Cheers. Can find reference to one star (the sun) and moon, but no reference or screenshots of night sky with stars. Article mentions planetary alignment, and that it was deemed OTT by developers.
Doesn't really sound like a public announcement of the same feature @
Imari
The stars are in a single celestial sphere. They're accurate, because it's about as easy to place a star map on that plane as it is to generate a random star map. Probably easier. While the stars do change position relative to each other over time, it wasn't deemed worth it to actually calculate those orbits.
The sun and moon are so obviously in different orbits to the stars that they needed to be calculated separately. That, and it's necessary in order to make the seasonal changes and lunar cycles work properly. For instance, the track of the sun moves north or south depending on the location of the track and the time of the year.
The discussion was whether the planets should be treated as part of the celestial sphere or calculated separately as the sun and moon are. Some planets can be seen with the naked eye, if you know what you're looking for, so it was a reasonable thought.
The decision was made that it wasn't going to be worth adding those extra calculations into the system for something that no one would ever be able to notice at a glance. It's relatively easy to see that the sun and moon are in the right places, but it's unlikely that anyone except an astronomer is going to be able to tell that the orbits of the planets are fudged without digging into the reference books.
It's a more generalised version of what PD has done. They've taken specific dates for specific tracks, and modelled what would be seen in the sky on those dates. The pCARS system accepts a date, and calculates based on that what would be seen in the sky. No doubt Polyphony's system does this too, but only back in the Polyphony office. In game, it's restricted to what Polyphony allow.
From the longitude/latitude of the track, the sunrise/sundown hours at the 2013 Le Mans 24 hours, Nürburgring 24 hour race, and the Goodwood Festival of Speed are represented accurately. The environmental changes that happen seamlessly according to the passage of time during gameplay is no longer just a recreation of a track, it’s the simulation of the earth itself.
Not that Polyphony's system isn't cool. It does it's job just fine. Back to the planets thing, if they're only simulating one night, I wouldn't be surprised if Polyphony is also including the planets in the celestial sphere. Otherwise you'd spot the relative motion in their nice time lapse trailers. So in reality, Polyphony and SMS have probably arrive at exactly the same solution, except that SMS's in-game implementation is more flexible in what it allows the player to do.
