NIGHT TIME!!

[Skies]

I already complained a little so I didnt want to provoke the knights.. But now that you brought it up - Gridania's sky looks like it has light pollution. I see more in the city then they are seeing there lol.

I think they design a 'slightly' light polluted night because they think their players have never seen the real night sky :P

Just to give FFXIV a fair shake:

http://xkcd.com/331/ <- This
Sometimes, we somehow don't believe reality because it doesn't seems real. If you try to simulate it in a game or something then people won't feel like it's real either!
It's the case with the night sky there, I think, they probably tried to do something similar to what a city person would see (I can say that there is still far more stars in the LL screenshot than I ever saw even the middle-of-nowhere city I spent two years at!).

Also hidden somewhere there might also be the "Let's not put a far too complex/high quality backdrop in the sky because of performance issues" situation, there's a reason we got FoV and sadly a really realistic sky would kind of push things in my opinion

[Shougun]

http://xkcd.com/331/ <- This
Sometimes, we somehow don't believe reality because it doesn't seems real. If you try to simulate it in a game or something then people won't feel like it's real either!
It's the case with the night sky there, I think, they probably tried to do something similar to what a city person would see (I can say that there is still far more stars in the LL screenshot than I ever saw even the middle-of-nowhere city I spent two years at!).

Also hidden somewhere there might also be the "Let's not put a far too complex/high quality backdrop in the sky because of performance issues" situation, there's a reason we got FoV and sadly a really realistic sky would kind of push things in my opinion

well I did link that limsa image and say 'to give them them a fair shake' - because the photo did have some stars (very low res imo, but there was a number).

If you've really got away from all the light pollution on a clear night you'd see more. That or I was just really lucky.

There may be a point to the computer specs though. Its hard for me to say because I've never had that problem... lol

Whenever I load up skyrim or oblivion I make sure to HD the crap out of my stars (right click view image or open in new tab to see it at a better scale)

Oblivion:


Pretty cool clouds


http://youtu.be/V0E-GWtpWEo