So I posted about this just after the Season 7 launch, but it kind of got buried under more pressing bugs. Recently, though we've had this very nice and attentive dev coming by and going through the Foundry bugs and I wanted to make sure this one gets on the list to be fixed.

So when building a space map, you have options to customize the background. One of the things that you can add is a sun. This not only adds a a visible sun to the background, but also defines where the light in the scene comes from. Or at least it used to. Now, no matter where or how you add a sun to the background, the space map only uses default lighting. It's not the most obvious bug, but it does have a univeral impact on the visual quality of space maps in the Foundry.

Time for the visual aid:

Pre-Season 7 Lighting

So this is a shot I took from a mission I made a while back. I should explain what's going on here. It looks like the station is in close proximity to two suns. These suns are fake. The are actually two gas giants I put in. To make them glow, I placed a sun (a real one) behind the player. The light from the that sun, hits the two gas giants and triggers the engines bloom effect, thus giving the illusion to the player that they glow. If you look at the station in the foreground, you can see where the light is coming from.

Fast forward to today:

Post-Season 7 Lighting

This is the same scene right now, The settings are the same, but lighting no longer works properly and you can see, the scene looks aweful. This sun (real one) is still in the same position,m but has no effect on the scene.

This seems to affect every space map, and as a result, they look duller. This is the last of the Foundry bugs I'm waiting on to get fixed before I submit my mission for featuring, and I would very much like to get it fixed.

Do you have dynamic lighting turned on in your video settings?

ESC>options>Video

Dynamic Lighting is on, lighting quality set to very high. This doesn't affect normal content, only Foundry missions.

Settings

Hmm... I dunno. But yeah, it does seem different somehow.

This issue is known to us and is on the list o' Foundry bugs to be fixed. Additionally, it is assigned to a programmer. As usual, I cannot predict when a fix might arrive.

Is this a fix for just this, or a global fix for the lighting problems that have existed since before Mapolis got sucked over into the Forgotten Realms?

Thank you. And may I say how much I appreciate the attention you've put into the Foundry forums lately. Knowing this and other bugs are being worked on is a big relief.

Which lighting problems are you referring to?

The bug report that I mentioned is just for the issue of suns not being light sources of UGC maps when they are selected to be such. I don't recall anything regarding global lighting problems. If you can give me some more details, I'll look into it.

I'm haveing this problem as well.