Hey Dan,
Thinking about new cool features for Universe Sandbox I got a wonderful idea. Actually there are two things my thougts were orbiting around^^
1. Locking the view to a specific point on a planet:
By that I mean a "normal" view, from the planets surface to the stars. With that view on would be able to watch the rising of stars, moons and other planets. Especially for me this would be wonderful, because I want to look after moonphases and the sunrises of my fictional starsystem.
2. An atmospheric shader:
This feature I enjoyed very well in Stellarium: the possibility to enable a simulated atmosphere. I think this feature is related to the planned one, that stars should really emmit lights. If there also would be really spectral classes, on would also be able to look after the apparently brightness of the central star on the sky.
By use of these features elementary questions could be answered, like:
Is my stars luminosity big enough to make the planets sky appear in blue?
Is/are my moon/s too far away to can be seen on the planets sky? (Here also the apparently size of moons should considered, because as you surely know we are seeing our moon much bigger than it actually is. This effect is related to the position of the moon over the horizon and a false understandment of distance to it. Surely this is quite a simple equation to add.)
How lunar eclipses do look from the planets surface?
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I am sure that there are a lot of questions wich could also be answered by this feature. However, this would be wonderful and I hope quite easy to do.
What do you all think about that? Dan, is this complicated to realize?