Astronomy in games: does a realistic sky make a difference?

[Cubilone]

I really liked how the night sky in Wind Waker had some real constellations in it. Sailing around at night was pretty neat already, between the music and the various things you could see or hear near different islands, but seeing Orion over the horizon just made it feel right.

I did not know that. Now I want to replay Wind Waker just for seeing the sky!

The interesting thing there is that I'm not actually sure if the sky is realistic; it's stylized like the rest of the game, but the stars and stuff might still be in the right places. To me, I guess, overall the attention to detail means a lot more to me than realism, though of course for some games they're almost the same thing.

I would say this still counts as a sky that has been paid attention to, and that's what counts!

So isn't anyone annoyed that, at least in Fallout 3, the moon rose in the west and set in the east?

 

[NXMT]

Subtle differences is a plus but not a necessity. Unless the sky is part of the actual gameplay, there's not much of a reason why it needs to be expanded upon other than to wow gamers with it's attention to detail.

 

[Zoron]

I really liked how the night sky in Wind Waker had some real constellations in it. Sailing around at night was pretty neat already, between the music and the various things you could see or hear near different islands, but seeing Orion over the horizon just made it feel right.

I did not know that. Now I want to replay Wind Waker just for seeing the sky!

The interesting thing there is that I'm not actually sure if the sky is realistic; it's stylized like the rest of the game, but the stars and stuff might still be in the right places. To me, I guess, overall the attention to detail means a lot more to me than realism, though of course for some games they're almost the same thing.

I would say this still counts as a sky that has been paid attention to, and that's what counts!

So isn't anyone annoyed that, at least in Fallout 3, the moon rose in the west and set in the east?

I loved the sky in Wind Waker, it had the different phases of the moon and everything

 

[Fraught]

No, no it doesn't.

I'm pretty sure the 'sky' is an afterthought in most games, since 99.9% of the time you won't be looking at it. I've never really paid attention, or lost interest so much that I've just drifted off and decided to look up.

Probably word-to-word, 99.9% similar to what I would've said.
I've never looked at the sky, and never will. It's not important, and even if I do look for a brief second, it looks nice enough.