Lighting whilst traveling between stars

[Ahres]

I believe it's already mentioned somewhere on this thread. But at 1:31 in the Feature Video it sure looks to me like we already know what to expect for lighting on an interstellar voyage. 

And I like it.

[darthgently]

21 minutes ago, Ahres said:

I believe it's already mentioned somewhere on this thread. But at 1:31 in the Feature Video it sure looks to me like we already know what to expect for lighting on an interstellar voyage. 

And I like it.

I'm not fully convinced.  It almost looks, from the skybox, that the craft is in something like the Magellanic cloud, so maybe no significant light at all.  I agree that star light would not be enough in real life to see the craft except in silhouette, but I'm not convinced that the designers will go with that level of realism.  I don't really care either way;  I'll just play the game

Edited April 12, 2022 by darthgently

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

It's don't want vs don't need

We want interstellar travel, but we don't need interstellar travel. KSP 2 could have marketed itself as a modern KSP 1 remake.

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Says, after a lot of participants in the thread clearly lack the ingenuity to put a light on their ships

Because interstellar ships in the year 2500 will have flashlights strapped onto the side - spoiler alert, they won't.

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Pitch dark environments exist in KSP1

They don't. KSP 1 has ambient light so that, again, you're not completely blinded.

[PDCWolf]

22 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

We want interstellar travel, but we don't need interstellar travel. KSP 2 could have marketed itself as a modern KSP 1 remake.

Because interstellar ships in the year 2500 will have flashlights strapped onto the side - spoiler alert, they won't.

They don't. KSP 1 has ambient light so that, again, you're not completely blinded.

Lmao it's like really we haven't played KSP1 have we. Have some screenies, all from inside the solar system, on the shadow of planets:

https://i.imgur.com/ygsRMJm.png and https://i.imgur.com/8pj1xqK.png

Sure, you're not blinded, but unless you crank everything up, you still need lights. As for not using lights, laughable prediction at best.  Even with super night vision, there'd still be not enough light to work.

1 hour ago, Ahres said:

I believe it's already mentioned somewhere on this thread. But at 1:31 in the Feature Video it sure looks to me like we already know what to expect for lighting on an interstellar voyage. 

And I like it.

How they made it:

How it could look with a bit more exposure if they'd gone for realism instead of random magic color clouds: 

50 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I'll just play the game

That's what we're all gonna do, hopefully.

[Bej Kerman]

22 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Lmao it's like really we haven't played KSP1 have we. Have some screenies, all from inside the solar system, on the shadow of planets:

https://i.imgur.com/ygsRMJm.png and https://i.imgur.com/8pj1xqK.png

Both of these images demonstrate ambient light. What is the point you're trying to make?

22 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

How they made it:

How it could look with a bit more exposure if they'd gone for realism instead of random magic color clouds: 

It doesn't matter. What KSP 2 is doing is perfectly fine.

[PDCWolf]

8 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Both of these images demonstrate ambient light. What is the point you're trying to make?

I should be asking you at this point, since you've been pretty much pushed the goalposts a whole marathon:

"Yes [there's a light source] depending on exposure" > Mathematically disproven. Even with a whole lot exposure to see nebulae you'd still only see the black silhouette of your ship.

"Gameplay over graphics" "Not an engaging gameplay feature" (over multiple posts, only bothered linking the first couple) > Yet you gladly never mentioned this again when reminded that lighting was part of the design [1] and gameplay [2] for the first game. 

"the player shouldn't need lights to interact with parts in the same manner." (another one with different wording) > Again, dodged when it was made clear that lights, even in complete darkness, aren't necessary pretty much by design with all the extra tools the game provides. Lights are rather just another solution on the list [1] [2]. 

"lights would probably erode on an interstellar vessel" (another repeat)> Simple stuff you're missing just to try and have a point, and then completely ignoring and jumping onto the next argument when called out. At relativistic speeds, damage wouldn't stop at lights, but the entire vessel. At FTL, dust and even gas atoms could be fatal to a spacecraft. Since you're ignoring my points anyway, here's Dr. Sten Odenwald explaining it in his blog.

Now I gave you an image that is 99% pitch black image from KSP1, to the point the only parts you can barely distinguish are bright white, and suddenly that condition seems good enough for you to fumble around with parts. Even the weather is more consistent. I made this post recalling all previous points to see either what tidbit you nitpick to run off with, or how you'd dodge the entirety of the thread and come up with a different point.

8 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

It doesn't matter. What KSP 2 is doing is perfectly fine.

This is an opinion, and so happens to be different from mine.

[Ahres]

On 4/12/2022 at 3:28 PM, PDCWolf said:

How it could look with a bit more exposure if they'd gone for realism instead of random magic color clouds: 

I'm bringing this up because I missed it the first time. There were some comments in the Episode 5 thread about how great the skybox looks. And while it does look better than imagery and footage we've seen in the past, I was also slightly confused about the "magic color clouds". Mostly because this is not something we see with our own eyes. Would someone be able to see something like this in interstellar space with the naked eye? It doesn't seem like it. Granted, we're in the Kerbal universe and not our own. Plus the KSP2 shot shows a few stars and color clouds at first but then just clouds and no stars.... How in the world does that make sense? No stars visible? When you're in interstellar space?

+1 to the Expanse's look

[PDCWolf]

24 minutes ago, Ahres said:

I'm bringing this up because I missed it the first time. There were some comments in the Episode 5 thread about how great the skybox looks. And while it does look better than imagery and footage we've seen in the past, I was also slightly confused about the "magic color clouds". Mostly because this is not something we see with our own eyes. Would someone be able to see something like this in interstellar space with the naked eye? It doesn't seem like it. Granted, we're in the Kerbal universe and not our own. Plus the KSP2 shot shows a few stars and color clouds at first but then just clouds and no stars.... How in the world does that make sense? No stars visible? When you're in interstellar space?

+1 to the Expanse's look

That's why I searched the mathematical answer. When looking at the ship you'd have no color vision, no capacity to discern details, and completely unable to do any sort of work if you don't have your own lighting. That's why the background being filled with stars is so poetic.

You'd have a background filled with stars, incredibly more than we see on Earth, yet out of those millions of light sources, not a single one or the combination of all of them is enough for you to see something that's right in front of you. That's pretty much unique to dark space, yet "designers" insists that their solution of making everything pitch black, or put magic color clouds in space is "better".  A bunch of bull feces.

Edited April 14, 2022 by PDCWolf

[Bej Kerman]

11 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

20 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Both of these images demonstrate ambient light. What is the point you're trying to make?

I should be asking you at this point, since you've been pretty much pushed the goalposts a whole marathon:

You're implying KSP 1 doesn't have ambient light, when it does.

52 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

yet "designers" insists that their solution of making everything pitch black, or put magic color clouds in space is "better".  A bunch of bull feces.

That is only your opinion, and your opinions won't change the fact that some (if not most) people prefer this over realism.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Ahres said:

Would someone be able to see something like this in interstellar space with the naked eye? It doesn't seem like it.

Well you can see nebulae with a small telescope, so if Kerbol happened to be very near a nebula you'd probably be able to see it. As to the color you can see some tinge without filters. True colors range from blues to greens to pinks and purples. 

This is a true color image of the Trapezium, part of the Orion Nebula:

Edited April 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Ahres]

28 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Well you can see nebulae with a small telescope, so if Kerbol happened to be very near a nebula you'd probably be able to see it. As to the color you can see some tinge without filters. True colors range from blues to greens to pinks and purples. 

This is a true color image of the Trapezium, part of the Orion Nebula:

Good point, thanks Pthigrivi. So readily visible nebulae are acceptable in my opinion. But the starfield is quite off still.

The Trapezium image is thought-provoking. I'd expect a starfield to be present in the same magnitude of the Expanse silhouette  image @PDCWolf posted upthread. So why is that not the case here? Are the brighter/closer stars simply drowning out much of the stars in the background?

[t_v]

3 minutes ago, Ahres said:

Good point, thanks Pthigrivi. So readily visible nebulae are acceptable in my opinion. But the starfield is quite off still.

The Trapezium image is thought-provoking. I'd expect a starfield to be present in the same magnitude of the Expanse silhouette  image @PDCWolf posted upthread. So why is that not the case here? Are the brighter/closer stars simply drowning out much of the stars in the background?

That image is with the exposure turned way up, to the point that even background space isn’t black. If you kept a consistent exposure throughout the game, the sky would actually be very dark, much darker than either the KSP 1 or 2 skyboxes. 

[Pthigrivi]

16 minutes ago, Ahres said:

Good point, thanks Pthigrivi. So readily visible nebulae are acceptable in my opinion. But the starfield is quite off still.

The Trapezium image is thought-provoking. I'd expect a starfield to be present in the same magnitude of the Expanse silhouette  image @PDCWolf posted upthread. So why is that not the case here? Are the brighter/closer stars simply drowning out much of the stars in the background?

For me, whatever ends up being prettiest is best. I mean we're talking about what the settings are on a magic 3rd person camera, so just make it look cool I say. And Im sure they can add a minimum lighting toggle for folks who want it. I do like that star field though. It kinda comes down to mood. They said they wanted deep space to feel cold and empty... but maybe it could feel full and alive? 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[darthgently]

6 minutes ago, t_v said:

That image is with the exposure turned way up, to the point that even background space isn’t black. If you kept a consistent exposure throughout the game, the sky would actually be very dark, much darker than either the KSP 1 or 2 skyboxes. 

While realizing that turning down exposure in a digital image isn't the same as reversing the overexposure when the image was made, here is what I get when I drop the exposure down in Gimp such that the background is near black (not to mention differences in viewers monitor settings etc).  Anyway, the cloud and stars are still very visible, even faint ones:

[Pthigrivi]

It's also a small part of a much larger nebula that extends throughout the frame of this shot. And you really shouldn't keep a constant exposure. Human eyes adjust to different light levels, let alone flying magic player perspective cameras. Again, just make it as pretty as it can be. 

[PDCWolf]

7 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Well you can see nebulae with a small telescope, so if Kerbol happened to be very near a nebula you'd probably be able to see it. As to the color you can see some tinge without filters. True colors range from blues to greens to pinks and purples. 

This is a true color image of the Trapezium, part of the Orion Nebula:

What are the scope and camera settings for that? Because if you used those exposure settings anywhere else, you'd go blind in white as soon as anything brighter showed up.

6 hours ago, Ahres said:

So why is that not the case here? Are the brighter/closer stars simply drowning out much of the stars in the background?

Bright stuff definitely hides anything nearby that's less bright. That's pretty much the point of the other thread. From that thread we also know that astronauts at night, what'd be the shadow of the Earth can see uncountable stars more than being on Earth. Even at night atmospheric extinction and pollution are still a thing here. Whilst the Rocinante image is exaggerated, the only thing that'd change is you'd see less stars total. I'll boot up space engine in a while and just take a couple shots, the objective side of this topic is clearly lacking some finalizing closure for some.

5 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

It's also a small part of a much larger nebula that extends throughout the frame of this shot. And you really shouldn't keep a constant exposure. Human eyes adjust to different light levels, let alone flying magic player perspective cameras. Again, just make it as pretty as it can be. 

Yep, point of this and the other thread: Exposure should adjust to the situation, so if super bright nearby stuff is in the frame, you don't see stars. If nothing bright is nearby because you're in interstellar space, you see almost all the stars.

[snip]

Edited April 15, 2022 by Snark
Redacted by moderator

[Pthigrivi]

Edit: Sorry, previous response was a bit flip.
 

We know that Debdeb is young system so it stands to reason there’s a nebula very nearby, though we have no idea how big or how close it still appears. We also have no idea what kind of settings or filters would or wouldn’t apply to an imaginary camera floating around our vessel. In the end it’s a subjective, creative choice on the part of the developers and how it effects gameplay and makes us feel. I certainly like the idea that as you got out past the glare of Kerbol the galaxy would feel dense and bright and full of possibilities, but maybe that makes it hard to make out the important stars that you’re navigating to and from, or maybe they felt like you wanted to feel cold and alone out there and notice the warm sense of relief as you reached your destination. We each can have a personal opinion about what we’d prefer to see but that doesn’t make everyone else’s opinions wrong. 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[PDCWolf]

28 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Since we’re debating for 4 pages how bright a fictional nebula of unknown size and distance would apear to an imaginary camera Id also like to know How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

As much as you might want to ridicule the argument you forget that, since we're speaking of a camera, the math is all there to be calculated. Whilst we might have differing opinions on what is better and what isn't, the objective truth of what would a camera see in the interstellar medium is easy to find. Human eyesight is also pretty much calculable as well, which is what my first mathematical argument pointed to.

I took a camera to the surface of Callisto, and adjusted exposure such that I'm not blinded by anything. Stars disappear from the sky, though the other moons are bright enough to remain as point sources. I kept the settings visible in the lower right corner.

https://i.imgur.com/ebTwMhf.jpg

Now, with those same settings, I moved the camera to random interstellar space midway from the core of the Milky Way. Welcome to the void. 

https://i.imgur.com/HwrZABn.jpg

Since I'm not a fan of this either, I suggested in another thread that the camera should adapt its exposure.  Here's a setting that allows us to see stars, the galactic centre, nebula, and even Andromeda back there. This is superhuman, but a camera with enough aperture and exposure can do it.

https://i.imgur.com/Vz18xvQ.jpg

This is what happens when you go back to Callisto's surface with those same settings:

https://i.imgur.com/KTEt2Dx.jpg

If you can see the green magic cloud, you can see stars as well (though still not the ship). You can't have one or the other, you either have both or nothing (this is exactly what your picture hints at). Further on, human eyesight has much better dynamic range than a camera, which is why astronauts can attest to such a full sky of stars when in space.

[Snark]

Some content has been redacted and/or removed, due to heated debate crossing over the line into personal remarks.

Folks, it's fine to argue your points.  Please contain your commentary, however, to the points in question (yours, and anyone else's), rather than the people involved.  Address the post, not the poster.

Please also bear in mind that while it's fine to make evidence-based arguments about what's realistic or not... a major part of this debate simply comes down to a matter of opinion (e.g. what people like or don't like), for which the question of realism is entirely moot.  It's not possible to argue with opinions, because everyone has their own, and everyone's opinion is just as valid as everyone else's.  People are going to differ, and that's fine.  Please don't try to argue with someone's opinion, or criticize it, or get angry about it, or try to make assertions about what "most people" would like.  You're the authority on your own opinion, and nobody else's.  It's fine to state your opinion-- please do!-- and give your reasons for it if you like; but leave it at that and don't take it personally when other people have opinions different from yours.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Pthigrivi]

My b. I was making fun of all of us for having a silly debate but it did sound like I was mocking you @PDCWolf.  Sorry about that. Not my intention. I totally agree about how nice it would be to vary the exposure even beyond what a typical camera would pick up if it mimicked what astronauts describe or even just gave the right feel in the moment. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

@PDCWolf can you also take a few more shots with both exposure settings of:

Callisto surface at night (preferably with Jupiter out of frame)

A very light colored ship in deep space

and if possible, with dynamic range of 5 (I think that's a normal camera) around 20 (the human eye) and some really big number to see the difference. 

This is mostly because I can't own space engine and would like to see how these scenarios would look.  

[PDCWolf]

35 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

My b. I was making fun of all of us for having a silly debate but it did sound like I was mocking you @PDCWolf.  Sorry about that. Not my intention. I totally agree about how nice it would be to vary the exposure even beyond what a typical camera would pick up if it mimicked what astronauts describe or even just gave the right feel in the moment. 

Never took it personal, that's why I said "ridiculing the argument", not me.

25 minutes ago, t_v said:

@PDCWolf can you also take a few more shots with both exposure settings of:

Callisto surface at night (preferably with Jupiter out of frame)

A very light colored ship in deep space

and if possible, with dynamic range of 5 (I think that's a normal camera) around 20 (the human eye) and some really big number to see the difference. 

This is mostly because I can't own space engine and would like to see how these scenarios would look.  

Night at Callisto, no Jupiter to be seen, with same both settings as the previous post > Exposure "0" and Exposure "-9.5" (yes, it's all completely black).

A very light colored ship in space - Here's the famous IXS Enterprise (She's bright white almost all over) , on a random patch of the Milky Way, with the galactic centre visible. Exposure "0" and Exposure "-9.5"

Space Engine does not have a "dynamic range" setting, it's either normal or HDR. I'll give you some bonus shots of multiple settings on that second situation.

Expanded magnitude limit, normal exposure, HDR:

Heavily over exposed, with artificial ambient lighting, and HDR:

Custom non HDR setting to bring out nebulas and clear some stars

 

[OHara]

On 4/14/2022 at 4:20 PM, Ahres said:

 I was also slightly confused about the "magic color clouds". Mostly because this is not something we see with our own eyes. Would someone be able to see something like this in interstellar space with the naked eye? It doesn't seem like it.

I believe your expectation is correct. I don't think anything outside the sola system other than stars are bright enough to for human eyes to see in colour.   

A telescope can collect a lot of light with its big collecting lens or mirror, and send it all through the pupil of an eye, but there is a rule in optics that demagnifying the aperture always comes with magnifying the image by the same factor.  So the extra collected light from a nebula is spread over more the human retina, resulting in the same too-weak intensity on each of our colour-sensitive cones. No way to perceive the colour of nebulae with our eyes in real-time; we need long exposures on film or image sensors.

On 4/14/2022 at 6:39 PM, Ahres said:

The Trapezium image is thought-provoking. I'd expect a starfield to be present in the same magnitude of the Expanse silhouette  image

The Trapezium part of M42 is near some young bright stars, which I assume are hiding the background starfield in zoomed-in images of those bright stars and nebula.

And that silhouette image seems to represent a craft painted a very flat black (or rendered with an inappropriate ambient light setting).  The sum of far-away stars does of course produce ambient light in interstellar space (lighting the nebulae, for example).  While not having been in interstellar space personally, I would expect a white craft to be look nearly as bright in that ambient light, as a blurred average of the stars in its background. 

If there was a mirror on the craft, I would see the starfield behind me in that mirror, which on average is as bright as the starfield in the background of the craft.  If the mirror is frosted, the starfield is blurred, so I see uniform illumination in the mirror with the same average brightness.  If we have white paint instead of a frosted mirror,  that paint scatters probably only 80% of the ambient light, so I expect the craft would be a bit dimmer than the average of the starfield in the background.

[Bej Kerman]

On 4/15/2022 at 1:12 AM, PDCWolf said:

Whilst we might have differing opinions on what is better and what isn't, the objective truth of what would a camera see in the interstellar medium is easy to find.

It doesn't need to be realistic.

On 4/15/2022 at 3:02 AM, PDCWolf said:

Space Engine does not have a "dynamic range" setting, it's either normal or HDR.

What's the difference?

[t_v]

HDR means high dynamic range, that is the dynamic range setting. But it doesn’t have a slider. If you slid the range all the way up, you would be able to see all objects, no matter how bright, at their relative brightness, but since a computer screen can only display so many different brightnesses, a lot of things would be near black because the absolute brightest thing would be white and depending on the shot, everything else would be drowned out. 

Here is an explanation: 

In the HDR image, you can see the sky is made up of the bright sun and the darker rest of the sky, whereas in the standard dynamic range setting, the sky is just whitish due to it being too bright for the rest of the image. This is akin to (but much less extreme than) setting your exposure settings so that you can see stars and then looking at a scene with a planet and stars, with a low dynamic range the planet is just bright white but with a (very) high dynamic range you could capture both the bright planet and the dim stars. 

For numbers, the absolute best cameras have 15 "stops" of range, whereas the average human eye has 21 "stops", which means a range of 2^21 levels of brightness (each stop is twice/half as bright as the consecutive stops)