KSP2 Sneakpeeks

[Brofessional]

4 hours ago, Ahres said:

 

I still don't like seeing the stars and the silhouette of the unlit sides of celestial bodies when the lit side is on-screen. It just feels... incorrect.

I agree but ideally it should be an optional setting, which hopefully is the case already.  Worst case scenario mods will take care of it as in KSP1.

[regex]

11 hours ago, PD_Dakota said:

Maybe, just maybe, we're getting configurable tanks. Maybe. I'd have to look those parts up. I've given up hope for actual procedural tanks, seems the "LEGO" paradigm remains <sigh>

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

17 hours ago, Ahres said:

 

I still don't like seeing the stars and the silhouette of the unlit sides of celestial bodies when the lit side is on-screen. It just feels... incorrect.

It is not incorrect - the 'can't see stars in space' argument have been debunked many times on this forum. 

 

Please Google and listen to an astronaut or astrophotography specialist, not Twitter or some doofus site

Sorry - have not had coffee yet 

Captain snarky-pants strikes again. 

[Ahres]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It is not incorrect - the 'can't see stars in space' argument have been debunked many times on this forum. 

 

Please Google and listen to an astronaut or astrophotography specialist, not Twitter or some doofus site

Sorry - have not had coffee yet 

Captain snarky-pants strikes again. 

Ha. Get your coffee in, Joe! C'mon!

Can you point me to some references? I only remember one really in-depth discussion about it and after reading all of it I still have the opinion that when there's a lit celestial body on screen, there shouldn't be a visible sky box.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Ahres
typo

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

32 minutes ago, Ahres said:

Ha. Get your coffee in, Joe! C'mon!

Can you point me to some references? I only remember one really in-depth discussion about it and every reading all of it I still have the opinion that when there's a lit celestial body on screen, there shouldn't be a visible sky box.

Yeah - there are some good ones.  I'll post and tag you when I get a chance 

(Coffee is in Effect) 

[LHACK4142]

On 1/31/2023 at 11:09 AM, Ahres said:

 

I still don't like seeing the stars and the silhouette of the unlit sides of celestial bodies when the lit side is on-screen. It just feels... incorrect.

We're risking re-igniting the Great Stars In Space Debate here, but I feel like the absence of stars and the unlit side of the Earth in the photo is more of a camera-specific thing. After all, you can see the unlit side of the moon and stars at night.

[SolarAdmiral]

44 minutes ago, LHACK4142 said:

We're risking re-igniting the Great Stars In Space Debate here, but I feel like the absence of stars and the unlit side of the Earth in the photo is more of a camera-specific thing. After all, you can see the unlit side of the moon and stars at night.

Yes there's a difference between what a camera sees and what the human eye sees. And there's all the stuff with shutter speeds and exposures and aperture sizes.

I love your example, as it's something everyone can see themselves. A full moon doesn't mean you can't see any stars. You can even see bright planets out during the day.

But, having not been in space myself, I'm not sure when and where you can and cannot see stars.

Maybe a system that fades the skybox to black around bright objects could work?

 

(Around as in visually around not physically around. I'm aware you'd still see stars even if near the sun as long as you were facing away from the sun.)

Maybe it's all more complicated than it's worth.

Edited February 1, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[Kerbart]

22 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

Yes there's a difference between what a camera sees and what the human eye sees. And there's all the stuff with shutter speeds and exposures and aperture sizes.

Don't forget the lenses. KSP1 uses pretty crappy ones with hardly any coatings given the amount of lens flare we see, and I doubt KSP2 will be any better. It's not as bad as in racing games (it's almost like they put reflective coatings on their lenses to get more glare) but it's still pretty bad. But maybe T2's budget is larger than Squad's so they can afford better glass.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, Ahres said:

Ha. Get your coffee in, Joe! C'mon!

Can you point me to some references? I only remember one really in-depth discussion about it and after reading all of it I still have the opinion that when there's a lit celestial body on screen, there shouldn't be a visible sky box.

Here's some 

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-do-photographs-taken-in-space-not-have-stars-in-them.html#:~:text=Yes%2C you can see stars,are very%2C very far away.

https://nightskypix.com/can-you-see-stars-in-space/

https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-are-there-no-stars

https://stardate.org/astro-guide/faqs/why-cant-we-see-stars-pictures-spacewalking-or-moonwalking-astronauts

https://universemagazine.com/en/why-are-the-stars-not-visible-in-space-photos/

 

Happy reading! 

It depends on what you want from the camera in-game.  Are you hoping to recreate the sense of having a physical camera that has to deeply adjust the f/stops to render bright local conditions (meaning it cannot simultaneously render dim stars in the background) or the human eye (which can adjust from bright things to dim things fairly quickly)? 

If you want photo realism with the limits modeled so it looks like photography... You get a black sky background with way overexposed locally bright objects in the foreground. 

If you want the game to be more like what astronauts actually see?  You can have an illuminated planet, moon or ship and still see the background stars. 

 

I'm in the latter camp. 

[Ahres]

18 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Happy reading! 

If you want the game to be more like what astronauts actually see?  You can have an illuminated planet, moon or ship and still see the background stars. 

I'm in the latter camp. 

Excellent! Thank you.

I fall in the latter camp as well, that I want to see in the game what I'd see if it was my own human eyes looking at the game's scene.

Which makes me wonder if I'm not explaining very well what I mean, because almost all of your articles are talking about why cameras can't see stars. I don't care about cameras. Gimme eyeballs. Your last article actually talks about what the human eye perceives in space- specifically how Neil Armstrong couldn't see stars until he was in the shadow of the LEM, which is what I desire in the game.

*The rest of this comment is Ahres just thinking out loud now* If there's a much brighter object in your field of vision (in real life) or on-screen (in the game) compared to much smaller and dimmer objects in the same view, I'd expect those smaller objects to be less visible or (maybe?) not visible at all. These KSP2 screenshots don't do this and my intuition tells me this is incorrect for our latter camp of human eyeballs. Sure, you could almost definitely still see some stars and the planets (though neither group would be as noticeable). But I don't think you'd be able to distinguish the silhouette of the unlit side of Earth/Kerbin against the faint color of nebulae or the galactic disk, would you? I'd just expect with the Earth/Kerbin and Sol/Kerbol in view that there'd be some stars against solid blackness. I guess you could argue in the Kerbal galaxy these nebulae are much brighter than any that we can see from Earth with the naked eye though.... 

So now a couple extra thoughts:

1) If my intuition is correct, that'd mean even when a sunlit vessel is in view/on-screen the skybox would be hard to see because the brightness of the craft itself would dominate the stars in the background- assuming you're relatively close to the star that's casting the light. And if you rotate the camera around to the dark side of the craft now you've got the sun in view which would be even more dominating than the vessel was. So... that'd mean you never get to take in the full glory of the skybox until you're on the dark side of a celestial body. Which this to me sounds amazing. It reminds me of the scene from Apollo 13 when Bacon/Swigert talks about how he can't wait to see for himself what the stars are like behind the darkness of the moon. Imagine an unsuspecting player that's seen the skybox at night while in the atmosphere of Kerbin and it's pretty, but then they get to orbit for the first time and after that orbital sunset the skybox just lights up and it's a countless number of stars that suddenly show. We've all seen the pictures, I'm sure. Just stars upon stars upon stars suddenly visible because there's no light from the nearest star or another nearby celestial body or an atmospheric glow that's hiding the view. That would be an awesome experience. Especially for someone that didn't know it's coming.

2) Another situation that arises from this make-the-appearance-of-the-game's-flight-scenes-be-similar-to-what-the-human-eye-would-see argument would be when you're out at Eeloo or beyond wouldn't the celestial bodies be dimly lit? Sure your eyes would adjust and see details but it'd still be noticeably less lit than if you're at Kerbin. That'd be kind of a cool gameplay element that we don't experience in KSP1: to work in low-light environments where you're very far from the nearest star.

20 hours ago, LHACK4142 said:

We're risking re-igniting the Great Stars In Space Debate here, but I feel like the absence of stars and the unlit side of the Earth in the photo is more of a camera-specific thing. After all, you can see the unlit side of the moon and stars at night.

Yeah... I commented a few times in that Debate. I hope this discussion doesn't devolve into that. I'm not sure your last sentence is really acknowledging what I'm trying to explain though. You can see the unlit side of the moon and stars at night because a) the Earth is shining it's light on it and b) there's nothing else brighter in view. Having something dominantly brighter than anything else in view is the main point of what I'm trying to comprehend. It's been bugging me since my last comment. A lot of physical phenomena are intuitive to me because it's all stuff we experience every day.  But this specifically is not an easy behavior to test at home.

[atomontage]

 

[Dakota]

Just now, atomontage said:

 

Beat me to it! Enjoy

[atomontage]

2 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

Beat me to it! Enjoy

Haha, sorry. I just love KSP too much (despite its cons).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

@Ahres

https://www.universetoday.com/136802/can-astronauts-see-stars-space-station/

 

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stargazing-from-the-international-space-station

 

 

[Yellowburn10]

4 hours ago, atomontage said:

 

I just don't get it. What is it about these clouds that has rustled everyone's jimmy's? Maybe I'm just some blind sap who has no artistic taste, but these clouds look pretty serviceable, great even, and look no different to the clouds we've seen before. But everywhere I look I see nothing but criticisms about them. Am I missing something here?

 

Also wow that plane looks pretty. 

[Domonian]

7 minutes ago, Yellowburn10 said:

I just don't get it. What is it about these clouds that has rustled everyone's jimmy's? Maybe I'm just some blind sap who has no artistic taste, but these clouds look pretty serviceable, great even, and look no different to the clouds we've seen before. But everywhere I look I see nothing but criticisms about them. Am I missing something here?

Clouds have been all over the place, and I've been one of those people who's not happy about it (they said they would look like this: https://youtu.be/WoiFZGwy1fU). Granted, these new clouds look a lot better than what we've seen recently, so it's really hard to say. We can only wait until the 24th to see what they actually look like, and given how many things have changed visually over the last month or so between screenshots, I've decided to avoid starting anything about it. Those clouds do look good though, if a bit odd.

 

[TLTay]

1 hour ago, Yellowburn10 said:

I just don't get it. What is it about these clouds that has rustled everyone's jimmy's? Maybe I'm just some blind sap who has no artistic taste, but these clouds look pretty serviceable, great even, and look no different to the clouds we've seen before. But everywhere I look I see nothing but criticisms about them. Am I missing something here?

 

Also wow that plane looks pretty. 

Those coulds look like the raised area you get around a line of stitches. You can't unsee it now.

Also, howdy, rustled jimmies frend! I was just thinking of that term for the first time in years earlier today, and here it is now on the forum. Is it making a comeback?

-forever unrustled.

[DrCHIVES]

On 1/31/2023 at 2:09 PM, Ahres said:

 

I still don't like seeing the stars and the silhouette of the unlit sides of celestial bodies when the lit side is on-screen. It just feels... incorrect.

I totally understand what you are saying because this is how we have always seen images of celestial bodies from space.  But that's simply a product of our familiarity.  The reason you don't see stars in the background, and silhouettes of the body on photos is simply a result of camera limitations.  Earth gives off so much reflected light that in order to see any detail in a photo, the cameras were adjusted for super fast shutter speeds and low exposures.  Astronauts have said that, in person, the sights and experience is very different from the detail you see in photos.  If I'm not mistaken Scott Manley did a video on this very topic a while back.  I can't say that I belive the lighting (specifically the ambient lighting) is without need for tuning, but I do know that in person we would be able to see the silhouette of the earth and the stars behind it.

[Ahres]

17 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

@Ahres

https://www.universetoday.com/136802/can-astronauts-see-stars-space-station/

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stargazing-from-the-international-space-station

 

10 hours ago, DrCHIVES said:

I totally understand what you are saying because this is how we have always seen images of celestial bodies from space.  But that's simply a product of our familiarity.  The reason you don't see stars in the background, and silhouettes of the body on photos is simply a result of camera limitations.  Earth gives off so much reflected light that in order to see any detail in a photo, the cameras were adjusted for super fast shutter speeds and low exposures.  Astronauts have said that, in person, the sights and experience is very different from the detail you see in photos.  If I'm not mistaken Scott Manley did a video on this very topic a while back.  I can't say that I belive the lighting (specifically the ambient lighting) is without need for tuning, but I do know that in person we would be able to see the silhouette of the earth and the stars behind it.

I must not be explaining this very well... because Joe's articles corroborate my thoughts, not disprove them. All these astronauts can see stars in space when they don't have a brightly lit side of a celestial body in view. In the screenshot I'm talking about, we have brightly lit sides of not one, but two celestial bodies in view so I'd expect to see only the brightest stars or no stars at all. The only reason we'd notice the bodies' silhouettes is because there's no stars there, there's a planet/moon in the way. The silhouette itself wouldn't be darker than the blackness of space.

Edited February 3, 2023 by Ahres

[Ahres]

See though, I keep pondering it because it's not a behavior that you can easily replicate on the surface of the Earth and test for yourself. My last sentence about the silhouette being darker is probably incorrect. I guess. Idk. The silhouette would be darker than its background if you have a nebula or the galactic disc behind it, but that nebula or disc (disk? Man... I'm losing all confidence in my intelligence haha) would have to be bright enough to be noticeable when you've got a brightly lit celestial object or nearby star in view anyway.

The best way I can think of illustrating this would be if you found yourself in a certified Dark Sky location but there was cloud cover, i.e. an absolute dark environment and had a buddy standing 50 feet away shining a 1000 lumen spotlight at you, would you be able to see your buddy's phone screen that he's also holding and facing toward you but the brightness is turned all the way down? I honestly don't know the answer to that. 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Ahres
Added even more thoughts... because this fascinates me.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Just now, Ahres said:

I keep pondering

It's worth pondering and the sources are so frustrating because the answer isn't as obvious as we might like. 

I suspect that the awe of seeing Earth from space or the surface of the moon as you stand on it is incredible and draws the lion share of your attention - and thus memory. 

 

But Collins talk about seeing stars and in the shade of the LEM they captured images on cameras 

 

[Dakota]

[Profugo Barbatus]

2 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

Good 'ole one way trip. Its always so nice that the random kerbal in the recruit queue is happy to be involuntarily deported to another worlds colonization program. Hope he brought some snacks.

But seriously, this looks pretty. It feels like there's a lot of nitpicking lately on the graphics chasing an idea of perfection, when its design goals seem more of just what feels/looks good in the moment while being realistic 'enough'. Inspired by reality, but not constrained by it. Those clouds look pretty nice in motion. Terrain scatter is a bit lacking, but otherwise I like this. Maybe I'll do more than one lulz session with the pre-science EA launch, if its got sights like this for me.

[whatsEJstandfor]

53 minutes ago, PD_Dakota said:

omg I love how dynamic and squishy the parachute looks! And you already know how much of a fan I am of the little jigglies and recoils in the solar panels and antennae and whatnot

[stephensmat]

58 minutes ago, Profugo Barbatus said:

Good 'ole one way trip. Its always so nice that the random kerbal in the recruit queue is happy to be involuntarily deported to another worlds colonization program. Hope he brought some snacks.

Are you sure it's manned? I admit, it looks like a capsule, but I don't see a hatch, and the solar panels might be blocking the exit. I heard a rumor that you have to deal with cabin fever and such in KSP2, so you have to time your long-length missions. Nothing to confirm that, and I admit I'd be grateful to send my zero stars on long one-way flights around the sun. (I think we all do that on KSP1)

58 minutes ago, Profugo Barbatus said:

But seriously, this looks pretty. It feels like there's a lot of nitpicking lately on the graphics chasing an idea of perfection, when its design goals seem more of just what feels/looks good in the moment while being realistic 'enough'.

Honestly, I'm loving the look, and if this is as 'realistic' as it gets, I'd be a very happy space explorer. I mean, why do we need hyper-realistic planets and ships, when we're playing as little green plant-men?