Hello fellow citizens. I pledged during IAE 2951 and generally speaking I am blown away by the size, scope and ambition of the project that Star Citizen is. I love how raw and un-gamy the mechanics work and hope that development will constantly pick up speed as the tools for creating all these Star Systems and generating their assets slowly come into existance. Motivation I am an amateur astro-photographer at heart and I have some constructive criticism in order for the 'verse to look more believable. I know that CIG does not strive for perfect realism but for me a more realistic depiction of space is a big part of believability. So please bear with me as I show some examples that should mainly affect the backdrop / sky box of the engine. None of this should take client computing power as it can all be precomputed and is meant as a guide to creating assets. I have some basic assumptions about how the player sees the 'verse and what the 'verse is (but please correct me as I haven't read through the entirety of the lore): The player should see the way a human sees, that is he should only be able the see the visible spectrum which ranges from the near infrared to the beginning of the ultraviolet band. All Star Systems are part of a Galaxy (no rogue star systems) and are part of the same galaxy(this implies that the galactic plane should be visible from every System - but with a differnt perspective) The galaxy of the verse should not be a dying, eliptical galaxy as the radiation would render life as we know it impossible and would make a sky box obsolete as everything would be blindingly bright and homegenous There are many types of Deep Sky Objects that have distinct features, sizes and colors. Star colors and shapes Star colors range between blue - teal and yellow to red as can be seen in the main sequence of the milky way (Attachment-01 Author: ESO). Stars themselves should look like a single point in space due to their angular size when looking at them through "normal" amateur telescopes - yet 2 effects increase their size and 1 effect (that is not considererd an optical defect - neither chromatic or comatic aberration or astigmatism) can change their shape. The size can be bloated by atmospheric seeing effects which act like a changing lens and are the reason for the "twinkling" of stars The diffraction limit inherit to every optic which is mainly limited by the primary aperture of the optical tube assembly. This Limit adds diffraction rings concentric to the star itself which make the brightness distribution of a star look like gaussian normal distributioin on 2 axis. The diffraction limit is dependent on the wavelentgh of the signal Obstructed light paths cause by i.e. the spider veins of a newtonian reflector add star spikes as the contrast on the axis of the obstruction is almost terminated. Star Clusters Star clusters are large groups of stars. Two main types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of hundreds to millions of old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters are more loosely clustered groups of stars. The colors of the stars follow those of the main sequence. Angular size depends on the amount of stars and on the distance to the viewer mainly. While the Plejades (Attachment-04) an open cluster are visible with the naked Eye others need high magnification to resemble more than a slightly fuzzier star in the night sky. Emission Nebulas Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur, the most abundand elements in space, can be excited/ionized by cosmic radiation and emit photons at specific wavelengths. The angular size of these nebulas can be many full moons in diameter in the night sky as they are also part of our own galaxy and local group. The hydrogen lines that lie within the visible spectrum are h-alpha and h-beta a deep red that is in the near infrared but still visible to the human eye and a blue on the verge to teal Oxygen has a visible emission line that resembles a stron teal Sulphur is an even deeper red more to the IR end of the spectrum than h-alpha A true color representation of an emission nebula (the Eastern Veil Nebula) can be seen in Attachment-02 (Author: Benjamin Olry) -BEWARE- Emission Nebulas can be imaged very well with line filters and it is a popular method, also used by scientists, to collect the dominat lines of these 3 Elements and represent the data in a false color palette that has a better color contrast between the adjacent lines of Sulphur and Hydrogen. One of the most common palettes is the hubble palette. This is not a a true color representation. See Attachment-03 of the Eagle Nebual - M16 (Author : Pierre Markuse and Hubble Space Telescope) Reflection Nebulas As the name suggests reflection nebulas reflect the light of other Objects, mainly of bright stars. They are considered broadband targets and can resemble all shades that can be seen in Attachment-01 of the main sequence. See Attachment-04 The Plejades - M45 (Author: Benjamin Olry). Their angular size can range from the fraction of a full moon to a few full moons in diameter. Dark Nebulas Dark nebulas are interstellar mass that block the light of other Deep Sky Objects. As the rims of these objects are in-dense enough to let through some light, they appear yellow-brownish on the borders. See the dark bands in Attachment-05 (Author : Benjamin Olry) that depicts the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. Galaxies and Galaxy clusters Galxies have many shapes and their appearance can be vastly different depending on the angle you look at them (Edge on vs. full frontal nu...galaxy). Their size can be 5-6 full moons across like the Andromeda Galaxy - M31 and the Triangulum Galaxy - M33 (Attachment-08 & Attachment-07 Author : Benjamin Olry) or hide among many other equals like can be seen in the Markarian Chain (Attachment-06 Author : Benjamin Olry). Galaxies can be classified by the way their active galactic nucleus is shaped or by the amount and opaquness of their halo (See Attachment-12). Galaxies collide as they are gravitationally bound to each other. The tidal forces tear the once regularly shaped object apart quiet spectecularly See Attachment-09 of M51 - the Whirlpool Galaxy. Galaxies are referred to as broadband targets as they emit light in the wavelengths of their stars and they often have all the above mentioned nebulas types inside their galactic disc. Comets Comets can also be seen with the naked eye - at least the big ones. Their size as seen from a planet range from 1-2 full moons to a fuzzy star. I have to come clear, they sometimes have a green halo as they are venting of hot gases mainly water on their trip around the sun. Their jet always faces away from the sun despite their inertia bein on an eliptical orbit as it is the solar winds that determines the direction. See Attachment-11 for an image of neowise that paid us a visit in 2019. EDIT: Since the attachment filenames are not shown, I have uploaded all attachments to a google drive folder, so that the text makes more sense https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JlYzOydrLHVRBWU_5sNewvi6B5z9kqDN?usp=sharing