NIGHT TIME!!

[Zenaku]

1.0 had too many stars in the night sky, it looked like someone spilled a tub of glitter. It made the stars not really feel special. I kind hope that 2.0 has a more realistic night sky. I'd love to have distinct constellations maybe tying into lore. I think when it comes to the cosmos less is more.

The smallish pictures of the night time shots look really lovely. I'm impressed how it actually looks like a night, and not just day with a navy blue tint applied to everything. I'd love to see weather screen shots too! Particularly snowfall if there exists any.

really 1.0 was not realistic to you?

Real life



FFXIV


Please explain to me how 1.0 was not realistic? it even had the wave of stars like seeing a galaxy from a inside view which it just happen to be just how real life is lol.

[Zenaku]

Actually, I'd give the points to the non-doctored FFXIV screencap for highest accuracy.

The real life photo has way more stars than you'd ever see in RL, even from a dark location. More technically, even if you could see that many, the difference in brightness would be drastically different since the eye responds to light more logarithmically than most cameras (and to me it doesn't look like they've applied a logarithmic stretch to the image data to mimic that), and thus individual constellations should still noticeably pop out from the rest of the starfield. I can barely discern constellations in this photo, and that's just because I know where to look (the teapot of Sagittarius, for example just to the left of the largest part of the dark dusty lanes low to the horizon. It's way more conspicuous to the naked eye). For the record, on Earth there is about 3,000 stars brighter than the limit of the human eye's capability, so that's the most one should expect to be able to count across the entire sky, and only half that at a given point in time since the other half is below the horizon.

The FFXIV screencap also has a crescent moon in it... even from a dark location, the moon being in the sky has a dramatic effect on what you're able to see. During full moon, you can't really count on seeing much of anything besides the brightest constellations and planets. If anything, there should be fewer stars visible even in this one, especially in the vicinity of the moon. Astronomers call the time around full moon "bright time" because the glare is so bad it even prevents certain types of full-on research observing.

Now, pixellation, yeah that's something that could be smoothed up for the game's stars, but overall I'm satisfied with their general brightness and visibility from 1.0.

Source: 4-years spent in observational astrophysics grad school with many weeks spent on remote mountain top telescopes...

On a clear night with no moisture and the moon not showing you could see up to 5.000 that up too how good your eye sight is tho . But you also see man made stuff up there so ya 3.000-5.000 point of light is about human eye's capability but seeing how we talking about a final fantasy game when most race have better eye sight then humans i think they could easy make the night sky look just as cool as this

[Catapult]

To be honest, the main thing that makes this image unbelievable more than anything else is the fact that there are stars in front of the dark side of the Moon.

The density of stars I can believe.

[Shougun]

To be honest, the main thing that makes this image unbelievable more than anything else is the fact that there are stars in front of the dark side of the Moon.

The density of stars I can believe.

You may already know, but I'm unsure so i'll add it - that moon and red star next to it (dalamud) was added by Matsu.

[Myranda]

On a clear night with no moisture and the moon not showing you could see up to 5.000 that up too how good your eye sight is tho . But you also see man made stuff up there so ya 3.000-5.000 point of light is about human eye's capability but seeing how we talking about a final fantasy game when most race have better eye sight then humans i think they could easy make the night sky look just as cool as this

The photo you posted is a bit more believable for what someone might actually see, with some stars significantly brighter than others. I'd believe yeah maybe Miqo'tes have better eyesight than humans do, maybe elezen too, but I'd probably rate hyurs, roes, and lalafell as more or less human-equivalent in eyesight. So I probably still wouldn't prefer quite that many stars but somewhere in between would be a decent compromise. That and too many stars rendered I think would make it generally look like distracting clutter rather than something I could appreciate.

If we really wanted to be ultra-realistic, it would also be mostly wrong to include the color of the galaxy. Cones just don't work that well in dim conditions, and the rods would take over, leaving only the brightest objects with some slight amount of color distinction. Stars colors from red to blue, yeah the eyes can pick that up but the galaxy in color, nah. Just a smear of grey...

That said, I wouldn't have a problem with a little low-saturation color to liven it up... it's a game after all and I'll take some prettiness over hyper-realism hands down.

[Also yeah, you were right, the number of stars brighter than magnitude 6 is closer to 5000 not 3000. Lapse in my memory :P]

[Catapult]

You may already know, but I'm unsure so i'll add it - that moon and red star next to it (dalamud) was added by Matsu.

Yes, I was aware it was shopped.

[Soukyuu]

Here's a non-photoshopped image of the sky I took last August on a dark night in Europe, without the light pollution:


It's slightly blurry, but gives you the idea. I can imagine the stars are even brighter if you are in the mountains, the picture I took was taken at sea level.

[Nakiamiie]

We spoke with the writer of the Developers' Blog, and she told us that she'll do her best to try get a pic showing just how pretty the stars are at night! So while we're not sure if we'll be doing a video just yet, we'll keep you in the loop!

Also for those of you asking about weather in the Beta Test, we can say that there will be clear and cloudy weather implemented. We'll let you know when we have more to share!

That's awesome news but I got stuck on the bold words... so, Ferne is a she? Or is Ferne a liar and someone else is writing the blog?

[Soukyuu]

That's awesome news but I got stuck on the bold words... so, Ferne is a she? Or is Ferne a liar and someone is writing the blog?

The "she" refers to the Japanese writer of the blog. Our version is written by Ferne using the material from the Japanese version. :P

[Nakiamiie]

Real life

Having spent most of my life so far in Canada, I've seen similar starry skies like that quite often.
I lived in a small village and often went camping in the wood. Then, before going to sleep after putting out our fire, we would look up at the sky and wait. I can tell you, after only 20 minutes, your eyes can so many stars (you feel really insignificant too, haha)! It's still to this day my favourite night memory.

In big cities, you can't see anything... dull night sky. ◉︵◉

I hope we have super beautiful night skies in ARR (with a lot of diverse random "happenings")