Planetary Shadows / Eclipses

Does Uber intend to more accurately model planetary shadows?

The current design appears to have objects still lit by the sun as they pass behind other objects (e.g. as a moon orbits a planet and is obstructed by the planet). Generating a more accurate model would generate, potentially, cool eclipse and shadow effects on planets as occultations occur.

IIRC it's a VERY low priority WIP.

It's was one of questions I care a lot. In one of latest streams I finally get answer about that from @bgolus and as I understand his concern that it's won't work well for scale of PA. For example moons rotate pretty fast at moment and constant shadow might be really annoying.

The night/day cycle, that appears to have disappeared, didn't bother me at all. I considered it a nice touch of realism; especially when the Comm turned his lights on

Maybe incorporate a gfx option that can be turned on/off at the user's prerogative

The day night cycle is still in, just significantly slower than it was when it first went in.

Shadowing between planets in the real world of course happens, but the massive scale of size differences and distances mean that apart from the Earth's moon the slight shadowing from other planets is literally impossible to detect. A solitary bee flying over your head has a more significant shadow than Venus by several orders of magnitude. The moon casts a shadow on the Earth during a solar eclipse the resulting shadow (or specifically the umbra) is at most about 165 miles across, even though the moon itself is over 2000 miles wide. I'll leave you to do research on the solar eclipse and the umbra / penumbra shadows.

Rendering shadows with that level of accuracy is expensive and difficult. So for real time graphics we're always approximating the shadows. The result is if we had planets shadowing planets they'll shadow the planets much more significantly than they would "in real life" even if the distances and sizes were what they are in the game, and honestly they'll just be annoying.

Maybe if we have time for some extra polish later in the project we can make it so when you zoom out to celestial view they shadow each other but turn that off when you're closer.

Venus is the only other known astronomical body, other than the sun and moon, that can cast a shadow on a dark enough site and if the Venus is at brightest (around -4.5mag). True story! Amaze your friends; bore your enemies

You're talking about the light reflected off of Venus being bright enough on it's own to cause objects on earth to cast noticeable shadows. That's a little different than Venus itself casting a shadow on the Earth.

The only times I can see this being fun and not annoying is if you are either zoomed to celestial or the camera is tilted so that you are looking at the planet from a very low angle and can see the horizon and some of the sky.

Im sry can't really se why Uber should use there time on this, there are alot of other gameplay stuff, they can use there time on.