be brutal. it's the only way the game will be the best it can be. if you have any tech tips to offer please do. this was done in photoshop cs1 the tut i learned from was greg martin's

That, sir, is a marvel. I'll work through the tutorial and see what I can produce :) perhaps then I can critisize.

is it just me or are the images not showing up guys?

It looks beautiful, better than anything I can create :D.

But, astronomically, its a little perplexing. Those pinkish & bluish clouds - they seem to be stretched out bands. In my opinion, it would look a little more realisitc if you made them circular or spiral. I.e., make them look more like galaxies or clouds.

Nevertheless, awesome pics.

Yeah looks great! Personally I would go a little lighter on the stars though. It starts to look very busy and the more stars, the less natural of a feel you get from it. But really overall it looks great.

Beautiful...

I agree on less stars. Although we do have thousands of stars in our galaxy, let alone planets to cycle those stars, you space doesn't have that 'empty void' feel we are falsly accustomed to.

Those are some great pics there - and of course, reiterating on the above people's comments, it needs less stars. I'm not sure about D. Shankar's remark about the nebula clouds -- I think they're fine, but he may know more about astronomy than I do.

I like the look of it a lot. The number of stars looks fine to me if you are using that for the skybox for a space sim. If it's for use as a night sky from a planet's surface (with an atmosphere), I'd decrease the number.

The shape of the nebula seems fine to me as well. Real nebulae come in all shapes and sizes.

For reference, here is a picture taken by NASA of a real nebula, the Crescent Nebula: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0304/crescent_kpno_big.jpg

As you can see, there are plenty of stars and the nebula is oddly shaped. If anything, I might add some more red/orange colors and more light, background cloudiness. Anyways, nice work!

Just out of curiosity, won't it look a little strange when mapped to the inside of a cube? I mean, the stars in the corners will appear a bit flatter/stretched because of the viewing angle, won't they?

EDIT - forgot to mention - they do look superb!

Wow cool,

With the first picture i initialy didn't realize it wasnt real. What gave it away were the stars, they seem a bit hard, they could use some softening maybe.
The second one i feel may be a bit to much (depending on what you are going to use it for).

Great work though.

Greetings