[Nighteyes]

as we all know, using a skybox model for BIG planets is necessary, but as most of these skybox's are a simple starfield with a plane for the planet, it can be very useful to be able to rotate that model and thus change the planets position in the mission

[Aardwolf]

You want an actual rotating planet? Or you want the planet to move across the starfield?

I reckon you could probably accomplish something like what you're talking about using a .pof  file with a rotating section, although that might require you the rotation to be on one of the 3 principal axes (i.e. the x, y, or z axis)...

[karajorma]

No, he wants to be able to rotate the skybox in FRED so that you don't need several skyboxes if you want the planet to be on the left in mission 1 and on the right in mission 2.

To be honest I've always found it easier to just rotate all the ships in the mission.

[Aardwolf]

Oh... sort of like how in FS1 the nebula patterns could be rotated?

[Herra Tohtori]

The first thing that comes to mind about this is that in missions that use a terrain model you could rotate the skybox around it to add stuff like the moon rising from below the horizon. And on something like the assault on raider base at shattered star in tbp's raider wars you could simulate the planetoid's fast rotation period.

Problem would actually be moving the light sources (stars) along with the background. Skyboxen can already be rotated as subspace model shows.

EDIT:...which would actually work best with a full "rotate background objects" feature that would rotate the whole bg set around given axis at given angular velocity.

[Dragon]

But he just wanted to be able to rotate skybox in FRED.

Oh... sort of like how in FS1 the nebula patterns could be rotated?

Exactly like that, it would be really usefull for FREDers.

[Nighteyes]

To be honest I've always found it easier to just rotate all the ships in the mission.

well, thats always an option but it dosn't change the fact that this is a basic need that can save the hassle for fredders
(and I hope its also relativly simple to implement)

[Thaeris]

Perhaps once the lighting system is enhanced/fixed, you could use a physical planet model and just have it rotate about a point in FRED? I remember Cardinal Spear having several rather attractive planet models...

[KeldorKatarn]

I think he doesn't speak only about planet models but about rotatable skyboxes so one has more variety in missions without needing to rotate all ships.

[Fury]

In addition multiple layered skyboxes would be neat.

[Dragon]

Perhaps once the lighting system is enhanced/fixed, you could use a physical planet model and just have it rotate about a point in FRED? I remember Cardinal Spear having several rather attractive planet models...

Unfortunately, an issue called Z-fighting gets in a way of really good planets.
I played with the idea here: http://freespacemods.net/download.php?view.550