Give Feedback
0 of 0
About this mod
Realistic depiction of the Milky Way with accurate size and rotation.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Welcome to my first Skyrim Mod! As a hobbyist astro-photographer, there are a few things that have bugged me about Skyrim's vanilla galaxy. This mod replaces the Skyrim galaxy with a 16k realistic image of the Gaia galaxy image created by the European Space Agency and makes a few changes to Skyrim's problematic vanilla galaxy mesh. This image is nice because bright stars do not interfere allowing skyrim's stars to shine instead.
The vanilla Skyrim galaxy is a texture which repeats 3 times around the sky. This is very apparent to anyone playing VR as you can sometimes see more than one galactic center! I have used a larger, wider texture and fixed the UV texture coordinates in the mesh so that the galaxy properly wraps a full 360 degrees around the sky. I have not seen any other mod which fixes this problem. Sadly any other galaxy mod textures will appear stretched across the sky as they are not the right size.
The galaxy mesh has been rotated to exactly match the realistic galactic plane as we see it from Earth. The brighter galactic center now appears more from the southwest to the southeast when visible. When looking northward the galaxy looks faint as you peer to the outer edges.
Another issue with the vanilla galaxy is that the sky rotates around the zenith, the point straight up, as if skyrim was at the north pole above a spinning top. Some mods like Moons and Stars - Sky Overhaul change the rotation so that the night sky rotates around the north pole as if Skyrim was on the equator. This mod makes the night sky rotate around a point above the northern horizon as if you were an observer around 38 degrees N latitude, or the central united states.
And finally, this mod changes the rotational rate of the sky to spin a little faster than once every 24 hours. This means the night sky and orientation should change as the days and months go by in game. There is a patch for Four Seasons - Faster Seasons of Skyrim which makes the seasons change every month. Vanilla skyrim actually causes the sky to rotate a little bit SLOWER than one day. The devs did the math wrong!
This was tested using SkyrimVR, and Rudy ENB for NAT 3. Let me know how it looks with Community Shaders or in other setups. I can make different brightness options or texture sizes as well.
Let this mod override any other mod making changes to the night sky.
The vanilla Skyrim galaxy is a texture which repeats 3 times around the sky. This is very apparent to anyone playing VR as you can sometimes see more than one galactic center! I have used a larger, wider texture and fixed the UV texture coordinates in the mesh so that the galaxy properly wraps a full 360 degrees around the sky. I have not seen any other mod which fixes this problem. Sadly any other galaxy mod textures will appear stretched across the sky as they are not the right size.
The galaxy mesh has been rotated to exactly match the realistic galactic plane as we see it from Earth. The brighter galactic center now appears more from the southwest to the southeast when visible. When looking northward the galaxy looks faint as you peer to the outer edges.
Another issue with the vanilla galaxy is that the sky rotates around the zenith, the point straight up, as if skyrim was at the north pole above a spinning top. Some mods like Moons and Stars - Sky Overhaul change the rotation so that the night sky rotates around the north pole as if Skyrim was on the equator. This mod makes the night sky rotate around a point above the northern horizon as if you were an observer around 38 degrees N latitude, or the central united states.
And finally, this mod changes the rotational rate of the sky to spin a little faster than once every 24 hours. This means the night sky and orientation should change as the days and months go by in game. There is a patch for Four Seasons - Faster Seasons of Skyrim which makes the seasons change every month. Vanilla skyrim actually causes the sky to rotate a little bit SLOWER than one day. The devs did the math wrong!
This was tested using SkyrimVR, and Rudy ENB for NAT 3. Let me know how it looks with Community Shaders or in other setups. I can make different brightness options or texture sizes as well.
Let this mod override any other mod making changes to the night sky.