"Thankfully, Starfield is actually amazingly physically accurate, and in many ways a true space simulator – it just doesn't ever reveal this to the player, but I could leverage it in my design here. So, the planet rendering is based upon Starfield's biome data and exact surface maps, including climate data, atmospheric composition data, and takes into account things like orbital phase, distance to the sun, distance to the moon(s) orbiting the planet and how they contribute moonlight, and so on. The philosophy is: Starfield's data is the 'truth', but we then modulate it by real physics."

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm intrigued.