Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I had been thinking about the beauty of the view of the galactic accretion disk in reality and in relation to Eve. The core idea is simple and one line which I'll put in a short paragraph next, but the assets created around it could be used meaningfully to touch on many parts of the game, and add an extra layer of depth and realism if you are interested in reading on.

Add a sky box asset between the "actual" star positions on the Eve sky box, and the fake star/galaxy dots which visually represents the galactic accretion disk of the galaxy that the stars in Eve are in. Here is a picture from Earth, from a vantage point and weather that allows it, of our Milky Way accretion disk from inside as an idea of the direction I'm talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_%28astronomy%29#mediaviewer/File:Laser_Towards_Milky_Ways_Centre.jpg

A few features to note of a galaxy's accretion disk are the galactic center, arms, and non-luminous rivers of dust clouds. I'll talk a little about the visual and immersive elements of a few of those intertwined with other thoughts.

Meaningful, but not overpowering visual feature:

The galactic center is bright, but that shouldn't be a problem. For Eve, and similarly from our view on Earth from our accretion disk, it would be ideal if the asset was modeled so that the dark bands of non-luminous dust clouds obscured enough, but not too much of the brightness of the simulated accretion disk so that the more local "actual" in game stars weren't obscured. You can see it from the previous picture, but here is a picture of what I'm talking about closely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_%28astronomy%29#mediaviewer/File:Guisard_-_Milky_Way.jpg

This would allow for the in game stars to still be visible within this layer depending on the direction you are looking, if it is a little obscured, it should still be visible, as you can see from that close up second picture.

It seems like in game design the main intention is to allow for those actual Eve star positions to be the main representation of the galactic accretion disk. I imagine that it will expand even more as they add numerous stars in the I believe intended expansion with added player built jump gates. I like that because it's beautiful and practical and immersive; I think it would still fit to add the band of the accretion disk of the Eve galaxy though when you consider the visualization of galaxies, and the actual number of stars in one versus the accessible ones in a game. Here are some thoughts on that:

A sense of positional perspective: and furthermore a concept of galactic north
Similar to the relative movement of objects easily visualized when you look out the side window of a moving car, the accretion disk is not only realistic, but serves as another beautiful layer of spatial reference point that should add no load to the client, as it's a static part of a solar system's sky box. When they added the different nebulae sky boxes, it was a beautiful representation of that scale on a level relative to the movement between accessible stars in the Eve galaxy. Adding an accretion disk outside of the nebulae would serve to visually tie the position of the nebulae to each other as they change position visually to the galactic center represented by the accretion disk. It could also be used as a visual marker for the functional layer some use for direction communication people call the galactic north. If we are a small section of a spiral arm in a galaxy, the galactic north could stay more or less the same represented by the brighter galactic center in the sky box.

Likely not too difficult of an asset to create:
Similar to the process they seemed to have used for making the nebulae, the accretion disk could be modeled as one three dimensional asset, then positioned on the sky box. This should be easier to achieve because it should be one asset instead of many different ones as they had to make for the nebulae. Though it would be ideal also if the accretion disk could be slightly offset each time for each constellation's sky box, it would make enough sense for the accretion disk to be the same visually throughout all the systems, as comparable to a typical galaxy's mass of stars, the stars in game are pretty close to each other. Less work this way.

Added ideas that aren't neccessary but would add a lot to EVE:

Within the map view, the 3d asset made to render the skybox could be used in a lower resolution form.

The galactic center, and where on which arm of the galaxy the stars in the game lie in could be represented.

We could see the stars as they are in the map view, but when zoomed out far enough, it could fade in a lower resolution 3d representation of the cloud of stars that make up the arms, the stars between and galactic center, with maybe the eve star systems visually representing (visually) only less than 1 percent of the density of stars when zoomed out far enough. It would add a grand sense of scale, and a visual indicator (when new star systems are added) of meaningfully colonizing and interacting with the spiral arm the Eve galaxy lies within.

In summary: A realistic visually cohesive feature that is functionally relevant, lends a large sense of scale, and is applicable to multiple layers of in game assets, with one main asset creation that shouldn't add to client or server load.

How do we know we're not living in the Matrix and this is all just a game?

Duh, if you call the operator and you are still here..

Thanks for your interest!

We don't know the design intent exactly, but we can make educated guesses!

The explored stars in the Eve Galaxy lie more or less on a plane. It's not completely flat but that isn't outside of expectation. Unless they had a reason not to explore down or up, we can guess it's not a globular cluster.

You are correct that some stars float free of galaxies, but the stars in the Eve galaxy are pretty close in AU, it's unlikely they are floating free and not part of a system of stars with interacting gravity. They are very close in a relative sense.

As you say orbiting a dim galaxy is possible. It's unlikely with the large amount of stellar activity in the system though that it's so far, or that the center of that galaxy it would orbit would be so dim that it would be negligible. The universe is pretty expansive though so a lot of variation does exist in composition. Mostly though they fall within some norms with variance, which can be inferred from known information.

I'm fine not knowing, and also agree that there is a possibility the Eve system isn't intended to be in a spiral galaxy, negating the implementation of my interest in a represented accretion disk and the subsequent functions we can derive from that in game.

My interest is mostly however that it would be both beautiful and functional, as outlined in the op, along with being expansive and meaningful. There are of course many reasons not to implement something, player/dev interest or disinterest in features due to art/practical preference, and also the ever looming fact of dev time, I covered a few reasons for my interest in the op and wouldn't mind hearing opinions about those subjects! Do you not like accretion disks? I guess to me it seems your disinterest is either in not wanting a change in the sky box, or not wanting to be in a spiral galaxy, or wanting to be in a globular cluster in game, all interesting opinions.

I'm personally a big fan of the different facets of astronomical phenomena at all the scales from galactic to within solar systems so I've been thinking this through for a few months. I like spiral galaxies. I admit to flaws in ideas though so open up the discourse!

Thanks.

" the Sleepers were masters of virtual reality, neural interfacing and cryotechnology. " ;)