[IceFire]

Lens flares would be great (the circle thingys).  And so would invisible lighting (whithout glow,flare, or anything except for the casting of a colored light).  And so would ND stuff in D3D as Venom wants.  Or lightmaps

[Vasudan Admiral]

for the star thing try combining a really small star with a black .pcx

[TheVirtu]

Yes, I'd like to know how they did that in Dante's Ascension, I have an idea with it my campaign sometime

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Unkown Target
we might be living in a 5D universe.

Length, breadth, height, time and stupidity :wink:


Anyway, on topic; wouldn't ambient light look strange? Surely the light being in nebulae is a result of reflection and dispersal of light from stars in the nebulae? Just guessing though since I haven't read up on this kind of stuff.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Maeglamor


Length, breadth, height, time and stupidity :wink:


Anyway, on topic; wouldn't ambient light look strange? Surely the light being in nebulae is a result of reflection and dispersal of light from stars in the nebulae? Just guessing though since I haven't read up on this kind of stuff.

Who cares?  Seriously, there's enough stars out there for some light, not to mention your own ships running lights, or any matter of 'stuff' you can make up to justify it..... a planet coated in fluorescent algae, for example

[Martinus]

Ooooohhh! There's a thought, complete blackness except for what your fighter's lights illuminate, you'd have to fly mostly by radar but it would look fantastic. Reminds me of bits of 'Event Horizon'.

You could put forward facing lights on the fighter, sorta like headlights on a car, it would be very atmospheric and claustrophobic.

[CptWhite]

its easy to make a mission without a star, use a stars.tbl with an entry that does have the entry in the tbl you distribute with your mod, the result is no star at all just ambient lighting, the only thign you cant do is simulate nebula glow  or light sources from other objects without the "facing the sun" glow thing.....the option to disable this is needed

[Vasudan Admiral]

i like the idea of no light, so make a no sun option, like being in deep space, and only have bobbous running lights on. now THAT would be cool

[penguin]

(maybe a little off-topic)  How dark is space?  Assume we're still in the galaxy, halfway between two stars.  How much light would there be?  Could you see a fighter at 1km?

[TheVirtu]

A kilometer? Hahahah, I wonder if you could even see a few feet

[Martinus]

Since there is realitively little distortion in space (no atmosphere, low concentrations of dust particles) I'd say anything that's refelcting sufficent light would be visible over quite long distances. The amount of light would obviously be a deciding factor.

[penguin]

Could the human eye adjust to this low lighting?  Of course you'd have to turn your instrument lights and HUD down REALLY low or you'd be blinded by them...
 
And even if you couldn't see a fighter at 1km you could probably see the thrusters and lasers, which would look much brighter in the absence of other "light pollution."  So ships laying in wait could be almost invisible, but ones in flight or in combat wouldn't be.  Hmm...

They would still appear on sensors, though, unless there's a good reason for them not to...

[##UnknownPlayer##]

This blends in with the idea of having a HUD projection of the wireframe of a ship to show enhanced imaging.

The thing is, if you were outside of the galaxy the result I would expect is that with no light around you you'd find that you'd see a whole lot of 'stars' that were actually other galaxies. It'd be the same as when you go out into the bush camping away from all artificial light and look up - its an amazing sky.