[gavilatius]

how big can they be?

can they get big enough to substitute a planet or moon?

how many ships can be on the field at one time?

[General Battuta]

Ships can get pretty big. Current objects limit is 400 ships. But no good mission will ever use that many at once (with exceptions for very talented designers.)

[gavilatius]

100 your ships 300 enemies... or 400 capital ships... lets see how your pc can take it

[Spoon]

Big enough?

[Qent]

can they get big enough to substitute a planet or moon?

I think that there are various problems with modeling planets.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, you should just use a skybox for that.

[Akalabeth Angel]

how big can they be?

can they get big enough to substitute a planet or moon?

how many ships can be on the field at one time?

People have used models for planets but there seems to be some dislike of them in recent years.

See Inferno: Release 1 and . . .  I think the OTT model dump for some planet models.

[The E]

The problem with planet models is that they usually don't look nowhere near as good as a proper skybox. And then there's the fact that you can collide with them, which usually ends with the planet spewing the same damage particles that capships spew when you collide with them....

[Commander Zane]

With Inferno's Earth it has no collisions, you just fly through it.
Check my screens on the Celebration of FreeSpace thread for one such image.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The problem with planet models is that they usually don't look nowhere near as good as a proper skybox. And then there's the fact that you can collide with them, which usually ends with the planet spewing the same damage particles that capships spew when you collide with them....

the problem in that scenario is not the planet it's the mission . . . or barring that the player.

[General Battuta]

Well, and the fact that they just look ugly.

[Sushi]

Cardinal Spear has some planet models.

They look OK, but a bit weird because of the specular/environment mapping on them.

Skybox is definitely the way to go, IMHO.

[Ziame]

Planet models? All which I saw in FreeSpace had common problems:
1) too small (seriously wtf)
2) you can fly/collide with them
3) generally not fun.

eg.:
Herra's Skybox>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> any Earth model