A suggestion for astronomers

FS9 does a pretty good job of representing the night sky. Particularly with the RealStars add-on it shows a large number of stars. But there's a problem. To someone fairly experienced with the night sky, the stars appear 'flat', that is, there is little difference between the brightest and dimmest stars. A couple of years ago I did some tests. I was amazed to find that the maximum range in star pixel brightness was about 3:1. In other words, the brightest star is just 3 times brighter than the faintest star. I think I can guess why Microsoft did this. If the full dynamic range was used then fainter stars would not be easily visible, particularly if viewed in a bright room. But this is exactly how it is in the real world! I am the author of a program called AutoStar, which can place the brighter planets in the night sky according to the date. It can also place images and in particular, comet images. Here are a couple of examples: http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/comet2.jpg http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/comet3.jpg Although they are recognisable as comets they are quite crude. This is because of the 3:1 dynamic range limit. If the limit were removed then very realistic comet images could be placed in the night sky, together with galaxies and nebulae - and even the Milky Way! I'm not a pilot, but I would be confident that pilots often get spectacular views of the stars etc So my suggestion is this: remove the dynamic range limit or make it optional. Removing it would probably involve simply removing a line of code. Making it optional would require more work. But it would be another step toward As Real as it Gets - and it should be pretty easy to implement... Best regards, Chris AutoStar: http://www.kline.demon.co.uk/autostar.zip