A couple of visual improvements

[filami]

While the game looks really cool (I love kerbals expressions the're so cute), there are a few areas that could have an improvement.

- Atmosphere: sometimes the atmosphere gets too bright with white bands but the main issue for me is during the night, the atmosphere simply disappears. In reality, during the night, while the atmosphere does not get light from the sun and looks black, it still absorbs light coming from the sky. That means that stars and the milky way should pretty much disappear near the horizon. Also a little bit of fog would be cool. On the surface of Eve, the sky should not be visible at all at any moment because the atmosphere is so thick.

- Ocean: Right now is just a transparent blue texture. You can see the bottom of the ocean a couple of miles bellow, makes no sense. It would be cool to have blue fog under the ocean so the bottom of the ocean is not visible but you could still see the bottom at the beach areas. Also, having some fresnel effect with a generic blue/greenish cube map would make the ocean look more like flowing water.

- Stars: This is minor but the background have little stars and they look a bit bloby. A cool solution would be to use point sprites with a star texture using carefully generated mipmaps. You can literally have thousands of dots in the sky from tiny 1 pixel white dots to big star like dots in a single draw call.

[providus]

+1

I didn't dare to say the "new" stars look awful. MUCH to many, MUCH too big*, MUCH too blurry, MUCH too bright ... i get no space feeling any more. Yes this is my oppinion: I hate the current "stars" - they are terrible awful! Squad failed replacing stars in one hand with removing auto-exposure. Very big fail...

* Yes, galaxies are big. Look at night sky: There are no galaxies you can see with bare eyes. The most distant object you can see is andromeda galaxy. Its the only galaxy you can see. All other objects are milkyway objects: stars, some nebulas and cluster of stars

Now i have to run fast, do I? Nah, too lazy...

Im sure the other points you mentioned will be revised in future.

Edited July 29, 2013 by providus

[Anizer]

I think the game has forgotten about trees on Kerbin.

[XenonSpark]

I think the game has forgotten about trees on Kerbin.

I started playing at .15, but when I see videos of some of the first versions of the game, I definitely notice and really like the palm trees around KSC. I think it would be neat to bring those back.

[chaos_forge]

I think the game has forgotten about trees on Kerbin.

They're still there, you just have to activate terrain scatter in the settings menu.

[woppeldopple]

I didn't dare to say the "new" stars look awful. MUCH to many, MUCH too big*, MUCH too blurry, MUCH too bright ... i get no space feeling any more. Yes this is my oppinion: I hate the current "stars" - they are terrible awful! Squad failed replacing stars in one hand with removing auto-exposure. Very big fail...

* Yes, galaxies are big. Look at night sky: There are no galaxies you can see with bare eyes. The most distant object you can see is andromeda galaxy. Its the only galaxy you can see. All other objects are milkyway objects: stars, some nebulas and cluster of stars

Exactly! Earlier KSP Versions (< 0.17 or 0.18? ) had much more realistic stars. Perhaps Kerbals do have hubble telescopes integrated in their helmets? What is auto-exposure?

[providus]

What is auto-exposure?

When you look at a bright/eluminated object (your spaceship, a moon/planet) you should not be able too see any stars. Thats why pictures of moon landing don't show any stars.

[comham]

- Stars: This is minor but the background have little stars and they look a bit bloby. A cool solution would be to use point sprites with a star texture using carefully generated mipmaps. You can literally have thousands of dots in the sky from tiny 1 pixel white dots to big star like dots in a single draw call.

iirc this is planned, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

[BrotherBunsen]

On the topic of graphics and stars, did anybody else notice the corners of the skybox becoming remarkably pronounced with the last update? I never noticed them before, but now I'm seeing them every time I turn a ship around.

[filami]

I have notice those corners. I guess it is a problem with either mipmapping or texture address clamping or both. It could be a Unity bug tho, not KSP.

[Tw1]

W\ On the surface of Eve, the sky should not be visible at all at any moment because the atmosphere is so thick..

This is one thing I potentially am not looking forward to. It'd be nice to see them a little, at times.