Space is Gorgeous – PA Should be Too

Realistic ? Actually, in visible light, space is a black background with dots here and there. The colorful nebulaes, gas clouds and galaxies are all made using enhanced colors and UV light. In fact if you are looking at space next to a bright object (such as a planet or star), space will be just black.

If you want to add fake but colorful backgrounds as seen in many eye-candy space games, make it at least optional. For realism, look at Space Engine.

I would be opposed to stock images in the background though.

Enhanced light? UV? Looks like the super advanced robots and their sensory perceptors wouldn't be able to see it then...

The current background is kind of lame.... it seems bugged on mine as well, and so ends up with a horizon

You know, I actually thought that this was going to be a "rrr, more grit and grey" thread at first.
But in all seriousness, I like this idea, it'd especially add quite a bit to the galactic war side of things, as you'll see distant galaxies and nebulae and such.
Maybe even the occasional faint explosion in the distance of space, as if another planet was destroyed. That'd be pretty sweet to see, it'd give off this feel of "There's more than what you're doing".
Oh, and just for posterity's sake, <initial "lol it's beta" post goes here>

Can i has a hell skybox for my lavaplanetsystem?
.... welcome to paradise ... hehehehehe .....

Woah, not a bad idea.

How about skyboxes that change when you zoom into planet? Like you can see the sky like on a real earth planet, or a smokey firey sky on lava planets, a sky of blue on naval planets, the black skybox on lunar biome planets, maybe a mildly ionic or electric biome on metal planets.

I would be up for anything a bit more pretty looking, I'm actually quite happy with the current look as well though, but perhaps something a bit better looking graphically wouldn't hurt though. EVE online has some massive and very unique nebula's so hard to really go by those. Start adding too realistic backdrops for the space, and it will look out of place and hard to look at and find your planets without shortcuts, you'll want something kool with stars but dont want the space backdrop too overpowering.

NASA pictures are acquired through machines and enhanced digitally to look awesome. Since this war is entirely fought through machines, wouldn't they do the same?

The question is : do they need it ? Because too much eye candy can be confusing. I haven't played Eve Online but I have played Homeworld and X2, and even though the backgrounds were stunning, they were distracting.
Of course it does not hurt to be able to configure it. I find the current background too bright for space...

Interesting. Other people on this thread are wishing PA's backdrops were more like Homeworld.

By the way, over in the mods forum it looks like @DeathByDenim has figured out how to customize skyboxes...

I generally agree that the our skybox is lame. What I would actually like is a procedural system for building a skybox. Steve our main graphics guy wrote one before but as you can imagine it's not exactly near the top of the list at the moment.

Glad to hear.

Makes sense that it's a low priority, but glad it's gonna be worked on!

Uber should put the word "PROCEDURAL" with giant letters on the retail box.. I know I'd buy anything procedural, I'm a huge fanboy for that stuff.

On topic: I'd really like the skyboxes to be something like this:

I think this is a better route to take.

Coming this March, "Procedural Annihilation"!

Even the units are procedurally generated!

Space does need to look more like space, also I noticed the background does not move even though the camera is rotating with the planet. Which gives the illusion that the planet is orbiting really fast.

You wouldn't see nebula like you do in a lot of space games though. Even if you were only a few light years away from them. The colourful pictures you see from NASA are long exposure images usually in IR or UV.

Here are some screenshots i took in the free real scale space simulator Space Engine. It takes known astronomical data and fills data gaps with procedurally generated data.
It can give nice idea for PA skyboxes.

The sky from a planet inside the Orion Nebulae


The sky from a planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud (You see the Milky Way and the Large agellanic Cloud)


The sky from a planet near Carina Nebulae


The sky from a planet near the center of the Milky Way


The sky from a planet above the disc of the Milky Way


It is such a shame we don't live in such places. Maybe i say that because i never saw the beauty of a very dark night sky.