Skybox reflections?

[FluffyFreak]

When I get it working it will be a compromise system, low-res per-face of the cubemap (512x512 max) and only major objects so things like Star, nearest planet, orbital spacestation if inside or within range, ground station with some of the buildings maybe.

That'll be needed to get performance since you have to render the scene 6 times to make the cubemap.
There's other options that I'll try out, maybe make them performance based features. For example only updating one face of the cubemap each frame so you spread the cost over 6 frames, that worked ok for Driver '76 on PSP so it should work for us :D

Opaque cockpits make things easier, there's less detail to model inside the cockit, there's no double-transparency or z-ordering issues when drawing the glass etc.
If we had a better material and rendering system then we could make them look more like the Gold visors on Astronaut helmets but we're a little stuck with what we've got right now.

[DraQ]

When I get it working it will be a compromise system, low-res per-face of the cubemap (512x512 max) and only major objects so things like Star, nearest planet, orbital spacestation if inside or within range, ground station with some of the buildings maybe.

I don't really think trying to be smart about it won't backfire horribly - for example you may be nearest to a moon of a gas giant with said giant still dominating the sky.

Maybe disabling non-statics and simply refreshing the cube map only once in a while would be sufficient? The sky is unlikely to change much very fast anyway.
Refreshing one face at a time is a nice idea to spread the load out, but I fear it will produce visible seams even at low res and with slow changes.
Or using simplified approach with objects getting simple specular glares based on their size in the sky?

Opaque cockpits make things easier, there's less detail to model inside the cockit, there's no double-transparency or z-ordering issues when drawing the glass etc.
If we had a better material and rendering system then we could make them look more like the Gold visors on Astronaut helmets but we're a little stuck with what we've got right now.

I don't think we are going to escape transparency anyway, not with all the ideas of making biospheres and whatnot. I don't think we should try to either - it's been there for decades.
Plus we could make it go an extra length for us - Pioneer ships are fairly detailed, so we could use the ship model itself for much of the cockpit graphics with only details and dynamic stuff like instruments and HUD making up the "actual cockpit".

And if we are making stuff opaque, then maybe at least make canopies of small ships black? It had been used used to make decent looking ships for years when graphics processing power was scarce and opaque bright yellow is among worst alternatives imaginable (sure, it could have been neon pink, no, I *am* happy it isn't).