Not a bug Sun shadowing in space stops working at an arbitrary distance

Build: 1.8 3842 (also in 1.7.9, possibly earlier)
Mode: Survival / Creative
Mode: Single Player / Multiplayer

Reproducibility: Always
Severity: Minor

Type: Lighting

Summary: A ship or structure in space that is shadowed from the sun will only appear shadowed when up close.

Description:
[Note: this is not new to 1.8 but for some reason I just noticed it. Barring performance concerns I'm hoping this can be addressed.]
If a structure in space is positioned where it should be shadowed from the light of the star, the shadowing only works at a close range. As you pull back you will see the shadowing effect cut off at a line, and eventually the structure will be fully lit. This makes what should be obscured ships and stations appear fully lit at distance.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Go into orbit in a creative session
2. Navigate to a position where the planet completely blocks out the sun.
3. Spawn a ship or base. Note that up close the structure appears dark.
4. Pull away slowly. Note that eventually the shadows disappear and the structure appears to be fully lit by the sun

This can easily be reproduced using the save I posted in this bug report: https://empyriononline.com/threads/...nconsistent-between-planets-and-space.100132/

Screenshots:

Test ships up close, showing they are in a shadowed location:


Pulling back, the far ships start to be unshadowed:


At a distance, all ships appear fully lit:

 

I would love If they were able to improve that, but unless I am mistaken this might just be a technical limitation in how the game (or most games for that matter) handles shadows. The key word here being shadow draw distance. Increasing it usually comes with a noticeable performance penality, as typically more objects will have to be considered for shadow computations. Which are amongst the more expensive things performance wise. Even though that might not be that much of a problem on the space side of Empyrion.

Doing this would probably have to be an optional setting, perhaps a new "ultra" shadow quality setting on the graphic settings menu or something like that. So doing this would really be more of a new feature than fixing a Bug, I am afraid. You can actually see that the current Shadow quality setting does already affect the distance of this shadow drawing, if you change the setting while having the ships partially lit.