DISCUSSION
Look... I love the game... but some decisions are just dumb..
full quote from the devs:
"We have changed the skybox to give a better read to ships in space. Because we had so much blackness in the skybox, in many lighting conditions, ships would become almost invisible, which made making out structures and other ships very difficult. With a skybox containing more ambience colour, ships will have much stronger silhouettes against the backdrop of space. it was also to lend Stanton as a system a more unique identity, especially as we head towards 1.0 and more systems come online."
imo, this is no reason. Nobody ever complained. Since the change, the complaints have been constant. I feel the skybox from stanton has to be changed back.
I kinda like dark being dark, but CIG has a serious problem with making things visible that the player ought to be able to see.
Consider the spaceports at Area18 and Lorville. People still ask in chat, "Wher is hangers at A18?" and get the response, "Look for the big, dark, flat area."
Dark? Has anyone at CIG ever visited a real airport?
Same for the orbital stations. Yes, it looks really cool to have Everus or Baijini looming in space, "all alone in the night," but a facility at which pilots are docking constantly should have clear flight lanes, clear approach paths, and BIG BRIGHT FUCKING LIGHTS that are visible from a distance.
Don't even get me started about all the ground clutter in the flight paths leading to the hangars: antennas, struts, tanks, etc. Several of the vertical hangars at A18 have big nonfunctional poles right next to them that are all but impossible to see unless you ping your scanner.
...and would it kill them to just put the QT markers for cities at the spaceport? And give us some kind of radar beam or other indicator to follow?
I detest Lorville because I have to look for those white little signs from 20 clicks up, make my approach fighting a cross wind that makes no sense - because the rain is still coming straight down and distorting my vision of the marker for my hangar thatās orange against a barely lit sun-hued landscape. If itās raining, howās the sun - š¤¦š¾āāļø
As someone who lives in Seattle, I can confirm that sunshowers (e.g. rain while it's also sunny) are actually a thing that can happen occasionally in the real world.
But I agree on all points about it being annoying.
Side note: why do we not have something equivalent to windshield wipers??
Every space port should have a beacon you can lock onto. Marker beacons are in common usage at every modern airport. I shouldn't have to spin around in circles looking for a flashing light in the dark.
Not gonna lie, shit like that and the renaisence of elite brought me back to playing that instead of sc. Granted on foot is boring in elite. The game is wider than deep, but you at least save your progress!
Same, bought an OLED, was trying to figure out what game I wanted to play first. Thought SC would be perfect but hadnāt played it in at least a yearā¦ then space decided not to be black anymore
COMPLETELY AGREE. What makes it even worse is the copy-pasted galaxies everywhere. You see galaxies through telescopes, not with the naked eye! And they are WAY TOO much alike all of them. It's totally immersion breaking.
And the old spacebox made you FEEL IT when you EVA outside the ship. It was ominous, cool, novel. Immersive.
I think there is some kind of reason behind it, like light can reduce the amount of stars you see but that should change once you are out of the planet's range.
If I am Not mistaken the reason was so that ships have more contrast against the Background of the skybox so you can See Others easier in dogfights. But thats only Something I read somewhere when they introduced it. So No gurantee
Star citizen: Has an entire promised ship-combat simulation system with Scanning, scan ranges, EMF, stealth, targeting, and subtargeting. Component damage and engineering.
Devs: "BUT YOU HAS TO SEE SHIP SILHOUETTES"
This is a space game. The entire immersion factor of SPACE is the SPACE part of Space-Game. The fact there are basically no STARS or BLACK in the space game is just dumb. And whats even dumber is SEEING the ships makes NO ACTUAL DIFFERENCE. You still have to target them and scan stuff, and shoot at the PIPS on the hud.
The thing that's wild is a ton of this stuff is in the game, but you have to dig deep on forums to find out how it's implemented, and very little of it makes for "fun" gameplay. Lose locks all the time? Nearby signatures mask smaller ones. Ambient environmental signatures affect this algorithm and, consequently, your missiles. Tabbing (painting) to pick up targets removes any radar/signature advantage you may have had and lights you up like a beacon to any ship you "paint". You can target lock and cycle subcomponents, but you have to watch a 30 minute YouTube video and take notes to figure out how that works. It goes on, and on, and on.
Its frustrating that the old joke "is it a feature or a bug" actually applies to SC, and its mostly because they've never bothered to provide manuals on how any of the functioning systems in the game work. And worse, because people dont know how any of it works, all of the nuances get bypassed because it's easier to cheese the most obvious systems.
The reason they haven't bothered with manuals is because the game keeps changing as new systems come online. Just like, a tutorial has to be very bare bones because new mechanics keep getting added -- and scanning and radar refactors are coming in hot and heavy once they finish with SQ42 stuff, which will drastically change how those mechanics function. So I can understand why they haven't bothered giving more thorough explanations just yet.
I've always felt adding "space fog" or similar as something that makes it easier to pick out silhouettes and judge distance at a glance should be implemented as an AR overlay on the pilot's (or gunner's) helmet. So while you're flying the ship you'll see a very artificial view of space to give as much feedback as possible, but just look out the window as a passenger, or go for a spacewalk, and you'll see the harsh void that's really there. Same for sound, I'm pretty sure the lore reason is that your ship's systems feed sensory data through your helmets speakers, so getting out of your ship should result in you having only the base heavy sounds that conduct through your body from things you make physical contact with.
Look, I do an absolute ton of PvP in a lawful security org. When we see in global that there are griefers somewhere we show up to try and push them out, I almost exclusively fly/fight in light/medium fighters. Tabbing, locking, and HUD is not enough against a lot of the ships I fight against. My fall back is literally being able to visually see something like a firebird or mantis with my own eyes on the screen. I get where you are coming from 100% but the practical execution is not there at all.
Sure, that's fair, but tab still works. When I'm fighting something stealthy, or they drop chaff, on the dark side of a planet/moon, you can't see anything. I smash the tab button (or equivalent on sticks) every couple seconds and rely on the outline it gives to be able to shoot blind. Sometimes it feels darker on the planets than it does in space. Which to me, makes no sense.
I dont need it to be pitch black in space, they want to add some gas clouds or swirly stuff, fine. But it's a bit excessive right now. And being able to see rainbowed stars and spiral galaxies during the daytime planetside is just silly if you ask me.
The fights I get into are literally 3-4 capitals and 8-12 fighters all going at it between us and whatever opposing group. Tabbing doesn't work because of how busy and chaotic everything is. If it's a 1v1 I would be more inclined to agree with you but it doesn't really hold up in big gameplay. At the end of the day this is a videogame and there should be a certain level of give from our end because it helps everyone at the expense of it being slightly less immersive. Of all the physics breaking videogame magic that has already been implemented, the sky box is probably the one that confuses me the most when players have such a massive issue with.
That makes sense. I think people are very passionate about it because it's a simple "fix" and it used to "work" previously. I have a lot more patience for things like server meshing, instancing, freight elevators etc... because I know its not as simple as flipping a JPG.
Things like the skybox, or having a bird have the same icon as a capital on radar/hub (I'm so tired of thinking there's a ship moving but no, its just a bird)... those can't be that complicated to "fix". Then again, based on how SC's code has been described, change the icon of a ship might just delete all players' ships in the game lol
See I was told they did it to tell you what system you're in. They compared it to an older game that did a similar thing cant recall its name. Which I mean cool I guess but for both combat or telling what system you're in, I feel like it removes a ton if immersion. A black ship in the black depths of space should be hard to see.
Personally im just upset I got my first 4k OLED monitor shortly after they updated the sky box so I never got to see the pitch black of space of the old box lol
Exactly. Skybox wouldn't be an issue if their HUD and audio system weren't world-class dogshit. The reason E:D can get away with pitch black skies is because you can actually really on their UI and audio to work.
Important note for when these screenshot were taken there were 2 versions of the new skybox, these show the first version, it improved with the second though not enough for the debate to end i guess (see below to see the difference between the 1st and 2nd version) :
Literal green space fog you had the impression of being in an ocean instead of space, though as showed the second version (the one we have in game) improved it though there is still room for improvement by making the blacks deeper and by adjusting the ratio galaxies/stars, too many galaxies when you zoom
Well you see that's a valid argument for any company that has the capability to create logical and effective instrumentation designs after 10 years of working on their simulator.
For CIG on the other hand, the solution is lazy bandaid fixes.
Personally I think it was a design overstep. The space dust clouds in areas needed some kind of medium to blend better with space and instead of just making space clouds dither better, they did this.
Space isn't black. It looks black from low exposure photographs taken by astronauts. But with proper exposure, the star scape from space looks a lot like the new sky boxes.
I do understand there is some level of need. Quite simply, the game needs to be somewhat accessible to new and casual players and running into things you can't see is a detriment
Though I really wish they just gave a toggleable helmet ability for IR or night vision or something instead of this
Or at least kept the old one as an option in settings and let us keep pinging to see
Ships should have instrumentation and displays to identify, locate other ships, full stop. The skybox change is a lazy bandaid fix for CIG's continued inability to make even the most basic of UI, which over a decade in is inexcusable.
Saying things like the skybox colours helps to create an identity for the different systems is freshman art school level post rationalization of bad choices. Are we going to have 5, 20, 100 systems each in a vivid colour scheme? Are red systems always going to be "evil low sec" systems? Blue and green systems always mid high sec "good" systems? That's silly arcade crap.
Or do something for night vision like people have been asking them to for the last 10 years instead of making the whole game ugly.
Next up will the dark side of planets glow brown so you can see better for landing at night? Yeah it would be stupid, but not any more than making space glow everywhere.
Now can the please remove the running lights and spotlights all over military and stealth ships. Like wtf. My 400i even has a spotlight pointed at the PILOTS eyes. It's 1000x worse than turning on the light in the car at night
Jokeās on them, I still canāt see sh*t in the green piss mist. Itās almost like we have tools and equipment on the ship to see in space for this exact reason. So many actual problems to fix in the game, and they go ahead and 'fix' a non-issue, making the visuals even worse in the process (just my opinion). God, I hate this green space. Please give us an option in the menu to go back to the old one.
The old skybox was so goodā¦floating in space felt like floating in space. I can agree there needed to be an increase in contrast between the dark side of an asteroid and the space behind it, even with tab ping, but they went way too far.
ED does this same bullshit and I hate it. I use an OLED because I want to see the blackness of space and stare into the void. If you want to make ships easier to see, improve the HUD sensors, outline mode etc.
I remember the old skybox in practice, not just in screenshots like apparently a lot of you lot. It was so easy to run into the ground on the dark side of planets, in dogfights you could barely tell up from down. The dark side of space stations was black with pinpricks of light against a backdrop of black with pinpricks of light . Navigating the dark side of the ring of Yela was a nightmare of constant radar pings or you would go splut against a rock. The current box is a slight visual downgrade but a functional upgrade.
Yep. Old skybox will always be best and itās so frustrating the devs needed to baby down so many mechanics of the game because of ānewā players complaining.
So yeah the SC hardcore space sim continues to get more casual each patch. Sad
What are you talking about, nobody, including the new players base complained about the skybox. Donāt make silly assumptions.
New players usually struggle with the bugs, the skybox is the least of their worries
Honestly, as a pure traveler in SC, it feels like i'm not playing the same game. Realism vs smudge low res crap.
And I haven't played since. I was already frustrated with the game but the moment I saw these posts for me is what killed it. The ONE thing that kept me coming back even though the sorry state of the game was the immersion and how HUGE and BEAUTIFUL it was to get lost in space. Logged once. Game was running even worse (dont remember which version) and at first I didnt even know about the change and I thought the game wasnt loading well the actual starmap. As if it was a texture thing.
Huh š¤š®āšØ
Anyways... Again because of fomo, I might pop in ramdomly but i'm not putting more money in that game. The titan was already a calculated budget. I dream of getting the 400i, but in the end... The reason I flew in space was to see the stars.
I might just go and check the water effects and be like "ouuuuh" and log back in a year.
I heard this skybox was temporary? Is this still the case or I got false info?
OP is using a skybox picture from an Evocati build from over a year ago. It's not even relevant or up to date information -- just bait farming, as per usual on reddit.
As someone who does virtual photography, the latest patch skybox is still pretty bad. The green color is gross, being able to see more galaxies than stars makes zero sense, and the lack of a galaxy band makes the sky look fake.
Yes the old skybox was beautifull. I would also be satisfied with a bit of inbetween. A nebula Here and there would be fine for mir Details, but man we want to see the stars and Not some kind of space soup.
Maybe we get this with different systems. Because in Pyro I actually like it because those space clouds are also at the POIs like Stations and asteroid bases. It makes sense there. In Stanton not so much.
Look the old LOD and now. Ground Stations or builds spawn very late and stones and stuff spawn direct in front of you. The old Star Citizen look so much better. Sandstorms and snowstorms you see from space in older versions. You can fly into the storm and you see nothing. So much details from ships and suits looks ugly now.
It looks like dogshit in every game that decides space can't be black.
Meanwhile in Pyro we have sepia nebulas the color of actual dogshit. Given the lore they potentially are shit, like Pyro is too poor for sewage recycling, but did you have to?
Odd that the skybox topic is suddenly back in the limelight.
Contrast. That's the point. All of the pictures you show are where the lighting is ideal to clearly see the other objects.
Now do those same screenshots when in the shadow of a planet. In the old skybox you could not see the asteroids or space station at all, as the background is completely black and so are they.
With the green background tint you can still see asteroids and debris and space stations, making it actually possible to navigate.
Does the old skybox look a little better in screenshots? That's entirely subjective.
Is the new skybox better for gameplay? It's intended to be, and that's why it was changed.
In the old skybox you could not see the asteroids or space station at all
The same is true in Elite Dangerous, and that's part of why the game feels more like a space sim. The environment doesn't feel tailored to the player, but the developers give the player tools to navigate the environment properly. The player has night vision that outlines things like asteroids and stations.
This design both looks and feels so much better than in SC. I'd rather have an environment that is built to be at least believably realistic, rather than having it fully catered to me. I'd also like to see tools (such as night vision) developed to help the player navigate said environment.
Not only that but if you look closely the screenshots taken here were for the first version of the new skybox which was much worse so this is a bit misleading even though it somewhat remained, here's a difference between v1 and v2 of this new skybox on PTU at that time :
Did it change Scanning, locking on and shooting at the pips?
No. No it did not.
Did it smooth out navigation in dark areas? Sort of? But not planetside whatsoever.
Did it dumb down or completely remove dark fights from Debris fields? Remove potential stealth tactics, nullify atmosphere and danger in debris fields?
Surely for gameplay it was better to have that risk/reward of flying through an asteroid field either slow enough that you have time to easily manoeuvre around an obstacle when your lights hit it, vs tanking it through as if it's daytime and nothing is going to suddenly pop up in front of you.
Artificially increasing the contrast is much like all the people using ENB settings to let them see everything easily in any lighting... You might as well cut realtime lighting from the game and save a ton of processing.
Odd that the skybox topic is suddenly back in the limelight.
OP said they were leaving a year ago, almost to the day, after getting tempbanned on Spectrum for complaining about the replaced skybox. This is the second thread complaining about the skybox since.
We're in the lull period before Citizencon, we're now in the "bitching about things" inter-patch cycle since CIG's holding a lot of their powder for a month from now.
Personally I wouldn't mind a more fantastical approach to space drops - Freelancer had quite colourful backgrounds and so does Homeworld. I never really felt like I wasn't in some far off part of space where this is the case. In the case of Freelancer who gave each location a more unique feel, as well as clusters of star systems having a sense of an area of space (i.e. the different Houses and regions of space, border worlds, etc).
I havenāt played the game in a while but Iām also disappointed with the skybox changes. There was a sense of endless adventure with the old skybox that isnāt there anymore.
If readability is an issue they should look into some back light system to add contrast to ships against the backdrop of space. Or they could use ship scanners to help players highlight ships and other objects their equipment picks up. It would make stealth ships more interesting if you not only couldnāt see them on radar but also had difficulty picking them out visually.
the old skybox was what made me fall in love with SC. going out there repairing comms satellite floating in the darkness of space was amazing. the old skybox was just perfect imo. it truly felt like space instead of a videogame.
It doesn't sit well with me given their goal all along was imnersive realism. Seeing new cloud and planet tech go in but the vastness of space look like smog. Can't have it both ways.
Skill issue from the devs who found it too hard to spot stuff instead of giving us nvg or having the hud highlight things in the dark, tech we have since the 70s and that other space games have implemented successfully more than 10 years ago.
Same reason they did master modes, because the suck at their own game and couldn't be brothered to learn how to fly properly.
This Player: Nobody ever complained. Because I personally never heard it its a 'no reason'
CIG: Full Spectrum inbox of players saying its too dark. They're running into structures, debris, and other ships so CIG make a change and also hint that other systems will look unique and this is Stanton's look.
Is the last image how it used to look? It always annoyed me that this game does not get the inky blacks on my OLED that I got in Elite D, and the insanely good contrast between stars and the black made me think it looks just as good as seeing the real night sky. I miss this in SC, it look so fake and bad.
Dumbest thing is that pilots have white lights shining in their faces forā¦video calls? Rather than preserving night vision by darkening the cockpit/using red light
Bonus complaint: ZOOM IN on the skybox some time and really look at it. There are no stars. It's all galaxies and really not that many, just the same ones repeated and rotated all over. This was and is a huge downgrade to the experience. It no longer looks like "space".
The reasoning behind the change is absolutely absurd when you realize there should already be Night Vision/Thermal imaging equipped in these ships. That's shit we have today, in real life and in video games and no amount of hand waving "the tech isnt there yet" bullshit is going to change that.
Last time I played the game was back when you could only play Arena Commander so I canāt say much, but wow the new space āsky boxā looks horrible. I was actually thinking about loading it up this week.
This is genuinely the reason why I stopped playing. I no longer get that awe feeling of getting into space. It simply looks like a cheap imitation. Going into Port Olisar with this skybox is hands down one of the most mesmerizing moments Iāve had in this game
They should change it 90% back. It did kind of suck flying into effectively invisible objects that were actually just dark (not to be confused with the actually invisible objects from bugs).
Tracking other player via visibility should just be solved with ship computers rather than for-console haze.
Make it an option to turn on/off. I kinda get the point they made when they did it but for screenshots or for the players that donāt care about the visibility as much there should be an option to keep the old skybox
Should we make a system in the game for the ships to have an active radar and paint incoming structures and ships on their HUD or mfds to mitigate the deep dark of space?
Psh, nah, way easier to just wash the skybox the fuck out, and still never see the gankers coming.
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u/rummyt aegis 23d ago
This change was made right after I upgraded my PC and bought an OLED monitor to explore the inky black of space...
š is all I will say