[m2258734a]

Hey everyone,
       
   IMO, one of the nicest features in any space game is the amount of artistic detail and beauty that is placed into backgrounds. The original Freespace 2 had its nebulae and the star of the system you were in, but it never captured the awe that we see in today's games. With SCP, the nebulae are more beautiful than ever, and the stars have increased in the level of intensity and detail, but I was wondering if I could propose a few ideas.

   1. As far as nebulae go, I like the ones we have now. However, is it possible to add more variation? To clarify, instead of seeing a red and blue nebula in this mission, and then a red and purple one in the next mission, I was thinking more on the lines of creating global star clusters, galaxies, or maybe even show the galactic plane of the Milky Way: different features that would glorify the scenery and enhance the beauty of the game.

   2. The stars look very nice, but from what I have seen in other games, I wonder if more could be done to make the stars look more like stars. I wish I could explain what I mean, but maybe pictures from Freelancer would convey my thoughts a little better:



These images make the stars look radiant and intense, adding nice halo effects caused by particles in space which act like lenses, and glares from viewing the star directly. Adding these effects in Freespace would be a nice feature.

  3. This last feature will probably sound like nitpicking to you all, but it's something that has been bothering me regarding the stars. As you all know the stars of Freespace are indeed real, except for Vasuda unless someone has evidence otherwise, but I think it would be nice to match the stars of Freespace with their real-life counterparts. Since I do not have a list of the stars used in each mission, I basically restarted both FSPort 3.0 and Freespace 2 campaigns to find out.
      From the main Freespace 1 campaign, I have ran through the first three training missions, one advanced training mission, and four main missions, and so far I have encountered the stars Betelgeuse and Antares. Both are depicted as small white stars, when in reality, both are red type M supergiants. With Freespace 2, I have gone through 3 missions... all in Deneb. Again, Deneb is depicted as a large orange giant star when it is actually a type A white supergiant. At least large size was featured.
 
      I would be glad to continue completing this list for anyone who is willing to make a commitment to my idea, if not, I understand. I also asked about a new supernova for the last mission a few times, but lol, I don't think my idea received many fans. I know that any of these features may cause a decrease in frame rate, especially an epic supernova during the final mission, but these are only proposals I would like everyone to hear. I love astronomy, hell, my name might as well be a type of star as one of you has said in the past, so that is one of the main reasons why I posted this topic. But the number one reason is that I appreciate what everyone has done for this game, all of the hard work that was put into it, and I would like to help to make it better. So what do you all think? 

[Goober5000]

Some star information is in the Wiki.  For instance:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Capella

If you have more information, feel free to add it.

As for putting more SCP features in, generally the best way to do that is to make some new artwork first and then blackmail the SCP into supporting it.   IIRC that's more or less how the mediaVPs developed.

[Shade]

1&2) Not really an SCP matter, it's a media matter. Freespace 2 will display whatever background one chooses to provide it with, and improved nebulae, planets and stars have already been made which are far superior to what you see in retail FS2. In addition, there's SCP support for full skyboxes which can also incorporate any of those things. Lightspeed's nebulae are a prominent example of such a media improvement.

3) Vasuda is supposedly real enough, it's just the Vasudan name for it and not ours. As for the stars not matching, well, it goes even deeper than you've found so far... some of them are binary systems and what not in reality while they are not in the game. But I guess Volition just never expected anyone to actually care enough to check regardless, you can always fix it with little effort yourself so it isn't an SCP matter either, but a FREDding matter.

[Goober5000]

A few years ago we took an informal poll and Beta Hydri won out among various other contenders.  It's my preferred star too... I guess Beta Hydri just "sounds right".  Coincidentally, a fan-fiction story used that very star system a few years even earlier than that.

EDIT: Hydrii -> Hydri

[m2258734a]

I understand, and that's pretty interesting ^. When I posted this topic, I meant for this to be a "global" enhancement for everyone to enjoy, not just me. Shade, when I was referring to the nebulae of Freespace, I was talking about the new and improved features that had been added. I like what has been done to make Freespace look better, in this case in terms of the stars and nebulae, but I think more variety in terms of different backgrounds would give the game more awe. I wish I had the skill and talent to reproduce galaxies, supernova remnents, and star clusters myself so that way I won't be over here shouting advise from the sidelines while the team does the work, do you know what I mean? These ideas apply to the stars as well. I have seen what they look like now, and while they are much better than retail, I do not think they look as good as the pictures that I provided earlier, IMO. As for the third comment, lol, that is just me being a stargazer. I like look at the stars during my spare time, so I have grown familiar to constellations and proper star names.

Anyways, this was only a feature request to further enhance the beauty of the game, and I just wanted to know if anyone was interested. I would be glad to supply information regarding the proper stellar classification of a star, including the type and size, and the mission it is in. I can also supply deep space images as a foundation for anyone if they are willing to add more background features. I also provided a supernova animation in another thread if anyone was willing to update the final explosion of the game to something more epic...https://webspace.utexas.edu/maa945/www/hst15_supernova.mpeg Credit to NASA.

Thanks for the replies and help Goober and Shade, and I would be glad to provide information of the stars in the Wiki. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this, lol.

[Goober5000]

Found the links.
http://www.angelfire.com/games2/fsarchive/GWch1.html
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,16610.0.html

[Backslash]

These ideas sound a lot like what Lightspeed was working on long ago, templates for each star system.  http://www.penguinbomb.com/lightspeed/.  He had a few finished templates and a lot of ideas for the rest.  You should check out his "Not a Real Release" of nebulae.

While it's not NEW new content, it looks way better than the retail nebulae, and his ideas for standardizing star systems and making them unique are very good.  There's a lot more to be done.  (look at the readme for the intended templates, including sun color.)  Me, I am also not artistic enough to make new backgrounds, but here we have a lot of the artwork done for us  

m2258734a, you want to take this on?  It's been on a back burner of my head for a long time... I WANT to do this standardized template thing, but don't have the time or motivation to do it properly.  Sounds like you'd enjoy messing around with it.

[m2258734a]

To tell you the truth I would love to, but I am afraid that I lack the experience and skill to be able to produce images on the computer as Lightspeed did with his work. I am just here presenting ideas in hopes that someone might be willing to tackle them. I have a good sense of the kind of environment I would like to see, a sense that represents the feeling of vastness and depth, as well as beauty and mystery every mission. But all I can do now is express my thoughts through communication in hopes that someone else can see what I see, you know? You pretty much nailed what I was thinking head on, templetes for each system that would provide variation to the ambience of the game, to make it feel like I was not in the same place. I have nice images of deep space that could be used for such a situation, and I provided the Freelancer images of stars that really convey a sense of radiance and brightness. I would be willing to help by providing such images and information on stars if anyone is interested. Hey, thanks for Lightspeed's website, I have been trying to find that site for some time now. 

[bfobar]

the only thing that really bothers me is the option for a green star. There are no green stars in space. But maybe I'll start playing around with this too. I have some astronomy knowledge I could put to use.

[Backslash]

I know what you mean about the skill needed for producing the images... no way can I make new stuff even a tenth of his quality.  But I was unclear -- that doesn't matter in this case:  we have some images already made (by him), and what's better, is they are dynamic (mix and match with many different combinations).  All we have to do is play around with them, mix up, choose which ones look good together and match the template.  Then position them in an example mission and say "This is Ross 128" "This is Deneb" "This is Betelgeuse" etc.  That's it!

I'm messing around with FRED learning more about how to position them in the sky (for the example mission template)... what I need is ideas of which to put together, and where (generally).  Like "This system should have a small yellow sun.  A13-whisp should go nearly directly opposite the sun, with A2 main connected to it to the left and A8-whisp rotated to the right and connected to the bottom."  [I just totally made that up, but I hope you get the idea]

Also, read the readme (NaRR_Nebulae.txt) and see if his templates match your real-life information... perhaps we adjust things here and there.

Sure it'd be nice to add even newer images of deep space and stuff, but I guess we have to leave that to someone else... 

[CaptJosh]

No green stars? What "astronomer" told you that? Last I heard, stellar color is merely a matter of temperature. Nothing at all precludes a star from being a temperature between yellow and blue.

[Shade]

It's actually the emission spectrum for the elements in the stars that determines their colour. The temperature simply determines which emission lines are most prevalent. For hydrogen, for instance, there are emission lines in violet, blue, cyan and a good chunk in red, so that's what you have to work with in most stars.

[Flipside]

Quite a lot can be done with Lens Flares, which are supported by the SCP, and have been so for a while, it's just there are die-hard Anti-Flarers about who don't like the idea.

And as far as Green-Spectrum stars are concerned, it's correct that there are no true green stars, however, if you take Beta Librae as an example, when compared to the stars around it, it look green, but it's an optical illusion. The same can be said of Antares' binary companion, it's actually blue, but the eye adjusts itself for the intense redness of the main star, and so the companion looks green to the naked eye.

[m2258734a]

This is a very interesting topic, green stars and all.

Yes, there are stars that do in fact emit their peak radiation on the wavelength and frequency of green, and even violet as I think there is a violet star used for the game too. But we never see green stars or violet stars. The peak radiation is not the only form of radiation a star emits, so while a star maybe classified as a "green" star, it is emitting combinations of red and blue light as well. Since our eyes are sensitive to specific colors of the spectrum, this combination of red and blue appears to us as yellowish white. This color overwhelms whatever we see from the green wavelengths emitted, and so the star appears yellow. This same idea can be applied to violet stars, because they also emit a large combination of blue light besides violet, and this blue light is what we detect.
      As far as having green stars in-game, it would be possible as stated by Flipside for there to be a green star caused by a large difference in contrast by neighboring stars. Very very interesting stuff. 

I think Lens Flares would be a plus to this game; I do not know the reasons against lens flares, so there is no convincing for me to do.    Do you know why people are against it aside from realism?

I'll check out the readme Backslash, thanks.

[StratComm]

Because they are TEH LENZ FLARES!!!111

In all seriousness, I don't like them because I find them to be an overused effect.  Space is fascinating in it's own right, we don't need totally artificial special effects to surrealize it for us.

Oh, and while we would never percieve a green star (there's no stopping you from changing the bitmap to yellow, by the way) there are certainly circumstances in a mission where you may want a green lightsource.  In particular, LS made that green nebula set; I'd expect it to provide a lot of green light as it's a fairly bright object, so the perfect solution is to drop a small green sun on top of it.

[bfobar]

No green stars? What "astronomer" told you that? Last I heard, stellar color is merely a matter of temperature. Nothing at all precludes a star from being a temperature between yellow and blue.

This is why you don't see green. When the center of a star's blackbody emission spectrum is at a wavelength we see as green, It look white because the emission spectrum is so wide that the red and blue inputs at the edges of your vision are basically the same intensity as the center so the star looks entirely white. The sun looks yellow not because it emits in yellow, but because it's cooler than a pure white star so there's a relative absence in blue. Hot blue stars O class stars actually have their emission peak in ultra violet. you see blue because the blue end of the visible spectrum is relatively brighter than the red light they emit. I could go on all day, I am an astronomer.

It's actually the emission spectrum for the elements in the stars that determines their colour. The temperature simply determines which emission lines are most prevalent. For hydrogen, for instance, there are emission lines in violet, blue, cyan and a good chunk in red, so that's what you have to work with in most stars.

Actually, this isn't entirely correct. Stars emit as a temperature dependent blackbody. They have absorbtion lines in their cool photospheres, where you will see dark lines at the emission wavelength of the balmer series of hydrogen that you refer to. The exception to this is that very hot B and O class stars actually do have an emission spike for their HeII and HeIII lines, which originate from strongly ionized Helium below the photosphere.

Green in nebulae does occured from excited Oxygen spectral emissions. The brightest I have seen have been from planetary nebulae where the amount of hydrogen (which typically emits in red) is low because the star emitting the nebula has burned most of it.  The mass lost from the star to the nebula is enriched in oxygen and carbon, and glows a nice shade of green when heated by the exposed core of the dying star. I see no reason to change the bitmap, using a 0.1 sized green sun in a green nebula as a light source is fine. I'm just talking about a big ol green sun just sitting there in space. not right. I don't like the lens flares either really, but the smooth transition of color to central white glare in those images looks better than the FS2 white pie plate with a color border suns.

I know what you mean about the skill needed for producing the images... no way can I make new stuff even a tenth of his quality.  But I was unclear -- that doesn't matter in this case:  we have some images already made (by him), and what's better, is they are dynamic (mix and match with many different combinations).  All we have to do is play around with them, mix up, choose which ones look good together and match the template.  Then position them in an example mission and say "This is Ross 128" "This is Deneb" "This is Betelgeuse" etc.  That's it!

I'm messing around with FRED learning more about how to position them in the sky (for the example mission template)... what I need is ideas of which to put together, and where (generally).  Like "This system should have a small yellow sun.  A13-whisp should go nearly directly opposite the sun, with A2 main connected to it to the left and A8-whisp rotated to the right and connected to the bottom."  [I just totally made that up, but I hope you get the idea]

All you could really do here is nebulas though. Depending on the location and distance of your mission from the sun (basically, whether you're at venus or pluto), the sun will be differently sized or in a different location with respect to the background nebulas and star clusters or whatever.  Planets would be different from mission to mission in the background too, depending on what time and respectively where the mission occurs.

Edit: Oh, I see most of this has been said already.

[bfobar]

oops.

[m2258734a]

Nice explanation^ 

Yeah, so this week I have been having midterms so I haven't been able to say much. I will try to check out the templates as soon as possible, most likely during Spring Break.

Yeah, lens flares have been an overused artificial effect for many games, but features like those have been a trademark that make space simulations the way they are. To clarify, I am not sure if any space simulation creator has actually been in space before. The idea of space is open to any one of these creators to make it as detailed, dynamic, and mysterious as possible: a creation of their interpretation of space. Not only that, these games are made to be fun and if realism is focused on too much, well, then you get a pretty dull and boring game.

Freespace is the best space sim that I have ever played, and it never used lens flares at all. IMO, there are very few games that even compete with it. But Freespace was never all about detailed backgrounds, dynamic lighting, and so on. But based on the improvements that have been made so far, I do not see why lens flares have been rejected. While I agree that space is fascinating in its own right, we might as well take out sound, fiery explosions with bright blue shockwaves, and things of that nature, because that adds surrealism as well. I don't know, I just don't think that because of surrealism lens flares should not be considered.

If it is never added in the future, I understand, but I think it should be something to be considered. Personally, I think if more detail and variation to ambience was added, this would make Freespace more beautiful than it already is.

[Flipside]

They're already available

I think Goob or Phreak coded them in ages ago, Search doesn't work, I'll try the Wiki and see if that says anything, one sec....

Edit : Damn! Not there...

I'll keep looking....

[jr2]

bfobar

Depending on the location and distance of your mission from the sun (basically, whether you're at venus or pluto), the sun will be differently sized or in a different location with respect to the background nebulas and star clusters or whatever.  Planets would be different from mission to mission in the background too, depending on what time and respectively where the mission occurs.

Why not just alter SCP so that when you specify the location of a star in FRED, you can also set a scale of size, which also affects the brightness.  eg, Sun A is at x,y,z scale .79 (79%); Planet B is at x,y,z scale 1.23 (123%).  Of course you'd have some problems with over-stretching some planets, etc. but I think that could be fixed by using different images, eg  have a maximum scaling that a planet can do over 100%, if you need it bigger than the scale limit, use a bigger image of the same planet.

PS: Just what is a lens flare?  I thought they were the whiteout caused by looking at a sun (which happens in FS retail too, I believe).  Oh, BTW, If lens flares are the color spread caused when looking at a star / sun as in
then I think there's a very scientific explanation (ok, well, maybe, I'm not sure...)
I was reading about a protective helmet device that protects pilots against blinding laser attacks (in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics, I think)... what it uses is micro fine flaps in the helmet that are sensitive to light; somehow bright light makes electrical charge on the flaps, which causes them to close in a micro-second.  Also, I've seen auto-darkening sunglasses advertised, they probably use something much less fantastic.  I imagine that in space you'd want to have UV light filtering, and that you'd not want to loose your vision every time you looked at a star that was close enough.  Either the cockpit or the helmet probably have those darkening micro-flaps, which probably don't block all of the light, just enough to prevent the sun from blinding you.  So, the light would hit the flaps and probably cause the glowing edge effect seen in the pic above... if that explaination isn't good enough, tweak it so it is!!