Starfield in Elite Dangerous

[TyphoonOfDvina]

Is it just me or do you also find starfield in ED a little less visually attractive when comparing with real space photographs (that of Hubble for instance)?
I don't know, starry backdrop in ED seems to me a little too flat.
When I'm looking at the real photograps, it seems that there is much larger variability in star brightness, size, color and also distribution density.

I haven't spent a lot of time searching for good examples for comparison, but two pictures below should do.
Now forget the galaxy backdrop and possibly some nebulae on both pictures, I'm talking only about individual stars.

To be honest, I'd feel much much better, if I was flying in space that looks like the one on the real picture.

Who knows, maybe next time, when graphics in ED gets a generational upgrade (if such a moment ever comes).


ED:

Real:

 

[Riverside]

The image you chose to represent the game isn't one of the best, out near the neutron fields some of the imperfections show, plus the real image is a tighter region, and a longer exposure than is emulated in the skybox.

It's by no means perfect but I think the skybox is very, very good.

 

[Red Martian]

Honestly, I think the starfield in ED looks terrific. The other day, I was landing at a planetary base, and I took this shot:

So yeah, I think the starfield looks great. Planetary textures could use some work, but I expect that will come along later.

 

[Sapyx]

Don't forget too, your "real space photographs" are augmented reality, using long exposure times and colour exaggeration which pick up details the naked eye could not see. Go up in a real-life spaceship and physically look out the window, and what you'd actually see would be even duller and less interesting than what you see on the skybox in ED.

 

[Arry]

Is it just me or do you also find starfield in ED a little less visually attractive when comparing with real space photographs (that of Hubble for instance)?
I don't know, starry backdrop in ED seems to me a little too flat.
When I'm looking at the real photograps, it seems that there is much larger variability in star brightness, size, color and also distribution density.

I haven't spent a lot of time searching for good examples for comparison, but two pictures below should do.
Now forget the galaxy backdrop and possibly some nebulae on both pictures, I'm talking only about individual stars.

To be honest, I'd feel much much better, if I was flying in space that looks like the one on the real picture.

Who knows, maybe next time, when graphics in ED gets a generational upgrade (if such a moment ever comes).


ED:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/s...cX5tQ_VCg9F82OhMGnySplkVQ9z3zg=w1920-h1080-no


Real:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d...hPoE6CsK88Ym_3tWTtosouBFR0zlaw=w1920-h1324-no

Err... Where did you take the first photo from? Should be from Sol if you want it to be accurate.

 

[CptXabaras]

The image you chose to represent the game isn't one of the best, out near the neutron fields some of the imperfections show, plus the real image is a tighter region, and a longer exposure than is emulated in the skybox.

It's by no means perfect but I think the skybox is very, very good.

Anyway, the real picture looks better

 

[Red Anders]

Computer game in 'not as good as reality' shocker.

 

[Riverside]

Anyway, the real picture looks better

The ED skybox isn't a photo. In most games the skybox is a photo (or what might be loosely described as a 'painting'), processed to wrap seamlessly etc. If you were to replace ED's skybox with a composite photo from the real night sky it could look amazing - from Earth.

The ED skybox changes as you move through the galaxy, each system's skybox really is unique. To do that, you have to generate it from the raw positional & other data from the in-game galaxy.

Inevitably it has imperfections & bugs, but it's still an impressive technical feat, and one that is barely noticed by most traders or combateers as they do their day-to-day tasks in the bubble.

But yes, the real sky is better

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Compared to my first combat flight simulator, I think the graphics are pretty good...

 

[Red Martian]

The ED skybox isn't a photo. In most games the skybox is a photo (or what might be loosely described as a 'painting'), processed to wrap seamlessly etc. If you were to replace ED's skybox with a composite photo from the real night sky it could look amazing - from Earth.

The ED skybox changes as you move through the galaxy, each system's skybox really is unique. To do that, you have to generate it from the raw positional & other data from the in-game galaxy.

Inevitably it has imperfections & bugs, but it's still an impressive technical feat, and one that is barely noticed by most traders or combateers as they do their day-to-day tasks in the bubble.

But yes, the real sky is better

Exactly. The sky we see in Elite: Dangerous is dynamic, and not a static photo. The image I took of the base camp, and sky? I can travel to any one of those stars at any given moment. They're real, in a sense, in that they're active destinations.

Compared to my first combat flight simulator, I think the graphics are pretty good...

http://www.myabandonware.com/media/...t-simulator-b0/harrier-combat-simulator_5.png

Harrier Combat Simulator? That one was fun. My first flight sim was the Commodore 64 flight simulator, but my first space flight simulator was Star Voyager, for the Nintendo. You want realism? That game was all kinds of real:

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Harrier Combat Simulator? That one was fun. My first flight sim was the Commodore 64 flight simulator, but my first space flight simulator was Star Voyager, for the Nintendo. You want realism? That game was all kinds of real:

https://s26.postimg.org/3wcfzbcmx/star-voyager_4.png

Nice!

 

[Red Martian]

Nice!

Thanks.

For years, when I would play, I'd always die within minutes, because I'd run out of fuel. See, when I bought the game, I did so second-hand, and it didn't come with a manual. Back then, there was no (public) internet, and strategy guides were still years away, so I was stuck figuring it out myself. I failed in doing so. lol

Still, I enjoyed flying around in space, while I could, firing my lasers at nothing whatsoever.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Thanks.

For years, when I would play, I'd always die within minutes, because I'd run out of fuel. See, when I bought the game, I did so second-hand, and it didn't come with a manual. Back then, there was no (public) internet, and strategy guides were still years away, so I was stuck figuring it out myself. I failed in doing so. lol

Still, I enjoyed flying around in space, while I could, firing my lasers at nothing whatsoever.

Totally the same with Harrier - I was, what, 11 years old playing on my Grandpa's 286? Mine did have a manual, but manuals back then left something to be desired. I would crash and get blow up and all kinds of stuff. Still played the hell out of it trying though. Then I found SSI's Pool of Radiance, and....

 

[Riverside]

Totally the same with Harrier - I was, what, 11 years old playing on my Grandpa's 286? Mine did have a manual, but manuals back then left something to be desired. I would crash and get blow up and all kinds of stuff. Still played the hell out of it trying though. Then I found SSI's Pool of Radiance, and....

I played AV8-B with much the same result

 

[Old Duck]

Is it just me or do you also find starfield in ED a little less visually attractive when comparing with real space photographs (that of Hubble for instance)?

Take a picture of the night sky with your cellphone and compare that to ED. Hubble does not represent how space would look through a cockpit window. Perhaps someone can email NASA and ask an astronaut on ISS to take a picture of space with their cellphone. That's the kind of sky you could expect looking through your cockpit (assuming you have a relatively nice camera on your phone).

 

[RadBlaster]

Haven't we flog this dead horse enough?

 

[Dialectic]

Computer game in 'not as good as reality' shocker.

It's not unreasonable to want and to expect a lot from games - it's how we drive the market.

 

[Dialectic]

Take a picture of the night sky with your cellphone and compare that to ED. Hubble does not represent how space would look through a cockpit window. Perhaps someone can email NASA and ask an astronaut on ISS to take a picture of space with their cellphone. That's the kind of sky you could expect looking through your cockpit (assuming you have a relatively nice camera on your phone).

That's a good point. I bet there's stuff on google searches to be found that fits this. I follow on twitter one of the astronauts that was up there

 

[Red Martian]

Totally the same with Harrier - I was, what, 11 years old playing on my Grandpa's 286? Mine did have a manual, but manuals back then left something to be desired. I would crash and get blow up and all kinds of stuff. Still played the hell out of it trying though. Then I found SSI's Pool of Radiance, and....

SSI made a bunch of games that were like crack for me. One of my favorites was Buck Rogers: Countdown Til Doomsday, and of course the Wing Commander series, so I know what that feels like.

 

[AIR HORN]

If you live in a sparsely populated area, I would suggest you go a few tens of kilometres (or miles) from the nearest inhabited location and just see for yourself. I live up in the European Arctic so it's easy for me to get away from light pollution, and air pollution is virtually non-existent. The nearest towns are 100, 200 and 2 000 km away respectively.

I like to drive a few hours inland, stop in the middle of nowhere, lie down on the ground and just stare into the abyss of nothingness until reaching straight up acid trip levels of ego loss from the inconceivable vastness of space. Can't be done in summer obviously, and snow reflects enough light up in the atmosphere to tarnish the experience. However, September and the first half of October are warm enough to melt any snowfall right away, the nights are pitch black, clear and the Moon sets early. Even though I don't use a telescope, no matter how often I do this, it never ceases to blow my mind how stunning the galaxy is.

With that said, and more to the point, neither ED nor reality looks like the fancy pictures taken with multi-million dollar telescopes. In addition to tbe filters and herculean exposure times (obtained using bleeding edge laser tracking, taking days or even months) previous posters mentioned, most iconic space photos are also composites of several images taken in wavelengths our eyes cannot natively perceive, eg. UV-, x-, gamma rays, radio waves and IR.

Case in point: The Pillars of Creation (situated in the Eagle nebula), is imho, the most awe-inspiring image ever taken; commonly known to look like this:

Buuut here's the true-colour image in visible range:

Now, in ED we seem to have x-ray perception to at least some degree. Might include other wavelengths as well, idk, x-ray is the only one I'm fairly certain of; the galactic core is nowhere near that bright in the visible spectrum. It's not a far out idea though to get x-ray implants. Hell, we can already "augment" our eyes to see UV spectrum, but I digress...

Sadly, I haven't seen the galactic plane with my own eyes though, cause I'm too far north. I'd love to go to Australia just to look at the sky, lol. But then again, the spectacular aurora shows up here kinda makes up for having a less interesting stellar view


Crap, this post went on forever...
tl;dr: While Shakira's hips may be pathologically honest, pics DO lie. For science. Elite looks pretty realistic, imo, but on the other hand I've never been to space.