Hi guys. It's that time of the year for Arcanic to start posting rants about the game on the forums, and this time it's for the Cobra Engine's lighting system that has been implemented into Elite: Dangerous. I probably don't need to tell you about just how annoying it is at times, as you, dear reader, might know exactly what I'm talking about. If you are unfamiliar, here are the key points I will be talking about in the next few paragraphs:
It seems the way the game illuminates celestial objects in the system is not actually based on where they are in the system compared to the main light source, but your position relative it and to the main light source, the parent star. In most cases, this is fine and dandy, the planets are lit the way you would expect them to on approach. But, for example, you drop into a system with a hot jupiter, or you find one of those death spiral gas giants that orbit a white dwarf in 30 minutes, if the gas giant is on the opposite side of the star from you, it appears as if it is lit by something behind the main star; From your perspective the planet is in a new or crescent phase, when it should be nearly fully lit or in a half phase.
Consider the picture above. The white dwarf is the light source and the gas giant orbiting it is located on the opposite side of the star from where I am. However, instead of being lit by the WD itself (and would look like a waxing gibbous lunar phase), it is being lit from my perspective of where the WD is compared to it. If I were to avoid the exclusion zone and fly straight to the gas giant, as I'm passing the star, the gas giant would quickly change its phase from crescent to full as I approach it. This makes certain planets within the exclusion zones of stellar remnants unable to ever show their lit face, because it is impossible to go between them to make it lit.
Single Light Sources
Celestial bodies in a system are currently only being lit by only one star at a time. In binary and n-body orbit systems, the orbiting planet will only be lit by the brightest star relative to it. I do really wonder why the choice was made to develop a space game where multiple light sources are a given to happen, but not support it. That it would destroy graphics cards? Well, clearly they were investigating what it looks like ingame, considering there is a hidden system named 'BINARYLIGHTTEST B', but still, it's sad to see a cool complex system of six stars or something on a planet and only have one shadow. Or if a gas giant is orbiting its parent herbig star in 15 minutes or something but is still lit by its nearby higher luminosity secondary star, as per the case here:
And also here, where for some reason the gas giant is lit by the nearby L dwarf:
And stars that have rings don't even light their own rings! Ringed T Tauris and main sequence stars, when acting as planets to a black hole, have their rings completely black, only discernable from the golden hue of the core.
Every Star Casting White Light
With the release of Odyssey, and its tweaks thereafter to its lighting system, the old vivid horizons lighting has been removed in exchange for a consistent white color that all stars now cast (besides for some reason L dwarfs that still have a pink-red tint to their bodies).
This eliminated a very big thing in Elite that distinguished one system from another: Mood. Back then, you could visit a red dwarf and have all the bodies tinted orange. You could visit B types and have the bodies tinted bright blue. O types cast a beautiful blue-purple light. Carbon stars cast a murky yellow-green color that distinguished the system from others. Visiting each star type had a mood!
And whatever happened to limb darkening? Anyway. Technically, these colors are still visible in Odyssey, just very close to the star, before going further out the light turns white. My guess that this was done for landable atmospheres to look the way they are supposed to look, which was not the way to go about it I think. Plus they all look the same* regardless of their actual atmospheric makeup, just what title the game gives the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide-rich? Doesn't matter if it's 89% Oxygen, landing on it, it will still look like it's 100% Carbon Dioxide. Also, some have said that seeing as vivid of colors as in horizons is 'not realistic'. Yeah, well, neither are these colorful nebulae you see in the sky. Nor the perfectly spherical contact binaries. It's a game, It's allowed to have its artistic freedom. Elite uses its freedom in such a way as to keep its realism. I don't care that if in real life all these planets would look white, to me in the game it is boring and an absolute tragedy that we don't have it anymore. The only places it shows up at are if you have close orbits to main seq stars or nearby giants in Odyssey:
Left is light from a Carbon Star, Right is from a M dwarf in a landable silicate vapour atmosphere. It would still work and would still look great, but for some reason the devs decided to mute all the colors and stick with white. If ANYTHING in this post would be changed, I would want horizons lighting back. At least SOME COLOR.
Light of Other Celestial Bodies Disappearing when line of sight obstructed from light source.
I really have no idea why this is still a thing, but when on the night side of a planet, or just in supercruise and fly behind a planet, all light to nearby planets and moons are taken away (to an extent, gas giants just go featureless). This just makes absolutely no sense, and ruins those spooky nighttime shots you would get with the parent planet hanging low in the sky at night, its light reflecting bright off the icy terrain. No. You don't get that.
To close, I know that it would probably be very impractical to fix any of these issues because of spaghetti code, or worse, just by choice. It seems just so simple to include these things, especially nowadays in almost 2025, other space games seem to get it right, light-wise. Of course I refer to Space Engine here, with the possibility for planets to have permanent day at one point in their orbit and regular day-night cycles in others. Don't make me talk about the missing ring shadows on planets, transit shadows on planets, nearby planetshine onto the unlit side of planets that sometimes seems to work, blinking shadows that will give someone a seizure, and more. What do you guys think? Do you agree with me? Or do you think all this nonsense should just be left alone because it will never change anyway?
- Directional lighting
- Single Light-sources
- Every star casting white light
- Lighting of nearby celestial objects basically disappearing when line-of-sight from CMDR to star is obstructed
It seems the way the game illuminates celestial objects in the system is not actually based on where they are in the system compared to the main light source, but your position relative it and to the main light source, the parent star. In most cases, this is fine and dandy, the planets are lit the way you would expect them to on approach. But, for example, you drop into a system with a hot jupiter, or you find one of those death spiral gas giants that orbit a white dwarf in 30 minutes, if the gas giant is on the opposite side of the star from you, it appears as if it is lit by something behind the main star; From your perspective the planet is in a new or crescent phase, when it should be nearly fully lit or in a half phase.
Consider the picture above. The white dwarf is the light source and the gas giant orbiting it is located on the opposite side of the star from where I am. However, instead of being lit by the WD itself (and would look like a waxing gibbous lunar phase), it is being lit from my perspective of where the WD is compared to it. If I were to avoid the exclusion zone and fly straight to the gas giant, as I'm passing the star, the gas giant would quickly change its phase from crescent to full as I approach it. This makes certain planets within the exclusion zones of stellar remnants unable to ever show their lit face, because it is impossible to go between them to make it lit.
Single Light Sources
Celestial bodies in a system are currently only being lit by only one star at a time. In binary and n-body orbit systems, the orbiting planet will only be lit by the brightest star relative to it. I do really wonder why the choice was made to develop a space game where multiple light sources are a given to happen, but not support it. That it would destroy graphics cards? Well, clearly they were investigating what it looks like ingame, considering there is a hidden system named 'BINARYLIGHTTEST B', but still, it's sad to see a cool complex system of six stars or something on a planet and only have one shadow. Or if a gas giant is orbiting its parent herbig star in 15 minutes or something but is still lit by its nearby higher luminosity secondary star, as per the case here:
And also here, where for some reason the gas giant is lit by the nearby L dwarf:
And stars that have rings don't even light their own rings! Ringed T Tauris and main sequence stars, when acting as planets to a black hole, have their rings completely black, only discernable from the golden hue of the core.
Every Star Casting White Light
With the release of Odyssey, and its tweaks thereafter to its lighting system, the old vivid horizons lighting has been removed in exchange for a consistent white color that all stars now cast (besides for some reason L dwarfs that still have a pink-red tint to their bodies).
This eliminated a very big thing in Elite that distinguished one system from another: Mood. Back then, you could visit a red dwarf and have all the bodies tinted orange. You could visit B types and have the bodies tinted bright blue. O types cast a beautiful blue-purple light. Carbon stars cast a murky yellow-green color that distinguished the system from others. Visiting each star type had a mood!
And whatever happened to limb darkening? Anyway. Technically, these colors are still visible in Odyssey, just very close to the star, before going further out the light turns white. My guess that this was done for landable atmospheres to look the way they are supposed to look, which was not the way to go about it I think. Plus they all look the same* regardless of their actual atmospheric makeup, just what title the game gives the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide-rich? Doesn't matter if it's 89% Oxygen, landing on it, it will still look like it's 100% Carbon Dioxide. Also, some have said that seeing as vivid of colors as in horizons is 'not realistic'. Yeah, well, neither are these colorful nebulae you see in the sky. Nor the perfectly spherical contact binaries. It's a game, It's allowed to have its artistic freedom. Elite uses its freedom in such a way as to keep its realism. I don't care that if in real life all these planets would look white, to me in the game it is boring and an absolute tragedy that we don't have it anymore. The only places it shows up at are if you have close orbits to main seq stars or nearby giants in Odyssey:
Left is light from a Carbon Star, Right is from a M dwarf in a landable silicate vapour atmosphere. It would still work and would still look great, but for some reason the devs decided to mute all the colors and stick with white. If ANYTHING in this post would be changed, I would want horizons lighting back. At least SOME COLOR.
Light of Other Celestial Bodies Disappearing when line of sight obstructed from light source.
I really have no idea why this is still a thing, but when on the night side of a planet, or just in supercruise and fly behind a planet, all light to nearby planets and moons are taken away (to an extent, gas giants just go featureless). This just makes absolutely no sense, and ruins those spooky nighttime shots you would get with the parent planet hanging low in the sky at night, its light reflecting bright off the icy terrain. No. You don't get that.
To close, I know that it would probably be very impractical to fix any of these issues because of spaghetti code, or worse, just by choice. It seems just so simple to include these things, especially nowadays in almost 2025, other space games seem to get it right, light-wise. Of course I refer to Space Engine here, with the possibility for planets to have permanent day at one point in their orbit and regular day-night cycles in others. Don't make me talk about the missing ring shadows on planets, transit shadows on planets, nearby planetshine onto the unlit side of planets that sometimes seems to work, blinking shadows that will give someone a seizure, and more. What do you guys think? Do you agree with me? Or do you think all this nonsense should just be left alone because it will never change anyway?
