I like the idea Inc.

Thanks for the suggestions/feedback.

Making more real perturbations for storms/fogs is possible, something to make navigating them a little more challenging.

Also, making the fog related to the local mining is also something I've long considered and would be cool, although I would probably do this mostly for the "expanded universe" (additional grayspace that will come eventually). Perhaps make the density based on the heat of asteroids or some other easily-found data already in the database.

I definitely want to fog some of the actual stations. Stations look really cool in the fog (I fogged some Sedina sectors awhile back, to show people in production, just by manually spawning an ion storm there).

I have mixed feelings about making the fog directly related to the content of local asteroids. I thought of this too, the problem is.. we have a lot of ore/mineral types, and i'm going to be adding more. I don't really want this crazy rainbow of color options for fog types.. plus I think certain fogs might be pretty ugly (like, uhh, yellow fog). But we certainly could have some diversity of "common" fogs that might be aesthetically pleasing.. like aquean (blueish), carbonic (dark green), ferric (gray), xith (lighter green).. I'd have to more artistically experiment with the fogs. I like the general idea though. I just don't want, you know, pink lanthanic fog.

Anyway, more on-topic feedback is welcome. Thanks all.

Two things.

1. It seems like a lot of the systems already have sort of a background colour scheme, depending on the nearby stars and planets, etc. Expanding the fog colour ideas to make it so the fog colour is system-specific would be pretty cool, in my opinion. Ore-based would also be cool, just adding in another idea.

2. Sort of on but also off-topic, how about expanding Daare's suggestion and making it so in ANY sector you can only see people in your radar range (or in ships in your radar range, like in capship turrets, etc). That would then make having radar extenders REALLY damn useful, even if they only extend in stormy/foggy sectors, because you'd be able to know people are in the same sector as you before they knew you were there. This would make surprise attacks and stuff like that possible and lots of fun. Or maybe just something like this in grey space (RP-wise, maybe beacons in nation space keep track of people in sectors, after all, they are monitored/guarded, and grey space is open seas). It is a source of great wistfulness to me that there is no real way of disguising numbers meaningfully except by waiting to jump into a sector. But this is getting further away from the main point, so I'll stop here.

Yeah, I know that radar awareness limits are an important adjunct of all this stuff. That is coming as well.

Back to topic..

Did you ever get the 'clouds' of fog working? I seem to remember you working on the ability to have clouds in part of a sector.


It might be useful to have a procedurally generated cloud around the astroids themselves, instead of just filling the whole sector...

No.. that's complicated. It would be nice to do, but not realistic in the short term.

This is a much better implementation of navigational hazards than ion storms, I like it.

Love the idea :)
Could ion storms also happen in foggy sectors? That would be pretty cool too.

that would be...redundant..

Look, I love it..

Yeah, on topic, this gets my massive thumbs up. Approval is there, anything above and beyond, in response to my or other suggestions, would merit extra-awesome approval. :)

Yes.

No it wouldnt, you'd have the foggy sectors with the little sparkling lights floating around :P

edit: Ok, yeah, it'll be redundant but it would look cool, which was my original point.

Well, the "fog" effect is whatever we say it is. We could have little sparkling lights, a-la storms, if people want that.

I like the idea overall, but I would like to bring up this as something to think about adding in with this.

Also, on the idea of ion storms in fogged sectors; Maybe there is a reaction of some sort, which creates "lightning" in the sector? If ion storms become rare, then the chances of running into a lighting storm would be fairly minimal, but would make for a new hazard in what is currently relativly boring flight.

could you make the fog have about 2000m visibility and 1000m radar vis?

krilliner: the radar-sharing is an interesting idea. It has some technical caveats with our engine, to implement it, but it is feasible to do.

spidey: well, yes, we could do anything. However, part of the benefit of fog is that the reduced clipping plane allows me to fill the sector with lots more asteroids. Enough that even the people on the crazy SLI gaming setups would be ground to a halt if they had to see all the asteroids at once. Fog is part of what makes the "dense asteroid" gameplay more feasible. I would have to be careful with distances and such (even with "dynamic" regions that might have more or less fog at different times), to make sure the visibility distance didn't negatively impact performance too much. So, it would depend on the sector, most likely.

awesome!

Could you put a test sector together just for kicks/testing? Just pick a random hellhole in Odia and go crazy :D

Awesome idea. One of the things I'd like to see:

Since these fogs would be semi-permanent, instead of having local faction "weather broadcasts," only get the fogged areas marked when you run into them. Make it so there;s still unknowns in the beginning of your exploration of space (more newb immersion?), but not the total crazyness of current storm systems.

Whad'yah think?

2000 viz isn't too bad :P

I find the fog is far too thick atm in Ion storms.

there should be a hell of alot more viz but barely any radar, right now storms are thicker than our atmosphere. :P
sectors with lots of mining should look dusty, and not like pea soup.

kinda like this but a bit less bright and more saturation, and without the volume light and shadow prettiness.

http://static3.filefront.com/images/personal/l/lordspidey/78836/otqtaebihx.jpg