Bad Skies

[Ver]

Has anyone mentioned this thus far?

Planeshift's skies look terrible! There are no clouds or movement of any kind, just an extremely grainy and unattractive mass of homogeneous blueness with no clouds or sun.

Old 3d games with much lower quality graphics than PS had much better looking skies. Examples are Everquest Classic and the old Lithtech games (like Shojo). Is it some kind of issue with the Crystal Space engine that makes PS have the terrible-looking skies? It seems like the terrible-looking sky is an artifact from the earliest Atomic Blue version releases of PS that no developer ever bothered to go back in and improve.

[Siteri Kidachi]

...That's how it's supposed to look. It's a crystal.

[saladasalad]

How would you be able to see the sun in Yliakum? I always thought that that "unattractive mass of homogeneous blueness" was the giant crystal that provides light in Yliakum.

EDIT: It seems the OP removed their reference to a 'sun', making my first comment sound rather strange.

[Erisnas]

I do wonder about this though.  First, most residents of this world refer to it as the Azure Sun, so just calling it a sun shouldn't matter too much.  Also, due to the gases in the atmosphere you shouldn't see just the rock above you.  In my opinion you should be able to see the crystal, but since we are so close to the top of yliakum that the crystal would be rather low in the sky, also if you set the crystal in the sky you would be saying where the crystal is, something that could have bad results.

[Ver]

I can not believe I actually forgot the fact that Yliakum is all underground.

You're telling me that the sky = the Crystal? That's quite a crystal.

[Erisnas]

Took a look at the sky, appears to by one center bright spot and the rest is the rock surrounding the crystal.  It seems to be given the glow by the crystal.  I expect that of course the rock would look wierd considering that it hangs next to a giant radioactive crystal.

[zanzibar]

Took a look at the sky, appears to by one center bright spot and the rest is the rock surrounding the crystal.

Bingo.

There are alternative skins you can mod your client with that make the rock part of the roof brown instead of blue.  They have the advantage of hiding certain graphic glitches regarding edges of the map and structures.

[Myriel]

but Yliakum has got weather?! I mean, it can rain or even snow, so there have to be some clouds in the sky. Perhaps not always but at least sometimes. And I believe the ceiling is high enough for a lot of clouds.

[orino]

ever think instead of the crystal being super big in the sky.. that maybe we are really tiny and just part of a bigger world that is so massive to us that we will never be able to perceive it... like ants .. they are so small our world doesn't relate to them.. they live in their own universe, their own reality.. so maybe the crystal is just part of a broken glass coke bottle that shines light down to our tiny insignificant world... just saying .. you never know where the devs will go with the story line.. not likely but it is a possibility...

[Roderyck Slywolfe]

So...

If the sky is a stationary crystal, how does it become night.

Is there any physics posted anywhere?

[Dihenis]

The Crystal draws its light from the surface and thus Yliakum is subjected to times of "day" and "night". However, even at night, it is not completely dark[...]

[Roderyck Slywolfe]

Ah, thank you, I've not seen that before.