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Lights/Lamps: Need for Strong Improvement


Hirnsausen

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We place lights, and still cannot see much at all.

I would like very much to see the illumination system to be improved. Like range of illumination and strength.

Also suggesting far-reaching search lights of different sizes, some 1x1x2, some much larger. The stone age was dark, but in the age of technology, we really should be able to illuminate. Even the spaceports and markets are an example, how poor the illumination is in DU. Improve, improve, improve.   ?

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Large vertical lights put out a lot of light, but spotlights that illuminate "for miles" is just asking to cause excessive lighting calculations and subsequently lag.

 

If you wrap your piloting seat in luminescent glass, you'll find you can oddly see a fair ways in 3rd person (I don't fly in 1st, so I don't know if it works there too).

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"Miles" are not needed, but I assume, this was just symbolic and stands for the more realistic "few hundreds meters". Which leads us to the questio: which actually is a good distance (range) that allows safe night landing but not too much more server-burden? Would it be 500m, or a maximum of 1,000m? I believe, these two are the minimum and maximums of what is needed especially for landings by night. What distances do you all suggest?

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You may find it worth noting that in real life, large vehicles don't typically use a spotlight to see far ahead, they just put lights on the runway and each-other. Use luminescent glass to make landing-lights on your runway and warning lights on your buildings so you don't hit them.

As far as the inevitable "But what if I am landing in an empty hex for the first time in the dark like a helicopter in real life?" argument, helicopters can hover and descend slowly. Build to do the same and throw a mix of headlights and L vertical lights on the underside of your craft and you will be fine.

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I think, the atmospheric attributes in regards to illumination outreach/range are comparable to the deep sea, and therefore I think, it is legitimate for my own example to refer to deep-sea vehicles (not the military submarines that cannot go that deep). Those deep-sea vehicles have lights almost all over, but certainly at their front. Very strong spotlights. Needed in unknow terrain.

If atmosphere and illumination in DU would be similar to how it is here on Earth, there wouldn't be much need for this posting. But having the fact that the screen is fully black at times when flying through the night, there is a need for spotlights. Even airplanes, which are the closest real-life thing to our DU ships, have very strong spotlights on their landing gear, and even on their wing roots.

We have no wheels in DU, and therefore no cars. I am not sure how you reference real-world cars to the airplanes and spaceships we build and use in DU. At least, your comparison is highly,, uhmmm, creative. I give you that point. ?

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51 minutes ago, Hirnsausen said:

If atmosphere and illumination in DU would be similar to how it is here on Earth, there wouldn't be much need for this posting. But having the fact that the screen is fully black at times when flying through the night, there is a need for spotlights. Even airplanes, which are the closest real-life thing to our DU ships, have very strong spotlights on their landing gear, and even on their wing roots.

 

They have some lights, yes, but those are for seeing the runway while maneuvering when the plane is already on the ground, and for making themselves visible to other aircraft in the dark. As I said before, if ya want to land like a real plane in the dark, put lights on your runway.

 

45 minutes ago, Hirnsausen said:

I think, the atmospheric attributes in regards to illumination outreach/range are comparable to the deep sea, and therefore I think, it is legitimate for my own example to refer to deep-sea vehicles (not the military submarines that cannot go that deep). Those deep-sea vehicles have lights almost all over, but certainly at their front. Very strong spotlights. Needed in unknow terrain.

 

Deep-sea exploration and maintenance subs have lights to see, but they are not that powerful because water disperses/absorbs light too much for high-powered lights to be practical. They instead rely on a variety of other environment/location-detection hardware to navigate, and just use the lights to look at things up close. If you want some sort of terrain-detecting radar for night flights that doesn't cripple the game with lighting calculations while still providing you the vision you desire, you should make a thread for that, I'd support it.

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The problem with DU is, that the atmosphere in DU appears absorbing illumination too much. Even the landing platform of markets can hardly be seen. And light sources are also set to not render when even in a small distance.

I am aware that light calculations are a burden for the game server, yet, in other gams, we do not have such illumination problems. There is really a need for NQ to do something about the lack of illumination range/strength. Screen is fully black until you are maybe 300m away from a landing platform in an arriving ship, that is just not realistic.

Just in addition, I too would support the terrain-detecting radar as mentioned by you. But fixing things that are not good enough, would come first.

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