Yeah I know. The scanner train left development city quite a while ago, but I figured it couldn't hurt bringing this up anyway.

The idea is, that a scanner can detect a certain range of frequencies (in our eye's case red to violet) plus pink, that is - if I am not completely wrong - a mix of frequencies that would be outside of your range. (Correct me if I am wrong. I'm wrong, aren't I?)
Scanners can be bought in different ranges. So if you are looking for squirrillium you could drill blind, or get a scanner wiches spectrum covers the frequency of it's reflection, the light that goes through or it's own radiation.
Let's say the sweet fluffy ore radiates in the 1.4PHz area. So you get a scanner with a 0.9 - 2.3 PHz range. Now you just need to keep your eyes open for a yellow, maybe green glow.
The wider the detectable range, the more you can see, but you will have a bad time looking for something specific. With a narrow range are you blind for almost everything except what you are looking for.
So. There isn't a blue nebula, but one that emmits mainly in the upper third to fourth area of your scanner.
This could even be combined with aperture mechanics and expanded to communication.

Pink is just general noise (white) + a moderate high in the lower (red) bands.


This would be cool, but only as a special function and not as default.

As permanent false-color and color-gap imagery would at best be irritating...

I kind of like this idea. It makes scavenging for materials more about finding the ore instead of getting it.

While beautiful, an immediate concern with tying such an important game feature to color is the various degrees of color blindness humans have.

Indeed.

Der_Foe wrote:The wider the detectable range, the more you can see, but you will have a bad time looking for something specific. With a narrow range are you blind for almost everything except what you are looking for.
So. There isn't a blue nebula, but one that emmits mainly in the upper third to fourth area of your scanner.

Beautiful idea indeed.

By the way: Here is a nice graph regarding to The Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum

In real life it's not so easy to determine what material something is made of based on passive scanning.
Active scanning makes it a lot easier.
Have a radar send out a high-bandwidth squarewave/sweep chirp. harmonics that are missing in the return corelate to absorbtion bands of radiation in the target material.