Visible Planets

[gustavodag]

There is a big flaw at how kerbal shows planets, that most people never even noticed.
Have you ever looked around trying to find the planet you are going to? And you can only see it when you are already at it's sphere of influence.

In reality planets are the most shiny objects when you look to the space, so how can it be so difficult to see them in kerbal?

This feature is essencial to a better view of the cosmos.

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by gustavodag

[Snark]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! 

2 hours ago, gustavodag said:

There is a big flaw at how kerbal shows planets, that most people never even noticed.

Well, it's a behavior.  Whether it's a "flaw" is a value judgment, based on whether someone thinks it's a problem or not.  I don't think it's that people don't notice, but rather that they don't especially notice it much (I sure don't, for example)-- i.e. they care more about other stuff.

2 hours ago, gustavodag said:

Have you ever looked around trying to find the planet you are going to?

No, because they're too small to see, generally speaking.

2 hours ago, gustavodag said:

And you can only see it when you are already at it's sphere of influence.

Or pretty close, anyway.  They're actually visible considerably outside the sphere of influence.  For example, Minmus is easily visible from Kerbin's surface, and you're nowhere near being in Minmus' sphere of influence.

2 hours ago, gustavodag said:

In reality planets are the most shiny objects when you look to the space, so HOW CAN IT BE SO DIFFICULT TO FIND THEM IN KERBAL??

Because reality is not the same thing as a computer game.  Technical details in spoiler, for people who may be interested.  TL;DR:  "Because physics."

Spoiler

Reality doesn't have pixels, and in reality, the human eye is logarithmically sensitive and can detect far fainter / smaller things than a single pixel on a computer screen.

For example, I can go outside on a clear night, shortly after dark, and if I watch patiently for a few minutes, I can watch satellites pass overhead-- with my naked eye.  I'm literally looking at an object the size of a car, generally over 200 miles away, and I can see it-- despite the fact that both its apparent size and its apparent brightness is far smaller than the physical size of a pixel on my computer monitor seen from a couple of feet away.

For that matter... why can I see stars in the sky at all, given how vanishingly tiny their actual apparent size is?  It's because human eyes are super sensitive in the dark, and also because the brightness of a star's surface is so glaringly bright that it makes up for its tiny size with high intensity.

Computer screens and pixels don't work that way.  Individual pixels can only get as bright as "white", and don't get any brighter.  There are other objects on-screen and there's a good chance the dark sky on your computer monitor when you're playing isn't the sole source of illumination where you sit, meaning your eyes aren't optimally dark-adjusted.  So things just don't look the same, it's not how it works.

The planets are as small and hard-to-see as they are because they are actual physical objects in-game that are rendered according to their geometry, and guess what?  That is invisibly tiny.  When they shrink to sub-pixel size, there's basically no way for the computer to make it visible to you.  When you look at, say, Saturn in the night sky, and you see it easily?  That works because even though its actual size is smaller than a pixel on a computer monitor would appear to you, it's far brighter than a pixel can possibly be, and your eye can see microscopically tiny things if they're bright enough.

A game that realistically rendered Saturn at its appropriate angular size in-game would be sub-pixel size... but couldn't make it bright enough to be visible, because white is white and the monitor can't get any brighter than that.

The reason you can see stars on the skybox in KSP is that they're not actual objects, they're a texture, which means they're shown as being multiple pixels in size (which a real star would never be)-- it's a piece of art which a human has hand-painted in order to create a "starry" look that feels real, even if it is actually highly unrealistic.

 

2 hours ago, gustavodag said:

We have got two options in here: planets are too small or it is the classic lazy development. 

If I might offer a suggestion:  when asking for a thing, it usually works better to ask nicely, because if you insult the people you're asking, they tend to stop listening. 

Speaking as a software developer myself, I'm pretty sure that "laziness" is not why this hasn't happened.  More rambling in spoiler, for anyone who may be interested.  TL;DR:  "There are reasons."

Spoiler

Not sure why you would think "lazy development"-- are you under the impression that software engineers working at a company spend their time lounging around, watching TV and goofing off, instead of actually working hard?  Speaking as a software engineer myself, I assure you that's not the case-- it's a very hard-working intense profession.  And game developers tend to be even more overworked than software engineers in general, from what I've heard.  Certainly I've never seen any evidence to suggest that the folks at Squad are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

And "classic" lazy development?  As if this is somehow a common problem that's been around a long time?  Not sure what you meant by this, but I've been doing this for the last 25 years and I can assure you that any developer that's "lazy" and doesn't work hard, tends not to keep their job all that long.

So... not sure if you intended to be insulting when you said "classic lazy development", but that's sure how it comes across (at least to me). 

That said, there's a third option:  because players haven't cared enough for such a feature to be prioritized yet.

Bear in mind that software development is a zero-sum game.  There's only so much budget available.  There are only so many engineers to do the work, and they only have a certain finite number of hours available.  Spending time working on feature A means that you don't spend time working on feature B instead.  And there is always more stuff to do than there is time to do it in-- which means things have to be prioritized, and features that aren't high enough priority have to wait their turn.

I've been playing KSP for five years now, and I've seen KSP go through a lot of releases during that time.  And Squad appears to have been hard at work the whole time-- they've made release after release, adding all kinds of features to the game.  When they're deciding what features to add, they have to prioritize, and I expect that they do that based on perceived demand-- i.e. what do the players, as a whole, want or need?

There's no way they can please everyone, because different people want different things and Squad can't do everything at once.  So they have to work on the highest-demand stuff first, and wait until later to do other things.

 

Basically, my understanding of what you're asking for, here is this (please correct me if I'm wrong):

You'd like to see Squad add a new feature to the game that artificially boosts the visibility of planets so that they will "stand out" on your screen and be easy to see even when they're far away.

Yes?

Well, that's not a bad feature suggestion.  I can see how that would be useful.  I expect that there are other players who would like to have that, too-- heck, I'd find it useful myself.    But it does have to compete with all the other features that people are asking for and that Squad is working on.

So in general, the best way to ask for this kind of thing?  Just lay out the request, plainly and simply, and skip the accusations of laziness and so forth.

 

In the meantime:  I realize that "there's a mod for that" is not the solution to wanting a feature in stock.  But, now that you've asked for the feature in stock, I imagine you might like to have a way to address the problem while you're waiting.  So... ahem... in the meantime, there's a mod for that. 

 

Perhaps you may find it useful?

[gustavodag]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

No, because they're too small to see, generally speaking.

Extremely wrong, clearly don't get astronomy or the post.

 

1 hour ago, Snark said:

For example, Minmus is easily visible from Kerbin's surface, and you're nowhere near being in Minmus' sphere of influence.

Didn't know Minmus was a planet

 

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Because reality is not the same thing as a computer game.

That was a rhetorical question and you did a 50 line explanation.

 

1 hour ago, Snark said:

You'd like to see Squad add a new feature to the game that artificially boosts the visibility of planets so that they will "stand out" on your screen and be easy to see even when they're far away.

No.

 

All your post is [snip] that will never generate any change in the game because as we all know, [snip] and you were probably deceived,  the same case for physics not being processed correctly when you accelerate the game, the sets of calculations are the same, if your processor can't handle the more calculations the game should lag and not skip calculations.

I'm talking to the community, so people get mad at those directors that can't do simple things, it is like a disease look at the new movies,  [snip]

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by Gargamel
Portions Redacted By Moderator.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

That was a rhetorical question and you did a 50 line explanation.

Let me introduce you to Snark.   That is his MO.   Ask a question, and He will give you more info that you dreamed you would need, in fact, this reply was rather brief for him.   But it is always informative, learned, and on point.   And it will usually be the right answer. 

[Snark]

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

Extremely wrong, clearly don't get astronomy

I'm sorry if I didn't communicate clearly-- my response was about software development and computer graphics, not about astronomy.

I do totally get where you're coming from about the astronomy side of things-- if you want to talk about apparent magnitudes and luminosity and albedo and subtended angles and so forth, I get you.  (Physics major, here.) 

My response wasn't about the astronomy-- you're totally right, there, and I agree with you.  Yes, distant tiny objects at night are visible to the human eye.  That's a matter both of astronomy and of physiology.

My point is that software and computer graphics don't work the same as real life.  To implement a feature such as you request is certainly doable-- after all, there's a mod that does it, and I linked it for you-- but it is a feature that would need to be specifically implemented, it doesn't just "happen" for free.  Meaning that it takes time and resources and therefore would need to be prioritized, the same as any other feature needs to.

 

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

or the post.

Well, I kinda get the sense that you think I've missed your point, and if I have, I'm sorry about that.  My impression was that you're saying you want a feature to make distant planets more visible, but if that's not it, what is it that you do want?  Could you explain?

 

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

Didn't know Minmus was a planet

Well, it's a celestial body, and KSP doesn't really make a distinction between "moon" and "planet"-- there are some moons that are bigger than some planets, for example.  I was just using it as an example-- just saying that there's nothing about the SOI boundary that's special, it's not like planets instantly become visible when you make the transition into their SOI.  They are, in fact, visible outside it-- just how visible depends on how massive the planet is, how far from its primary it's orbiting, etc.

But certainly, I'll grant you that they're really hard to see from far away and become effectively invisible at interplanetary distances, yes.  Which I get the impression is your main point, yes?

 

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

That was a rhetorical question and you did a 50 line explanation.

Okay.  It wasn't at all obvious that it was rhetorical-- it sounded like an honest question, because "why is it hard to see planets at long distance in KSP?" actually is a reasonable question to ask, and one where the actual answer isn't necessarily obvious to folks who aren't programmers or graphics developers.

Besides-- even if you're not interested in the answer, other people might be, so I figured it was worth an explanation.  I understand that not everyone wants to wade through all the technical discussion, though, which is why I put most of the explanation in a spoiler section so that folks who aren't interested can just skip right over it.

2 hours ago, Snark said:

Basically, my understanding of what you're asking for, here is this (please correct me if I'm wrong):

You'd like to see Squad add a new feature to the game that artificially boosts the visibility of planets so that they will "stand out" on your screen and be easy to see even when they're far away.

Yes?

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

No.

 

...Okay, now I'm kinda confused.  It sure sounded to me like the feature that you wanted was to be able to see planets from far away.  I mean, here are your own words, from your (edited) OP in this thread:

4 hours ago, gustavodag said:

Have you ever looked around trying to find the planet you are going to? And you can only see it when you are already at it's sphere of influence.

In reality planets are the most shiny objects when you look to the space, so how can it be so difficult to see them in kerbal?

This feature is essencial to a better view of the cosmos.

So... if what you want isn't "I want to be able to see planets from far away", then what is it that you do want?  I mean, that sounds like that would be a useful feature to have, and I agreed with you that it would be a nice feature to be able to see faraway planets, but if that's not what you're asking here, I'm having trouble understanding.

Could you explain what feature it is that you're asking for, if it's not "planets that are more visible"?

 

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

All your post is [snip] that will never generate any change in the game

Hm?  The way people generate changes in the game is to request features.  That's why Squad created a "suggestions" forum, because they'd like to hear what their users are asking for.  It's kinda the point. 

And the way to get interest for a particular suggested change, is to demonstrate that there's interest in it.  Which players (such as myself) do by posting in the suggestion threads.  Popular suggestions will be ones that generate interest and responses from lots of players.  So, the more, the merrier.

 

1 hour ago, gustavodag said:

the same case for physics not being processed correctly when you accelerate the game, the sets of calculations are the same, if your processor can't handle the more calculations the game should lag and not skip calculations.

Well, that's an interesting suggestion in its own right-- but that's a totally different topic than "visibility of planets".  So if you'd like to suggest that, perhaps start a separate thread about it?

(My observation over the last few years has been that suggestion threads tend to be more effective when it's one suggestion per thread.)

 

[OHara]

On 2/21/2019 at 12:55 PM, gustavodag said:

Have you ever looked around trying to find the planet you are going to?

Yes.  I think many of us did, when first starting to play KSP.  I could not find this in Squad's 'feedback' tracker, so I added it:

Suggestion: make planets and moons visible on approach

New KSP players are likely to have seen Jupiter, Mars and Venus being quite brighter than the background stars, and to have known what they were seeing.

It would be reasonable then, to look for the target body in flight-view, as one approaches it. It would also be rather fun to spot it from far away on approach.

The surface of the target, however, at standard rendered brightness, is hard to see when only a couple pixels across. We depend on our dark-adapted eyes to spot Mars from Earth.

We also depend on dark-adapted eyes to see the stars in real life, but the KSP skybox is visible at standard rendered brightness. The visible skybox is nice to help players keep their orientation, but those visible stars set the expectation to also see the target planet, for players who know how Mars stands out from the stars.

For example, the mod 'distant object enhancement' has a DarkenSky operation to dim the skybox and adds a Flare to planets and craft.

[SchwinnTropius]

I'm running a monitor not at all meant for high definition applications, but I don't really have any problem finding planets/moons in the sky if I take more than a few seconds to look. The only time I have issues finding anything is if I'm in a weirdly inclined orbit and my acrophobia kicks in. It helps if you can find the planet/moon in map view and then try to match the angles in flight view.

[4x4cheesecake]

When I installed the mod "Distant Object Enhancement" for the first time, I was totally blown away by the feature to see planets in the night sky. I never thought about this before and it didn't bother me but since I've experienced how it can be, I don't want to miss it anymore. Looking around during the launch or in orbit to find the planet I'm going to visit actually became one of my favourite things to do^^
On a fresh game, you will always see the inner planets beeing lines up and if you visit the jool system or eeloo, you can see the whole solar system...it is just beautiful

So, I support this suggestion to add this feature to the stock game

[Loskene]

On 2/22/2019 at 1:10 AM, Gargamel said:

But it is always informative, learned, and on point.   And it will usually be the right answer. 

Ehhhhhhhhhh...

 

Anyway, distant object enhancement is one of those must-have visual mods you didn't know you needed until you installed it. +1 for making it stock, it should be relatively simple as far as these kinds of requests go.

[Vanamonde]

In very early versions, the planets could be seen from very long distances. Jool could be seen from the surface of Kerbin, for example. I don't think that was deliberately changed, though something did change it. 

[Superfluous J]

On 2/21/2019 at 6:55 PM, gustavodag said:

That was a rhetorical question and you did a 50 line explanation.

50 lines is considered a short reply for @Snark

EDIT: I'd say I was ninja'd but I got beat by like 4 days.

Edited February 23, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[Whirligig Girl]

Planets *should* be visible to the unaided eye from Kerbin, all of them including Dres and Eeloo should be at least near the limit of naked eye vision, with Jool, Eve, Duna, and Moho being quite bright in the night sky. We know this because I've seen these objects with my own eyes in the real solar system--Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The reason you don't see them in-game is related to how 3D applications display objects. They don't usually do it by shining photons and reflecting them off of surfaces, that would be too intensive. If that were the case, then point sources of light would be able to shine, since occasionally photons would hit the "camera sensor" even if the light source isn't visually as large as a pixel. Instead, 3D objects are drawn flat onto the screen using mathematics that I don't understand well enough to explain. The result of this is that objects smaller than the size of a pixel on the screen are rendered invisible. It also doesn't handle contrast correctly, so if the background is a medium gray tone like the skybox and the planet's surface is only a few shades lighter, then it won't really stand out even when it's several pixels across. Solving this problem is not straightforward, and the solution in Space Engine, KSP's Distant Object Enhancement mod, and more, is to draw flat sprites on the screen where the planet should be that match roughly how bright the object should appear. This is imperfect, since they can sometimes appear to be too bright compared to other objects which are big and bright enough to not need sprites, but it does allow the user to see distant planets and moons.

KSP has a LOT of visual issues/behaviors/flaws regarding the relative brightness of the planets and space. But it's more a result of just using standard rendering methods throughout the game and calling it good enough and working on other things than actual laziness.