Actually the sectors themselves are large spheres with wallpaper on them. The dynamic is esier for the engine to generate rubber bands of "posters" that turn into the randomly generated debris of choice when you fly closer and infact in some of the background of the vanilla systems you can see that.. (had you ever ran freelancer in low settings) that these rubber band posters of debris can be turned off leaving only the background to hint theres rocks or debris in one direction.
in tau 29 is probably the best case.. from baffin go there.. and turn everything down.. then turn it to high. youll see the spraypainted asteroids on the background.
Its eye candy.. a deliberate system to implement the greatist impact per actual work/time investment that youd find in a title released in around 2002.
As for realistic.. i hope not cause cruise engines would have to be bumped up from 350-400 to 250 000 000 just to be playable.
While i cant speak for the skill set for the current devteam when I was making systems with txt and XML tools all you really have is what was done before.
Im sure theres been better tools release since then if other mods took a stab at it. but those are other mods.. Here.. well..disco is disco. it keeps to the original freelancer pretty well.
but if you REHEHEALLY LIKE REALISTIC... try "orbiter"
