G'th

IIRC there isn't a way to do it in-game, but if you're in GIMP/Photoshop, you can just shrink the word slightly to get it to fit. Either change the text size or apply it as an image and scale it.

The fun part is that technically neither one is real lol, but the top one is decidedly far less real.

Neat little comparison between real life and the mod:

Its actually an aurora. Or rather, a proto-version of one. My initial go at it ended up looking too much like clouds lol. Martian auroras, like on Venus, can appear anywhere, not just at the poles, so these will be semi-rare compared to the always on ones you'd find in places like Earth or the gas giants.

So the dynamic dust thing is unfortunately not going to work as EVE limitations rear their ugly little heads again. However, here's the new Vibrance for Mars, with Phobos hanging out too because I inadvertently set my screenshot probe to its height and got captured.

So the actual shape of the city lights are pulled from the Blue Marble images and modified slightly. (Namely to shore up some of the unsightly bits) The texture of the city lights however are also real-ish. All city lights at night are a Dr. Strange nightmare version of Paris and during the day they're Liberty City (from GTA4)

To go along with the new found inspiration for Mars, how about a completely redone texture, again lol. We are definitely getting into the swing of it now, as at least for TrueSight I don't believe I'm ever going to be compelled to change a thing about how this new Mars looks, other than of course building the dust and cloud systems.

Its a subtle effect, but have you ever noticed how oceans tend to just look like a flat color? How about now?

You know, every time I went to research what Martian weather looks like, including the dust storms, for some reason all I ever found showed the storms as being blurry as all get out and not very detailed. Idk what it was about the pictures I was pulling up, but thats just all I ever got. Until today. These images just gave me, not only mind numbing amounts of inspiration, but also open up a lot of possibilities now as I can replicate these visuals with the cloud sources I have access to... But in the meantime, even more insanely pretty Earth clouds to look at from low orbits: A very important question for my regular Like pressers: If we presume that the above pictures of the City Lights are what I consider to be the best of that particular visual aspect, what are your opinions on it? I am inclined to do some more color tweaking on them, but I'm uncertain if I should touch them on that note. But I'm also curious as to the level of "shine" being shown. I have some means to up the amount of light coming off of these without it washing out the day side, but this is where I have it set to now. Do you think its adequate?

Actually the typhoon was one of the first things added, so its always been there. Unfortunately EVE is quite limited with spinny storms so at the moment its only possible to have the one storm in the Indian Ocean specifically, that only sort of spins like it should.. I've hit up blackrack about adding more options to fix this but obviously he has other priorities. I know exactly what I would need to be able to put a storm anywhere and have it behave properly, but I don't have any real ability to amend EVE, nor desire for that matter. Now proportionately sized and color corrected: Also these views tho. As per the standard, all at 100km in altitude, the lowest of low orbits and we get some pretty good detail out of it:

The Typhoon in the Indian Ocean has consistently been the one thing about this mod that I simply never touched again after, I felt at the time, perfecting it. So naturally I touched it: Still going to need some color tweaking (and for testing purposes I also have the wrong texture in for detailing which isn't helping) as its too starkly white compared to the rest of the clouds, but its looking fantastic with my new cloud techniques.

Initial goes at Scatterer + TUFX Updates. Still trying to find the perfect balance with bloom so that city lights look good without washing out the day side, and so far it looks like its going to be achievable.

Completely redid City Lights and the Earth Textures....again. Next up we're gonna finish all the new cloud patterns and then i'm gonna dive head first into completely redoing Scatterer, and then I want to move along to Mars.

It is, though decidedly less useful given the details blur out at those distances regardless.

Its also just sad that I'm only able to figure this all out now, as I'm basically faking the 3D effect that real volumetric clouds would impart.

My capacity for perfectionism is as exhausting as it is horrifying and exciting. These photos are at 100km in altitude. No zoom.

Most likely the coast line if I understand what you're referring to. Shallower waters means you actually see some of the ocean floor, hence, the water is more brightly colored than where its deeper and the sun doesn't penetrate. You can see the same affect all over the Caribbean and in some other places on the planet. You can even see what it looks like for Australia in that real sat photo from Himawari 8. Eventually yes. Thats most likely a post "1.0" thing, and will also need me to actually want to play KSP lol. Haven't actually played in a hot minute and don't see myself finding any interest in doing so anytime soon.

Already has. The pics since my return a week ago have all been with Reborn.

Thats the eventual plan yep.

Proof of concept for dynamic dust on Mars. The idea is that the planet would, slowly, flit between the beige and the orangeish red. It isn't exactly realistic to the real Mars, but it also isn't unrealistic either. Mars is just weird and you kind of have to just pick a point in time and make that your "look". Course, we should know by now I'm too much of a perfectionist for that.

I suspect my technique for Dynamic Clouds is going to be valuable here. It depends on what the altitude cut offs are for the volumetrics before it fades out into the 2D texture, but I've been able to push the fidelity of clouds pretty far in 2D, and in some of the shots I can even get a little close to faking the volumetric effect. At actual map view heights it won't provide that much benefit, but the middle orbits may see some improvements.

The classical volumetrics most likely not, as I'm banking on the new volumetrics to be out before I feel like this is finished enough to try releasing again, and if that ends up being the case then this whole thing could end up being redone again as I start to break and tweak and intuit and inspire myself with the new system. BUT, if its still in development by that point, then I will at least turn on the classical volumetrics and get them looking as well as they can, which is pretty easy compared to the endless tweaking for everything else as I already figured the limits of that system years ago. And as for Australia! IDK! I like to think its because the way the Outback looks it just provides a nice contrast with the surrounding ocean and clouds, even in the dullest of textures. And that effect only gets more so when we hop over to the Vibrance version, which if it wasn't mentioned earlier is based on live-ish imagery from the Himawari 8 satellite. OH, and on that note, here's the 13094813048th version of Vibrance Earth, which has now been, I think, perfectly color matched to that of the Himawari 8 Satellite, as you can see in this neat comparison (Do note my Earth is considerably brighter. Given that Australia is not actually this virulently red IRL, I'm chalking up the difference to the post processing on the Himawari imagery, and thus I go for the idea rather than a one-to-one recreation. This is also apparent because of how decidedly un-visible all the other landmasses are when they shouldn't be that dark compared to the surrounding oceans. Its probable that when I start looking at TUFX again we might be able to go for the 1:1 as an option): Himawari-8 SOL And just for fun on a more historical note, here's one of the earliest images of the mod compared to roughly the same scene as it is now. It is indeed quite fascinating how far this has come, considering the mod got cancelled twice lmao. Early SOL circa mid-July of 2022: Present Day SOL:

Its almost always Australia lol. In those instances though it was northern South America and the Caribbean.

I assume you're referring to how they look on the day side? There's a companion texture for this that I admittedly haven't even looked at yet that should reduce the, uh, awfulness that usually results from that. Won't look as good as basically everyone wants, but we're also just dealing with a rather limited tool in EVE's City Lights implementation. I also intend on essentially reducing the city lights within a certain radius around the most common launch sites (Kennedy, Kourou, Baikonur, etc) so that way at least when you're launching you'd have to get up to altitude before any of the textures become apparent, which should help in that regard. HOWEVER, in explaining all that I just had an inspirational spark. I'm not going to explain what I just thought, but I will say that this is the same sort of spark that has led to all of the things in this mod...