Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: Kazan on April 16, 2006, 05:19:06 pm
-
Things i'd like to see in the starfield:
Globular Clusters
Open Clusters
Distant Galaxies
Variance in star size (closer stars)
Star "lanes" (Ala milky way)
-
for me it would be rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up and haveing generalised background images that you can specify diferent features for.
-
Hee and a real easy way to make Freelancer and X3: Reunion run for their money would be backgrounds just as good if not better than theirs, no? ;7
-
You apparently never saw a mission set in front of one of Lightspeed's nebulas ;)
(http://www.duke.edu/~cek6/raynor_ingame1.jpg)
I'm still trying to figure out how you'd make displaying "distant galaxies" any different from displaying normal stars though. Last I checked, the resolution that we were running our monitors at only included a couple of million dots in the screen area.
-
I think that by galaxies, he means things like this (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/AAO/images/icons/aat017_2.jpg) in the background. I have never really cheered at the idea.
And yes, FS nebulas are all nice nowdays... Its the stars that need improwing. Just go look at the sky in a pitch black, clear night. That sight alone is more awsome than a whole bunch candy coloured nebulas. That's what I would like to see in Freespace.
-
The starfield background does a decent job of that IMO:
(http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/screen0147.jpg)
It does need a lot more smaller stars sprinkled in it though. I think just bumping the star limit in FSO beyond the default 2000 (which is way too low) would help a lot with that.
-
The ability to specify 3D coordinates for a mission and have FS2 generate a realistic starfield based on that. :D
-
The ability to specify 3D coordinates for a mission and have FS2 generate a realistic starfield based on that. :D
Sounds good. ;)
-
those nebulae are indeed beautiful - especially the one CP posted and shouts out to lightspeed's awesome abilities.
however it's not only less-pretty to be missing distant galaxies it's unrealistic. Also all the star being of the same apparent magnitude and the same random distribution is unrealistic.
I guess it's something i'll have to work on (this can be done in code OR in nebulae graphics by adding stars to your nebulae (hint hint LS, yes i know you don't like it))
-
Lightspeed is definitely no longer here, so he's not going to get that hint. And I still have absolutely no idea what you think "distant galaxies" would look like in a game where the absolute largest they could be would be a single pixel. Differing magnitudes and colors, sure. Non-uniform distribution, sure. But "distant galaxies" doesn't make any astronomical sense for something with a fixed, relatively low resolution.
-
Lightspeed left while i was away!?!?! WTF!! NOOOO
As for a single pixel? where did you get that idea? You can see the SMC LMC, Andromeda and some others with a low powered telescope from _inside_ the atmosphere - you'd be able to see a couple (say 3-5) easily in open space
-
hi,
to distant galaxies: galaxies they are far away, must look like stars, but i think they have a other color, because they go away or came to our galaxy.
the near galaxy mabe you can it, that they not a star.
but i doesnt think that you can it really good see without any telecope.
but what i really missing is the center of the milky way in the missions.
Mehrpack
-
it takes only a very low power telescope to see andromeda from the atmosphere - and i think the LMC and SMC are naked eye visible in the souther hemisphere
3-5 small objects that are clearly galaxies in the background, and then the starfield having variably sized stars would add a lot of atmosphere
tell me this spiral wouldn't be pretty to be in the background
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0604/M81_M82_schedler_c80.jpg)
-
or as i more had in mind - our closest major galactic neighbor M31 (Andromeda)
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0512/m31_gendler_Nmosaic1.jpg)
-
Apparent Magnitude (smaller = more visible, naked eye threshold on a clear night with low light polution = 6)
Andromeda: 3.4
LMC: 0.9
SMC: 2.7
all of these are naked eye visible INSIDE the atmosphere
-
That spiral wouldn't be pretty in the background. Being that close to a galaxy and yet in a dense starfield is just not what I have in mind for "immersion" as there are very select few places in the known universe where you could get that vista that large.
What's the magnification on those images, Kazan? Please, do tell. More to the point, what fraction of the sky (or the starfield) does our nearest neighbor, andromeda, take up? Is it more than three arc-seconds of the night sky? Because unless it is it simply will not be resolvable at maximum resolution in the freespace engine.
Yes, I know they are not stars. Yes, I know only minor magnification can resolve the difference between a star and a galaxy. But you can't tell that when you're looking at the whole sky unless you know what to look for. My question isn't if they are naked-eye visible. My question is are they distinguishable from a star without equipment?
EDIT: And besides, there is absolutely nothing stopping you or anyone else from taking a galaxy image and making it a background bitmap. Support for that has been there since retail. It's painfully unrealistic to have huge galaxies floating around like that, but whatever floats your boat. Putting them in autogenerated starfields would be silly.
I also don't see what you're talking about with the stars all being the same apparent magnitude. There's quite a bit of variance in the brightness of those starfield pixels in both the shots CP and I posted. Sure, there are no extremely dim stars in there, but that's a consequence of computational power rather than art or even the starfield setup itself.
-
I tend to agree with StratComm about the Galaxies. Maybe it should be made to a poll. But let us not let it take the other thing off our minds.
The starfield. Background nebulas aside, FS2 starfield looks like crap and needs to be improved. Can we all atleast agree on this?
-
when the ****ing hell did i say huge?
do me a favor and NEVER presume something i didn't say
ever
i mean it
that pisses me off ESPECIALLY IN ARGUMENTS
Andromeda is big enogh that it was considered a nebulae before we knew there were other galaxies!
Even under suburban skies you should be able to see it with your naked eyes, as a 1° fuzzy patch of light. If you live in an area with heavy light pollution, try to find it with binoculars (or your finderscope).
http://www.backyard-astro.com/focusonarchive/andromeda/andromeda.html
more accurate:
M31 is 178x63 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m031.html
the LMC is 650x550 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/lmc.html
the SMC is 280 x 160 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/smc.html
so the answer to your question is: Yes, they can be naked eye distinguishable!
putting SMALL background graphics to properly depict our neighbors in the local cluster would add some nice feel - even if they have to be displayed as some SMALL ammount of magnification - which i don't think they would have to be magified
since StrattComm seems to have the pixels<->arcseconds conversion already fixed out he can figure their sizes for me
(IIRC 1 degree = 60 arcmin = 3600 arcseconds, correct?)
-
Anyone reading this thread might want to check this similar thread out:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,38731.0.html
EDIT: Oops. Changed link to point to the topic, not a single message.
-
Kazan calm down. Point here being that ingame the galaxy spiral would be at the size of your lead idicator. For it to be larger, you should be somewhere in the emptyness between galaxies. And FS FTL technology prevents that. Thus they would be only marginally different from big stars ingame.
-
i just wish the blur stars in the background could maybe have a band, like an arm of the milky way, just an area of higher density.
-
Someone tell me the reason Lightspeed left is because he was approached by a company to work his magic for a brand new, DX9 or OpenGL2.0 level, pixel shaded space combat game. :p
-
It does need a lot more smaller stars sprinkled in it though. I think just bumping the star limit in FSO beyond the default 2000 (which is way too low) would help a lot with that.
I never really liked that original starfield I made, so here's the new one:
(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c189/LtCannonfodder/BSG%20Screens/20060119_3.jpg)
Maybe not just what kazan wanted, but lightyears ahead the normal starfield of FS2.
-
appears to be the same as the standard starfield
-
It's a step to the right way. But it still doesn't look like this (http://starmatt.com/gallery/astro/02041612.jpg).
-
star "lanes" is definantly one thing i want it to do
-
appears to be the same as the standard starfield
You know, I could almost take that as an insult :D Trust me, especially ingame it makes a big difference.
It's a step to the right way. But it still doesn't look like this (http://starmatt.com/gallery/astro/02041612.jpg).
I like my starfields subtle, so they won't distract me too much. But each to his own, I guess.
-
I like my starfields subtle, so they won't distract me too much. But each to his own, I guess.
Of course that picture is too crowded and a background like that would make you blind. But seek out your monitor brightness fiddler, and turn it down. As the smaller stars fade out of view, it becomes almost perfect. :yes:
-
It's a step to the right way. But it still doesn't look like this (http://starmatt.com/gallery/astro/02041612.jpg).
To be fair, I don't think BSG looks like that either (it's really close to pitch black most of the time).
-
when the ****ing hell did i say huge?
do me a favor and NEVER presume something i didn't say
ever
i mean it
that pisses me off ESPECIALLY IN ARGUMENTS
Andromeda is big enogh that it was considered a nebulae before we knew there were other galaxies!
Even under suburban skies you should be able to see it with your naked eyes, as a 1° fuzzy patch of light. If you live in an area with heavy light pollution, try to find it with binoculars (or your finderscope).
http://www.backyard-astro.com/focusonarchive/andromeda/andromeda.html
more accurate:
M31 is 178x63 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m031.html
the LMC is 650x550 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/lmc.html
the SMC is 280 x 160 (arc min) http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/smc.html
so the answer to your question is: Yes, they can be naked eye distinguishable!
In a game? At normal resolutions?
I'll admit, I got seconds backwards, meaning to say minutes. Silly conversion and I do know better. But the horizontal angle in FS is supposed to encompass at least what, 45 degrees? More? I can't remember what the default FOV actually is, but that would tell you. At that scale, two arc minutes would be represented by about a pixel, give or take, at most "standard" resolutions. One pixel drops down to closer to 1.5 arcseconds at 1600x1200. At that scale, the argument becomes making them a placeable bitmap, not part of the starfield. But that's not really my point.
I've done a fair bit of stargazing in my day, and while I have used a (relatively powerful) telescope to actually look at Andromeda before, I can certainly say that it's not something that just leaps out of the night sky at you. Even if you know what you're looking for, you can see that it's there and that it's perhaps blurrier than its neighbors, but you can't say "gee, that's really big in comparison" because the part of it that has an apparent magnitude greater than six is not substantially bigger than a star. You can't make out the disk with the naked eye, and you can't see its full extents without masking the residual starlight from around it. It's not like I'm living in a cave here; I'm talking out of personal experience and it just isn't big enough IMHO to put in to a game at all. Now the magellenic clouds, on the other hand, are outside the scope of this discussion. One, they aren't disks, and really are hard to distinguish from an ordinary clump of stars if you don't realize what they are. Two, they aren't highly structured, so clumping a bunch of stars together would do fine. I've never been south of the equator so I don't know what those clouds look like from a normal perspective, but they certainly don't fit in the same argument as "look at this disk, isn't it pretty."
Also of real importance is that Freespace is a space combat game, not an astronomical simulator. If someone playing it is sitting there long enough to go "hey, that's not a star, it's a galaxy" then something is seriously wrong. Unless you want them large enough to be trackable features, in which case they should be done as background bitmaps using the system we already have. Either-or. There is absolutely no reason to spend time that could be better spent elsewhere implimenting something that, when all is said and done, will be either virtually unnoticable or just downright silly.
-
i never said any of the things in my initial post had to be done through coding so do not assume so
all things can be done with backgrounds, but some of them (particularily the starfield things) could be better done in the starfield sprite code
Representations of SMC, LMC, Andromeda and Triangulum would be NICE to have even if yuo have to apply some magnification to Andromeda and Triangulum
it would be PRETTY
however we've been arguing about by far the LEAST important thing on the list and ignoring the important onest hat would have a much greater impact
star distribution and variance
-
Personaly, I want it to be more like the I-War 2 starfeilds, where stars are actualy glowing points of light, rather than pixels, and the stars shine in different colours and intensities.
-
And I quote (thread title):
Star Field Wishlist
Which, when combined with four distinctly code-based alterations (before and after) in your original post, only logically falls code-side too in your original proposition. If you intended it otherwise, it should have been stated explicitly there.
I've never even said anything negative about starfield dispersal (I think it'd be a great idea, really) or even diversity, other than to point out that stars on the background are already more diverse than you're giving them credit for.
-
there is no magnitude diversity
-
Well if this isn't code related it should be in FSUP.
Which is where it's going now.
-
It is actually majority code-related, unfortunately ;)
there is no magnitude diversity
Look at that picture I posted one more time, please, before you go saying something that's patently false. Specifically, see the two stars near the upper right small whisp. There's a noticable - not huge, but noticable - difference between two adjacent stars. Now I'll freely admit that the starfield in that picture is crap. It was a test mission and I never raised the density, and I'm not going to try to hide that. But you cannot say that there is no difference in magnitude when there is actually quite a bit of variety in both the intensity and color of the stars in the engine as of a year ago. I don't know how long it's been like that, but it's not just a bunch of identical points of light.
-
Man, i'll take the starfields that came in 3.6.7vp's over retail starfield.
Galaxies sound cool as hell too:)
I'm sort of split on whether or not galaxies should be in the star field.
After finding out a couple are visible to the eye from the atmosphere.
Go ahead and toss them in:p
But, that spiral galaxy didn't look too nice :(
-
ok there is a very little ammount of magnitude diversity
i want some stars with higher magnitudes and I want banding
-
ok there is a very little ammount of magnitude diversity
i want some stars with higher magnitudes and I want banding
I still am thinking that you have not actually run a semi-recent build. What more diversity do you want?
(http://www.duke.edu/~cek6/screen0013.jpg)
And of course I'm not talking about banding. Please, lets add banding. That would only help visual quality and be noticable in doing so.
-
i'm currently playing latest official release
i'm talking major magnitude diversity - some bright stars like the open cluster Subaru along with general background stars, other open clusters, globular clusters, star lanes, etc
-
well, you know how to code... on with ya!
-
You apparently never saw a mission set in front of one of Lightspeed's nebulas ;)
Just a question .. what mod is that? Inferno?
-
Try playing derelict, those require lightspeeds nebulas.
I think destiny of peace did too.
-
Would it be possible to make the angle/possition of the banding definable and would it always have to be used? Could it be switched off in Fred as, as cool as it would be, sometimes it would be nice for it not to be there.
-
Get a better star field.
-
Just to make things clear, by the "Sometimes it would be nice for it not to be there" I meant banding not the starfield as a whole.
Edit: Though that could be useful too...
-
BTW what is banding?
-
As in bands of stars, like the
Beatles the arms of the Milky way Galaxy
-
You apparently never saw a mission set in front of one of Lightspeed's nebulas ;)
Just a question .. what mod is that? Inferno?
None. That's a ship I had just POFed and needed to test; inferno uses a variant of it but the ship itself is just public release.
-
i've cropped and cleaned those galaxy images i posted, i'll try to stick them into game
they'll be greatly magnified next to what i think they should be probably, but they'll atleast show some proof-of-concept prettiness
-
I still am thinking that you have not actually run a semi-recent build. What more diversity do you want?
And of course I'm not talking about banding. Please, lets add banding. That would only help visual quality and be noticable in doing so.
hi,
yes i know its a game, but the that starfield that can we see on this screen isnt a starfield like we can see in the naturally space.
i know that is not every time the best way to put to much reality in a game, particularly because Freespace is fiction.
but i think only a point starfield and some nebular are not enaugh.
i think we there a little bit more diversity, too.
Mehrpack
-
i know that is not every time the best way to put to much reality in a game, particularly because Freespace is fiction.
but i think only a point starfield and some nebular are not enaugh.
i think we there a little bit more diversity, too.
Merphack there is no real problem trying to extend FS universe for personal use (mods, campaings), though, yes I am careful as you when talking about FS Retail campaing, remember that fiction doesn't is always an attemp to modify or harm reality, but sometimes just extend it, it has already happen that fiction has become reality in many cases.
I bet that warning was originally to prevent the original FS from being too modified, and mainly to stop requests...
Anyways, if you want to make something real you can check here, this is regarding more Nebulas, (I am not too sure but I think the starfield is done quite complex in Celestia, that means drawn point by point with an X,Y,Z location, intensity and some other artifacts)
ExtraSolar Nebulaes: Messier Nebulae:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/messiernebulae.php
ExtraSolar Nebulaes: non-Messier Nebulae:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/nonmessiernebulae.php
ExtraSolar stars (but there maybe something to complement an Starfield)
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/extrasolar_stars.php
Galaxies:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/galaxies.php
Or you may want to check the Homepage of Celestia Motherlode (but there is nothing more there related to Starfield), they do an excellent job in the rendering of the overall know universe :
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/
----------------------------------------------------------------
There is a lot of media to start with here, All of this media (Nebulas/etc.) just need some format conversion in order to be used in the SCP, sometimes you'll see they are using DDS format, anyways without some "average" knowledge about the media you download you won't be able to really define what you're supposed to represent...(some files contains Readme files with accurate data, so you can get an idea on where in the universe the nebula or other media is or should be located).
-
Merphack there is no real problem trying to extend FS universe for personal use (mods, campaings), though, yes I am careful as you when talking about FS Retail campaing, remember that fiction doesn't is always an attemp to modify or harm reality, but sometimes just extend it, it has already happen that fiction has become reality in many cases.
I bet that warning was originally to prevent the original FS from being too modified, and mainly to stop requests...
[...]
hi,
yes for personal use modify isnt the problem, but i think this discussion is more about a general modify.
and i think that what i had write, doesnt show that what i had really mean.
i mean the universum its itself fictional, so many things that work there doesnt work in reallife.
so i will say, you doesnt complettly transfused the real to a game.
its more abstract.
and the next point is, how much realistic is good for a game?
but i think more generally diversity for the starfield is a good one.
maybe its possible to add a system that you show you star constellation and some visible galaxy in the right possition.
i hope thats explain is better.
Mehrpack
-
Making the starfield more realistic, and making it look prettier are the same thing here. Because real stars happen to look much better than FS dotfield. So the issue is not making the game more realistic, but to improve the eye candy.
And no, Kazan. The galaxy spirals should not be in the background because I don't think they look good there. Realistic or not.
-
tell me the images i posted are not pretty
imagine scaled down versions of those in the background
not pretty my posterior
-
I don't think they'd be pretty. I really don't. That's no universal truth, I just honestly don't personally think they'd fit.
-
well i'll have to hack them into a mission later
-
I want to see the following...
Pulsars
Quasars
Supernova remnants
Protostars and planetary disks
-
tell me the images i posted are not pretty
imagine scaled down versions of those in the background
not pretty my posterior
They are in a "ooh the universe and science" sort of way but not for a sci-fi shoot em up. But...so long as the tools are there...you should be able to toss them up on a skybox or something like that and giver er a go. Maybe they will turn out better than I expect them to.
-
Thing is, if you were close enough to Andromeda for it to be that large in the sky without magnification, then there would be far fewer stars in your immediate location, and the Milky Way would be a comparatively dim smudge behind you ;)
-
Pulsars might be cool, if not really distracting. ;)
-
Thing is, if you were close enough to Andromeda for it to be that large in the sky without magnification, then there would be far fewer stars in your immediate location, and the Milky Way would be a comparatively dim smudge behind you ;)
Unless you're around a coulple billion years from now...
-
Thing is, if you were close enough to Andromeda for it to be that large in the sky without magnification, then there would be far fewer stars in your immediate location, and the Milky Way would be a comparatively dim smudge behind you ;)
did you see the arcminute sizes i post?
-
Thing is, if you were close enough to Andromeda for it to be that large in the sky without magnification, then there would be far fewer stars in your immediate location, and the Milky Way would be a comparatively dim smudge behind you ;)
This is true....if it were to be really important on the screen...you'd likely be very close to that galaxy and the Mily Way would be far behind. But it is visible, to the naked eye, on Earth, if you know what your looking for...so it is possible to see it.
-
Or you could go out on a clear night and see just how big and noticable that spot actually is to the untrained eye. I still stand by my statement that it's not something I would want to see in a game because no matter how you do it you'll wind up emphesizing it more than you'd see in real life.
-
I still stand by my statement that it's not something I would want to see in a game because no matter how you do it you'll wind up emphesizing it more than you'd see in real life. inside the atmosphere of earth
fixed that for you
-
I still stand by my statement that it's not something I would want to see in a game because no matter how you do it you'll wind up emphesizing it more than you'd see in real life. inside the atmosphere of earth
fixed that for you
M31 spans about 6 times the diameter of the full moon in the sky. On a clear night you can see the bright central bulge with the naked eye. It looks like a little blurry spot, not much bigger than Mars or Venus. Through binoculars it looks like a little bigger blurry spot.
Going outisde of the atmosphere might give you a clearer picture, but you'll never see it like in the telescope with your own eyes. But then again, you wouldn't see any nebulas either, so the discussion is somewhat redundant.
More on-topic: If the starfield would be improved, I'd like too see the milky way as a band of higher star density with more size/colour variation than the current system.
(http://www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/files/1125438863-Lightning%20strike%20milky%20way%20image.jpg)
-
6 full moons eh? :P not that large :D
[actually larger than i thought]
-
Well, this always comes to the question of coolness versus realism. The backgrounds currently in use (lightspeeds cool ones and such) are impossible. Regardless, they are cool. But.
I think that it would be very much possible to create very good-looking starboxes by using just stars, and planets of course if one happened to be conveniently nearby. For example the Sol system simply doesn't have any colorful nebulae around it, but the sky with stars is cool in itself. Of course you would have to have the Milky Way visible. Add to that differently colured and sized nearest stars (red Betelgeuze and orange Arcturus, bright Sirius and blue Vega and Regulus... you name it. Most star systems would be like this, quite similar in starfield itself. Planets should take a greater role in backgrounds IMO. Everything would be centered around them anyways in normal systems.
But then there could (and probably are, too) some star systems that would offer really spectacular views. Mostly I'm talking about systems inside or next to star clusters. Having a star cluster near you could fill the whole sky with relatively bright stars and gas illuminated by the stars. For example, take a look at the Pleiades, or M13 cluster at Hercules constellation:
M45 Pleiades Open Cluster
(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/pleiades_gendler_big_shrink.jpg)
M13 Hercules Cluster
(http://users.tkk.fi/~lmiettun/Kuvat/M13_shrink.jpg)
Even in the wildest backrounds we haven't yet had anything like these IMO. Of course the gas would not be quite dense - locally the space is practically just as transparent as in solar system. But in the long run, being inside a nebule would definitely create a subtle shade of color to background darkness. The colour of a nebula is defined by the color of the star that illuminates it.
It would be very interesting background in a mission inside a spherical cluster...
Galaxies and nebulae would not be nearly so impressive as these. Of course, if GTVA discovers intergalactic subspace travel, there could be some missions situated in some more dense cluster of galaxies... something like this:
Abell 1689 Galaxy Cluster
(http://www.spacedaily.com/images/galaxy-cluster-abell1689-desk-1280.jpg)
Clusters FTW!
-
I still stand by my statement that it's not something I would want to see in a game because no matter how you do it you'll wind up emphesizing it more than you'd see in real life. inside the atmosphere of earth
fixed that for you
No, I was correct in my statement. The bright spot that you would see on a (pixel-based) background, the central bulge of Andromeda, is not noticibly larger than a planet at 2/3 AU which isn't worth adding in either. Sure, the whole feature is pretty large. But most of the feature takes magnification and a trained eye to make out (which has been my point from post 1). You won't get either of those things in a game, because limitations of a discrete pixel size and the fact that it's a game (and you should be moving at all times) makes noticing something not resoundingly different from the background prohibitively unlikely. Unless, of course, the bright portion of that feature is large enough to notice easily, in which you should be able to easily point out Andromeda in one of the pictures of Earth from the moon, or space from the shuttle, or something like that. Because I know you haven't been in space to have a better idea of what it 'should' look like.
-
we've spent the most time on the lowest priority item on the list - features like M45 which are _MUCH_ more apparent and would add some beauty
variation in star apparent magnitude in the levels displayed in the M45 image is really the single biggest thing
we can then add clusters and then ry and get some banding
-
We're debating the "lowest priority" item because it's the only thing to really contest. (I'm curious how you plan to make the starfield more diverse than it currently is but that's a relatively minor thing; the point being that diversity isn't something to argue over other than how painfully obvious it is.) If you want to have correct constallations and features as you would see them from earth, I firmly believe you should be using a skybox for 100% of your background.
well, you know how to code... on with ya!
This sums up the rest of this thread nicely. There's no point to keep debating it if you've already got your mind made up over what you want to see, unless you're trying to convince someone else to do it for you.
-
But then again, you wouldn't see any nebulas either, so the discussion is somewhat redundant.
Unless you were nearby said nebula....
-
I've always liked space black and scary. The Great Void, if you will.
Anywho, Celestia is a great tool, not only for astronomers with a bad case of short term memory, but also good for illustrating what space looks like, with diffrent magnitudes, galaxies, nebulas, comet trails, fuzzy stars, disc stars etc..
Get the 2 million stars db from Motherlode, turn on galaxies and nebulas, set the mag limit to something mid. 12, and you'll have yourself a good lookin' universe. :)
-
Personally
If anyone gets this to work in fs2
That'd be really sweet
It'd look amazing, along with the already amazing game :)
It wouldn't not fit if done properly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Freespace2Open_Screen01.jpg
This here is sort of a good example of what i thought is a populated starfield with nebulae and other stuff
It'd be even better with actual star clusters and stuff :)
-
You really don't need to start a new paragraph for every sentence. :p
-
Sorry :lol:
Just :lol:
My :lol:
Format :lol:
-
Sorry :lol:
Just :lol:
My :lol:
Format :lol:
That's bold, as I'm pretty sure Microsoft holds the patent on annoying formats(wmv).
-
Sorry :lol:
Just :lol:
My :lol:
Format :lol:
Problem is that it means I ignore pretty much half of what you say. It's simply too much effort to read it that way.
-
That's more laughy smileys than ought to be allowed on a single page of text....
-
That's more laughy smileys than ought to be allowed on a single page of text....
That's more laughy smileys than ought to be allowed in 4 lines of text....
-
The reason i do it like this is so that it's like easier to read :)
It's easy because the sentence is just one line down
I think of the forum as reading people's replies as opposed to a paragraphed novel :p
-
Well see, most of us actually prefer to read paragraphs over sentences, or worse yet sentence fragments. The use of proper english spelling and grammar is something that's rather ingrained on most of us native speakers, particularly on a board where most of the members are the products of better-than-average education. You're much more likely to be taken seriously if you post things in the "normal" way because that's how most of us prefer to read and reply.
-
Back to the Starfield wishlist says I!
-
i dont care as long as its really pretty
go to it.
-
i dont care as long as its really pretty
go to it.
:nod: :yes:
-
I agree we could make it look better, but I don't think the solution is to add a bunch of floating galaxies and objects around, but to improve the rendering and appearance of stars. This is reminding me of the bloom/shader discussion going on in the 3D Warp thread, another reason to have programmable shaders.