Visible planets!

When a platform is parked above a planet, the planet will be rendered in the background!

Includes animations for arriving and departing from planet orbits, slow planet rotation, and a mostly working parallax effect. Planet scale, positions, parallax, animation parameters and more are all configurable, even at runtime.

Again, everything is customizable! If you want a smaller or slower planet, a different amount of parallax, or a fixed planet angle, you can do this in mod settings. (Look in the map tab to find them.)

Can be added to an existing saves, and should automatically work with any new planets added by mods, assuming the mod correctly defines the space location’s starmap icon.

High resolution planets:

I don't plan on adding HD planet sprites to this mod directly, but any changes made to planet starmap icons should get picked up and used by this mod.

There are a few that do this currently, all with different styles. Check them out and see which you prefer.
- HD planets by OwnlyMe
- Sharper Planets by HealdollEmily
- HD Planets Renders by SovietSpartan
- YAPR by Omega42
- Valerian's Planets by Valerian
- Grog2's 4k Planets by Grog2
It's a good idea to disable planet rotation in this mod's config when using some of these sprites, as they can look weird if upside down.

Parallax and animations:

Yes, the default parallax would mean the planet is tiny and very close. I'm fully aware this isn't realistic. If you really want a planet that's static relative to the camera then you can still do this in mod settings, though keep in mind that the base game stars also have parallax and it can look weird having the background move but not the planet.

Dragging the camera won't update the planet's parallax position until letting go of drag. This is an issue for other kinds of mods too, and afaik there isn't a fix available in this version of Factorio. WASD works fine, but if you primarily use dragging in remote view then you may want to disable parallax.

I plan on implementing zooming parallax, but need LuaPlayer.zoom to be readable to do so. Once/if the API is updated to have this then it'll be added.

The new planet rotation and parallax probably isn't everyone's cup of tea. Please remember that you can disable most things in the mod config.

I'd love to make the planets fade in and out instead of the current scaling system, but I haven't found a good way to do this yet in the API. I'm still looking, but this is pretty low priority for now.

Other known issues / mod limitations:

(This is a long list, but most of these are minor so don't worry)

Planets will not render if a platform arrives at an orbit while paused. Simply toggle pause on the platform to update it.
-- (This normally isn't something that happens, and I don't have a good fix for it using the current API, so this will likely not get fixed.)

Those small background asteroids will go under the planet sprite. Hardly noticeable though, and normal asteroids work perfectly fine.

We fixed asteroid shadows showing on the planet by removing asteroid shadows, but if the planet is on the right side of the platform then buildings can still cast their shadows onto the planet. I don't have a good fix for this, so if it gets annoying either move the planet further left or disable parallax to lock it in place.

Parallax planet renders seem to lag behind the correct position by one frame. It's not noticeable for a slow moving camera, but you can kind of see it happen when zoomed all the way out. Increase the parallax factor to help hide this if it becomes too noticeable.

Parallax isn't perfect in multiplayer right now. Players other than the host will see the planet render "lag" behind where it should be, worse with higher ping. Also when two players look at the same planet, the planet position will only be correct for one player. (Host gets priority now.) For now, it might be best to disable parallax in multiplayer, though you can keep it on if you really want.

It's not possible to get a platform's distance to it's destination planet, so the planet arrival animation can only start when the planet arrives at orbit. I'd love to render the planet at the half way point and slowly have it grow bigger, but the current API doesn't allow this.

Planet render will sometimes show in wrong position in the pin preview camera list. Another API limitation afaik.

Supported languages:

English, Chinese (PlexPt), German (OC1024), Polish (Grofab95), French (Danura30082), Russian (Astorin), Ukrainian (Click0), Japanese (Sakuro), Italian (Momift)

If you want to help translate the mod, you can open a pull request through GitHub, or link to a translation file in this mod's discussion pages.

For other modders:

If you've made your own textures for planets and want to see them added to this mod, you can replace the planet's starmap icon to have it show in-game. Have a look at the existing mods that replace textures and basically do what they do but with your textures. It should be a relatively simple job, and won't require much knowledge of Factorio modding at all. (Feel free to ask for help if needed.)

If you want to prevent a modded planet or space location from displaying a render, you can do so in 1.2.6. Add the desired planets to the blacklist by writing vp_add_planets_to_blacklist({"vulcanus", "gleba"}) in your mod during the data or data-update stage. Just replace Vulcanus and Gleba with your own INTERNAL names.

Additionally in 1.2.11, mods can set custom planet scale and sprites for any individual planet if desired. vp_override_planet_scale("nauvis", 2.0) will make Nauvis twice as large as other planets, and vp_override_planet_sprite("fulgora", "__mod-name__/banana.png", 320) will make Fulgora render as a banana without needing to also change it's starmap icon.