Making the Moon Bases Brighter.

[gimp1992]

I am wondering if it is possible to make the landing sites on the Moon brighter? The Moon from orbit is a nice light grey, but when you get to the landing sites they are a dark grey. I was trying to land at the Apollo 12 site and i cold hardly make out the craters. Photos from the moon shw a very bright ligh grey surface no a dard one. So I'm just wondering if it's possible?

 

[FordPrefect]

The reason for this is that the planetary surface of the moon and the surface base meshes in Orbiter cannot display the extreme zero-phase glare reflectivity of the real lunar surface. It is a problem of the shading technique used in Orbiter. In fact, I don't know of any (realtime) software that is able to replicate this lighting effect. That's the same reason why the moon apparently looks too dark in Orbiter, something that has been discussed at the Francophone forum also recently (http://orbiter.dansteph.com/forum/read.php?f=3&i=56373&t=56373)

So I guess increasing the ambient light level is the only quick solution for this, though not everyone likes that, like me...

*EDIT*

Here's an interesting website regarding the absolute magnitude (and zero phase glare) physics:

http://www.answers.com/topic/absolute-magnitude?cat=technology

 

[gimp1992]

Thanks FordPerfect I appreciate the quick reponse. I tried increadsing the Ambiate Light Level to about 25 nd like how it made things brighter. I have not tried it in orbit around the Earth.
Cheers