SpaceSimCentral

a bit late answer but i was off in dezenber so i din't mind
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Yeah, well... it's not that the starfield is 100% realistic as in real constellations and stuff, but it's black! It's black and the stars are white/silver. Other spacegames always have those weird oversaturated nebula backgrounds. Sometimes, it looks impressive but I'd rather have space the way I see it when I look outside on a clear winter evening. Cold, black, endless with bright twinkling stars. Not those weird nebulae
one must have started that Tard, and all the others copied it.well remember the vid of a blender created 3d shoot 'm up i posted once?same **** over there, lot of coloured nebulas no black space like we expect, i guess some like thatand whoaa what a stupid game, blasting ships out of the sky like you were unbeatable, one small fighter messes up a hundret, heavy metal soundrack (ok that's flavour) and a typical fitting comment to it "oooa, wow, eeek, whooa, and so on..."but in the end a invaders clone not more, only in 3di like shoot em up's, but show a bit, only a little bit of intelligence... i don't mind when they come in 2d then.

nebule should have some practical use if put into pioneer

i wonder which...besides of that. we look here from our grain of sand to the wide open space,now you see a nebula (if it's a not a full galaxy, some are just named nebula, a leftover from the past), but in reality that object is so huge and the density of matter is so extremely low you wouldn't see when you stand inside of it.in other words, our world could be place inmids of such a nebula and we wouldn recognize it's there.usually we forgot the enormous dimensions of space.a rather "small" one planetary nebulaand a huge one, where stars get borncolliding galaxiesit helps to measure the unmeasurablefor the observers eye from earth all the same, a nebulaand i guess it's obvious they have false colors sometimes on the photos to make things better visible, further they are compositions from various layers of different frequency ranges (not only visible light).well most will concern now, ok, it looks fantastic but not very realistic.of course a bit of fantasy is allways good and as i wrote this i thought about what we can do and how it should look then.i guess it would make sense to have a clouded region in our game galaxy, you could hide something in it, but it must have then a relatively high density and no beautiful colors, more like some ink splattered on the map.maybe it would do the game good to have some objects, not a full map, that identify the region you are in.but on the other hand, the way how i play the game i don't look often at the stars (sounds egoistic but usually i look at my ships).i do fly mostly with the outside view, i like to get something out of pioneers beautiful universe, but really i'm not fixed to the background, in fact i don't recognize it well. it a somewhat fast game (for a space sim) and in 20 or 30 seconds you have reached your destination, not much time to gaze at stars.i guess we post at the wrong place here, who cares

hmmm. if you were a being from a different planet, you might wonder why all the game devs are making the games with cool looking dark coloured space rather than the more accurate pink/red/orange that lights up your world at night.;)since pioneers galaxy itself is so far at least, a thin interpretation (literally so) of the entire galaxy i dont really see that it matters since its not really the same thing that you see when you go outside at night and look up. infact in pioneer and frontier, etc, on earth really you'd only 'realistically' see a few stars above and below the galactic plane because the galaxy is just a few lightyears thick.

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What is realism in a scifi game? A technological world where the infrared, night vission or x ray vision does not exist?, a world without reference points to navigation with the pilot poetically enjoying the pitch black of space?
lemme think Pioneer is a "lifted" Frontier,Frontier, do plays in 33century yes, but apart from spaceships and hyperdrives it's a victorian worldwhere adventure and danger exists, pilots flying tiny vessels to other systems through hyperspace, it's a bit likesailors that travelled the 7seas 500 years ago. no lifeguards, not much security, and of course no "i can do everything" technology.i guess that's a mainpart of what addicted players like me love at frontier.the name allready is program FRONTIER, space (i repeat myself) the final frontier, just like the oceans 500 years ago.if it would have a superbe technology, offering all the goodies we can expect from 33th century (like yeah, maybe you wouldn't have to wear a special glasses to see in any frequency range, built in you can say), i wouldn't like it that much.i guess exactly this particular fantasy element what was even made Star-Wars to something special, on one side a future technology on the other "knights and sourcerers".and if i'm not completely wrong mr. braben wanted to catch exactly this with elite and frontier (without just copying SW).not a "super tech humans are better then all the rest of universe" game.and if we would see a realistic space in pioneer then i would like to determine the course myself, using a sextant a circle and a map, can u feel me? it's somekind of mixed space, adventure, roleplaying, with no given storyline and no security.what can be fun if your board computers doing it all for you, is there a challenge? just pressing a button?allready i find it annoying that scanners reach that far in pioneer, they shouldn't imo.the limits of ability makes the game, not "i can do everything".but well maybe some must play first computergames for 25years, hack and tweak where they can to find out what is fun and what not.maybe a stupid comparison, but yeah, soon as i knewed how to trick Frontier(amiga), it has started to get a bit boring,having a eagle wit 500t cargo, a range of 1000's of lightyears, there is no fun. maybe for a short while exploring the galaxy, but apart from that.i never made it to elite in frontier, not because i'm a bad pilot, no, because i get bored as soon as i'm unbeatable.usually after some bombing missions i start a new career, it's better to fight with a eagle and a 1MW gun rather a to sit in a ASP, fully shielded, fitted a 4 or 10MW lasergun, that's something for guys i described in the post before.download the tie, hack the .exe so you have to start with the tie instead of the eagle, good luck commander.that's what I like.everytime i jump into a system i pray to god some pirates lurking around there, hopefully armed ones...allready, pirates in 33th century? that is i don't know i guess unrealistic, but that's the spirit.what we do in pioneer is like you would sail the seven seas in a dinghy! great feeling!and i hope one day my targets start to fight really in pioneer, i mean when i pick a assasination usually they use large ships like a boa or the hammerhead (similar to frontier), but these ships are totally weak (even similar to frontier), you can hang on them and they don't have glimpse of a chance no matter plasma accel or whatever gun.i really hope that is getting better in one release sometime, so they use a bit smaller more agile ships and hopefully they are armed, armed with all you can get in pioneer, guns, missiles and maybe a energy bomb? and shields, shields, shields.then it starts to get real fun.the best you can do by now with the hammerhead (oh, do i have posted my updated version dan? i've added some transparency polys to make the heads sledge invisible when uc is lowered) try to fly with you fighter in the very front of it before he recognizes you as enemy, and try to catch a view of it's inside, get as close as possible, ok you will probably crash and your ship is a piece of crap after, but that's fun. i guess when there is no danger i have to make danger myself.

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the best you can do by now with the hammerhead try to fly with you fighter in the very front of it before he recognizes you as enemy, and try to catch a view of it's inside, get as close as possible, ok you will probably crash and your ship is a piece of crap after, but that's fun. i guess when there is no danger i have to make danger myself.
Hehe, I think if those big ships had moving turrets they might pose a bit more of a threat.
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(oh, do i have posted my updated version dan? i've added some transparency polys to make the heads sledge invisible when uc is lowered)
Thanks for fixing that Gernot

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The colors of the game you speak about are ugly, exagerated and don´t give sense of immersion. Unrrealistic views. I Agree.But I think you are not understanding what I mean.
i'm just wading in with my 2p. Also i'm not talking about any particular game so i can't comment on whichever one you're talking about. I dont care if a game is colourful or bland much of the time, i have no problem with more colourful backgrounds & wouldn't always expect space to look dull in real life. colour also has a real effect on people, particularly when its overwhelming the scene. and its often exploited in films and games, you'd feel slightly different about flying around with different colours dominating the palette in different systems. ah, whatever though, i know what it shouldn't look like though, navy blue all the time:D But even that didn't spoil my enjoyment of frontier.Anyway... this subject of 'night vision'... yes this is essential i think as having a proper darkside that you have no way of seeing makes no sense. i'm sure these advanced spacecraft would have a way for a pilot to navigate a planet at night, perform landings and so on, actual lights might be silly considering the coverage that would be required (actually, the crazy powerful engines would put out tons and tons of light as well as thrust anyway, which would be brighter than any lamps you could install on it).what might look pretty cool, would be a wireframe view of the darkside terrain, which is self lit... so the lit side of the planet will be rendered normally, but with this glowing electronic 'overlay' which provides visual information on the dark side.. it would be essentially a shader effect. the explanation would be that its a holographic projection inside the cockpit generated from radar, existing topographical data or something. another way would be to have ambient lighting at a low level on the darkside and have a 'night vision' mode that ups the exposure a lot, but this causes problems like it would in real life - what happens if theres some sun peeking over the planet, it would throw the exposure right off.. it would probably only work properly and give you a good view of the darkside when the sun is fully occulted by the planet.

I'd like Pioneer's space to look like the night sky in particularly excellent viewing conditions. This is the view of the galaxy that left me in awe when I was a wee lad.Close-up pictures of nebulae with 10 hour exposures look dandy, but they just aren't the night sky.

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I'd like Pioneer's space to look like the night sky in particularly excellent viewing conditions. This is the view of the galaxy that left me in awe when I was a wee lad.Close-up pictures of nebulae with 10 hour exposures look dandy, but they just aren't the night sky.
thx brother.and please leave it dark on the unlit side.like i said before, it might be that space travel will be reality at all in 33th century, like in Pioneer, then in would be clear to have all the technical wonders we know from sci-fi.but it kills some of the fun to me, yes some slight info when you look at the unlit side of a object but no light from which i have to explain myself that it is a holo projection in my helmet (or directly to the brain? there are no limits if you don't make some).no i like it that way, and when you put some glowing stuff around the starport, then it's still enough to land safely, even on the really dark black atmosphereless moons.it's maybe not realistic in sci-fi dimensions, but plausible, nice, fun, good too look at. and near reality.and colors do play a big role certainly, but the absence of color is to weight equal.if music was no pause and repetition then it would be only noise (some sounds really that way, loud but lack of dynamic and i don't mean only contemporary music by that the same faults have been made before to)if color is everywhere there is no color or only noise, there is no difference no dynamic in it.to emerge dynamic a difference is needed.try this experiment (only for those who don't believe or know allready)make a screenshot of your favorit planet in pioneercut that thing out in a paintprogramlay one on a plain black color backgroundthe other on one of the above posted nebulaenow tell me seriously which looks better?

how instead of vast nebula we might have in random solar systems pockets of gas ( argon, hydorgen) perhaps in the ort cloud area u could fly through woould be coloured specifically and could be mineable in some way

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And I wonder how the space is seen near some kind of nebulae or massive stars with different light.
like i said you won't notice it, when close or inside.check somewhere, how dense the materia is in a nebula......not much more as the rest of the universe.now start guessing.actually we could be inside a huge nebula, and wouldn't see that, space would be black as it is now.compareimagine you have a glass filled with air (stupid i know), what do you see?nothingnow look at the sky on a sunny day, what do you see?azure blueonly because you see the whole (or enough) thikness it's blue, else it's a transparent gas (more or less, i don't like to go the detail why it's blue, but as a fact sky is blue).we see nebulae only because we are far away from them and can see the (reflected, emmited or even obscured light) the whole object, if you are close or inside, not much, to less density.---yesterday i was watching a physical explanation to skimming hydrogene from space, you would have to travel a long time a very long time/way before you've skimmed enough... (8 light months, or such, for one travel, even with a antimatter reactor such as in star-trek. this for impulse speed, how much energy a warp drive needs i explained somewhere else)but who cares?

The trouble is that the night sky as it appears in a city with lights environment is much different than what it truly is: The view of the stars without city lights so so incredibly spectacular and filled with nebulas, and star clusers. So the majoirty sci fi space backgrounds are actually more realistic than not. IMHO

True, but even in a spacecraft it's often hard to see stars, let alone nebulae.See for example the log from Apollo 8: [url]http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/12day3_lunar_encounter.htm[/url] time 069:05:47.To see nebulae and stars clearly, you would probably have to turn off all your bridge/cockpit lights/screens/indicators, turn away from any bright objects, and even then you might need a longer exposure time and higher sensitivity than the human eye can provide, to really see the colours in the galactic plane. I think that even the light from another ship's engine exhaust could blind you enough that you wouldn't be able to see many stars. Similarly if you looked at the day side of a close planet or moon. I don't recall nebulae in any NASA videos that I've seen. I for one am convinced that space games vastly exaggerate what it really looks like.

you have a point, but here is a counter:space ships won't have cockpits, hell they will probably rarely have crewslook at predator drones, where is the crew? where is the cockpit? look at submarines (I'm no scientist, but for some reason submarines strike me as what space ships may end up line, swimming in the seas of space), no cockpits either.so if you compromise realism by having a cockpit, you can also compromise and have pretty nebulas.

It's good that it's not us who have to make the ultimate decision No, personally I don't mind artistic license, be it in nebulae, visible lasers or sounds in space. But I think overly colourful or overly big nebulae would be out of place for a simulator which strives to be realistic in many aspects, such as a believable galaxy, realistic star systems and Newtonian physics.

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The trouble is that the night sky as it appears in a city with lights environment is much different than what it truly is:
lucky me, i grew up and live in a part of the world with no BIG cities, actually i live in a small town.you won't have to go far, just have to climb a mountain to get rid of the artificial light.yes sky looks different, but not that spectacular. milky way is bright yes but i can't remember such intense colours, sorry.i do must say and said that before, some points in the sky of a game like pioneer that will give you a idea where you are would be fine.on the other hand, i like to explore pioneer, but formost Frontier and also Pioneer are a special sort of combat flight sim to me.yes it's not to realistic at all to travel space in little fighters like in pioneer, but that's the game.if all would be realistic no game, no combat in (with other) fighters.apart from that i didn't know if something like that is to realize at all, i guess it goes a bit to far, it would be a wish (not only to have changing colourful space like in i.e. X, i don't know newer releases but first was a very small cube of space and ugly seals of the backround was to see everywhere) to have a reference point, but not very important to me at all.to me would be more important to have better AI pilots, something i can fight with, not only shoot them down, i had some troubles in the beginning, but soon as i changed my way of combat like i used it in FE2/FFE no real danger from them and i didn't get beat often (that's why i changed the pirates script a bit for me).to have maybe once the possibility to dogfight via web, would be more interesting, no full Multiplayer game, just a possibility to meet (e.g. here) and have a battle or two. the stardreamer problem could be solved with disabling it and just to put the fighters in a acute battle situation in a maybe randomly selected system.other things have a higher priority i guess and to get back to what i said once before, to much colours would kill the beauty of the planets or even the models. they look only that superartificial cool BECAUSE of the black inked linnen behind.
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I don't recall nebulae in any NASA videos that I've seen.
yeah, the lack of stars is one of the stupid arguments for a fake moon landing, beeing not aware that it didn't looks like what we expect. moons albedo (ability to reflect light) is close to 100, almost like snow and very very bright when lit by the sun (and if grew up in a corner of the world where you have lot's of snowpeaked mountains, you knew in a clear fullmoon night at a snowy mountain it's almost bright as day).photographic backgrounds of nebulae are out of the question fo pioneer and to make a halfways realistic background would cost to much power of the engine, some like to play pioneer maybe on somewhat aged notebook, we should respect that.further, if i like to see the beauty of the nightly sky, i go outside and take a little walk, but won't play a videogame.

I'm basically happy with the way things are now. I'd only add more of a glow to the suns and a slight color variance to the stars, comparable to what one actually sees in the sky. I'd also replace the Milky Way ribbon with something like the image that Gudadantza posted, only darkened a bit. However, in FE2 and FFE we had the option to select stars, spacedust, etc. to suit our personal preferences. That should make everyone happy except tomm and the others who'd have to code it.