Planetary Rotation

[Diziet Sma]

Not exactly a bug, but something I hadn't realised until now. I'd always assumed the main planets in Oolite rotated about a fixed axis. I took trunk5503 out for a spin today, and happened to engage the TAF to get a dawdling Moray off the scanner, and noticed the planet was rolling about like a drunken pinball.. in the space of about a minute at TAF4 I noticed at least 5 or 6 distinct shifts of rotational axis.

I was wondering if there was any particular reason for this rather bizarre behaviour, and if it is possible (or even desirable) to fix it?

[cim]

The planet's atmosphere (cloud layer) does rotate all over the place, but as far as I can tell the planet below is fine. Until recently you might not have noticed, because the cloud layer was broken for textured planets. I'll fix that, and also tie the default rotation speed a little more closely to the planet's rotation speed.

What do people think about the planetary rotation speeds, in general, by the way? The median planetary day is about 40 minutes, which seems on the short side, if the planet can make a full revolution in the time it takes to get down a busy spacelane.

[Cody]

Slower planetary rotation would be preferable for me.

[Diziet Sma]

So that's what it was.. it sure did look weird.. At least sorta matching planetary rotation would make more sense.. and I agree with EV about the speed.

[Smivs]

Yeah, slower sounds good, but we'll need to be careful in case it becomes un-noticeable. At least at the moment it is clear the planets rotate, but even then you have to watch it for a few seconds to really see the rotation.

[cim]

Yeah, slower sounds good, but we'll need to be careful in case it becomes un-noticeable. At least at the moment it is clear the planets rotate, but even then you have to watch it for a few seconds to really see the rotation.

For me it's not too bad in space, but when you have to fly flat-out in a Cobra III to keep up with the landscape at low altitude, it gets a bit strange.

[Commander McLane]

So perhaps about halve the rotation speed? Something in the range of between 60 and 80 minutes.

It would clearly not be a good idea to make it "realistic" with a 24-hour rotation period.

[cim]

It would clearly not be a good idea to make it "realistic" with a 24-hour rotation period.

Indeed. Though, because of the way planetary rotation is calculated, some of them already have that. Probably the lower end needs speeding up too.

I'll set it to "about 1-2 hours" for the rotation period, which at the high end is just enough to make it out visually while you watch, and at the low end still gives a noticeable turn if you look away and do something else for a few minutes.

And then I'll document all the secret planetinfo.plist parameters that I've found while working on this

[Smivs]

And then I'll document all the secret planetinfo.plist parameters that I've found while working on this

<Smivs looks up, interested>

[cim]

rotational_velocity (and the following two)

So, if you disagree with the choice of rotation speed, just set rotation_speed_factor to whatever you like.

[Wildeblood]

And then I'll document all the secret planetinfo.plist parameters that I've found while working on this

Yeah, that would be good. There's a few of them.

rotational_velocity (and the following two)

Um, that's not one of the secret ones. If you scroll down the page to "Custom Planet settings" you'll see it documented there.

[cim]

And then I'll document all the secret planetinfo.plist parameters that I've found while working on this

Yeah, that would be good. There's a few of them.

And a few more that look like they're planetinfo settings but aren't - there are a bunch of settings for the atmosphere generator, but none of them can be set from planetinfo because of the way the atmosphere is generated.

rotational_velocity (and the following two)

Um, that's not one of the secret ones. If you scroll down the page to "Custom Planet settings" you'll see it documented there.[/quote]As applied to the main planet, though, the documentation was not in the right place. But yes, the other two are more secretive.