Hi FDEV,
The new night vision is cool, and can sometimes help spot a human outpost due to the number of outlines converging to a slight bright spot at low altitude (the old fly and eye method of discovery).
However, and especially as much as David Braben and others have talked about heat mechanics in space and hard science, the night vision system should pick up and highlight human installations where their heat signature stands out from background. (I'd argue for other electromagnetic signature pick up as well, and maybe night vision works in the ultraviolet, but that is maybe a different post?)
I recently discovered a little mining outpost with a dozen laser or whatever mining machines, a small building and an imperial cutter. On night vision at about 1.5 km, this showed up as a slightly brighter blob than the terrain. However, at this distance and with all the activity I think it should really be like a beacon in the night.
I've posted similar thoughts before but with addition of night vision and new lighting engine I thought it might be worth bringing up again.
Additional realistic and futuristic sensor enhancements could enable deeper gameplay for stealth and smuggling especially, and also make things easier to find. This would be along the lines of the fantastic mining and exploration enhancements to core gameplay in 3.3 that I hope continue for other "careers" or parts of the game mechanics.
A lot of the little facilities are probably RNG but the player ship is still made aware of "something" at great distance by the blue disc showing up on the sensor display and zeroing in on these should not be much work really - and the RNG can happen when dropping into Orbital Cruise, much like the USS signals are now more persistent and generated when a player drops into a system.
Idea would not apply to everything. A shipwreck with no active heat signature would obviously be same heat as background and so not stand out.
The new night vision is cool, and can sometimes help spot a human outpost due to the number of outlines converging to a slight bright spot at low altitude (the old fly and eye method of discovery).
However, and especially as much as David Braben and others have talked about heat mechanics in space and hard science, the night vision system should pick up and highlight human installations where their heat signature stands out from background. (I'd argue for other electromagnetic signature pick up as well, and maybe night vision works in the ultraviolet, but that is maybe a different post?)
I recently discovered a little mining outpost with a dozen laser or whatever mining machines, a small building and an imperial cutter. On night vision at about 1.5 km, this showed up as a slightly brighter blob than the terrain. However, at this distance and with all the activity I think it should really be like a beacon in the night.
I've posted similar thoughts before but with addition of night vision and new lighting engine I thought it might be worth bringing up again.
Additional realistic and futuristic sensor enhancements could enable deeper gameplay for stealth and smuggling especially, and also make things easier to find. This would be along the lines of the fantastic mining and exploration enhancements to core gameplay in 3.3 that I hope continue for other "careers" or parts of the game mechanics.
A lot of the little facilities are probably RNG but the player ship is still made aware of "something" at great distance by the blue disc showing up on the sensor display and zeroing in on these should not be much work really - and the RNG can happen when dropping into Orbital Cruise, much like the USS signals are now more persistent and generated when a player drops into a system.
Idea would not apply to everything. A shipwreck with no active heat signature would obviously be same heat as background and so not stand out.