[m2258734a]

if you're talking about the lens flare I artificially made in one of my pictures (Antares I believe), then no. I only slapped that on there to experiment, but I think it would be awesome to have lens flares like that in-game. DaBrain's effects look awesome and they will be included in the next set of VPs, but I don't see an actual lens flare like the one I made in that picture (unless my eyes are deceiving me).

I'm working on the Type III giant stars, and I have finished Capella not to long ago...

[Mobius]

Beta Cygni is used in SthCrs as well. Thanks!

[m2258734a]

You're very welcome 



From left to right: Tania Australis, Etamin (Gamma Draconis), Aldebaran, Dubhe, Gienah Cygni, Kaus Borealis, and Capella (approximately 10 solar radii in size).

Tania Australis:
A spectral class M giant, Tania Australis A has an unresolved companion star a mere 1.5 AU away. Without doing any calculations we already know that this companion would appear very close to Tania Australis A, as bright as the Sun would appear from Earth or more. Also, we already know that from Tania Australis B, its red giant companion would appear humongous in the sky... almost 22 times the angular diameter of the Sun.

Aldebaran:
Also a double star, Aldebaran consists of a K class giant and an M class dwarf. The red dwarf is several hundred AU from Aldebaran A, so it would probably appear nearly 200 brighter than Sirius from our night sky. From the red dwarf on the other hand, Aldebaran A would appear about 23 times smaller than the angular diameter of the Sun from Earth, but would have an apparent brightness 1/582 times that of the Sun (remember, the Sun is over 400,000 brighter than a full Moon, so Aldebaran A is still very bright regardless of this fraction).

Dubhe:
A quadruple star system, Dubhe is made up of three components. Dubhe A is the giant of the system, and orbiting about 23 AU is component B. This main sequence star would appear 3% as bright as the Sun. Even further out at 8000 AU lies component C, a binary itself. The combined apparent brightness of the binary would appear nearly 350 times brighter than Sirius from our night sky as viewed from the giant.

Gienah Cygni:
Composed of an M class dwarf and K class giant, Gienah Cygni is the third brightest star in the constellation Cygnus. The stars are separated by nearly 1700 AU. At this distance, the red dwarf would appear as bright as Jupiter from Gienah Cygni A, and Gienah Cygni A would appear brighter than 2 full Moons as viewed from Gienah Cygni B.

Capella:
Last is the most famous spectroscopic binary in the FS universe. It is composed of a pair of red dwarfs orbiting a pair of G class giants. The giants are separated by ~2/3 AU, so Capella B would be positioned fairly close to its slightly larger companion. In fact, from the surface of Capella A, Capella B would appear nearly 6.5 times larger than the angular diameter of the Sun. From the surface of Capella B, Capella A would appear 8 times larger than the angular diameter of the Sun. At nearly one light year away lie the pair of red dwarfs. Together, the red dwarfs would appear as bright stars in the skybox. This is due to the extreme distance between the two pairs, and due to the fact that red dwarfs are not very luminous. From the red dwarfs' perspective, the giant pair will appear nearly 3% as bright as a full Moon.

Here are the Type III giants of FS:

[Link disabled: revised and resized version available on page 8]

RGB Color Values:

Tania Australis A: 255 203 132

Tania Australis B: 248 247 255

Etamin (Gamma Draconis): 255 204 138

Aldebaran A: 255 204 138

Aldebaran B: 255 196 131

Dubhe A: 255 227 190

Dubhe B: 224 229 255

Dubhe Ca: 255 247 252

Dubhe Cb: 255 247 252

Gienah Cygni A: 255 227 190

Gienah Cygni B: 255 206 129

Kaus Borealis: 255 223 181

Capella A: 255 231 199

Capella B: 255 242 233

Capella C: 255 204 142

Capella D: 255 204 111

[TrashMan]

Why give us only the stars? I suggest giving the community the complete background settings (either by several empty FRED mission or jsut the copy/paste of the background entry) to use. They are awensome!

[Admiral Nelson]

I will be providing such a package (stars + LS Nebulae) once he is done.

[neoterran]

Umm, how many stars are there left at this point 

[m2258734a]

Well.... taking into account multiple star systems and the fantasy systems in the FS universe and their companions, I have about 50 left.
*drops suddenly to the floor*

*gets back up*
What might help is that while I am going through the subgiants at this moment, you all can give me ideas on what real stars I can use as a foundation for a particular star system; this would be similar to how you all decided that Beta Hydri would be the best representative of Vasuda. I would like to share some ideas:

For the Shivan binary system in Knossos.... I got that covered (I want to surprise you all and hopefully it works).

For Ribos, for absolutely no reason a cool red dwarf comes to mind, but not your typical spectral class M main sequence star. If Ribos is supposed to support life, than this is probably not a good idea as far as realism is concerned (unless the planets are really close to their parent star). I would like to make Ribos a spectral class L red dwarf. This star would emit mainly in the infrared and would appear very red in color, more so than any other star in the FS universe.

For Delphi, Ikeya, Laramis, Talania, and the Nebula system in FS2... I have not had the time to decide. I would like to implement special types of stars for these fantasy systems, similar to what I would like to do for the Shivan binary and Ribos. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[Admiral Nelson]

Sirius, the unknown binary system, and the nebula star (if it is desired to fix this) are the ones not yet posted for FS2.

Lightspeed's ideas on the fantasy systems are below, which are what I have used for these systems in a few places:

Code: [Select]

System   Stars                                      Background Nebulae
Ribos    Violet Giant, Yellow Purple (#2)
Delphi    Blue Giant     Yellow (#8)
Ikeya    Violet Black Clouds (#5)
Laramis   Green      Cyan (#4)
Talania    White , Violet Dwarf        Black Clouds (#5)

[Darklord42]

isn't sirus a binary star?

[Admiral Nelson]

Yup.  A normal white star, and a white dwarf.

[m2258734a]

There are plenty of multiple star systems in FS. Acrux, which is the star system I am working on, is made up of 6 stars, by far the most that I have seen in FS. What I would like to see is some variation of the scenery within a system, but that all depends on the number of missions within that system. One mission could be set near Sirius A, and the next could be set 50 AU out near its spectral class DA2 white dwarf companion. Does this sound like I good idea?  I don't mean to sound repetitive, but I have asked this a few times and I don't think anyone answered.

As for the fantasy systems, I am sticking with my idea for the Shivan binary system. I am also going to work with LS original ideas, but I want to make each one of these systems special types of stars. For example, Delphi is described as a blue giant. I would like to make Delphi a spectral class W star, a Wolf-Rayet star which is essentially an evolved O type star. I would base Delphi off of Regor, which is the brightest Wolf-Rayet star in the night sky.

As for the other portions of LS ideas, everything after a comma is the color of the nebulae correct? I'm a little confused with the format.

Anyways, I should be done with the subgiants by the end of tonight. Tomorrow I will devote my day to finishing the rest of the main sequence stars, and then saving the special fantasy systems for last.

EDIT: I also need to know if I need to resize the stars. IMO the stars look too small in the background, and if I need to resize them to 512 X 512 I would be glad to do so.

[Admiral Nelson]

The issue about setting missions at variable distances to the different components of a stellar system is an annoyance about how FS2 handles luminosity.  Stars.tbl uses RGBI format, which strands the star's luminosity in a table file instead of in the mission file where it belongs.   This means I would need entries in stars.tbl for "SiriusAClose" and "SiriusAFar" and so forth to capture that variance in luminosity.  Annoying but not impossible to deal with.

Yeah, Lightspeed created several sets of nebulae of varying color.  These were his ideas for each system.  the only reason to note it here is to ensure that we don't disrupt somebody's existing missions by introducing something wild for a star.  For instance, I used green and blue nebulae for the unknown binary.  It would be nice if the new stars were not wildly out of place with that existing background.  I don't know of any LS backgrounded missions that exist for Delphi or for Laramis, so I'd say to do as you like for these.

EDIT:
I do think they are too big for their in mission size.  Maybe 512x512 would be better.  Lassi, you agree?

[m2258734a]

Ah ok, I understand. That's perfectly fine. I'll still provide the companions as they still will need to be represented as very bright stars in the background of any multiple star system. Also, I don't know if this has been done for all multiple star systems, but the companions of Polaris Aa seem to be too faint in your screenshot. Polaris Aa and Ab make up the component A, a spectroscopic binary. Polaris Ab should appear very bright in Polaris Aa's night sky. Polaris B is another companion which is gravitationally bounded to the center of mass of component A. Even at 2400 AU away, this star would still appear very bright as I described in the Polaris text with the Supergiants.rar release. I don't mean to sound repetitive in those descriptions, especially since I refer to the Sun and the full Moon as standards, but I am trying to say that companion stars will appear very bright in the proper stars' sky, but would have very small angular diameters. Of course, this all depends on the size of the star and its spectral class, but this is why I provide the information to give the designer an idea of how bright and how large each component should appear to maintain realism while creating spectacular sceneries.

Don't worry about the special systems. They will not deviate from what LS has already provided; I just want to take each one to a new level. What I plan for the Shivan binary system will fit the blue and green nebula you have placed. I hope you guys like what I have in store.

So there are no binaries in that list of LS ideas, or does Talania consist of a white and violet dwarf?

EDIT: Sorry about that Admiral Nelson, I got your EDIT after I sent out my previous reply. No problem, I'll resize the images when I can.

[Admiral Nelson]

He has Ribos and Talania as binary systems.

Eltanin/Etamin/Gamma Draconis:


CapellaA:


Capella C & D


Now with Capella, Capella B is never visible or explained in FS2.  I have sort of decided that rather like the ridiculous old movie  "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" Capella B just happens to be on the other side of Capella A all the time...

The sizes of the stars in game is open for discussion.  These sizes correspond to the old retail stars.

[Mobius]

Discussing about the size of the stars means discussing about the presence of planets, many of which seem habitable.

I think you should leave the dimensions as they are...

...uhm make them bigger so we can appreaciate your work.

[m2258734a]

Is there a reason why Capella B is being permanently obscured, other than the fact that having Capella as a double giant star would deviate from canon? Everything that I have been doing so far is deviating from canon, so I really don't see the need to hide Capella B. I don't think Volition cared too much about getting the astronomy correct for FS, otherwise our work would have been done: stars would be represented with their correct colors and luminosities, multiple star systems would be correctly respresented such as Sirius and Antares, planets would exist in the correct circumstellar habitable zone, and so on.

I really don't understand why Volition took the time to use real stars to represent their universe, but didn't take the extra time to make those stars at least a little similar to their real-life counterparts. Sirius doesn't have its companion in FS2, Antares and Betelgeuse aren't supergiants (let alone red supergiants), and our famous Capella is not a double giant star, just to name a few. So if we can correct Betelgeuse and Antares, and give Sirius A its white dwarf, why not give Capella A its large companion?

This might be because the numerous animations don't mention or portray another stellar companion to Capella. First, FS and FS2 never mention accurate details of any star, visually or verbally. The only thing the games got right was fairly accurate pronunciation. Referring to the animations, if we go with the idea of making the in-game scenery more like what we see in the animations, then several changes have to be made: less nebulae, more planets in Capella, Capella has to be infinitesimal in size compared to any real star, and so on. I know that none of these changes are wanted, so why make Capella B hidden just because it's not shown in the animations?

*explaining myself about Capella's animation size*
IIRC, command states there are hundreds of Sathanus juggernauts surrounding the Capella. I don't remember if it was hundreds, thousands, or millions but let's go with hundreds for now. Lets say an SJ Sathanus is about 2.5 km wide and about 2 km away from the nearest Sathanus. Let's assume that they are in a straight line, forming a large circle. If Capella A was the same size as the Sun, it would have a circumference of ~4,373,097 km. If this is true, there would have to be 971,799 Sathanus juggernauts encircling Capella. This is already way off commands calculations of hundreds or even thousands of Shivan juggernauts. If there was no space in between the juggernauts, then we would have 1,749,239 Shivan juggernauts. This is assuming that the juggernauts formed their circle on the surface of Capella, which we know did not happen since the juggernauts would have been obviously destroyed and this is not depicted in the animation. So let's say the Juggernauts are Mercury's distance away from Capella's surface (which is still Sun-sized) at a little more than 1/3 AU. With the 2 km spacing, we would have to have 82,024,890 juggernauts in line; Without the spacing we would have 147,644,802 juggernauts. The problem is we know that the juggernauts are not lined up in this manner, and that Capella A is 10 times larger than the Sun. We would need a helluva lot more juggernauts to make one complete circle around the giant, at a suitable distance away that would not destroy the juggernauts in the process. Assuming a Sathanus could survive being 1/3 AU away from Capella, the giant star would appear huge in the sky at this distance, more than 14 times the angular diameter of the Sun.... maybe the juggernauts are even further out than 1/3 AU, but that would mean more juggernauts to complete the circle. Therefore either the juggernauts are very humongous, or Capella is extremely tiny.

As for the size of the in-game stars, I think they should be much bigger. Betelgeuse looked great in your screenshot, but I think all of the others are too small. Stars with companions are also too dim. The situation with Capella C and D is fine, because not only are they dim red dwarfs, but they are extremely far away from Capella A and B. The calculations I made would give the pair of red dwarfs an apparent magnitude from Capella A and B no brighter than that of a normal skybox star. I would still like them to be a little noticeable since I did take the time to make them. But in the case of Polaris Ab and B (I don't even see B in the screenshot unless Ab is the bright center of the nebula and B is the little speck in the corner of the nebula), they appear to be too dim. With Polaris Ab being 7000 times brighter than a full Moon, no one should have any problems locating it, the same goes for Polaris B which is only 40% as bright as a full Moon and much brighter than the brightest star in the sky.

Back to the proper stars, here's the same shot that I found from an older 3.6.8 thread:



This is the original image, no zooming or cropping. The sizes of the stars here look perfectly fine, so I believe its ok to increase the current stars' radii to make the hues and details more visible.

[Admiral Nelson]

Is there a reason why Capella B is being permanently obscured, other than the fact that having Capella as a double giant star would deviate from canon? Everything that I have been doing so far is deviating from canon, so I really don't see the need to hide Capella B.

Mostly because its weird to see two stars in mission, and then immediately see a video of one star blowing up and incinerating all sorts of planets, yet nothing is seen of another star that should be nearby.  I arranged the nebulae I put in Capella rather far away from the star for the same reason.  I also need to confirm an issue with the supernova code wherein the supernova in the last mission does not occur if more than one star is in the background.  In this case, I'd even have to take out the red dwarf stars from the final mission of the game.

I believe that there were only 80 juggernauts.  The whole idea of them forming a ring around any sort of object on a planetary, much less stellar scale, is pretty silly.

As for the size of the in-game stars, I think they should be much bigger. Betelgeuse looked great in your screenshot, but I think all of the others are too small. Stars with companions are also too dim. The situation with Capella C and D is fine, because not only are they dim red dwarfs, but they are extremely far away from Capella A and B. The calculations I made would give the pair of red dwarfs an apparent magnitude from Capella A and B no brighter than that of a normal skybox star. I would still like them to be a little noticeable since I did take the time to make them. But in the case of Polaris Ab and B (I don't even see B in the screenshot unless Ab is the bright center of the nebula and B is the little speck in the corner of the nebula), they appear to be too dim. With Polaris Ab being 7000 times brighter than a full Moon, no one should have any problems locating it, the same goes for Polaris B which is only 40% as bright as a full Moon and much brighter than the brightest star in the sky.

Back to the proper stars, here's the same shot that I found from an older 3.6.8 thread:

That's fine, it is simple to change star size until we find one everyone likes. The annoyance is really just dealing with the luminosity limitations inherent in FS2.

[m2258734a]

Mostly because its weird to see two stars in mission, and then immediately see a video of one star blowing up and incinerating all sorts of planets, yet nothing is seen of another star that should be nearby.

Yeah that's true, one of the reasons why I wish the time was taken to realize that Capella actually has a nearby giant companion. I don't know how much the new scenery for Capella has changed from the original, but I only recall seeing one planet in-game. It's been a while since I have seen the video, but IIRC it depicts these planets to be very close to one another and very close to Capella... unless we assume that the Saturn-like planet just had many satellites. Either way, that Saturn-like planet is nowhere to be seen, and should be represented as a bright star at the least. I know its a very minor thing, but I am just saying if the video doesn't have Capella B, and has all sorts of planets, what difference would it make if we had Capella B and only one of those planets in-game? I do understand the concern and the inconsistencies it causes, but the videos are inconsistent with FSSCP in general, seeing how so many improvements have been made to the game to make it better despite deviating from canon.

On the otherhand, if the supernova code causes a problem with the number of stars in the Capella system then that is an entirely different situation.    That is rather unfortunate and I hope that can be fixed. Speaking about the supernova, it's about time that "animation" gets a makeover. I believe thesource has something planned for us. 

I believe that there were only 80 juggernauts.

  You are absolutely right, it was 80. Wow....  this is what I was talking about. If the video can go above and beyond ridiculous and completely unrealistic by having 80+ Shivan juggernauts form a complete ring around a giant star with relatively close spacing at a distance away from the star's surface, then we have all the right to make Capella B appear in-game just to give realism and common sense a chance to recover from that massive error. 80.....

I am a little behind schedule, so the next time I reply with updates, I will provide all of the real-life stars in FS from luminosity type I to V in 512x512 size (is this still necessary Admiral Nelson?). I'm gaining more ideas for the fantasy systems, so right now all of FS2 is covered. Admiral Nelson, may I be of some assistance for those luminosity values? Again, thanks for all of your help.

[Herra Tohtori]

Perhaps the juggernauts were headed towards the Capella Star from the general direction of the subspace node...

Which would make it possible to see some of the last ones silhouetted against the star. Although you would only see their rear side, which is not as easily recognizable as the familiar side silhouettes. Meh.

[m2258734a]

I like that alternative, but I believe one of the briefing animations actually presented the juggernauts having formed a ring around Capella. I don't remember which one, but I believe we see a sphere representing Capella. The camera quickly revolves around the star, revealing multiple Sathanus juggernauts which have already formed a closed circle around the star. I think its the mission where they mention the 80+ juggernauts, but I am not exactly sure.

So while it is possible for all of the juggernauts to have ventured to Capella in a single fleet, I think that animation gives us the notion that they indeed formed a great circle with 80+ juggernauts. Again I am not exactly sure if that's what the briefing animation portrayed...