I'm not sure how the sky is generated in scout+, but in pioneer, it's only a painted Milkyway texture, and points are generated on top of that by the engine.

You could replace the ones scout+ has with the one that comes with Pioneer. (if that works the same for scout+, you can just delete the others, no need to replace all of them)

I should make it configurable. Currently it draws 100,000 points for stars but it used to be 10,000 which some people found less overwhelming.

@Coldwind651 Welcome!

Thanks for the replies, and the link there, walterar.

fluffyfreak, it's only a personal preference thing, certainly not complaining - the game as a whole is pretty stunning, and I appreciate the work that's gone into it.

I'm one of those people, though, who like space to be very contrast-y, if that makes sense: I always turn ambient lighting right down in Orbiter, for example, and the lighting (and the darkness) is one of the things that appeals to me about Elite Dangerous.

It goes without saying that in space a lot more stars would be visible than here on Earth - but even out there I imagine it wouldn't take much light to wash them out as they're such tiny points.

So if there's a way for me to modify that number myself I'd be quite happy with that...

I've been wondering for quite some time what it actually looks like out there. I remember reading a statement from a space station astronaut saying that you don't see stars during spacewalks in the daytime, and another from a Lunar command module pilot that looking at the sky from the dark side of the Moon was like looking at a sheet of light. There was no space between the stars at all. So would a person in a spacecraft at 1AU from the Sun see no stars if the Sun was in the field of view and an 'infinite' number when it wasn't?

I guess it would vary enormously. I think of the number of stars visible from Earth on a dark night out in the countryside, where there's little light pollution, and I know that doesn't compare to what can be seen out at sea, or in a desert.

But I also think about the Moon photos: one of the standard arguments of people claiming "it was all a hoax!" was that there were no stars in the sky - and the Moon's got no atmosphere so there should've been loads of them, right?!

And then you have to explain that the Moon's surface is really, really bright, and washes stars out almost completely...

Please see: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/3343

I know this is an old topic but I agree with it right now. The crispyness and the brightness could be a bit lower. I know it still something being worked on but is there a way to lower the brightness  myself in the meantime? I have absolutly no idea about C++ (or whatever this game is being written in) but I know how to change a parameter in notepad++ and know some of the terminology.

edit: I turned on multisampling which in turn made the stars not appear as sharp as before although it is quite hefty on my laptop

I think two things need to be done about stars, but both are rather big sub-projects on their own:

• HDR - Pioneer is probably the only game I know of that actually needs HDR and needs it badly. We simply have so massive differences in lighting that doing it the usual way won't do. This would mean much fewer and much weaker visible stars unless staring straight into the empty space.
• BG generation based on actual nearby/bright stars and overall star densities.

I've made a Pull Request which will allow you to control how many stars there are. Hopefully someone will get around to reviewing it and suggesting how I can do the interface a bit better etc.

I'd dearly like to do both of the things DraQ has mentioned. I did look into the 2nd item briefly but then life swamped me with other things. If anyone wants to give it a go I can suggest various ways of getting the information and projecting the stars.

Andy

Goodness that would be awesome. I hope someone takes a crack at it.

Plans for the stars is covered here:

http://pioneerspacesim.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=302