Nikita Alterana
Risen Angels
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Posted - 2010.11.29 15:55:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Nikita Alterana on 29/11/2010 15:55:52
Lets talk about Sunshine for a bit.
The Inverse Square law:
 Quote:
The intensity (or illuminance or irradiance) of light or other linear waves radiating from a point source (energy per unit of area perpendicular to the source) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source; so an object (of the same size) twice as far away, receives only one-quarter the energy (in the same time period).
What that means, is that if a star is shining at the brightness of our sun at 2 AUs distance in space (say, from the orbit of planet 2), then at 1 AU (the orbit of planet 1), it should be 4 times brighter. This works in reverse as well.
In Eve, the inverse square law clearly doesn't apply, stars are a uniform brightness no matter how far away you are from them.
The stars in New Eden are ugly. They were ugly before the graphics revamp of them, they remain ugly now. This should not be an issue, they should be able to be ugly, because we shouldn't be able to see the ugly parts of them.
Why? Because of light. It should be so damn bright near the stars that its impossible to see anything about them, the surface of your ship facing the sun should shine with an incandescent brilliance as the light from the star is reflected off the hull, leaving the back in apparent darkness and shadow. Space would be black, no stars would shine, they should be utterly smothered by the light from the nearest sun.
Up close to the star, it should be like this, and as we back off further, the brightest stars start to come out, and if we move behind a moon, or planet, into the shadow, the nebulas appear. Continuing out from the star into the night, the light fades, it becomes black, your ship being lit only by the fiery tail of its engine exhaust, the myriad of lights coming from the windows on its hull, and occasional glitter of weapons fire. The nebulas would shine faintly in the distance, the many stars would cast a ghostly glow down onto the hull.
That is how space should be.
That would be beautiful. That would convey the immense distance, seeing the star fade to blackness in the distance, space growing dim and dark.
What we have now is nothing but a mockery of that, a sad shadow of something that should be monumentally impressive.
I'm proposing that, if its feasible, a general boast to dynamic lighting systems be done across the board. We've seen what CCP is working on for Incarna with Ambient Occlusion, lets see this technology applied to Eve at large. Make space truly awe inspiring in its vastness.
Crazy doesn't even start to cover it |