Real sun mods

NEWS:
Working on new mods version that'll be compatible with the new renderer released in SE 1.150.001

Hi guys.
Back on the DX9 I began creating sun mods based on real stars parameters (e.g., "Betelgeuse").
For my mods I used light with a real color of the stars, intensity calculated from star's brightness at simulated distance, and sundisk scaled to as close to real size as possible.

Old DX9 Betelgeuse mod:


For a long time I didn't release DX11 versions, because the DX11 environment lighting modding possibilities are still very limited
(or at least I didn't found a way how to bring back black shadows, or how to change the size of the sun).
But not long ago I finally decided to port the old suns to DX11 using at least those limited modding possibilities currently available and to continue in making the "real" suns again.

DX11 Betelgeuse mod:



Currently available "suns" for DX11 are:
(this list is continually being updated)

M-type "Betelgeuse"
K-type "Etamin"
G-type "Sun" (near Mercury)
G-type "Sun" (near Earth)
G-type "Sun" (Jupiter)
G-type "Sun" (Kuiper belt)
O-type "Naos" (habitable zone)

Suns that are next to come:
- O-type blue star
- T-type brown dwarf
- M-type "VY Canis Majoris"
- G-type "Sun" for distances: Venus, Mars, Main belt, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune

---------------------------------------------------------------

This weekend I went on creating the G-type sun mod (which is our own "Sun"). I was asked for creating a lighting for Mercury, so I began with this close distance.
The sunlight is 6.5 times brighter than on Earth. I have mixed a color corresponding to our Sun. It was kind of alchemy due a lot of white that Space Engineers are adding to sunlight in DX11 which I need to compensate, but I managed to find a settings that gets me close enough to the desired tone (Yup, it's not a pure white ).

You can check the mod here
G-type "Sun" (near Mercury)




I plan to continue in creating these real suns and hopefully make a full set of stellar classes in the end.
First I'll make our Sun for Earth distance, followed by Main Belt and Kuiper Belt. I am thinking about Oort cloud too.

So stay tuned

 

The Sun for Earth distance is finished and on Workshop.

It's nearly identical with default SE lighting. Only instead of the absolute white it uses the real "yellow" tone of Sun. (It's only called "yellow", in real I'd call it... pinkish? )

 

I'm trying now to determine representation for magnitude = -4.
A light brighter than magnitude -4 should cast shadows visible by human eye (i.e., you can see a difference between black and gray).
If you want to help me with this, please, look properly on the image below, and tell me what is the smallest number on it that you can still see.
Results from more people will make better approximation of the result.
Thank you very much

What's the smallest number you can still see?

 

smallest I can easily see is 7. I can make out 6 if I try, but if I didn't know it was there I might not see it.

Liking the looks of the mod btw

 

2 and a bit of 1

 

At the angle where I use my notebook the most I see only 10.

Wow! You see even those? O.O

 

changed a bit now its 2-3(2 barely but once i locked on to it i can see it better)

 

also a suggestion how you could get more to answer that question: put it into you signatur

 

Heh, that's a great idea. I forgot on the sig.
Thanks for reminder ;-)

 

I can see 3 very slightly, but really hard to look at so I would say 4.
if I would put my RGB to original it would be 10 or 12 even.

I do like it so far, but I do hope keen will try to fix some of the light issues, I still find it a little buggy and un-natural, but that is mostly with light sources of the light bulb itself, not the sun, do need to check this out.

 

Thanks for your inputs about the visibility.
The differences in numbers nicely show how everybody is playing with different monitor settings.
So far the collected numbers are: 6, 1, 10, 2, 4, 10.
That'd make gray 6 as magnitude -4 for now.
I'll update it when more results come in.

 

Work In Progress - O-type star
I began working on light of an O-type blue star.
It'll be based on 42,000K supergiant Zeta Puppis, aka "Naos".
I have already calculated distance and expected light brightness for its habitable zone, and I am now in the phase of light intensity color matching.

For now you can take a look at Photoshop preview with color filter resembling the 42,000K light.
Note: The final SE render may be a bit different in some colors.

 

For darker shadows and fixing the contrast, I made a very simple Reshade preset. I'm using it with your sun mod, and it makes the game look a lot better.

 

That interests me. Can you share more details about what and where did you tweak?
Or is it something you released on Workshop?

 

Guys, enjoy the Blue in blue



Blue supergiant Naos (Zeta Puppis) is ready for habitable zone gameplay:

 

Will this also fix lighting issues that SE currently has? or...?

 

Which lighting issues in particular? It doesn't actually alter the game in any way, so it can't really fix game engine problems, but can allow you to adjust things outside the normal parameters, such as brightness, contrast, HDR, Bloom, DOF, HBAO, SMAA, FXAA, colour, and much more.

I make use of Reshade for a few different games, especially when running in fullscreen windowed mode, as it makes adjusting gamma in-game impossible. You can download Rehsade here https://reshade.me/
There are a great many settings you can tweak, and most have descriptions within the .cfg files. Of course the more you tweak, the more it will lower your performance, however, changing contrast settings doesn't have any noticeable change on FPS.

Once you download it, place the Reshade folder, dxgi.dll & Reshade.fx inside the Bin64 folder of SE. Open up the SweetFX.cfg file located in the Reshade folder, and adjust LIFTGAMMAGAIN (shadows) and CURVES (contrast). Everyone has a different preference of course, but you could easily make one to go along with these sun mods that will look great.

Here is mine for reference.

 

I think that Replic TuaniOne was asking about lighting issues with interior lights:

3 floors, interior light placed at the ceiling of top floor, light radius 10m.


Issues:
- top floor has dark floor
- middle and bottom floors are illuminated

This has 2 reasons.
First is that SE for an unknown reason is moving lightsource of interior lights away from the light body. By half of the light radius exactly. So in the case shown, the floor of the top floor is dark because the lightsource of the interior light is moved 5m below the light body, i.e., the lightsource is actually under the floor. This also explains why the walls of middle floor are illuminated the most. This is I'd say a work of SE engine, not of shaders.
Second reason is that interior lights are not casting shadows. So bottom floor is illuminated from the light from upper floors. Here I'm not sure if the shaders can or can't do something with it.

 

Yes, this is indeed what I mean, but I guess that is a total different topic, I thought he/she had changed some code ingame itself for altering.
Guess we need to wait for Keen to fix that, because I find it very annoying if you make specific places, but that besides.

 

Yeah the interior lights are definitely a pain to try and get lighting where you want it.

 

A bit different topic now...
I have looked on a code for sun rendering and tried a simple change to make the sundisk more responsive to the color of light. It makes the red and blue suns more distinguishable, and I'd dare to say, closer to what you'd expect these suns might look like.
Here is a comparison of the orginal render (top) with the tweaked render (bottom).



I'll try to send the change to GitHub and let see, if it gets accepted by Keen.

 

Now that makes me want to try the O-type.

 

I can see the number one on my screen. Without adjusting any settings.

 

The DX9 pictures looks much darker and better. Would it be possible for DX11-suns to let it look like the DX9 suns?

 

depending on the monitor I'm using, 1 or 3. (But for the one I use for gaming, 1)

 

WIP preview of M-type sun for new renderer from update 1.150.001:

 

Regarding the DX9 lighting. I assume you guys know about the Shader mod? Finally some proper darkness. Definitely looking forward to seeing the renderer changes in action. https://forum.keenswh.com/threads/darky-shader-mod-make-darkness-great-again.7385983/

 

The blackness is possible now as a workshop mod with the new renderer and reworked Environment.sbc.
It feels kind of strange on planets though. You stand next to your base nearly at noon, sun above your head, you look at white wall of your base and you see it's absolutely black.
Separate ambient, or better, backlight settings for the atmosphere and non-atmosphere environment would be great.
I'll make 2 variants anyway, so you guys will be able to pick if you want the space black, or default darkness.

Yesterday I was messing with light intensity, and today I want to do final color tuning.

 

Well at least there is more able to be tweaked now, but it might come down to a mix of both environment.sbc and shader modding to get the perfect combination.

 

Definitely
I'd like to give the sun some flare, have the backlights dynamic (turned off out of atmosphere, and turned on when in the atmosphere), or reddish sky at the morning/evening. That can be done only in the shaders, if at all. Although I have no idea yet HOW.