Map aesthetic polish

The maps could use some aesthetic polish and I'm going to make some suggestions here. New posts will be added as I come up with more ideas.

Point 1: Fog hides sun&moon
Thick fog hides the sun and moon without even a proper transition. The picture below shows how the sun just gets cut off as soon as it goes down a certain angle relative to the density of the fog. This looks very bad, see the picture below.


On this picture the fog is completely hidden by the fog. What should happen is that the sun is still visible but gradually gets more diffused as the amount of fog it shines through gets thicker, as is seen on the picture underneath it.



Here is the the shine from the moon during night time but the moon is barely visible and it's perfectly sharp. That is wrong. Again the picture below shows what it should be like. Moon is visible but diffused by the fog. Sorry for the new moon not being place properly over the old moon.



More examples.





In short, fog should not completely hide the sun at a certain density, it should gradually get diffused.

Point 2: Bottom light
For some strange reason Indar canyons, Indar grasslands and Amerish has a yellow light that illuminates from below. Any surface facing more or less downwards gets a yellow tint added to it. This is just wrong. There's no reason for it. Esamir has no sun light.

The picture shows examples of areas where the yellow tint is most noticeable.

Point 3: Lazy ugly prop placement
On Esamir since the revamp there are some bad placed props. Identical rock spires placed right next to each other and with the same rotation. Looks very unnatural and lazy. Examples below with their locations.




This formation is very unnatural looking and the spires intersect with each other.

Point 4: Moon not going below horizon
During sunrise on Indar grasslands and Indar canyons the moon never goes below the horizon but instead just bounces on it as it turns into the rising sun. This is looks ugly and makes it obvious that the sun and the moon are the same object. The gif below shows the Indar grasslands version.

Point 5: Amerish sunrise wrong since night adjustment
When Amerish nights were made shorter and brighter the level designer apparently forgot to synchronize the movement of the sun with the coloration of the sky and the lighting. This looks awful. The animation below shows what it's like.

The sun hasn't even touched the horizon before the sky changes.


Here is what the sunrise used to look like before the night adjustment. The sky and lighting does not change until the sun is rising above the horizon as it should be. Note that it's not perfect though, since the coloration is above the sun in the beginning. The sun should always be at the center of the color.

Very nice work spotting those bugs man! And Point 5 is just freaking hilarious and should be fixed ASAP.

Point 6: Highlight shines through walls
Even though the illumination from the sunlight is blocked by buildings and other objects, the highlight (specular) from the sun is not. It's perfectly visible on the floor as if there were no walls or roof blocking the light. Unless this is an engine limitation this should change. Is it not possible to hide specular effects if it's in shadow?

Not that in the picture below the direction of the light is at the wall rather than the opening so there should be no highlight.

i wish i could run the game settings as high as you . once i was on early in the morning back when it was still just waterson and thought i'd see what the game looked like on ultra. oh my god it's gorgeous. i was mesmerized just with the grav lifts, grav launchers, galaxy thrusters, and windblown dust/snow effects

Point 7: Lack of sun glare for some continents
Some continents has little to no glare for their sun which looks wrong and removes the feeling that you're looking into the sun rather than a random white disc.

Here are examples of proper sun glares. From left to right: Indar desert, Indar canyons, Indar grasslands, Hossin. One could say that Hossin has too diffuse glare though. Best glare I think is that of Indar grasslands.


Here is Esamir to the left and Nexus to the right with their midnight sun shown. Esamir has a good looking night glare but Nexus has not. The later might as well be way too bright moon. Nexus night sun needs a proper night sun glare.


Here is what the sun looks like on Esamir, Amerish and Nexus, during day time. They all have way too weak glare, Esamir has nothing while Amerish has the most of the three. All these should be adjusted to have the same amount of glare as is found on Indar.

Point 5 addon
Here are examples of what it looks like in real life when the sun shines through fog.
http://4.bp.************/-PG-ZTD_lYa8/TZ9QrNGG9fI/AAAAAAAAEoc/Vlwg5OEhQQc/s1600/March%2B2011%2B133.jpg

Point 8: Illuminated fog in shadow
Sometimes the feature of fog shadows fails to work. Fog that is clearly in shadow is still visible as if it was hit by sunlight, or moonlight.

Here is the caves of Nexus where you can see the fog being visible and colored green even though the midnight sun is blocked by all the mountains.


Here are two pictures of the same phenomena on Esamir. The fog is clearly visible in the shadowed area.

Point 9: Lamps for all custom lights
By custom lights I mean those spherical light sources that are used inside various buildings, most of the time. An issue with these is that they sometimes lack a lamp. It's just an invisible source of light. I suggest all custom lights should have some simple lamp that makes it look like the light is coming from it. Examples below.

Here is the first example. Red glow apparently out of nowhere.


That could easily be improved by adding a 10 polygon lamp at the roof as seen here. This strengthens the look that the light is coming from a lamp on the map rather than an invisible floating point for seemingly no reason.



Below is another example where the light from a custom source is going through the wall and is visible in the room behind. The reason for this is that custom lights do not cast shadows because it would cost too much performance. To make this look less strange a simple lamp could be placed in this room as well.

Here's the big room where the light source is above the opening, which also shines through the wall to the passage behind.


Here's a simple lamp added to make it look better.


Here's an example where the light from an outside light source into the passage. Looks strange and could be fixed by adding a lamp in that place as well.


Here's the lamp added. Reduces the strange look of light shining through walls.

Another sky bug, inconsistent lighting.



Here the gas giant and other terrestrial moon only have crescents of light on their upper left, meaning whatever is illuminating them is behind and to the left of the gas giant. However, the light reflecting off the Auraxis' moon indicates that the sun is behind Auraxis, which it should be at this point (night). The gas giant and terrestrial moon should be fully lit with a sliver of darkness.

Even if they were properly lit the placement of the planets still wouldn't make sense.

That's a funny point. Moon appears to get light from one direction but other bodies in the sky gets it from almost the opposite.

Oh my gosh. Based Pikachu checking Environment Artists/Level Designers, making sure they're doing their job.

Thank you for your aesthetic awareness.

Point 10: Amerish sunset wrong since night adjustment
I just realized that the sunset on Amerish is out of sync with the sun just like the sunrise. SOE just shortened the nights at both ends and didn't bother making sure the sun's movement was synced. As with the sunrise the sun is not at the center of the color, although it's not as noticeable as with the sunrise.

As you see on the picture below, the sun goes down too early so the moon rises before the coloration has finished. It looks awful. On top of that the moon glows just as much as the sun for a while until the sky has turned 'dark'.

Point 7: Addon
Besides normal white glare, the sun should change it's glare color and size when it goes down close the horizon. Going from white to a color with saturation. The pictures below show what it looks like i real life.

Orange and yellow glare when the sun is low.


Esamir night sun is what the sunset/sunrise glare should look like, except different colors.

Point 11: Sun change color when near the horizon
In real life the sun often gradually changes color from white to yellow as it passes down the horizon. See picture below.

The sun goes from white to yellow, starting with the bottom part which gradually colors the whole of it.

Good points. In regards to #2, This could be global Illumination kicking in, If so it is a super easy fix to lower the value but it also darkens the scene (which may be cool... NV scope is damn near useless and you can't really hide in shadows)

Supporting points with RL example photos = pro.

It being some necessary part of indirect illumination would be very strange since the bottom light is not found on Indar desert or on Esamir.



For comparision, here is Indar canyons. See the yellow bottom light again.


Also I doubt PS2 has any real indirect illumination. To me it looks like it's just an ambient light.