Just an observation but...

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

...is the Mun really dark now or am i mistaken?

The craters look really good but i miss the bright surface from before the patch, i kept looking upward to see where Kerbol was and it surprised me as it was right above, yet all around me is pretty dark, do you think the Mun is too dark now?

I did a small poll to see what you guys think.

[Tw1]

Digging up my photos from 0.20, the do seem a little brighter. I think it should have a reasonably high albedo, like the real Moon does. It's hard to tell with my screen though, I'm still not happy with the calibration, so I think I'll leave voting for others.

[HarvesteR]

We did tweak the lighting on this patch. As a whole the lighting was too strong, and there were several places where you'd get complete white-out.

Lighting for rendering is a complicated thing. There is no single solution that mirrors what you'd see with your own eyes (your eyes adapt), unless you use HDR (high dynamic range) techniques to simulate this adaptation, which alas, isn't something Unity does very easily at the moment.

That said, we're always trying to find ways to improve the looks of the game, and we found that by lowering the main sunlight intensity, we got a much nicer tone distribution throughout the lighting range, which means you get to see more tone variation, which is good.

This shot shows it pretty well. Where now you see pretty splash lighting, before you'd only see a white blob.

As for the Mun itself, my opinion on it varies from shot to shot... Sometimes I think it's too dark, other times I think it's ok... I guess it's one of those things that will keep getting tweaked over time.

Cheers

[Sapphire]

It's a little bit darker than I remember, and I like it. Very atmospheric.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

Thanks Harvester much appreciated.

[roosterr]

We did tweak the lighting on this patch. As a whole the lighting was too strong, and there were several places where you'd get complete white-out.

Lighting for rendering is a complicated thing. There is no single solution that mirrors what you'd see with your own eyes (your eyes adapt), unless you use HDR (high dynamic range) techniques to simulate this adaptation, which alas, isn't something Unity does very easily at the moment.

That said, we're always trying to find ways to improve the looks of the game, and we found that by lowering the main sunlight intensity, we got a much nicer tone distribution throughout the lighting range, which means you get to see more tone variation, which is good.

This shot shows it pretty well. Where now you see pretty splash lighting, before you'd only see a white blob.

As for the Mun itself, my opinion on it varies from shot to shot... Sometimes I think it's too dark, other times I think it's ok... I guess it's one of those things that will keep getting tweaked over time.

Cheers

Thanks for responding Harverster. On my system, which has a decent graphics card, etc, Mun looks a bit brown at times. And yes, darker than before. Overall, I thank you for the new look though, those craters are great! BUT, it does not look as much like our Earth moon as it did before because of the odd color.

[Brotoro]

Good. I thought my eyes were going.

[Geschosskopf]

I think it's more of a color change than a brightness change. Think of Mun as a grayscale image. It now has a lot more darker gray pixels than before because of all the new little craters. Thus, from a distance, Mun looks darker. However, when you get close enough, you see more lighter pixels than darker ones, in the spaces between the craters and also in how the rims, which you can't see from a distance, are lighter colored than even the uncratered terrain.

I've also noticed that when you're on the surface at night, it's not nearly so totally black as it was before, so maybe the actual brightness (as opposed to just the color) actually got bumped up a bit.

[PwnedDuck]

I have to point out, despite the Mun being just about as bright as before for me, my ship lights don't seem to actually have any effect on it at all. They had electricity, and they worked on Minmus once I got there, so I think they might need looking at...

[draeath]

Sounds like you got a bug! I saw a screenshot earlier today (and a video from Scott whats-his-name) with lights working perfectly fine on the new Mun.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

I'm not sure about ship lights but Kerbal helmet lights didn't seem to shine on the ground, they only hit the ship.