Landscape appears black when observing from the sun.

[Mario Galea]

Using ver 0.10.4
Operating System: Mac OSX ver 10.6.4
When observing from the sun, whatever landscape you use appears black. It would make more sense if the landscape would be always lit while on the sun.

[Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab)]

I've been unable to replicate this issue in the latest development version (trunk revision 4972¸ after 0.11.0 was released). Is anyone else able to reproduce this?

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

I can reproduce this issue (trunk revision 4972, Mac OS X 10.5.8)

[gzotti (georg-zotti)]

It is not a true bug, just how illumination works in computer graphics. Typically, the sun illuminates the scene when it is above the horizon. Here, in reality the area below your feet is hot, bright and boiling, and above you should see prominences and the black starrry universe. However, for the graphics system, the sun is "below horizon", therefore it's dark. BTW, you also currently see slightly weird behaviour (some sky brightness) if the earth comes into view and atmosphere is on.

This would require a change in the landscapes that would allow emissive colors, and a "solar" landscape. The first is something I have in mind that would also allow city nightscapes, to go with the light-polluted sky. Of course, a true solar landscape would not be static but would have to show the "boiling porridge" of solar plasma, that's another story yet.

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

Simple solution for brightness of landscape when observing from the Sun added to trunk at revision 5887.

Diff: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~stellarium/stellarium/trunk/revision/5887