New star background

DORN · Post by **DORN** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:37 am

well...

I wasn't able to get the blue sufficiently out of Ruckage's star.png so I had this weird idea.

I opened up Stellarium and adjusted its numerous parameters for the star field I wanted. Took a screen shot. Cropped it in Gimp and file named it, stars.png.

Then I inserted it in the environment folder. Fired up EM and thought, here goes nothing.

It blew me right out of the water. I have no idea if it will look as good on any one else's screen, but on my 42 inch monitor I had to grab the edge of my chair to keep from falling into space.

The file is attached to this post.

I have no idea how to get a screen shot on this post.

I can see things happening in the sim that I never saw before because the background is so clear.

Also , in Stellarium it is easy to select how many stars you want and you can control their relative sizes. It's amazing.

Dorn

[file]521[/file]

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:46 am

Ah, Yoda moment. I should've figured it out earlier since I had the same problem with those bluish stars. (Insert Yellow Submarine tag line here.) I ended up spot coloring small clusters of stars. Now I think I'll use JSGME to test out your download. Thanks.

Edit:

No-go for me. The game crashes ... possibly due to the odd size of the file.

[Edited on 1-17-2012 by Marvin]

DORN · Post by **DORN** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:22 am

Pick a file size you would like.

I just did six more raw screen shots, each with increasing numbers of stars.

It's easy to adjust file size in GIMP.

Dorn

DORN · Post by **DORN** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:30 am

PS: Just to check the file, I down loaded it from my post. Removed the original from Environment and replaced it. It works just fine on my system.

I wonder what's going on?

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:05 am

Did you try it when logging on to Dingo's server? That's where I got the game crash.

DORN · Post by **DORN** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:58 pm

Ooooooh, I hate displaying ignorance. Who's Dingo. What does his server have to do with this? {smile}

For what it is worth, it is REALLY easy to create the star.png from scratch.

Not only could one use Stellarium, but you could use Starry Night Pro, (which actually has hi res photos of the star fields), but also Orbiter and Celestia or ANY planetarium for that matter. Just take your screen shot and crop it in GIMP.

Try different fields of stars until you get one you like. It is better to not have any prominent constellations because EM repeats the pattern and the pattern then becomes obvious.

There is one trick in GIMP that is not obvious. When you save your cropped photo, check the Preserve Background Color. It seems to make the black of space blacker and deeper.

I just tried a star.png with lots of stars and did not like it as much as the .png at the beginning of this post.

Dorn

Post by **Marvin** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:49 pm

I'll keep the "Preserve Background Color" option in mind. Thanks.