Is your space lighting looking a little flat? You have a few options...

thegreendragoon1

Greetings, fellow authors.

As many of you may have noticed, following the recent update to the Lighting 2.0 system, all the space maps look very flat. Thankfully, it's not as bad as the recent "Lights of Zetar" bug (which is now thankful fixed), but it makes the space maps not look very good.

Thankfully, there's a workaround. Several of the sky layers for custom backdrops produce working lighting. I've gone through, tested and identified which which of these have lighting that works. Note that this must be a custom backdrop. None of the Backdrop Templates I tried worked.

• Casperia Prime
• Casperia Prime #2 (Solid blue backdrop, foggy with dim light)
• Memory Alpha (Built in sun almost overhead)
• Romulus Supernova
• Sector Space #1 (Strong black fog)
• Sector Space #11 (Dim, strong blue fog)
• Sector Space #4 (Strong dark grey fog)
• Sector Space #5 (Strong dark grey fog)
• Sector Space #6 (Light dark grey fog)
• Sector Space #8
• Trailer
• Vulcan

You can access all of these by selecting Custom for the backdrop and selecting one of these under Sky Layers. From there, you can add additional layers to customize the scene to your taste.

I wish there were more, but for now, it's something to work with, and If know anything about this community, it's that we can do a lot with very little.

(A special thank you to Duncan Idaho (Gorgonops) for discovering the first of these.)

starfarertheta

Thank you for posting this.

duncanidaho11

Additions:

• Orange Clouds #3 (overhead white light)
• Zaria+Orange Clouds #3 (angled orange light)

Zaria by itself does not have custom lighting.

duncanidaho11

Update upon testing, it appears that these custom backdrops do not produce lighting effects in published missions (in effect, we're still having problems with lighting 2.0 in space). They'll work great in the editor, but when live we're back to the flat default haze.

spiritborn

I can work with that, though I'd prefer a good directional lighting if possible so I could have planets where every orbital station isn't on the night side.

EDIT:I suppose for the time being we should put a note saying that due to a bug space lighting does look flat and it's not our fault and we have informed the developers about it.