Realistic Star Colors

This should be in the mods folder. It's a nice thought too because some people were posting earlier about how they don't like green and purple stars. While personally I don't mind the lack of realism regarding star color and planet sizes, this mod helps make everyone happy. Nice work.

how do you know there arin't purple stars out there somewhere lol

Heh, i suppose you could whip up an astronomical accuracy mod. Maybe fix the retrograde motion of Earth's moon and the like as well. There are some astronomical inaccuracies that'd be hard to get around though, like stationary planets located light years away from stars. None of it's a big deal, of course, because the game's incredibly fun. But hey, as long as the devs are adding gameplay features and tweaks it doesn't hurt for the community to add a little astronomical veracity to the whole thing. Well done.

sound like a bunch of nerds to me lol

wow, imagine what it would be like if the planets actually went AROUND the stars? that would add a different aspect to the game, you think the colonized planet is at point X but its actually rotated around to the other side of the star. it would make the game run even slower on the big maps.

how do you know there arin't purple stars out there somewhere lol

Because he is an astronomer. He can tell you there aren't purple stars just the same way he can tell you there aren't planets that are shaped like dogs; the laws of physics operate in such a way that the result you're thinking of is impossible.

sound like a bunch of nerds to me lol

Is that your word for anyone who's smarter than, say... a bag of hammers? "lol?"

Good work, Bynaus. This is cool.

sound like a bunch of nerds to me lol

And thats coming from someone who plays computer games and spends time posting on forums discussing one of these games?

I know there aren't green stars, but damnit they look cool!
Like shabbit said, post this in the mods folder. There's quite a lot of people that would want this, and will miss it when the forums slowly push it out of sight
Nice job

the laws of physics operate in such a way that the result you're thinking of is impossible.

Not necessarily. Human understanding is based upon knowledge of physical reality and to suggest that humanity has complete knowledge of such reality is premature.

To prove my point here is scientific proof:

There are also purple stars, which emit peak radiation in the violet part of the spectrum. But we don't see purple stars either because the human eye is more sensitive to blue light than to purple light. If a star is emitting a lot in the violet, it will also be radiating in the blue, and so these stars look blue to us. This is why the colors that we see for stars are:
red
yellow
white
blue
with red being the coolest stars and blue the hottest.

This information can be readily found on the web.

Just because we can't see it does not mean it does not exist.....

You just got owned!

Not necessarily. Human understanding is based upon knowledge of physical reality and to suggest that humanity has complete knowledge of such reality is premature.

It has nothing to do with human understanding, it is to do with human perception. A human cannot visually see with the eye purple and green stars, so from a visual point of view there are no purple and green stars. This game is made for humans to play so should reflect the human point of view.

Cool MOD Bynuas, I will try it out. Now if Reds were giants, whites dwarfs and we had Binaries that would be sweet.

BigBadBlue - I sure hope that post was a joke I didn't get. You know, we've come a long way at telling the colours of stuff emitting light in colours we can't see. How else would we know about infra-red? ultra-violet? Using human eyes for this sort of this is so passe with things like, oh i don't know, the hubble telescope. Our own Sun chucks out tons of light in ranges we can't see. Doesn't stop us still calling it yellow, though.

And btw, since colour is an artificial construct bsaed on the way our eyes and brains interpret an arbitrary slice if the electromagnetic specrum, a colour is only what we define it is. In other words, if it looks blue, it IS blue.


Anyway, when I first saw this post the thought running through my mind was "wow, what a geek." On second thoughts, though, neat idea. More reality (if it doesn't detract from the fun) can make a game so much more immersive. Although I suspend belief with games more than I do with films (I can't watch a lot of them the phoney science/computer stuff makes me weep), the less you're thinking "that's just plain WRONG", the more you're thinking "woo, I get to blow stuff up this is awesome!"

Prima Giedi , yes, exactly. Why shouldn't the game show the same star colors I see through binoculars or a telescope?

The Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me system was a first stab at classifying star types, back in the days before instrumentation, when everything was visually based. Now we can "see" into the ultraviolet, or infrared, or radio band, X-rays and gamma rays. But we have to use arbitrary, false colors to visualize the data. I want stars to look like they do up in the sky, through the Mark I human eyeball. And yeah, I know it's just a game. But why make five accurate colors and two fantasy colors?

It's a cool mod, thanks Bynaus! I especially like the texture map with the granular surface and sunspots.

Glad you like the mod.
As Prima Giedi has already stated, this is a question of perception, not of where the peak of the light emission curve lies.

I thought that you could have binary stars if you replace one of the gas-planet textures by a star texture (edit: this won't work because of the night side shadow...). But of course, it would be very cool to have a close binary at the center of the system. Maybe in a later update? Same for the prograde moon orbits...

I have added a small "Star Names Mod", meaning that I have added a few "real" star names to the starname-list that comes with the game (an actual replacement of all fantasy-based names was impractical due to the sheer size of the list).

You find it here:

Link

i'd red somewhere that red dwarves only look red to us because they are so far away, the same as a hallogen lamp will appear red from a distance but white hot close up.

If there is to much or to few light, everything is white - this is why the sun looks white and the same would be true for a red dwarf seen from very close by. But this is also the reason why it is difficult to see the color of the stars by naked eye: if there is to few light, they appear white. Therefore only the (apparently) brightest stars like Arcturus, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Capella or Canopus appear "colored" (red, red, blue, yellow, yellow, respectively) to us.

From interstellar space, but not from to far away, you would see the stars more or less in the color you see them in the mod.

It has nothing to do with human understanding, it is to do with human perception. A human cannot visually see with the eye purple and green stars, so from a visual point of view there are no purple and green stars. This game is made for humans to play so should reflect the human point of view.

Nah. I have never played humans except the campaign so I don't really care about their crappy eyesight. If it's green or purple, then let it be green or purple and use mods if you want it otherwise.

I agree who cares how humans percieve a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Because to the Korx, there are purple and green stars.

It has nothing to do with human understanding, it is to do with human perception. A human cannot visually see with the eye purple and green stars, so from a visual point of view there are no purple and green stars. This game is made for humans to play so should reflect the human point of view.

yes.... huh... so... I propose removing red stars for red-green color blind people. also yellow stars, for blue-yellow color blind people. finally, all colored stars for people with monochormacy... because it is about human perception and all people should be considered and respected.

what a waste of time is this? this is a game! how many people acturally play as human? I for one believe Yor can only see in Purple, thus all stars should be Purple.

why am I wasting my time writing this...

Because he is an astronomer. He can tell you there aren't purple stars just the same way he can tell you there aren't planets that are shaped like dogs;

Can he tell me a color of a blackhole? Surely the light doesn't escape, but if it did, what color would it be? The failing of Humanity, always assumign they know everything.

A human cannot visually see with the eye purple and green stars, so from a visual point of view there are no purple and green stars.

But in this game you don't just play as humans, as far as I can tell. Not that I'm arguing, honestly. I think it'd be neat to see the stars as the "colors" different races would see them in game. They ARE aliens and will see into different color wavelengths, after all [no, let's NOT get into hearing range ]. And you could choose which coloration you would see...but maybe that's asking too much.

There are no green stars in the universe? How boring...

Can someone create more star varieties??? and more planet and moon skins???

We can add star types ?

I don't think black holes exist really (that's just masturbatory, as a lot in today astrophysical science : They always forgot the angular momentum : I black hole CAN'T resist his own angular momentum. He probably explode when he try to form).

But i like the idea of pink stars, brown stars, bi-colors stars, and so one (if black hole exist, probably cubic stars exist, too).