The beauty of a ringed Ammonia World

Syrion1984 · Sep 29, 2016

Hello follow explorers o7!
On my way back towards the bubble from BP, I literally just stumbled upon this beautiful ringed AW and I just spent about an hour basking in its magnificent glory <3
I snapped some pictures of it, hoping they will reach you in due time, as I'm still 60-odd Kly from civilization.
Hoping the pictures are received with as much delight as I got out of the experience!

The album is right here:
https://imgur.com/a/oIMhf?reg

Fly safe, commanders!

Syrion1984

Aura Lorell · Sep 29, 2016

So very beautiful, thank you so much for sharing!

Cosmographer · Sep 29, 2016

Here's mine

and now I'm sad that I didn't take more pictures...

EISENHORN01 · Sep 29, 2016

Both worthy of a mention in the weekly newsletter from F.D

Col Frost · Sep 29, 2016

I love Ammonia worlds and think they are underrated, thanks for sharing

Col Frost · Sep 30, 2016

Just found this

http://imgur.com/a/8AUGd

MattG · Sep 30, 2016

I like how the OP picture seem to get dirtier as you get closer

Ringed AWs are glorious though, a few of mine

Syrion1984 · Sep 30, 2016

Love the AWs the two of you posted as well <3
They are very beautiful and I'm only happy this thread is getting some AW love!

Fly safe, commanders!

Syrion1984

Mengy · Sep 30, 2016

Yep, AW's can be lovely. I found this one out in the Abyssal Plain on my way "home" from the DWE:

Chrystoph · Sep 30, 2016

Beautiful pictures, I agree.

mickma · Sep 30, 2016

What a mess. They really need to fix that opacity bug.

Iskariot · Sep 30, 2016

Am I correct that aliens probes were found near ammonia worlds?
Perhaps the aliens are looking for real estate.

MattG · Sep 30, 2016

Iskariot said:
Am I correct that aliens probes were found near ammonia worlds?
Perhaps the aliens are looking for real estate.

Presumably for their own "List of Ammonia Worlds, v2" ?

Jon474 · Sep 30, 2016

Lovely. Good find and great pictures.

Flying happy
Jon
Type-6E

Mengy · Sep 30, 2016

mickma said:
What a mess. They really need to fix that opacity bug.

What opacity bug, do you mean the opaque rings in my pics? That's actually fairly accurate, as rings are very thin and mostly empty space. With direct light they refract and emit so much light that they appear solid from a distance, but take away that light and they become very see through.

thehairymob · Sep 30, 2016

Not seen one of these for a while now. Mind, I was away from playing this game for a good few months so that would have a bit to do with that. But I've not seen any on my present trip to the dark and I'm 11,000 ly out now. Found a few ELW that were untagged though that may have changed by the time I get back to the bubble, hehehe.

Great pics by the way

mickma · Sep 30, 2016

Mengy said:
What opacity bug, do you mean the opaque rings in my pics?

Yup. The lack of opacity in shadow here http://i.imgur.com/pVGzMxY.jpg .

Mengy said:
That's actually fairly accurate, as rings are very thin and mostly empty space.

Cannot be. See the brightess part here http://i.imgur.com/XVm1K5U.jpg .

Mengy said:
With direct light they refract and emit so much light

The pics show no refract and no emit.

What they show is high reflectivity. What's missing is the high opacity that entails.

Actually looking again I think isn't a bug. This rendering is just material property fakery hoping to be mistaken for realistic modelling.

Mengy · Sep 30, 2016

mickma said:
Yup. The lack of opacity in shadow here http://i.imgur.com/pVGzMxY.jpg .

Cannot be. See the brightess part here http://i.imgur.com/XVm1K5U.jpg .

The pics show no refract and no emit.

What they show is high reflectivity. What's missing is the high opacity that entails.

This rendering is just material property fakery hoping to be mistaken for realistic modelling.

But, in my pics, the "see through" part of the ring is in the planet's shadow, the sun is not hitting them directly, hence they would normally just be dark, HOWEVER in my pics the light of the Milky Way behind them is able to shine through. Due to the Milky Way's low brightness it does not reflect nor refract off of the rings, thereby not brightening them up to the point of looking "solid". Dark rings are only dark because there isn't anything in space to brighten them up or shine through them.

I've actually read about this in scientific papers, and while Elite's effect might possibly be exaggerated, I do believe it is accurate. If the game wanted to be completely realistic, we wouldn't be flying in the rings at all because they'd be thinner than our ships are, as rings are actually made up of space dust, not huge rocks and asteroids. But where would be the fun in that?

mickma · Sep 30, 2016

Mengy said:
But, in my pics, the "see through" part of the ring is in the planet's shadow, the sun is not hitting them directly, hence they would normally just be dark, HOWEVER in my pics the light of the Milky Way behind them is able to shine through.

And there's the fault. In shadow, the Milky Way's light is shining through the shadowed ring largely unblocked http://i.imgur.com/XVm1K5U.jpg . Whereas out of shadow, the local sun's light is being heavily blocked, as you can see from it being thrown back as bright illumination.

This makes sense only if the rocks are made of magical substance that bounces back light coming from one direction whilst admitting light coming from the opposite direction. Not possible.

Put it another way, the ring particles block enough front (sun) light to bounce back what you see out of shadow, and they would block the same proportion of rear (Milky Way) light shining though in the shadow. What we see is nothing like that. It is more like a sloppy arithmetic addition by the GPU than any proper modelling.

And another sign of fake is the sunward brightening on the rings. The ring particles close-up shows they have no structure that would create anything like that effect. The particles are irregular-shaped rocks for gods sake, not the reflective grooves of a vinyl record.

[VR] optimal_909 · Sep 30, 2016

mickma said:
And there's the fault. In shadow, the Milky Way's light is shining through the shadowed ring largely unblocked http://i.imgur.com/XVm1K5U.jpg . Whereas out of shadow, the local sun's light is being heavily blocked, as you can see from it being thrown back as bright illumination.

This makes sense only if the rocks are made of magical substance that bounces back light coming from one direction whilst admitting light coming from the opposite direction. Not possible.

Put it another way, the ring particles block enough front (sun) light to bounce back what you see out of shadow, and they would block the same proportion of rear (Milky Way) light shining though in the shadow. What we see is nothing like that. It is more like a sloppy arithmetic addition by the GPU than any proper modelling.

And another sign of fake is the sunward brightening on the rings. The ring particles close-up shows they have no structure that would create anything like that effect. The particles are irregular-shaped rocks for gods sake, not the reflective grooves of a vinyl record.

Good point.
Still my biggest issue is that rings don't cast shadows, and the lighting from secodary stars don't have any effect. Wait, the biggest issue is that dark side of planets aren't dark at all, rendering lights redundant.