"Toned-down Stars" more realistic night sky mod

[Bill Nichols]

It's always bothered me that the Dangerous Waters sky has so many bright stars, especially in the transitions between night and day. In this small mod, I've adjusted the dynamic range of star brightnesses to something I like better. The brightest stars are still bright, but I've made the dimmer stars more dim. The number of stars in the sky remains the same, the difference is that there is a greater range of brightnesses. This is especially evident at dawn and dusk. Before, there were simply too many stars visible in the skyglow. Now, only the brightest stars are visible before sunrise and after sunset.

Before:



After:




You can find this mod at my site, on the "Downloads" page.

Enjoy!

(Now, if only I knew how to make that huge, ugly moon smaller )

[MaHuJa]

The latter looks like something I'd expect to see here, with all the light noise created from the cities and other lightsources around here...

At the middle of the sea, there is far less light reflected by the atmosphere to drown the stars out.

Then again, I can not remember how mid-sea deep night starlight looks.


I guess that for the dawn the first may have too bright stars, but how does the latter end up looking in the night?

[Bill Nichols]

The screen dumps above aren't as nice as the actual display. I recommend you try the mod and, if you don't like it, it's easy to go back to the original (as long as you backed-up the original file to start with)

[Pirate]

I like it
Well done Bill! Much more realistic...