My own hope is that Frontier still is (or at least planning) to work on both shaders and lighting for Elite. Some personal pet hopes for the future:
Lighting 1: Stars casting their color, tinting everything we see illuminated by them. Not only the star color tinting the natural color of the planet surfaces, but also the objects such as our ships and cockpit interiors. Under a blue star, we'd see a world with a blue color cast everywhere, full time where that star shone. Likewise, red or deep purple stars, intense and saturated, like photography through a color filter.
Lighting 2: The dark side. The dark side of a planet should accurately be lit depending upon the brightness of other bodies overhead. The dark side of a moon could be quite bright, if the parent planet (or another moon) were overhead and in full illumination. But if not... then the ambient light from the galactic plane should be pretty dang dark.
Lighting 3: Shadow sources. Right now, the shadow source moves very obviously between stars in a system. I'd hope that this transition can be made much more subtle.
Planet shaders 1: Most critical to me is the impression of surface material variety, for some planets. Instead of many planets having a very uniform coloring over the entirety of the surface, give them mottled patches of 2 or 3 surface materials. Even our own gray moon has 2 or 3 different and contrasting surface types which we see clearly from earth. I'd love to see planets which scatter between a sandy soil of one material, interspersed with more rocky and/or icy regions.
And yes this used to be 100% possible. I have screenshots of me back in early 2.x driving from a wintry white icy region (with my SRV kicking up snow) on a planet, across into a dry rocky area (with my SRV kicking up dusty sands).
Planet shaders 2: Reflectance. Same as being on earth and seeing a snowy/icy field shining wet in the glare of the sun. Some surface types seem well suited to this, including icy, metallic, and some rocky varieties. (Note that I'm talking about seeing these effects from SRV level, or 2km to 3km up in the ship. Whether or not it would show from orbital level is another matter). Other prime locations for this would be surrounding geysers, where the liquified materials may have settled, before boiling off to a dry state in the vacuum, leaving a reflective effect in the region.
Planet shaders 3: Color variations which are based upon the materials listed as most composing the planet. Including some very black surfaced planets, which reflect very little color. Icy planets with tints of color in some regions of ice, as though materials have "stained" some stretches of those icy plains.
And finally... Of course, these color and surface variations would visually be changed further by the color cast by the star. So the mix of each star and planet types would create even further interesting situations. Thus:
Planets which under "white" light would be icy blue... Under a strongly red star, they appear as dark purple to black ice!
Planets which under "white" light would be metallic red... Under a stronly red star, they appear as white!
Planets which under "white" light would be rocky orange... Under a strongly purple star, they appear as purple!
![[VR] optimal_909](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/109/109067.jpg?1553781733){kind=avatar}
