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Why I think the nebula should be removed


Squidrew_

Which do you prefer?  

74 members have voted

  1. 1. Which do you prefer?

    • Remove nebula
      49
    • Keep nebula
      19
    • Other major change (comment)
      6


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I believe that the nebula skybox should be replaced with a realistic, dark and starry skybox, akin to the old one prior to Alpha 3. Here are my arguments,

 

The nebula was originally introduced as an immersive way to increase ambient lighting in Dual Universe, making it easier to see at night. This is mentioned in NQ's Dev Diary on YouTube. However, this was nullified in 0.24 with the reduction of ambient light brightness.

 

This is personal preference however I believe many will agree; the ambient light level does not have to match the skybox's brightness. For example, take this image of Pre-Alpha Thades. Its dark side is heavily illuminated, as I'm sure it would look on the surface as well. You'd be able to see. Compared to current Thades, I think most of us can agree that it still looks far better, and it could be taken down a notch if it's too bright. Additionally, with the introduction of the nebula, the atmospheres were changed to the same blue color we're all used to. I'm guessing this was done as a result of a technical limitation relating to the new skybox. So, think; If I'm right about this, we could have a Thades that looks like this, for example:

1910419012_oldthades.thumb.png.5e4ca5773b5a5b4a7aad98b7ff52b010.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Thades, for comparison:

1906924290_newthades.thumb.png.4b8430d6737ffa677d2fd77b620dbc22.png

 

You see where I'm coming from?

 

The way I see it, removing the nebula would provide so much in the way of fidelity, immersion and polish. It wouldn't affect gameplay either. Furthermore, I believe this change would solve many, many of DU's lighting glitches and "rough spots," at the very least making them look far better, and would provide much more polished lighting, both on ground and on a planetary scale. I simply don't see what the nebula adds other than style, but it sacrifices fidelity in a lot of key areas. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots to back up that claim, so you're gonna have to take my word for it as an Alpha 1 player who knows how lighting used to interact with the old skybox.

 

The nebula may be beautiful to some, but honestly, changing it would add so much in the way of polish — which I believe is far more important and is what this game needs right now. Not to mention, many people were dismayed at the release of this nebula, and I'm taking a wild guess by saying that most players would like this change. I know my friends and I would.

 

Please consider this, Novaquark.

 

Similar post by Mjrlun

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Yeah, I hate this NMS colorful looking space .... one of the reasons (as I mentioned in my review) I liked DU is for its realistic DARK space ...

I want my space to be dark!

Edited by sHuRuLuNi
because I can't stand the space looking like this now. It should be PITCH BLACK.
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I'd agree the nebula as it is now should be removed. The effect and "reality factor" of this can be seen very distinctly in Space Engineers where the default skybox has a similar function but replacing it with a realistic one makes the game world look so much better and less "comic book" styled.

 

We know that, while nebulae exist, the sky will look the same anywhere in the universe potentially only "coloured" by the atmosphere of planets. Now as far as I know the lighting system in DU is still very broken in many places and NQ is applying (a lot of) workarounds and fixed to make things at least look somewhat "workable", but yeah, the existing lighting is way over the top and should be dialled down. Problem is also that light objects really do not work very well. In general light in DU is not rendered at all, something that becomes very obvious when you are underground where light gets "textured in" a few moments after you remove chunks of ore or soil.

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2 hours ago, Squidrew_ said:

I believe that the nebula skybox should be replaced with a realistic, dark and starry skybox, akin to the old one prior to Alpha 3. Here are my arguments,

 

The nebula was originally introduced as an immersive way to increase ambient lighting in Dual Universe, making it easier to see at night. This is mentioned in NQ's Dev Diary on YouTube. However, this was nullified in 0.24 with the reduction of ambient light brightness.

 

This is personal preference however I believe many will agree; the ambient light level does not have to match the skybox's brightness. For example, take this image of Pre-Alpha Thades. Its dark side is heavily illuminated, as I'm sure it would look on the surface as well. You'd be able to see. Compared to current Thades, I think most of us can agree that it still looks far better, and it could be taken down a notch if it's too bright. Additionally, with the introduction of the nebula, the atmospheres were changed to the same blue color we're all used to. I'm guessing this was done as a result of a technical limitation relating to the new skybox. So, think; If I'm right about this, we could have a Thades that looks like this, for example:

1910419012_oldthades.thumb.png.5e4ca5773b5a5b4a7aad98b7ff52b010.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Thades, for comparison:

1906924290_newthades.thumb.png.4b8430d6737ffa677d2fd77b620dbc22.png

 

You see where I'm coming from?

 

The way I see it, removing the nebula would provide so much in the way of fidelity, immersion and polish. It wouldn't affect gameplay either. Furthermore, I believe this change would solve many, many of DU's lighting glitches and "rough spots," at the very least making them look far better, and would provide much more polished lighting, both on ground and on a planetary scale. I simply don't see what the nebula adds other than style, but it sacrifices fidelity in a lot of key areas. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots to back up that claim, so you're gonna have to take my word for it as an Alpha 1 player who knows how lighting used to interact with the old skybox.

 

The nebula may be beautiful to some, but honestly, changing it would add so much in the way of polish — which I believe is far more important and is what this game needs right now. Not to mention, many people were dismayed at the release of this nebula, and I'm taking a wild guess by saying that most players would like this change. I know my friends and I would.

 

Please consider this, Novaquark.

 

Similar post by Mjrlun

I second you the skybox and spacebox backrgound is ugly even horrible even the fast speed in space special effect looks bad we need better vfx.

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Yeah I see your point.

 

In Space Engineers it's very easy to change your skybox to any of the thousands (probably) available. I prefer no skybox in SE. I have the asteroid PG set to high, so the space has lots of things I can actually visit, feels very real to me. Thereagain, I haven't been to space to check. ;)

 

Make it moddable.

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11 hours ago, Mjrlun said:

Forget stealth. Instead we have this stupid nebula making any dark object extremely visible at night, or in space.image.thumb.png.9bf4a581f8d6dbbf7b6efc312665fbce.png

 

What stealth??

You for real? 

 

Ever heard about radar? Ever heard about lock and fire mechanism? 

How does lock and fire mechanism care if you see or not the target? 

 

What kind of stealth exists in this game? What kind will ever exist? 

 

This nebula exists so ppl dont hit space stations and get killed..... 

 

I agree that there should be a switch in options to turn it off. But i do not agree in removing it. It serves a specific purpose and i will not deactivate it if i have the option. 

 

And cut the BS excuses like "stealth"..... 

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I never liked bright nebulas in space games, almost all of them have them. Elite Dangerous isn't too bad. An option to remove them or dim them would be nice.

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5 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

This nebula exists so ppl dont hit space stations and get killed.....

True. However, my point in the main post was that objects themselves can still be artificially lit by the renderer in a dark skybox, as shown in the Pre-Alpha Thades picture. It may not be realistic but it still looks a heck of a lot better than the blue illumination we have now (IMO)

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10 minutes ago, Squidrew_ said:

True. However, my point in the main post was that objects themselves can still be artificially lit by the renderer in a dark skybox, as shown in the Pre-Alpha Thades picture. It may not be realistic but it still looks a heck of a lot better than the blue illumination we have now (IMO)

No problem with that. Just set it as a option and ppl like you can set in one way and ppl like me can set in another way. 

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If you remove the nebula you must make sure all other lighting is on point and directional head lights actually work like head lights at distance. The Nebula makes bad lighting far more forgiving. 
 

If you want to know what landing on the dark side of a moon / planet is like without the Nebula, approach the planet from the opposite side of the sun, come in at a nice low steady speed, deploy your landing gear, turn off your monitor.

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I think NQ thought "oh look how NMS got so popular now ... let's make the space look like that ... cartoonish, comic book like".
And that is the reason I stopped playing NMS - because after latest patches my DARK SPACE mods stopped working. I cannot stand that soup of colorful rainbow "space" which is anything else but not space.
Space is dark. Like REALLY REALLY dark. As in - there is no atmospheric scattering in vacuum, so the dark side of a planet or moon is PITCH BLACK.
And that is how space in DU should be - as it was before Alpha 3. Man I loved that ...

 

 

 

To give some context: I am an astronomer and I do astrophotography (10" SCT for Deep Space and mostly Hubble Palette) -- and maaan I am so pissed what is happening on earth right now where the light pollution is killing us. You can hardly see stars anymore. Lights everywhere man ...



Oh, and one of my more popular videos on my YT Channel is precicely my "Black Space Mod for NMS" video -- where you can actually see how much more immersive NMS looked with the Black Space Mod.
It just ... really looked good and I enjoyed the dark space ... until the next patches killed it of course:

 

 

Edited by sHuRuLuNi
because I can't stand the space looking like this now. It should be PITCH BLACK.
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You wanna know what lighting elements are for? To bring illumination on areas that are dark! In other words, to make the surrounding more visible in terms of details! Darkness is the absence of light! 

 

What is the point of the lighting elements? If the night is brighter than the moon, you don't need these elements! You don't! They have no purpose, they are just decorations like many things, I am telling you as a mechanical person!

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11 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

What kind of stealth exists in this game? What kind will ever exist? 

 

The same way a rogue/assassin uses stealth in a game like world of warcraft.  You hit a button and your ship disappears from radar.  Give other ships some way of breaking stealth or seeing through it.  Limit a ships abilities in stealth, maybe bonus damage for attacking from stealth.  Low end stealth ships could only use it outside of combat, but high end stealth ships could pop in out and out stealth during a fight.  

 

It's definitely all about radar and targeting though.  If stealth did actually have some kind of visual camouflage to it, having the nebulas would really make it more effective, since no one is going to be able to see your ship either way if it's pure black out there.

 

The nebulas are a logical aesthetic decision though, no man's sky did it for the same reason.  Space is nothing, and it's just not very exciting to look at.

 

But if they want to give the option to turn the nebulas off, i'm all for it.  More customization is always good.

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3 hours ago, Eternal said:

You wanna know what lighting elements are for? To bring illumination on areas that are dark! In other words, to make the surrounding more visible in terms of details! Darkness is the absence of light! 

 

What is the point of the lighting elements? If the night is brighter than the moon, you don't need these elements! You don't! They have no purpose, they are just decorations like many things, I am telling you as a mechanical person!

I love this man, please keep going you!!!

Also how was your commute?

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dark is good... Also make the dark sides of the planet inky black, like they should be, and improve the local lighting models...  

They skybox looks like they cut and paste from a "Blue star system" in NMS.

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not sure what you guys talk about but i just wanna say one thing about nebula/fog. you know why freelancer has the best spacemap? because of fog, clouds, radioactive clouds, stormclouds, scrapyards and some of these effect gameplay like damaging hull or reducing sensor efficiency

 

unrealistic? NOBODY CARES, dual universe is scifi fantasy and so is freelancer. copy the space of freelancer and you have the best and most interesting spacemap on the market.

 

nobody wants the realistic black empty space of nothing, its super boring.

 

i dont play DU atm because i dont wanna spend money on a mining simulator in alpha stage.

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3 hours ago, Niemand said:

unrealistic? NOBODY CARES, dual universe is scifi fantasy and so is freelancer. copy the space of freelancer and you have the best and most interesting spacemap on the market.

 

nobody wants the realistic black empty space of nothing, its super boring.

Sorry, but "Niemand", oh the irony, it's pretty clear by both the poll and the comments, the majority of the forum community believes in a dark, inky-black sky. I would agree. Making UI is not easy, but the current space environment makes so many good-looking UI look terrible.

In generally, they need to improve lighting in the game. So many things just don't make any sense, like light bleeding through voxels, or the fact that eye adjustment is just broken.
(And don't even get me started on how stupid luminescent glass can be with lighting)

Though, I hadn't really cared about skybox, on second thought, it does look weird. I would prefer the more realistic look.

Edit: If no one knows the irony, "Niemand" is German/Dutch/Afrikaans for "Nobody" ?

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8 hours ago, GraXXoR said:

Also make the dark sides of the planet inky black, like they should be

Why should they be like that? Realism? 

If "realism" then should we spend days before every flight, calculating all the differential equations needed so we dont colide with near invisible objects? 

 

Or should we treat this as a game and give some reference points so ppl dont spend their entire day crashing against pinch black asteroids on the shadow side of planets? 

 

Or why dont we put a switch, disabling that functionality in options and after 1 year, we make a statistic of how many players play with "as it should be" and how many dont?

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16 hours ago, joaocordeiro said:

Why should they be like that? Realism? 

If "realism" then should we spend days before every flight, calculating all the differential equations needed so we dont colide with near invisible objects? 

 

Or should we treat this as a game and give some reference points so ppl dont spend their entire day crashing against pinch black asteroids on the shadow side of planets? 

 

Or why dont we put a switch, disabling that functionality in options and after 1 year, we make a statistic of how many players play with "as it should be" and how many dont?

Then lets keep the nebula. they are exciting... and blue. more exciting than a black sky with a few stars... It's what people imagine space looks like. Yes, let's keep the nebula iridescent blue.

 

Oh my god, for the first time since 2016, I've had my opinion changed by someone online...  I hereby change my vote...

OK, jokes aside, I'm going to adopt your argumentative contrarianism and fire one back:  
 

if you're going down that rabbit hole, why have an annoying physics model based on reality when we all know that Eve Valkyrie and Elite dangerous, which don't have real physics -and SC which isn't even pretending to have exited alpha yet- have far better dogfighting?

Why have thrust to weight ratio affect acceleration, why bother with air density affecting lift causing countless noobs (well, a few dozen noobs given this game's player numbers) to plummet to their death on their return to Alioth from their first mining trip?

Or why don't we put a switch that disables gravity and acceleration in options and aft....  

 

Oh, you get the idea... 
 

 

Really, would it be so hard to implement AR instrumentation like ED does? Which the noobs and land lubbers who don't know how to use an altimeter and a speed readout can just switch on if they start feeling sweaty palmed?

 

Breaking or crippling another system just because they don't have the tools in place to realise a different system is truly the NQ style.
Don't even get me started on weapons limits vs core size...

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19 hours ago, EasternGamer said:

Sorry, but "Niemand", oh the irony, it's pretty clear by both the poll and the comments, the majority of the forum community believes in a dark, inky-black sky. I would agree. Making UI is not easy, but the current space environment makes so many good-looking UI look terrible.

In generally, they need to improve lighting in the game. So many things just don't make any sense, like light bleeding through voxels, or the fact that eye adjustment is just broken.
(And don't even get me started on how stupid luminescent glass can be with lighting)

Though, I hadn't really cared about skybox, on second thought, it does look weird. I would prefer the more realistic look.

Edit: If no one knows the irony, "Niemand" is German/Dutch/Afrikaans for "Nobody" ?

is this a joke? you think 24 votes matter while there are thousands of players outside of this trashy fanboy forum? looks like you are very low iq. i dont know why find my name so funny, must be another low iq thing. just dont talk you are the joke here.

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