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Can we NOT have stars during daylight?


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8 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Read the rules again. I'm allowed to hack KSP, as long I stay away from private thingies and do not reverse engineer the thing. And I didn't did any of them.

I'm not sure who there would be to care if you reverse engineered the game and didn't tell a single living soul ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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3 hours ago, Lisias said:

And that's what I did. I switched the skybox to one with way more resolution and tested the thing on my oldest MacCrap, that have only 384MB of VRAM (no to mention a crappy Intel HD3000 as GPU). You can't ask for a better rig for easily test performance, sir, every extra MB can make the textures being fetched from the CPU's RAM, plummeting the performance.

And some other interesting effects. :)

I think it's disingenuous to test on a system that's below the minimum specs of KSP1 specially when we're talking about KSP2 here. There's almost 10 years of evolution for the minimum spec the game could require. Also, it's not like we even know their performance target, we don't have anything for that outside of guesswork.

Quote

Read the rules again. I'm allowed to hack KSP, as long I stay away from private thingies and do not reverse engineer the thing. And I didn't did any of them.

And I'm not the one claiming how the GalaxyCubeControl works. I'm just telling you how I think it works based on my Clean Room tests made on weaker machines, where such behaviours are way easily spotted and measured.

Of course, I may be wrong about your claiming. Please pinpoint where in the KSP API Docs are the information needed to know exactly how the GalaxyCubeControl works. ;) 

And I never mentioned to know *exactly* how it works :wink:. However being in the software industry, and a modder, you'd easily be able to at least blackbox the thing.

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On 11/3/2021 at 11:47 AM, PDCWolf said:

The fact that you'd point out the orion belt on an alien sky is not just fantastic, but also very laughable.

I don't know that I'd call Saturn orbit an "alien sky". You'd have to go to a different star system for the constellations to look different.

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2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

I don't know that I'd call Saturn orbit an "alien sky". You'd have to go to a different star system for the constellations to look different.

Hey, those 0.02 arcmilliseconds of parallax mean all the difference!

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9 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

I don't know that I'd call Saturn orbit an "alien sky". You'd have to go to a different star system for the constellations to look different.

7 hours ago, Delay said:

Hey, those 0.02 arcmilliseconds of parallax mean all the difference!

Funny cause it ended up being a totally wrong guess, as pointed out by 

 

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2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Funny cause it ended up being a totally wrong guess, as pointed out by 

...but not because the sky is vastly different. The stars have merely been misidentified, which can even happen on Earth.

Just how many straws do you want to grasp at?

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2 hours ago, Delay said:

...but not because the sky is vastly different. The stars have merely been misidentified, which can even happen on Earth.

Just how many straws do you want to grasp at?

It falls under the definition of extraterrestrial sky, as much as you might wanna twist it any other way. 

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22 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

It falls under the definition of extraterrestrial sky, as much as you might wanna twist it any other way. 

You want to argue with definitions now? A sign of desperation in my book.

Anyways, let's play your game. You described the sky as "alien", not as "extraterrestrial". Here are all definitions of "alien" offered by Wiktionary:
 

Quote
  • Not belonging to the same country, land, or government, or to the citizens or subjects thereof; foreign.
    alien subjects, enemies, property, or shores
  • Very unfamiliar, strange, or removed.
  • principles alien to our religion
  • Pertaining to extraterrestrial life.

Notice any similarities? Because I don't.

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44 minutes ago, Delay said:

You want to argue with definitions now? A sign of desperation in my book.

Anyways, let's play your game. You described the sky as "alien", not as "extraterrestrial". Here are all definitions of "alien" offered by Wiktionary:
 

Notice any similarities? Because I don't.

Bro, I'm not the one that joined a thread to make a tangential post about a sub-topic, also, somehow you didn't realize extraterrestrial and alien are synonyms, pretty big oversight:

gjaaow2.png

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3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Bro, I'm not the one that joined a thread to make a tangential post about a sub-topic, also, somehow you didn't realize extraterrestrial and alien are synonyms, pretty big oversight:

gjaaow2.png

That's the noun...

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3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Works for the adjective as well, as Wiktionary would also repeatedly tell you. 

It does not, as I have quoted the defintions for alien (adjective) above.

Wiktionary's "See also" and "Synonym" sections (as well as the thesaurus) do not differentiate between nouns, adjectives and verbs.

 

Regardless of who's correct, let's get back to the topic of why a pitch black sky is a must for a space game... with planets of unrealistic masses and eyeball-shaped terrain.

Edited by Delay
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9 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

you didn't realize extraterrestrial and alien are synonyms

So just to be 100% clear, when you wrote that the sky around Saturn is alien, you meant that it was not around Earth and instead was around Saturn? Because that is 100% true but also 100% irrelevant to anything discussed in the thread so far.

And you did NOT mean that it looked different than Earth's Sky? Because that would be significant if it was true, but is false.

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11 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

So just to be 100% clear, when you wrote that the sky around Saturn is alien, you meant that it was not around Earth and instead was around Saturn? Because that is 100% true but also 100% irrelevant to anything discussed in the thread so far.

And you did NOT mean that it looked different than Earth's Sky? Because that would be significant if it was true, but is false.

I meant that it seemed fantastic and laughable to me, that someone would be quickly able to recognize a couple stars on a place that is not Earth, from a single, almost reference-less picture. It was relevant as a response to the user's post in that moment, since he was using his magic stargazer powers ("i saw this and that and that other constellation over there!") to justify being able to see, which he clearly wasn't since not a single one of his calls was right.

You're looking at a reference-less sky from a place that is not even on your same world, no human has ever seen that sky directly, nor is a single human accustomed to search for stars there, nor do we know the FOV of the camera to justify how much sky is actually visible, or any other useful data. Whilst literally not being Earth makes it fit the extraterrestrial sky definition, what I just described makes it fit the idea that the picture shows an enough different sky (from what we see every day) that trying to play stargazer is, again, laughable and fantastic.

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Ok, so not to jump into whatever semantic argument is going on here, I feel like you (@PDCWolf) are having a different discussion than the other side. You are arguing, as far as my understanding goes, that the sky around a celestial body near, or even far from, a star is black, and therefore this should be implemented in the game. You have proven multiple times now that on the day side of any celestial body or orbiting far from the night side, the light from the sun will overpower the stars, even at ocular dynamic ranges. You have also proven that light reflecting off a craft is also enough to do so. The only time that you should be able to see stars is looking from a window away from the star and landed on the night side of a planet with a clear/nonexistent atmosphere. Done, you did it. No more need to prove that the sky is black in space. (don't pick the specifics of that, you know what I mean.) In your mind, more realistic effects= better visuals, and therefore sky dimming is a must. 

 

But this is not true for everyone. Many of the opposing people are not arguing that the sky shouldn't be black, but instead that it is not good for visuals. Before you argue (or avoid this argument as you have done for the last few posts on the matter, once again you know what I mean, don't make me enumerate all the posts), consider that this is a purely subjective stance. I may want the sky to be black, someone else might want the sky to have stars. There really is no ultimate argument to defeat an opinion, because it is an opinion and not a fact. So, how about instead of arguing whether the sky should dim for realism, which has been proven multiple times already by you and others in this thread, try either (a) closing this discussion with a request for a sky dimming option or (b) debating over whether a black sky looks better rather than whether it would exist or not. 

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1 hour ago, t_v said:

But this is not true for everyone. Many of the opposing people are not arguing that the sky shouldn't be black, but instead that it is not good for visuals. Before you argue (or avoid this argument as you have done for the last few posts on the matter, once again you know what I mean, don't make me enumerate all the posts), consider that this is a purely subjective stance. I may want the sky to be black, someone else might want the sky to have stars. There really is no ultimate argument to defeat an opinion, because it is an opinion and not a fact. So, how about instead of arguing whether the sky should dim for realism, which has been proven multiple times already by you and others in this thread, try either (a) closing this discussion with a request for a sky dimming option or (b) debating over whether a black sky looks better rather than whether it would exist or not. 

I understand subjectivity, but subjectivity is also something that can be discussed. We're having a great artistic look in movies discussion with @Jack Mcslay, where he's found examples of movies showing stars, and I've found examples of movies not showing stars on bright scenes. The discussion might turn into arguments when generalizations and false equivalences such as "that's bad game design" or "artistic vs realistic" are thrown around. Notice how I have not responded to folks like @Bej Kerman that simply mention they just don't like it, or find it disorienting, because that's indeed their personal taste and experience.

Opinions are not facts, indeed, but they might be presented in a way that makes them seem to be, or used to push arguments about things that can actually be discussed.

I don't mind the whole thing being an option, either, and you can clearly see (since you've seem to read all my posts here) that I didn't discuss that matter either.

Edited by PDCWolf
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6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

I meant that it seemed fantastic and laughable to me, that someone would be quickly able to recognize a couple stars on a place that is not Earth, from a single, almost reference-less picture.

You mean that you couldn't?
KCWfPq7.jpg

By the way, in case you're wondering how I got this shot of Jupiter with stars in the background... I enabled "Real planet brightness".

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9 hours ago, Delay said:

in case you're wondering how I got this shot of Jupiter with stars in the background... 

Well, we might first wonder how you got your camera to Europa!

9 hours ago, Delay said:

I enabled "Real planet brightness".

Oh.  Space Engine 0.9.8.0 

Space Engine with that option enabled shows the brightness of illumination fade as we get further from the star, and then the illumination from alpha-Centauri get brighter as we approach it.  That might be nice for KSP2, but might risk disorienting players, depending on how it is implemented.  I notice that Space Engine's default settings give a less-realistic but easier-to-understand rendering.

qWdBEwr.jpg

That version of Space Engine has some quirks in its auto-brightness.  If the closest star (a.k.a. the sun) is in view the other stars are dimmed, but the planets are not.  (With auto-brightness off, the default, the stars are always brighter than in the images above.)   They changed this whole system in 0.99 when they moved releases to Steam.  

You game me an excuse to do more math.  The bright bulge in the Milky May is apparent magnitude 20 per square arc-second, 0.001 lm/m²/sr.  Jupiter is illuminated with 3000 lm/m², so if it Lambert-style scatters 50% over π solid angle, it has luminance 500  lm/m²/sr.   I can see how the brightest stars (8 lm/m²/sr if blurred into a typical pixel or human photoreceptor) could be seen with Jupiter in view, but I would have to spend time blocking Jupiter and dark-adapting before I could expect to see the Milky Way.

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2 hours ago, OHara said:

Well, we might first wonder how you got your camera to Europa!

You identified the moon from that tiny triangle? I'd consider that a bit... "fantastic", maybe? Who knows, perhaps even laughable!

 

2 hours ago, OHara said:

They changed this whole system in 0.99 when they moved releases to Steam.  

I thought so. However, I'm not willing to invest 20€. Unless the Moon's orbit was changed to accurately reflect the real Moon (such that solar eclipses become predictable), it's too inaccurate to be worth that much. I'd stick to Celestia if SE didn't have better graphics and a more intuitive movement system.

However, the main point I was attempting to make was that stars can indeed be identified without Earth in sight. It was, apparently, subject to debate "that someone would be quickly able to recognize a couple stars on a place that is not Earth, from a single, almost reference-less picture" (you getting the moon right surely counts just as much additionally).

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Hey, just joining in the discussion here with a big post, forgive me.

Perfect that you guys are using space engine, which shows that a realtime video game can implement realistic brightness of objects (in the latest version, not the betas).

I would really love it if KSP2 implemented something like this. 

However.
My opinion: If sunlit objects/ the sun keep the same exposure, while only the skybox dims, then that is really distracting and useless. The skybox should dim to prevent the actual sunlit objects/ the sun from being overexposed.

PROBLEM.
1. Hard to program realistic brightness of all objects (not only skybox dimming).
2. In space engine the automatic exposure adjustment is often not good enough, planets are either too bright, or they stay to dim. This is because the light differences are so extreme, and it's hard to determine what should be correctly exposed for comfortable viewing. It's hard to guess what the player wants to be correctly exposed. This is why I am always fiddling with the camera exposure in Space Engine. Still love it more than HDR view option though.


SOLUTION.
In KSP it is easier to guess what the player would want to have exposed: Planets/ spacecraft. So perhaps it should lock to a constant exposure (depending on distance from the sun). Like in KSP1 basically. But with the skybox looking totally black. Only when no sunlit objects are in view (nightside of planets (otherwise spacecraft is sunlit), interstellar space during transits, looking out windows), then exposure should increase to show the stars and galaxy. This should also make ship lights and engines etc brighter.
REWARD.
- If you see the stars and milky way all the time like in KSP 1, then is not special anymore, and it diminishes the planets visually.
- If you only see the stars when you are in darkness, that's like an epic moment, entering a different environment.
- Real engine brightness. Ever noticed in spaceX night launches, how bright the first stage gets lit up by ignition of second stage? Would be awesome to see in KSP, but not during the day.
- It's realistic. KSP is a valuable education tool. In my experience people often wonder about whether you can see stars in space, there are lots of misconceptions. These misconceptions give more ground for conspiracy theories like faked moon landing. If lighting just happens correctly in game, that improves people understanding.

I disagree with the opinion that the best looking shots are the ones where stars are visible.
Finally I get to show more of my pictures :D.

The worst case: Totally unrealistic lighting. The galaxy outshines the sunlit earth. Unmodded KSP1.
zUlDF3h.png

Much better: Black space, nicely lit planet and spacecraft.
XZbVmf3.png

On the nightside the stars may sparkle.
ixSRZjN.png

OMSqKqW.png
Qo5q7Zj.jpg

PoxPEvG.png
8hbSpNj.jpg

eWLfNM1.png
MLCqtCs.jpg

rW4dn8h.png
h7nCwN8.png

Would this image be improved with stars?
cV5cJou.png

Especially in darkness the galaxy can give nice moments: 
LrFtWtL.png
QI3ADL2.png

 

 


Finally, some screenshots from space engine that showcase how hard it is to see stars.
i5HLX6F.jpg
CeQkBDH.jpg

Rocinante at Mars.
Gk02FT8.jpg
EgF83B3.jpg

Overexposed Donnager and Rocinante at Mars. Still no stars!
0QIeTRV.jpg

AB987bL.jpg

Rocinante in Mars' shadow.ApKdWME.jpg

Keep in mind! The simulated camera in Space Engine has a specific dynamic range, like every camera/ eye has. The simulated camera in space engine attempts to be like an electronic camera. Our eyes have a better dynamic range, and can also adjust a bit locally, that never gets simulated. So maybe, in the overexposed Donnager shot, a person Would see stars, though your eyes/brain do not allow over-exposure for long.

Edited by kedrednael
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1 hour ago, kedrednael said:

Hey, just joining in the discussion here with a big post, forgive me.

Perfect that you guys are using space engine, which shows that a realtime video game can implement realistic brightness of objects (in the latest version, not the betas).

I would really love it if KSP2 implemented something like this. 

However.
My opinion: If sunlit objects/ the sun keep the same exposure, while only the skybox dims, then that is really distracting and useless. The skybox should dim to prevent the actual sunlit objects/ the sun from being overexposed.

PROBLEM.
1. Hard to program realistic brightness of all objects (not only skybox dimming).
2. In space engine the automatic exposure adjustment is often not good enough, planets are either too bright, or they stay to dim. This is because the light differences are so extreme, and it's hard to determine what should be correctly exposed for comfortable viewing. It's hard to guess what the player wants to be correctly exposed. This is why I am always fiddling with the camera exposure in Space Engine. Still love it more than HDR view option though.


SOLUTION.
In KSP it is easier to guess what the player would want to have exposed: Planets/ spacecraft. So perhaps it should lock to a constant exposure (depending on distance from the sun). Like in KSP1 basically. But with the skybox looking totally black. Only when no sunlit objects are in view (nightside of planets (otherwise spacecraft is sunlit), interstellar space during transits, looking out windows), then exposure should increase to show the stars and galaxy. This should also make ship lights and engines etc brighter.
REWARD.
- If you see the stars and milky way all the time like in KSP 1, then is not special anymore, and it diminishes the planets visually.
- If you only see the stars when you are in darkness, that's like an epic moment, entering a different environment.
- Real engine brightness. Ever noticed in spaceX night launches, how bright the first stage gets lit up by ignition of second stage? Would be awesome to see in KSP, but not during the day.
- It's realistic. KSP is a valuable education tool. In my experience people often wonder about whether you can see stars in space, there are lots of misconceptions. These misconceptions give more ground for conspiracy theories like faked moon landing. If lighting just happens correctly in game, that improves people understanding.

I disagree with the opinion that the best looking shots are the ones where stars are visible.
Finally I get to show more of my pictures :D.

The worst case: Totally unrealistic lighting. The galaxy outshines the sunlit earth. Unmodded KSP1.
zUlDF3h.png

Much better: Black space, nicely lit planet and spacecraft.
XZbVmf3.png

On the nightside the stars may sparkle.
ixSRZjN.png

OMSqKqW.png
Qo5q7Zj.jpg

PoxPEvG.png
8hbSpNj.jpg

eWLfNM1.png
MLCqtCs.jpg

rW4dn8h.png
h7nCwN8.png

Would this image be improved with stars?
cV5cJou.png

Especially in darkness the galaxy can give nice moments: 
LrFtWtL.png
QI3ADL2.png

 

 


Finally, some screenshots from space engine that showcase how hard it is to see stars.
i5HLX6F.jpg
CeQkBDH.jpg

Rocinante at Mars.
Gk02FT8.jpg
EgF83B3.jpg

Overexposed Donnager and Rocinante at Mars. Still no stars!
0QIeTRV.jpg

AB987bL.jpg

Rocinante in Mars' shadow.ApKdWME.jpg

Keep in mind! The simulated camera in Space Engine has a specific dynamic range, like every camera/ eye has. The simulated camera in space engine attempts to be like an electronic camera. Our eyes have a better dynamic range, and can also adjust a bit locally, that never gets simulated. So maybe, in the overexposed Donnager shot, a person Would see stars, though your eyes/brain do not allow over-exposure for long.

I find your low FOV images a bit disingenuous, as the skybox is very clearly blurred behind sharply defined objects. The field of view also makes stars appear much larger than they would be (zoom + proper focus on a real camera still produces point-like stars).

I otherwise do understand your point, I play with DOE myself. Nonetheless, deciding whether the majority of the game environment should be black or filled with stars by a sample size as small as this thread - this means both opponents and proponents - is absurd and non-representative of the (space interested, but not obsessed) audience that KSP 2 attempts to reach, even more than KSP 1.

 

I, for one, would welcome the idea of a DOE-like mod for KSP 2 instead of being a (not) feature implemented by the devs. Mods like DOE and TUFX give you way more options to customize the looks of the game to exactly your liking than any game developer could universally decide. Either that or literally every single PP setting is made available in the options menu, I'd gladly try all the settings out to see what fits me more (I personally like slightly overexposed planets when they are not exactly in view).

Edited by Delay
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1 hour ago, kedrednael said:

Especially in darkness the galaxy can give nice moments: 
LrFtWtL.png
QI3ADL2.png

 

 

This is without skybox dimming, right? Because the moon in both of those shots would apparently overpower the stars by a significant margin. (in both shots a piece of the moon that is sunlit is visible, and from the rociante shots we know that even a sliver of light is enough. Also, even if the craft was orbiting with the moon eclipsing the sun, they would still not be able to see stars as demonstrated by images of Pluto taken at high exposure where stars are not visible due to a halo effect.) I agree with Delay here, that mods will implement many options that a dev would not have the time for, but I would still like to see some sort of dimming feature. However, I don't want it to be fully realistic, as I think those two images quoted above look great, and a fully realistic sky dimming feature would remove those. 

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1 hour ago, Delay said:

I find your low FOV images a bit disingenuous, as the skybox is very clearly blurred behind sharply defined objects. The field of view also makes stars appear much larger than they would be (zoom + proper focus on a real camera still produces point-like stars).

You are right those are not very representative. These were the pictures where I had edited the skybox to black. They all happen to be with zoom, because with zoom the bright skybox looks the worst.
The low quality stars also look terrible indeed. It's totally undoable to do stars with a skybox texture if you're going to zoom. But at least space engine shows us that you can render thousands of individual stars, those remain point-like.

1 hour ago, t_v said:

This is without skybox dimming, right?

I think that was with skybox dimming. But it's unedited.

 

1 hour ago, t_v said:

Because the moon in both of those shots would apparently overpower the stars by a significant margin.

Yes the moon should look super bright in these pictures.
In KSP2 we'll have moonshine so that will already be a lot more realistic.

 

1 hour ago, t_v said:

I don't want it to be fully realistic, as I think those two images quoted above look great, and a fully realistic sky dimming feature would remove those. 

My dream feature would be that they implement realistic brightness, with background star brightness adjustable (set to realistic normally). And also a dynamic range slider, so you can see how it would look on a smartphone or our own eyes. It would make sense to have a dynamic range even higher than our eyes, because in reality when you look at something your eyes adjust, but the game does not know where you are looking on the screen.

In reality the galaxy is just so dim that you need too much exposure increase to do it in a easily playable fashion.

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2 hours ago, Delay said:

the (space interested, but not obsessed) audience that KSP 2 attempts to reach

"The excuse offered is always the vulgarity of the vast majority of the public. I insist that this is absolutely false. The public is infinitely superior to the rubbish that is fed to them daily." -TDTC

If it was about what the og devs thought the general public wanted and could handle, KSP would still be a game about throwing green men up and seeing how far up can you go. Let's not fall so low in the search for an argument. 

3 hours ago, kedrednael said:

SNIP

Some amazing shots, they really highlight the problem and the solution, though the KSP1 skybox doesn't help at all with constricted FOV shots. There's also some details here and there that could be nitpicked like engine light or ship interior lights not affecting the view, but that's so small it'll be a waste, specially since the point is already proven.

Quote

If sunlit objects/ the sun keep the same exposure, while only the skybox dims, then that is really distracting and useless. The skybox should dim to prevent the actual sunlit objects/ the sun from being overexposed.

This is a programmatically implemented limitation, and I believe it is easier to not implement it than to bother doing what KSP seems to do. If it was a single static light, obviously light levels as distance increases would change accordingly, yet KSP's anthropocentric planetarium implements its very own light source/solution  that seems to almost always be at the same distance to the player.

 

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