Lighting whilst traveling between stars

[Pthigrivi]

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

Do we know yet how distant stars are from one another in KSP 2? Think about how close planets are compared with real life; if something similar has been done with stars, we can have both gameplay and realism reasons why starlight should be enough to make an interstellar craft somewhat visible mid journey.

This is a good point. We don't know yet but the same 1/10th scaling would make sense. 

[Bej Kerman]

6 hours ago, Deddly said:

Do we know yet how distant stars are from one another in KSP 2? Think about how close planets are compared with real life; if something similar has been done with stars, we can have both gameplay and realism reasons why starlight should be enough to make an interstellar craft somewhat visible mid journey.

This would probably be like making the side of a skyscraper glow with a single tiny LED.

12 hours ago, EnderKid2 said:

would be nice to get some sort of augmented reality "utility overlay"/"night vision" which shows your ship(s) in fullbright and, if you have the relevant sensors, the ground and surrounding objects in wireframe/pointcloud

This just makes sense. Astronauts in the very distant future won't be clambering around with such outdated technologies like lights. In fact, such additions like lights would probably erode on an interstellar vessel due to the velocity that the ship meets the interstellar medium at.

[Maria Sirona]

jUst slap some lightes on dat ship

[t_v]

If you are worried about darkness in EVA, remember the the kerbal space suit has lights. I’m more worried about when just controlling the craft normally. 

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, t_v said:

If you are worried about darkness in EVA, remember the the kerbal space suit has lights. I’m more worried about when just controlling the craft normally. 

That suit light is 90% of my EVA depth perception cues.  If it weren't for the suit light spill pattern it would be hard to tell distance of kerbal from craft and objects at times

[Ahres]

9 hours ago, Deddly said:

Do we know yet how distant stars are from one another in KSP 2? Think about how close planets are compared with real life; if something similar has been done with stars, we can have both gameplay and realism reasons why starlight should be enough to make an interstellar craft somewhat visible mid journey.

This is a fair point.

I think about what it'd be like to start a craft that takes off from LKO in a standard level of brightness and then see it in deep, interstellar space where you can't even tell which star is Kerbol because they're all so far away. Someone in Episode 5 mentions how cold, and dark, and alone one needs to feel when they're in between stars. I'm excited to experience that. And I feel like that means very dim, or completely dark, vessels in interstellar space.

Then on the other end of the trip, think about how relieving it will be when your vessel has come so far that you can finally start seeing it again in the natural light of another star. I think that'll be way satisfying.

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is a good point. We don't know yet but the same 1/10th scaling would make sense. 

Remember that light emitted by the sun is also scaled down, that's why Eeloo is dark-ish as well. It'll really depend on how far apart they set those stars to be.

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

lights would probably erode on an interstellar vessel due to the velocity that the ship meets the interstellar medium at.

If we haven't solved the devastating effects of collisions that can happen during relativistic (and let alone FTL) travel, then we haven't solved relativistic/FTL travel at all. This is a different topic, but how they'll manage relativistic/FTL tech whilst keeping chemical rockets relevant is still something I'm very much concerned about.

[Bej Kerman]

32 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

how they'll manage relativistic/FTL tech whilst keeping chemical rockets relevant is still something I'm very much concerned about.

That's like asking how they'll keep gas lamps relevant in the age of flashlights. They won't. Gas lamps (chemical rockets in this case) will only be needed for progression.

[Pthigrivi]

30 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

That's like asking how they'll keep gas lamps relevant in the age of flashlights. They won't. Gas lamps (chemical rockets in this case) will only be needed for progression.

For the most part probably, but there may be cases where harvestable resource availability might make chemical rockets attractive even in other systems. If say you had a lot of volatiles and not much fuel for nuclear or fusion it might be hard to generate huge amounts of power and good ol' methalox could be the ticket. 

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

That's like asking how they'll keep gas lamps relevant in the age of flashlights. They won't. Gas lamps (chemical rockets in this case) will only be needed for progression.

I understand progression, but we're not talking about jumping from High TRW low ISP engines to a Nerva, we're talking about complete invalidation of a technology as soon as you unlock the next. In real life, gas lamps are still in use, widely, as we live in a world and society that's varied enough that people still have to give them active use, whether by circumstance, need or obligation. Plus, as you've said many times before, this is a game, and there's gotta be a balance around gameplay. If we've to throw an entire section of gameplay out the window, why even have it in the fist place?

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

For the most part probably, but there may be cases where harvestable resource availability might make chemical rockets attractive even in other systems. If say you had a lot of volatiles and not much fuel for nuclear or fusion it might be hard to generate huge amounts of power and good ol' methalox could be the ticket. 

This makes sense, and is an attractive idea, but only solves the dilemma partially.

Sorry 4 the massive off-topic, back to why we're here:

6 hours ago, Ahres said:

This is a fair point.

I think about what it'd be like to start a craft that takes off from LKO in a standard level of brightness and then see it in deep, interstellar space where you can't even tell which star is Kerbol because they're all so far away. Someone in Episode 5 mentions how cold, and dark, and alone one needs to feel when they're in between stars.

The cold, dark, lonely vacuum between the stars is a unique setting, and the only place where the universe gets incredibly scary as well (unless you go intergalactic, or inter-supercluster. We'd be losing the experience to magical light. Sad.

[Bej Kerman]

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

we're talking about complete invalidation of a technology as soon as you unlock the next.

What's the problem with that?

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The cold, dark, lonely vacuum between the stars is a unique setting, and the only place where the universe gets incredibly scary as well (unless you go intergalactic, or inter-supercluster. We'd be losing the experience to magical light. Sad.

We wouldn't be losing anything and it'd be a nice QOL feature.

[Deddly]

Even KSP 1 has a feature to adjust the darkest lighting situations to fit different tastes. I expect there will be enough options in KSP 2 to please everyone on this subject.

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

We wouldn't be losing anything...

Well that's subjective, isn't it? 

[Bej Kerman]

6 minutes ago, Deddly said:

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

We wouldn't be losing anything...

Well that's subjective, isn't it? 

We would lose the ability to interact with parts without having to fumble round - that fact doesn't change. You can say that this is just an opinion, but I guarantee you that no-one on Earth could point to an extremely tiny pitch black object on another extremely large pitch black object without some kind of ambient light - equivalent to trying to point to a thermometer on an interstellar vessel with the seemingly needless photorealism being proposed here. Again, fact not opinion, unless people now have the superpower of being able to see black on black.

[Deddly]

1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

We would lose the ability to interact with parts without having to fumble round

Absolutely. I don't think anyone claimed otherwise. 

[The Aziz]

And still, this whole thread went hot under the assumption that something would be needed to be done mid flight. We don't know if we're getting science experiments slapped on ships (doubt that), we're not going EVA for whatever reason because the ship is under constant acceleration and the only moment where it isn't, is used to flip and fire the engine back to slow down for approach. We're not having RNG failures, or at least none were announced, so there's no eg. tank pressure problems that need to be fixed ASAP. I still think we won't need ambient light of any sort on interstellar journeys.

[Deddly]

3 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

I still think we won't need ambient light of any sort on interstellar journeys.

It's quite possible we don't. However, one thing I've learned from this community is that someone somewhere will be doing things none of us could possibly imagine right now. Never underestimate the amount of ingenuity and/or stubbornness we can pull off as a group. 

[Admiral Fluffy]

7 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

I still think we won't need ambient light of any sort on interstellar journeys.

I don't think we will either, but I don't want to put lights everywhere. Assuming we do have slap on science, there could be some kind of light that outlines it. If you press the light button, the outline toggles. Along with other important parts.

[The Aziz]

11 minutes ago, Deddly said:

It's quite possible we don't. However, one thing I've learned from this community is that someone somewhere will be doing things none of us could possibly imagine right now. Never underestimate the amount of ingenuity and/or stubbornness we can pull off as a group. 

Of course. People love to engineer their way around things that weren't designed with such activities in mind. But that does not mean these things should be designed with every crazy idea taken into account. There will be a mod for that anyway.

1 minute ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

I don't think we will either, but I don't want to put lights everywhere. Assuming we do have slap on science, there could be some kind of light that outlines it. If you press the light button, the outline toggles. Along with other important parts.

I mean sure, that's pure gameplay mechanic. Just like crew modules light up when doing transfers, or parts get green outline when you hover on their icon on staging list. If we get enough options in GUI to get around complete darkness, then I'm fine with it. Even if I don't need it. That way nothing blocks me from interacting with the ship, and my screenshots look still somewhat realistic (I mean what the hell, dark silhouette of my first interstellar ship, on a maiden voyage to unknown system? I'd wallpaper it.)

[jimmymcgoochie]

Even if it isn't a part of KSP2 as stock, I'd imagine that something like Minimum Ambient Lighting will be made as a mod very quickly. When it comes down to "is this realistically illuminated?" versus "can I actually see anything at all on the screen?", the latter will win every time for me.

[Bej Kerman]

49 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

And still, this whole thread went hot under the assumption that something would be needed to be done mid flight. We don't know if we're getting science experiments slapped on ships (doubt that), we're not going EVA for whatever reason because the ship is under constant acceleration and the only moment where it isn't, is used to flip and fire the engine back to slow down for approach. We're not having RNG failures, or at least none were announced, so there's no eg. tank pressure problems that need to be fixed ASAP. I still think we won't need ambient light of any sort on interstellar journeys.

You also don't have to go to Jool, it certainly isn't necessary for anything, but it's there if you do decide to go there.

It is hasty to assume players won't want to do something mid-flight.

[darthgently]

13 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Even if it isn't a part of KSP2 as stock, I'd imagine that something like Minimum Ambient Lighting will be made as a mod very quickly. When it comes down to "is this realistically illuminated?" versus "can I actually see anything at all on the screen?", the latter will win every time for me.

I thought I saw Flight and Map view ambient light settings in the stock settings at one point.  Was that a mod putting that there?

[jimmymcgoochie]

Just now, darthgently said:

I thought I saw Flight and Map view ambient light settings in the stock settings at one point.  Was that a mod putting that there?

Those are stock settings, but those are global settings that are applied everywhere. Making it bright enough to see in the dark makes everything overexposed and glare-y in daylight, whereas using MAL I can set "day" and "night" options with very different levels of ambient lighting and switch between them as appropriate. Just give me a button to toggle the ambient light boost up for night shots and I'll be happy, but all this "you're interstellar so you can't see anything at all" is to me a needless hindrance that would make the game worse, not better.

[The Aziz]

28 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

It is hasty to assume players won't want to do something mid-flight.

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

And it's what my previous post was about. I don't have to try to operate something (maybe land) while on the dark side of a body, I can wait for daylight, but I can do it and deal with the consequences. Or I can turn up the ambient light setting and stop caring about darkness. I have the choice. I don't need to operate in darkness unless the planet in question is tidally locked to the star and my base/geostationary station is on the far side (which is oddly specific choice). See where I'm going?

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

It's quite possible we don't. However, one thing I've learned from this community is that someone somewhere will be doing things none of us could possibly imagine right now. Never underestimate the amount of ingenuity and/or stubbornness we can pull off as a group. 

Says, after a lot of participants in the thread clearly lack the ingenuity to put a light on their ships, or to use the extensive set of features designed specifically to operate under dark environments (all of which already exist in the first game).

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I mean sure, that's pure gameplay mechanic. Just like crew modules light up when doing transfers, or parts get green outline when you hover on their icon on staging list. If we get enough options in GUI to get around complete darkness, then I'm fine with it. Even if I don't need it. That way nothing blocks me from interacting with the ship, and my screenshots look still somewhat realistic (I mean what the hell, dark silhouette of my first interstellar ship, on a maiden voyage to unknown system? I'd wallpaper it.)

(all of which already exist in the first game).

It's like we're discussing KSP2 but no one has played KSP1. Pitch dark environments exist in KSP1, and it already has a whole suit of tools to deal with it. 

[shdwlrd]

48 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Says, after a lot of participants in the thread clearly lack the ingenuity to put a light on their ships, or to use the extensive set of features designed specifically to operate under dark environments (all of which already exist in the first game).

I was thinking the same thing. Then I remembered how often I would forget to put lights on my landers and rovers. (Basically most of the time.) Ambient light adjustments is helpful for us players that can't remember to light our crafts properly. It may not be realistic, but it is helpful.