Hi Eagle Sun,

about the lights: I also wonder that they are visible. But it is 
explainable. Let me start with some characteristics of my scene:
- The surface of earth consists of two textures and a bump map.
- The lights are actually the second texture of the surface.
- The clouds are another sphere just slightly bigger than the earth sphere.
- The clouds sphere consists of one semi-transparent PNG image map (the 
whiter the more untransparent) and a bump map.
- There is a tiny distance between lights (earth surface) and clouds.

I think, many lights are still visible because the clouds (like in real 
nature) are a bit transparent at their edges and of course between the 
clouds. So I could say, the lights are shining through the clouds in many 
locations. I am just sad that the cloud layer does not blur the lights 
shining through, as real clouds would do. Real clouds would diffuse the 
light shining through and blur it, but also be lightened a bit by the lights 
beyond them.

Questions:

- Who knows any way to limit the lights to only the nightside?
- I need a sphere which functions like fog: a color shift from transparent 
at the outest outside to blue in the center, for an atmosphere.

Greetings,

Sven



"EagleSun" <nomail@nomail> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:web.447a83d9a626bc349756002c0@news.povray.org...
> "Sven Littkowski" <sve### [at] jamaica-focuscom> wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> Please see here my earth render image. The planet consists of four items:
>> - planet surface sphere (bump map and texture)
>> - planet lights sphere (semi transparent PNG image at ambient 1.0)
>
> NICE city lights!  However, here's a concern I noticed... it seems that 
> you
> have a very cloudy daytime and a very clear nighttime.  That will
> definitely be unrealistic.
>
> And yes.... the daytime is so extremely bright, that you won't see 
> anything
> on the night side.... but if you concentrate on the night side, then there
> will be lights.... which are as bright as the stars.  But on cloudy earth,
> only portions will be seen.
>
>

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