Why does space look so... flat?

[Sciophyte]

I just fired up X4 for the first time and with all the graphics settings at max ships and stations and planets—in a word, all the objects surrounding my ship—look splendid. And yet...

...the backdrop of stars just doesn't look—starry to me. It's like I'm flying around in a big room the walls of which have been covered with star wallpaper. Now, I know stars don't twinkle in space, and they're too distant to shift relative to my position, but even the starry backdrop in, say, Stellaris conveyed more of an illusion of, well, the vastness of space. Is it just me, or does X4 simply not deliver that suspension of disbelief?

[flywlyx]

I think it's entirely personal. For me, Stellaris feels more like a map game.
VR games might provide more of a "space" feel, at least in terms of visualization.

[Sciophyte]

Well, I ran a few searches and apparently I'm not the only one who feels that the 'skyboxes' look a bit low quality (see here, for example)... currently I'm looking for some mods that might replace them.

[Captain Canard]

Try a mod called "Stars" - it really helps some of the skyboxes! I think I had to get this from NexusMods. It's been awhile since I installed it so I don't remember. Also, be careful to pick the right one, as there's a huge version that goes even further and makes solar systems with orbiting planets, etc. I've never tried this because I don't dare, LOL. You probably just want the one that provides more realistic skyboxes.

[Sciophyte]

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Try a mod called "Stars" - it really helps some of the skyboxes! I think I had to get this from NexusMods. It's been awhile since I installed it so I don't remember. Also, be careful to pick the right one, as there's a huge version that goes even further and makes solar systems with orbiting planets, etc. I've never tried this because I don't dare, LOL. You probably just want the one that provides more realistic skyboxes.

Ha! I'm downloading it right now! Thanks for the advice!

[0x41414141]

I agree that the skybox and the planets are very flat in their appearance; the planets especially looks very low quality. they give the impression of the old '3d trick' from games where they used a 2D surface that rotates to follow the player's camera to give the impression of 3D objects

[Venerable_Sin]

Not sure if it will help you but I turned off the "auto-roll" feature in settings menu and that really helped with my immersion.

[GetUrAssToMars]

Originally posted by Captain Canard:

Try a mod called "Stars" - it really helps some of the skyboxes! I think I had to get this from NexusMods. It's been awhile since I installed it so I don't remember. Also, be careful to pick the right one, as there's a huge version that goes even further and makes solar systems with orbiting planets, etc. I've never tried this because I don't dare, LOL. You probably just want the one that provides more realistic skyboxes.

Seconded,

Just grabbed this the other day and it definitely added some missing "depth" to the sector skyboxes.

[Weitsicht]

its not like all the planets are actual 3d objects you could fly around or crash into .... and some stars are even the suns of other systems from a distant view ... just saying :)

[Sciophyte]

Originally posted by Weitsicht:

its not like all the planets are actual 3d objects you could fly around or crash into .... and some stars are even the suns of other systems from a distant view ... just saying :)

Yeah, of course, but... I dunno, somehow the visuals just feel off for me. Even the Stars mod doesn't make it that much better.

[Project Danny]

I also made a post about this.

If you press Y to use them goggles to Zoom in on the stars they become super pixels and the spac and stars look worse than an old Nintendo 64 game.

I think the space backgrounds are 800x600 resolution lmao

I would use the stars mod but I don't want my game to be modified which sucks :(

[0x41414141]

Originally posted by Project Danny:

I also made a post about this.

If you press Y to use them goggles to Zoom in on the stars they become super pixels and the spac and stars look worse than an old Nintendo 64 game.

I think the space backgrounds are 800x600 resolution lmao

I would use the stars mod but I don't want my game to be modified which sucks :(

TIL about the goggles! Nice!

[Captain Canard]

Originally posted by Weitsicht:

its not like all the planets are actual 3d objects you could fly around or crash into .... and some stars are even the suns of other systems from a distant view ... just saying :)

I dunno, I think at least some planets are 3D objects, because they do rotate (slowly). I suppose that effect could be simulated using a giant 2D "sprite", but I think the issue is more with the low texture resolution.

Originally posted by Sciophyte:

Yeah, of course, but... I dunno, somehow the visuals just feel off for me. Even the Stars mod doesn't make it that much better.

Are you playing on a very high-res monitor? I play at 1080p, so Stars works well for me, but if you're playing at 4K, then it'll be hard for a standard skybox bitmap to compete with actual rendered stars like we get in Space Engine or Elite Dangerous.

That said, people do make high res skyboxes for games. Space Engineers has some that are 4K or more. I don't know if X4 has anything like this or not. You would need a video card with lots of RAM to use such big textures, however, but if you're playing on a 4K monitor, odds are you've got the RAM.

Question - have you spent any time in Sol? I ask because Sol has the most "realistic" skybox in the game IMO, as it's based on what we see in the night sky, not these fantasy skies that so many X4 sectors are based on.

Someday I want to make my own skyboxes, using Space Engine to generate realistic stars for different parts of the galaxy where lore infers these different sectors are. That's a project well outside my current skill in modding, but I think, with enough time and study, I could do it.

[Sciophyte]

Yup, playing at 3440x1440. Most of the game looks good, but space just doesn't look... spacious, compared to the titles you mention for example.

[Daemonjax]

Maybe it's the FOV? The ultra-wide aspect ratio could be messing with it.
Maybe try increasing the FOV until you get a bit a of a fishbowl effect?

It's hard to imagine egosoft doing something wildly different with how skyboxes usually work (textures covering 6 faces of a cube).

EVE Online has nice skyboxes, and they're just normal skybox textures that one would expect -- not hemispherical skydomes or anything fancy like that. I ripped the skybox textures out of the client's resource files a while back and looked at them.

Some of the skyboxes in X4 don't look great, but that's just because some are poorly drawn.

[Captain Canard]

I usually play in Commonwealth space, is that what it's called? In this space I think the Stars mod really helps with certain sectors. But I just started a new save where I'm a Terran spending most my time in Sol, and as I played I thought, "Wow, the OP has a point, this looks terrible!" More terrible than I remember... So I played a hunch and disabled Stars, and as I expected, Sol now looks BETTER without the mod. I'm kinda disappointed in that. It's evident that the skybox is low resolution (zoom really makes this clear), but at least it feels like "my" sky. I don't know why the author of Stars nerfed the existing skybox.. Maybe it's just his artistic preference. So for now I'll play with the mod offf as a Terran, and on as an Argon.

Like I said, I would love to generate my own skyboxes using Space Engine. Someday I'll reverse-engineer the Stars mod, see how he did it, and then see if there's a way to create skyboxes in SE.

Anyway OP, what are your thoughts of the vanilla Sol stars? FYI, Space Engine in HDR mode exaggerates colors and sharpness, much like NASA photos. So I personally use what I see looking up at the night sky (I live in the mountains away from the city with amazing views of the stars) as my gold standard for what I want space to look at in my games.