Request Deeper blue atmosphere for earth

[garyw]

41,000ft over Australia:

about 30,000ft in orbiter:

It's all rather subjective though, sunrise in Abu Dhabi. The airport is in the desert and there is little blue in the sky:

 

[vinny5000]

Hi, martins!

You are welcome! I got the pictures from online, and I got the other from the orbiter gallery. I think the code in orbiter should be changed a little bit to get the atmosphere color to look exactly the same as seen on the pictures except the one from the orbiter gallery. Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent

 

[martins]

Looks like I wasn't too clear before. What I meant is this:

The photographs are a convolution of the "true" colour of the object and the spectral response of the camera. Since each camera will have a slightly different response curve, taking a picture of the same bit of sky with ten different cameras will give you ten different colours. What makes you think that your pictures represent the true sky (i.e. were taken with a camera with a flat response function)? These days, cheap digital cameras even deliberately distort the spectral sensitivity to make more pleasing holiday snaps with deep blue skies and ocean to provide a nice backdrop for Auntie Marge on the beach.

Worse, even the same camera might give a different spectral responses depending on shutter speed, due to nonlinearities in the CCD sensor. Taking an underexposed picture and brightening it by postprocessing is unlikely to give the same colour response as a longer exposure picture.

Not to mention preprocessing techniques like polarisation filters in front of the camera.

So in short, without some hint about the spectral sensitivity of the camera, the pictures are not much use for deciding the true colour of the sky.

If you google "sky" and look at the first 50 or so images it produces, you'll find a wide variety of hues, and Orbiter's colour seems to sit comfortably somewhere in between.

Even if I could come up with a colour that is "true" in some sense, what individual users see would still be different due to the different spectral response of their monitor, so everybody would still have to adjust the colour individually. (and of course there is no guarantee that different graphic clients will produce the same colours either).

So I would propose that every user takes the default colours as a tentative suggestion, and calibrates Orbiter to their own hardware. It's pretty easy to do. Look out of the window on a clear day, and adjust the Orbiter Earth RGB values to what you see. You'll then have a professionally custom-calibrated Orbiter system. Congratulations!

P.S. I think the Orbiter gallery image you showed was from the 2006 edition. The sky colours have changed since.

 

[vinny5000]

Hi, Martins!

How do I adjust the orbiter earth RGB values? Thanks! I didn't know the orbiter gallery image is from the 2006 edition.

Cheers,
Vincent

 

[DaveS]

Hi, Martins!

How do I adjust the orbiter earth RGB values? Thanks! I didn't know the orbiter gallery image is from the 2006 edition.

Cheers,
Vincent

Open up Earth.cfg in NotePad and play around with the Atm color settings.

 

[vinny5000]

Hi, DaveS!

I would rather prefer to have the realistic atmosphere color addon that is very easy to install like the DanSteph's addons rather than playing around with the Atm color settings because playing around with the Atm color settings could make the atmosphere won't look good as it should and plus the earth.cfg code in notepad is for highly trained programers and developers who really know what they're doing, and since playing around with the earth.cfg code when you don't what you are doing would end up with a very strange looking atmosphere!! Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent

 

[statickid]

http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4665

How about this one?

Or, alternatively, Athena graciously posted their secret sky color recipe.

You can't mess up orbiter, just make a copy of the .cfg and edit the copy. If you hate it make another copy of the backup and try again. You can do it :thumbup:

 

[vinny5000]

Hi, staticKid!

Please read my post above. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not a programmer nor a developer? The earth.cfg code, the orbiter.cfg code, and any kind of .cfg code is not something for me to be playing around with, and the earth.cfg code, the orbiter.cfg code and any kind of .cfg code is for programmers and developers who really know what they're doing! Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent

 

[Hielor]

Editing a file in notepad is hardly the sort of thing that requires you to be a "highly trained programmer."

 

[Athena]

1. Open the Earth.cfg using notepad
2. Edit these as you desire:

AtmColor0 = 0.0 0.65 0.8
AtmHazeColor = 0.7 0.9 0.9
AtmFogParam = 5e-5 3e-5 4e3
AtmFogColor = 0.55 0.85 1.10

3. ???
4. Profit!

 

[garyw]

Editing a file in notepad is hardly the sort of thing that requires you to be a "highly trained programmer."

Indeed. Especially as that's exactly the sort of thing required to edit scenario files and customise orbiter.

 

[Urwumpe]

There could of course be the question if the lighting model of Orbiters atmosphere is accurate enough... but that is rather a task for the visualization front.

From what I personally can tell, it looks too much like a hazy day in northern Europe. There are better days with better colors around. Especially I miss that the zenit isn't going towards a purple tone.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

1. Open the Earth.cfg using notepad
2. Edit these as you desire:

AtmColor0 = 0.0 0.65 0.8
AtmHazeColor = 0.7 0.9 0.9
AtmFogParam = 5e-5 3e-5 4e3
AtmFogColor = 0.55 0.85 1.10

3. ???
4. Profit!

To know what these figure means, look up P.8-9 of the OrbiterConfig document in the Doc file. Try out the color you want in Microsoft Paint before typing the number in (note that in paint the RGB value is 0-255, while in Orbiter its 0-1, so divide the number by 255 for use).

Disclaimer: I have never looked up the OrbiterConfig before. :embarrassed:

 

[ADSWNJ]

Advice

Please read my post above. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not a programmer nor a developer? The earth.cfg code, the orbiter.cfg code, and any kind of .cfg code is not something for me to be playing around with, and the earth.cfg code, the orbiter.cfg code and any kind of .cfg code is for programmers and developers who really know what they're doing!

Vincent - look, I want to give you some direct advice, rather than skipping around this any longer. This is a friendly community, but there are some ground rules and some expectations on you if you want to get the best out of this awesome simulation and out of this forum.

The simulator itself is the result of tens of thousands of hours of Dr Martin Schweiger's time to create this environment totally free of charge for you to use. (Not only that, but the resulting community of addon developers, meshers, and artists have continued to expand this environment with their own tens of thousands of hours too.) Please resect that fact, and instead of complaining about the colors and how you think it will be different next time, just accept the comments from your fellow forum members who are showing you how to adjust things to your liking.

Regarding editing the config files ... this is a basic activity and totally necessary if you want to get at all into the environment. For example - editing a saved scenario file is one of the most basic things to do. Many of us have an orbiter downloads folder with the original zip and rar files, to recreate the environment if it gets dirty, or to set up a specific version with an exact set of addons (e.g. for the OFSS project). So, basic file manipulation, using some unzip tools and editing the .CFG's are required skills. (If not, there are other less intensive simulators we could point you too.)

If you don't want to touch things, then that's cool too, but then don't demand that it's done a different way just to suit you. It just looks selfish. A bit of humility, asking questions and thanking those who take the trouble to answer, really goes a long way.

I hope you take this as good advice and you go on to really have a great experience with Orbiter. There's so much to learn here that we all need a hand all the time, so don't feel shy to ask the dumb questions. But be respectful with your peers and elders around here, ok?

 

[statickid]

http://www.mediacollege.com/graphics/utilities/colourpicker.html

I can't see this on my tablet, but its probably an online tool that gives you the numbers

You can also use paper and pencil to write down the original numbers. Then you don't even have to make a backup. I recommend a backup though, just right click copy and paste the config, add some letters to the name, such as BKP or even the word backup. To restore simply throw the edited config, and delete the extra letters you added. Everything will be fine

Oh yeah and like Galactic Penguin SST said, divide the number by 255, creating a percent of 1

 

[vinny5000]

Hi, ADSWNJ!

Got it! That makes sense! I apologize for being a bit demanding about the deeper blue atmosphere. Please forgive me. Thanks!

Cheers,
Vincent