Great idea to remove the stars - telescope images with diffraction spikes are very obvious when they're statically plastered across the background. It got me thinking, though... May I make a suggestion or two? Stop me if this has already occurred to you...
In a lot of these background packs, the darkspots in nebulae are just translated to transparent in the alpha channel. In reality, a lot of the time, those dark spots are clouds of dust or gas which is not illuminated. It still occludes the background stars.
So my suggestion is to tamper with the alpha maps to make such dark spots opaque. It would add a lot of depth and reality to the illusion.
Another suggestion is to sprinkle a few stars that match the starfield (ie, dots without diffraction spikes) onto the nebula texture as foreground stars - as most nebulae are far enough away to have stars in between the viewer and the nebula. Obviously, nebulae in BC tend to be big splashes of colour in a map, indicating relative closeness, but there would still be a smattering of stars visible through, in, or in front of the nebula.
The final suggestion is no galaxies! At least, no big ones. They may be pretty, but if there was a big galaxy visible in the sky, I think we'd notice it. the Large and Small Magellanic clouds are fine, as is a dinky Andromeda, but beyond them, one would need a telescope to see a proper galaxy from anywhere in the Milky Way - unless there's one lurking on the other side of the core - which in any case, wouldn't be visible from much of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
To address some of your questions:
- We do have some nebula's that contain either no stars or are the pinpoints that you talked about. On the other hand, other nebula's we have - DO have the diffraction spiked stars... why, well because our aim here is not to completely embrace total reality but to have attractive backgrounds. In some cases, I think the "spiky" stars add a bit of "cool factor" to the nebula's. We by no means are "over-doing" it with spiky star nebula's, but you will definitely see some.
- Some of the nebula's we have
do have some "dark" spots that
partially occlude the background. But, not completely, especially towards the edges of the images. Why, because I did some experimenting and tried what you suggested in the past... I too thought about it and wanted some more "reality and depth" in my backgrounds. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out how I pictured it in my mind. Due to some of the limitations of the BC engine, it made the nebula's look too, for lack of a better way of putting it, "flat". It took some of the "3d" out of the 3d aspect of the game. So, we've decided to balance this effect as much as possible. Bottom line, it just gives the nebula's, and entire scene for that matter,
truly more depth IMO. Is it realistic, no, but hey, we all know this game is just that; a game, and once again, it's all about trade-offs and balance.
- Finally, I do agree with you that having large galaxy images in the game is a bit too far fetched but... who's not to say that a ship encountered a spatial anomaly that may have transported it instantaneously to a semi starless void between galaxies millions of light years from our own? I say "semi" because maybe dark matter/energy accumulated, through enormous gravity wells, a surprising amount of matter/stars in the rifts between the great mass of stars in galaxies.
How's that for an explanation
Here's the thing, we will include galaxies if they're once again, cool looking. You can choose to not add them to your own personal install and pick whatever other images you like.
Topic: Background Pack (Read 1009 times)
