Or just bring the moon to you :

:semi_major_axis(f(1172,15000000))

awesome view, i think some of the planets should have moons/other planets that close.

More moon fun :

How about Saturn orbiting New Hope .. lol

Here another one :

I can see no reason why there should not be many such moon and planet proximities in Pioneer - astonishing images Shadmar, should be very inspiring to custom system builders

@Vuzz  You can make a mod with closer moon or change you FOV setting in config and the moon will look bigger.  Now if there could be some atmospheric lensing effect that could give the illusion of a closer moon that would be cool. 🙂 

Has you he a possibility there to modify general scale of distances between each aster/planets in system  ? 

 

i mean , i check in  Sol that moon look too small  viewving from earth , maybe if we mod by 1/2 the general distance we can have something more nice ? 

This one sets the distance to it's parent

:semi_major_axis(f(Y,X))   

So if you look in 00_sol.lua at the moon we have

:semi_major_axis(f(257,100000))

We know that

1 AU = 149597870.691 km  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit

Devide this by 100000, then you get ~ 1496 km

257 x 1496 = 384472 km

so this statement :

:semi_major_axis(f(257,100000))

is really (with some other ellptic factors not considered here):

257 x (149597870.691 / 100000) ~ 384472 km

@Vuzz  You can make a mod with closer moon or change you FOV setting in config and the moon will look bigger.  Now if there could be some atmospheric lensing effect that could give the illusion of a closer moon that would be cool. 🙂 

Atmospheric lensing rarely, if ever, makes the moon look bigger, although it can make the moon appear to be above the horizon when it is not. The moon only looks as big as it does in real life because the human brain is so good at ignoring most of the FOV that you can see.

Take a photo of the moon with your camera phone, and you'll see that Pioneer has it spot on already.

Hi Vuzz,

I only have

FOVVertical=40

(note the second capital V, not sure if that matters) in my config.ini from a recent install - seems to work OK.

I think only FOVVertical is in use. I only have that one.

FOV is the old one, it was renamed a long time ago. Its no long used.

The second 'V' is necessary: FOVVertical is "Field Of View Vertical". Horizontal is calculated from the vertical value.

   One method that might be employed to give a more natural perspective of the moon would be if FOV was dynamic in some way.

So that if you were on the surfaces of worlds the FOV would be less than say if you were in orbit or enroute to another planet or system.

Of course the devil is always in the details - but if it could be done...

Implementing that vs potentially some sort of user controlled FOV slider would be a means to achieving realistic looking scales to the viewers eye

without the need of manually having to change FOV settings in the config file. 

Have to say am constantly blow away with Shadmar's work..

I agree the moon should look like a moon as apposed to a non discrete dot in the sky.. 

Yes a picture off a moon on a ~35mm type lens will always look like a dot.... 

The universe should be fun , not dull , even if a degree of artistic licence needs to be taken... 

I agree the moon should look like a moon as apposed to a non discrete dot in the sky.. 

Unfortunately, it's not there for decoration. It's the actual size it is, at the actual distance. You can land on a base there. If you want it to look bigger, I recommend using a narrower FOV. You'll lose a bunch of peripheral vision, but that's how it works anyway.

I wonder.. if we can mimic this view.. not all the way from mars, but the size/distance relation of earth/moon. Real pic shot from Mars.

Probably, but that photo was taken with some intense magnification.

Yeah but I wanted to see the size and distance between earth and moon relation (to check distance and scaling), not if we could zoom all the way from mars.

Ah I see 🙂

I like this explanation, it seems without true depth perception the moon wil always look small

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/20jun_moonillusion/

Have to say am constantly blow away with Shadmar's work..

 

I agree the moon should look like a moon as apposed to a non discrete dot in the sky.. 

 

Yes a picture off a moon on a ~35mm type lens will always look like a dot.... 

 

The universe should be fun , not dull , even if a degree of artistic licence needs to be taken... 

Not sure if changing a pilot's field FOV equates as much with taking artistic license as it does a proper simulated optical rendering in replicating the human eye experience on the surfaces of any world. 

One benefit from having a wide field of view is you get wider landscape details and it's helpful for combat and probably helps in navigation to find things more easily.

The price payed for that is that everything ends up looking smaller. The only way you could have it both ways is if you always started on any ground station with a narrower FOV and through altitude, your field would widen to the default FOV. 

Nice , and our moon is really small in the sky.. :

Any once catched the supermoon event yesterday ?

http://www.vg.no/bildespesial/spesial.php?id=10456

@BioMechanoid,

In Pioneer a "CustomSystem" is any hand made star system, it's how we add all of the real star systems that we know about. They don't just magically appear 😉

That's why most of the star systems in the sectors near to Earth are real places, although with the planets being invented.

The above discussion is about how the Earths Moon looks from the surface of the Earth, unfortunately it doesn't look the same because of the FOV (Field-of-View) used for rendering but it is in the correct orbit, at the correct distance.

Hope that's clearer 🙂

Also BioMechanoid you might want to take a look at these posts of mine here.