning to create a systematic thread describing all the GWGs, post-3.0, but alas, FD have edited them out of existence.
To be fair, it was a graphical glitch that "should have been fixed". I'm assuming FD had originally planned to give these super-hot Class V giants their own colour system, but neglected to do so, perhaps on the assumption that they simply didn't exist - they are, after all, very rare. That it was a glitch could be demonstrated by the lighting behaviour on some of the other planets in the system, as outlined in the first thread I linked above, where a mysterious non-existent super-bright illumination source was lighting up the back-side of planets in some GWG systems.
They have now been fixed. Planets that formerly were GWGs are now perfectly normal-looking Class V gas giants, albeit with a much whiter colour scheme than other Class Vs I have encountered.
Pre-3.0, the Wrupu GWG system looked like this:
Planet A 1 was, of course, the GWG. Now, this system looks like this:
I did not notice anything in the patch notes about appearance of certain gas giants being fixed or altered when I first read them, but on re-reading through them, I found it:
Fortunately, Glowing Green Giants have not (yet!) been "fixed", and one of them has a Tourist Beacon in place around it, so we can assume FD are not currently planning to "fix" them (just as they aren't planning to "fix" Mitterand Hollow). So there is still at least one extremely rare and distinctive planet type out there to find (and for me to create a catalogue thread for). And at least I now have four more bookmarks to play with, as I can now delete the four GWGs.
Or at least, there were two rare varieties of gas giant; now there is only one: for with update 3.0, GWGs have now been "normalized". They no longer glow like they used to.
First, some context: GWGs were Class V gas giants that were extra hot: they usually were found as the first planet in very close-in orbit to either a neutron star or hot O or B class star. They had temperatures above 9000 K - hotter than the star they orbited, in some instances. And they glowed bright white, even brighter than the star they orbited. If you got up close to them, your ship would take on a washed-out cartoonish appearance in the super-bright glare of reflected light from the planet. There were four known GWGs, mostly in the Core regions and along the Neutron Highways. This thread contains the record of the discovery and exploration of the Glowing Ball of Kyloall. This thread depicts the Fleasi GWG. I was planning to create a systematic thread describing all the GWGs, post-3.0, but alas, FD have edited them out of existence.
To be fair, it was a graphical glitch that "should have been fixed". I'm assuming FD had originally planned to give these super-hot Class V giants their own colour system, but neglected to do so, perhaps on the assumption that they simply didn't exist - they are, after all, very rare. That it was a glitch could be demonstrated by the lighting behaviour on some of the other planets in the system, as outlined in the first thread I linked above, where a mysterious non-existent super-bright illumination source was lighting up the back-side of planets in some GWG systems.
They have now been fixed. Planets that formerly were GWGs are now perfectly normal-looking Class V gas giants, albeit with a much whiter colour scheme than other Class Vs I have encountered.
Pre-3.0, the Wrupu GWG system looked like this:
Planet A 1 was, of course, the GWG. Now, this system looks like this:
I did not notice anything in the patch notes about appearance of certain gas giants being fixed or altered when I first read them, but on re-reading through them, I found it:
Fortunately, Glowing Green Giants have not (yet!) been "fixed", and one of them has a Tourist Beacon in place around it, so we can assume FD are not currently planning to "fix" them (just as they aren't planning to "fix" Mitterand Hollow). So there is still at least one extremely rare and distinctive planet type out there to find (and for me to create a catalogue thread for). And at least I now have four more bookmarks to play with, as I can now delete the four GWGs.
