Apparent Magnitude

[UH60guy]

I’d like to be able to see the planets from farther away.

I’ll admit- I have a little ritual every time I approach a planet or moon for the first time. I find its location in the map view, and as I approach the SOI, I switch to IVA and try to spot it. There’s something fascinating about watching it come into view for the first time, I have no idea why. However, they seem to be harder to see than they should be.

As it is now, the planets don’t really have much of a realistic apparent magnitude other than the rendering distance. Think of how bright Venus is from Earth, owing to its dense atmosphere. Eve and Jool should be readily visible from the skies of Kerbin as bright slightly off-white dots. Even bodies with high albedo like Minmus should appear brighter than they currently are from some distance. Heck, look at the moon tonight, and compare its brightness to Mun from Kerbin. Something as minty-green and bright as Minmus is should be more visible from Kerbin than just a flickering pixel.

I’m not asking to increase the draw distance across the solar system or anything, but a bright spot in the sky (replaced by the 3D model at a reasonable distance) would be an interesting addition to add a little realism. Similar to how the map view planet circles disappear when you zoom in, the artificial brightening of the celestial body can fade as you close in.

[Themohawkninja]

The atmosphere isn't technically what makes Venus bright, it's the reflectivity of the composition of the atmosphere that does that.

That being said, I would like to know how difficult this would be to implement. I've only ever seen it done in Space Engine, and it can do it quite well, so performance doesn't seem to be an issue, but I just wonder how hard it is to code.

[Kasuha]

The problem is, the game (and most games today) works with way too few levels of brightness. If our solar system had to go with 256 levels, sun would use levels 200-255 and almost everything else would be 0.

Human eyes are a great equalizer which makes sure we can see details on whatever we see despite the huge range of brightness levels we encounter. Not so much the game which only works with 256 levels of brightness and renders the planet the same way regardless on where we see it.

[UH60guy]

I agree with all of the above, an see your point on the levels of brightness.

I wonder if it could be implemented as a "sliding scale" based on the camera orientation. Such an implementation would also allow for the stars to be washed out when staring at the sun, but come into view as you turn away. As it is, you can't see Jool against the background stars when in space heading for it, where it should probably be one of the brightest objects relative to the background stars.