Starlight tints background skybox - Lighting issues

[da_wae]

It's called Adaptation. Color and brightness aren't the same thing fyi. Color is determined by the wavelength of the photon. Brightness by the amount of photons hitting your eye (though shorter wavelength = higher energy).

You can't really compare the amount of photons a light bulb would emit vs a fr eaking star.

When you're standing next to a star the amount of photons coming from that start that hit your rods is way higher than the amount of photons from any other source. It would very likely change the ambient color temperature towards the spectral signature of the star.

Edit: also since we evolved in a planet where our light is naturally filtered by our atmosphere, and has a certain "base" and "max" levels (depending on your region), if you literally personally flew out to space near a star (especially inside the corona) - you would go blind from the excess amount of electromagnetic energy hitting your eyes. But let's say you don't go blind for some magical reason, your retina / iris / rods would still not be prepared to process the sheer amount of photons entering them, causing heavy distortions in your perception.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

This is the game with the filter:


This is the game without the filter:


A simple toggle for this would be enough.

on your first screen, you are playing "Aquanox", right?

the second screen shows, that the lighting on the hull already shows that the light is blue.
you even see it a bit on your cockpit, but only where it directly hits the surface - the shadows only have the "baked" static lighting of the cockpit.

instead of adding a slight color-grade to THAT baked interiour lighting to simulate diffuse reflected light from the colored star (that would be there if they had real raytracing active)
- they have put an screen space colorizer filter over the whole scene, that make the whole scene look just play wrong.

i don't know how much here understand what "baked" lighting means

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

You can't really compare the amount of photons a light bulb would emit vs a fr eaking star.

When you're standing next to a star the amount of photons coming from that start that hit your rods is way higher than the amount of photons from any other source. It would very likely change the ambient color temperature towards the spectral signature of the star.

Edit: also since we evolved in a planet where our light is naturally filtered by our atmosphere, and has a certain "base" and "max" levels (depending on your region), if you literally personally flew out to space near a star (especially inside the corona) - you would go blind from the excess amount of electromagnetic energy hitting your eyes. But let's say you don't go blind for some magical reason, your retina / iris / rods would still not be prepared to process the sheer amount of photons entering them, causing heavy distortions in your perception.

what you are saying is... the colors make no sense in the first place,
because to the human eye, all stars are white because of to high exposure

you know, astronauts have those golden sunglasses not without a reason

 

[krautbernd]

So you want the less realistic. Dont claim it to be more realistic, then. because local lighting DOES affect the background.

There is no background. That's the whole point.

No. But YOU were the one using cardboard. Tell me, how do you know there is no light source? You don't. You merely assert.

Black cardboard, the point was to reflect less/no light. I already explained this.

ZODIACAL LIGHT.

No. I already pointed out why it doesn't make any sense, since only emissive background objects are tinted, not space itself, which rules out dust. It also doesn't match up with how the interioir of your craft and HUD are affected.

ZODIACAL LIGHT.

So if the galaxy map is in the same cockpit, meaning the cockpit view should match it, being under the same lighting conditions, turning the high beams on and off will show a difference, since they are by definition an additional light source when turned on.[/quote]There are no "high beams" in space at this distances. Your craft does not affect the background image, nor does the interior of your craft tint the background image. The interior lighting of your spacecraft is white, or very close to a neutral white.[/QUOTE]

 

[da_wae]

on your first screen, you are playing "Aquanox", right?

the second screen shows, that the lighting on the hull already shows that the light is blue.
you even see it a bit on your cockpit, but only where it directly hits the surface - the shadows only have the "baked" static lighting of the cockpit.

instead of adding a slight color-grade to THAT baked interiour lighting to simulate diffuse reflected light from the colored star (that would be there if they had real raytracing active)
- they have put an screen space colorizer filter over the whole scene, that make the whole scene look just play wrong.

i don't know how much here understand what "baked" lighting means

"Baked" lighting is when you get baked and decorate? [haha]

No, I know you mean the pre-calculated light maps for the cockpit. Problem is that they are indeed pre-baked so they wouldn't be able to manipulate that lighting on a per-star basis.
The whole problem here is that the Cobra engine doesn't support multiple light sources per-viewport.

 

[babelfisch]

You can't really compare the amount of photons a light bulb would emit vs a fr eaking star.

When you're standing next to a star the amount of photons coming from that start that hit your rods is way higher than the amount of photons from any other source. It would very likely change the ambient color temperature towards the spectral signature of the star.

Edit: also since we evolved in a planet where our light is naturally filtered by our atmosphere, and has a certain "base" and "max" levels (depending on your region), if you literally personally flew out to space near a star (especially inside the corona) - you would go blind from the excess amount of electromagnetic energy hitting your eyes. But let's say you don't go blind for some magical reason, your retina / iris / rods would still not be prepared to process the sheer amount of photons entering them, causing heavy distortions in your perception.

I believe that's why we have a canopy and a helmet.

 

[da_wae]

what you are saying is... the colors make no sense in the first place,
because to the human eye, all stars are white because of to high exposure

you know, astronauts have those golden sunglasses not without a reason

That's pretty much what I'm saying. Neither solution is "realistic". They're all artistic efforts to make outer space look pleasant to the naked eye. An illusion.

 

[nanite2000]

if the photo does not display on your monitor, then how will you see it? And if your monitor is fine to view this proof, then I don't need to: you're already looking at the monitor that shows that the colour you see is changed by nearby lights, whether they are that colour or not.

Flerfers keep demanding a picture of a round earth, but they will never accept one given because that's always "faked CGI". Not good to copy their demanding natures.

Oh, and find "black" on your monitor.

Heck turn it off. See how not black it is. Quite black, yes, not not nearly as black as the black background of this page you are reading. Yet that not quite black is the same colour. just doesn't look like it.

If yo're not going to believe your own monitor and eyes, how do you expect a photo or video that appears there from me to change your mind???

If that's your 'proof' then, respectfully, you've misunderstood what this thread is about.

To reiterate what the OP is talking about - local emissive light sources (e.g. a red M-Type dwarf star right next to your ship) would create no apparent colour tint on other emissive light sources (e.g. the galaxy, other stars in the same system, your ship's HUD, etc...).

It *will* affect non-emissive surfaces that are reflecting light (e.g. planets surfaces, your ship's dashboard, etc...), but that's not what the OP is complaining about.

The only way to get the effect you describe is for the player to move far enough away from the local light source that it is no longer distinguishable from other surrounding light sources, and so it's colour will then blend with those other light sources.

The game is trying to simulate local colour tinting as though the galaxy backdrop wasn't an emissive light source. However, it *is* an emissive light source (in real life), and so the only things that should be affected by the local star colour are surfaces that reflect light (like planet surfaces, ship's dashboard, etc...).

Can we at least agree on that?

Can we also agree that a big red (or green) light bulb in your room does not change the apparent colour of stars outside your room?

 

[Sterling MH]

It's called Adaptation

Which means that colours DO change when in a differently lit setting. Otherwise there would be nothing to adapt to.

Oh, and since the lightbulb they proposed was BEHIND, your vision adapts to light sources behind. However, we REINTERPRET IT differently. Hence your case has no basis: it's taking two differently lit situations and asserting that one must be right and that the other cannot be.

Color and brightness aren't the same thing fyi.

I know. And brightness and colour are not the same thing either, fyi.

Color is determined by the wavelength of the photon.

WRONG. Light a red apple in no light. Completely dark. What colour does it have? None. Colour of the apple is not a part of the thing, and when you look out, you're looking at things, like apples.

So colour is not inherent to a thing.

Is it inherent to a photon?

No.

Because to a red blind person a photon of wavelength 700nm HAS no colour.

Go out at night. Nice moon out. Not too big. What colour is the green grass? It is still 100% reflecting the same photon range, near enough, as before, but suddenly the garden is colourless.

How come???

According to you, colour is the wavelength of a photon.

Gold is a colour, too. What frequency is that, just for my sake.

But back to the grass. Despite the photon being that same wavelength you cannot see the colour.

So colour is not part of the photon either.

I guess colour must be a LOT more complicated than you thought.

Brightness by the amount of photons hitting your eye (though shorter wavelength = higher energy).

Nope, hv is irrelvant here. Higher energy LIGHT is brightness. Light is not "one photon" any more than humanity is one person.

Did you know that brightness is NOT due only to that? Visual purple is one confounder. Makes the rods more sensitive to photons. Higher quantum efficiency.

But here's another thing. if you shine light on the retina, it will get LESS SENSITIVE. Not because it has been damaged, but it has run out of the chemicals that it uses to signal "I see the light". Loss of the K+ ions causes a back EMF that pulls the next firing of the neuron to not fire quite as strongly.

Guess you never knew that light was so complicated when you mix up colour and brightness, both perceptual terms, not metrolgy ones.

Remember too that this isn't supposed to be a CCD sensor sitting in the pilot's seat. It's supposed to be YOU.

So all those problems of biological reaction, neurophysiology and the gross fakery done by a human's idiotic visual system (tell me you notice the blind spot, go on. your eyes lie to you and you never cared to call it faked unrealistic rubbish) such a person has.

 

[da_wae]

I believe that's why we have a canopy and a helmet.

And these work by magic, filtering light so precisely that your eyes get just the right amount of photons for perfect eyesight? No.

In reality, your helmet would make you almost blind to the details in space, and you would mostly be using your instruments to pilot your ship, as a canopy would be too great of a risk to have open at all times (most of the times it would be protected behind a blast door).

 

[rhiz]

Hey OP and like-minded CMDRs, what if the "range" of the tinting was greatly reduced? There is indeed a range, though I suspect it's ridiculously far out from larger stars. Visit a neutron star and fly away from it, and it doesn't take too long for the galaxy to look like it did before the 3.3 update (mostly).

I'm personally okay if the skybox tints when I'm fuel scooping, as I think of myself as in the corona, and my cockpit's adaptive tinted windows are being saturated with colored light (which actual can tint what we see through that glass). However this effect should very quickly dissipate once we head away from the star.

I bring this up because this would just be a variable in the code for Frontier to tweak, which theoretically should be very easy to do.

Yes, the filter is already being modulated quite dramatically as you move away from the star, so it could easily be reduced to 0 at a certain point. The thing is, I wouldn’t want to deny those who like the effect, so I’d argue that it be brought under user control so that we can adjust it according to preference.

In all likelihood these variables are already part of the system, so it shouldn’t be a mammoth task.

 

[krautbernd]

You can't really compare the amount of photons a light bulb would emit vs a fr eaking star.

Why though? They are both light sources.

When you're standing next to a star the amount of photons coming from that start that hit your rods is way higher than the amount of photons from any other source. It would very likely change the ambient color temperature towards the spectral signature of the star.[/QUOTE]Only if it was refelcted or refracted. Obvious biologically damage of your eye aside due to the direct procimity to a star, there is nothing that would focus the light of said into other areas of your eye - that's what your lense does (usually, that is). For the light to "blend" or "spill over" you need something that reflects said light.

 

[da_wae]

Yes, the filter is already being modulated quite dramatically as you move away from the star, so it could easily be reduced to 0 at a certain point. The thing is, I wouldn’t want to deny those who like the effect, so I’d argue that it be brought under user control so that we can adjust it according to preference.

In all likelihood these variables are already part of the system, so it shouldn’t be a mammoth task.

This would probably be the best approach. Some kind of slider to control the "distance / effect" relationship.

 

[babelfisch]

If that's your 'proof' then, respectfully, you've misunderstood what this thread is about.

To reiterate what the OP is talking about - local emissive light sources (e.g. a red M-Type dwarf star right next to your ship) would create no apparent colour tint on other emissive light sources (e.g. the galaxy, other stars in the same system, your ship's HUD, etc...).

It *will* affect non-emissive surfaces that are reflecting light (e.g. planets surfaces, your ship's dashboard, etc...), but that's not what the OP is complaining about.

The only way to get the effect you describe is for the player to move far enough away from the local light source that it is no longer distinguishable from other surrounding light sources, and so it's colour will then blend with those other light sources.

The game is tying to simulate local colour tinting as though the galaxy backdrop wasn't an emissive light source. However, it *is* an emissive light source (in real life), and so the only things that should be affected by the local star colour are surfaces that reflect light (like planet surfaces, ship's dashboard, etc...).

Can we at least agree on that?

Can we also agree that a big red (or green) light bulb in your room does not change the apparent colour of stars outside your room?

Sterlings explanation is that we see the galaxy through a cloud of space dust inside the system. The space dust does reflect the light and that's why everything is so colourful... Problem is that this space dust would mostly be present in the orbital plane and shouldn't affect anything when I am 20.000ls above it. On the other hand I don't know anything about this stuff, so feel free to tell me how I am completely wrong.

 

[Sterling MH]

And these work by magic, filtering light so precisely that your eyes get just the right amount of photons for perfect eyesight? No.

In reality, your helmet would make you almost blind to the details in space, and you would mostly be using your instruments to pilot your ship, as a canopy would be too great of a risk to have open at all times (most of the times it would be protected behind a blast door).

That;s why I prefer that the canopy cuts out UV and up but the pilots are augmented humans whose eyes have been modified to have a much wider colour senstivity than we do. Rods are 1000x more sensitive to light than our cones are. CCDs have a peak reception of 60% or so if they are doped for built in colour or 95% and up if they are bare. Eyesight has a much lower quantum efficiency and cones are much lower than that.

Alternatively, it's meta, and the game cannot cause our monitors to go emit EUV on us nor be as bright as a sun.

 

[da_wae]

Why though? They are both light sources.

When you're standing next to a star the amount of photons coming from that start that hit your rods is way higher than the amount of photons from any other source. It would very likely change the ambient color temperature towards the spectral signature of the star.

Only if it was refelcted or refracted. Obvious biologically damage of your eye aside due to the direct procimity to a star, there is nothing that would focus the light of said into other areas of your eye - that's what your lense does (usually, that is). For the light to "blend" or "spill over" you need something that reflects said light.[/QUOTE]

Edit: adding this separator cause you can't use QUOTE blocks properly.
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Different light sources emit a different raw amount of photons / second / meter^2. Even a 10000W floodlight emits way less photons/s/m2 than standing still next to a Sun-like star. Your eyes would probably melt inside their sockets if you tried to actually process the raw amount of photons the sun would be sending your way whilst inside the corona.

But let's say you had magical non-melty eyes, the amount of photons hitting your rods would overwhelm your eyesight as the iris wouldn't be able to close itself nearly enough to see anything (imagine staring at the sun without sunglasses, now multiply that by quite a few orders of magnitude). You would literally just see "white".

 

[nanite2000]

Sterlings explanation is that we see the galaxy through a cloud of space dust inside the system. The space dust does reflect the light and that's why everything is so colourful... Problem is that this space dust would mostly be present in the orbital plane and shouldn't affect anything when I am 20.000ls above it. On the other hand I don't know anything about this stuff, so feel free to tell me how I am completely wrong.

Well. That's an interesting premise.

@Sterling WH: Assuming dust is uniform throughout the system, wouldn't that make it very difficult to see objects far away?

Also, what are you basing this assertion on?

 

[Sterling MH]

Sterlings explanation is that we see the galaxy through a cloud of space dust inside the system. The space dust does reflect the light and that's why everything is so colourful... Problem is that this space dust would mostly be present in the orbital plane and shouldn't affect anything when I am 20.000ls above it.

Well the width does expand out. It's a LONG way off the ecliptic. Dust doesn't impart much momentum, unlike larger bodies, so they won't deplane anywhere near as fast unless they smack into a bigger body. Seen the size of the gaps in a solar system!!!

On the other hand I don't know anything about this stuff, so feel free to tell me how I am completely wrong.

Not entirely. It DOES cling close to the ecliptic. And zodiacal light is far brighter than an emission nebula is this close in. Which should logically mean it's less effective further away.

Which is exactly what happens in the current system of lighting.

Go out to 7AUs from a sun like star and it is barely coloured, if at all.

Unless you're near a "bright" emission nebula.

As I said, this does appear to be sound. I have no metrics to determine whether the figures for dust density and the fallof are "correct" for a hypothetical planetary disk, but the changes comport in the right ways.

 

[Sterling MH]

Well. That's an interesting premise.

What is a premise? Zodiacal light really does exist. Photos and all. though they appear on your monitor which you have already decided is not sufficient proof.

@Sterling WH: Assuming dust is uniform throughout the system, wouldn't that make it very difficult to see objects far away?

No. Unless the medium is thick. Go look at the lagrange clouds. See far through them? No? Guess what.

Also, what are you basing this assertion on?

Already known astronomical reality. They have someone on board with a post graduate education in some space-related discipline. They've passed it through people who do know. If you want to countermand their claims, learn as much as they do at least FIRST.

 

[krautbernd]

Which means that colours DO change when in a differently lit setting. Otherwise there would be nothing to adapt to.

No. Amount of photons!= wavelength. Still the same color, only not as bright. You are not reflecting light off of the moon, at least not in any amount thats important in this case.

Oh, and since the lightbulb they proposed was BEHIND, your vision adapts to light sources behind.

Your room!=space. Your room reflects light. Space does not.

I know. And brightness and colour are not the same thing either, fyi..

Which is a redundant statement by now.

WRONG. Light a red apple in no light. Completely dark. What colour does it have? None. Colour of the apple is not a part of the thing, and when you look out, you're looking at things, like apples.

It absorbs part of the EM spectrum and reflects or emits others. Space does not. Your argument makes no sense.

The rest of your post has you drifting off into philosophic concepts as to how we perceive things. I'm not going to waste my time replying to that. It's mundane, stuff i've debated ad nauseaum in the past. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand, since empty space doesn't reflect light, regardless of how (or if) you perceive light (or color).