Radius confusion

[Ebi]

Hi,

I have the feeling the planets in Oolite are too small. That's seems to be a common problem since the Freelancer planets are too small as well.

I've read in the Wiki the unit of the planet radius is "metre". I've logged the radius of a planet to the console and it is 10 times the value shown in the system data screen - which is given in kilometers. Either the Wiki or the system screen is wrong! If the Wiki is correct the average radius of our planets is only about 50 kilometers.

In the solar system the light needs about 8 minutes to get from sun to earth, a distance of 24000 earth radii (6000km). With a Adder it should take 32 minutes to get there (~0.25 LS)?! If I push an Oolite sun 24000 main-planet radii (50km) away its no longer visible and it takes years to get there.

What's wrong with my calculations?

[JensAyton]

What's wrong with my calculations?

Nothing. Oolite fails at astrometrics. :-)

[ClymAngus]

I think this should be filed with "the portal gun doesn't exist" under the broad heading of suspention of disbelief.

The real world is mostly out of our control. Sometimes it's too slow and poderous, at others it's way too fast and dangerous. So, we speed it up or slow it down so it's juuuusssttt right.

Oolite = Goldilocks physics

Just like intellegent design.

[Frame]

Hi,

I have the feeling the planets in Oolite are too small. That's seems to be a common problem since the Freelancer planets are too small as well.

I've read in the Wiki the unit of the planet radius is "metre". I've logged the radius of a planet to the console and it is 10 times the value shown in the system data screen - which is given in kilometers. Either the Wiki or the system screen is wrong! If the Wiki is correct the average radius of our planets is only about 50 kilometers.

In the solar system the light needs about 8 minutes to get from sun to earth, a distance of 24000 earth radii (6000km). With a Adder it should take 32 minutes to get there (~0.25 LS)?! If I push an Oolite sun 24000 main-planet radii (50km) away its no longer visible and it takes years to get there.

What's wrong with my calculations?

I was going to mention this last night but then the internet dies.. prolly because of the music festival using up all availeble broadband for broadcasting...

Edit i first beleived the distances was in tenths, but they are not...

strike the rest... i cant figure this anymore... wonderfull...i think you are correct... a planet is only average 50 kms, as in there can only be 50 stations inside it from the surface to the center in a straight line...

[Ebi]

I've added an entry to planetinfo.plist and set the radius to 400000, i.e. 400000 * 10 / 1000 = 4000km. Took me hours to get there due to the mass lock feature:) I've made two screenshots, but the forum does not allow me to upload them, does it? When the altitude indicator starts to drop you see hardly any curvature, pretty impressive such a huge planet.

Would it be complicated to correct the units, maybe Giles wanted to avoid numeric bugs?

Does anyone else care about a more realistic scale?

[ClymAngus]

I've added an entry to planetinfo.plist and set the radius to 400000, i.e. 400000 * 10 / 1000 = 4000km. Took me hours to get there due to the mass lock feature:) I've made two screenshots, but the forum does not allow me to upload them, does it? When the altitude indicator starts to drop you see hardly any curvature, pretty impressive such a huge planet.

Would it be complicated to correct the units, maybe Giles wanted to avoid numeric bugs?

Does someone else care about a more realistic scale?

Good luck finding the station round a planet that size.

[Erai]

True, realistic sizes would probably not be the best thing to happen to Oolite. If you want to get an idea what flying around in a realistically-sized solar system is, I'd advise you to start a trial account in the Eve-Online MMORPG, try to tweak your character in such a way that you can fit a Microwarpdrive (sort of comparable to Witchdrive Fuel Injectors). And then use them to go from a planet to a sun as fast as possible. Start flying at 14:00 GMT though, since the servers should have had their daily restart then, and you might need the 23 hours until the next reset to sort of get the feeling that you are making some sort of progress

[Frame]

I've made two screenshots, but the forum does not allow me to upload them, does it?

nope but..

you can make an account at http://www.photobucket.com

and use the IMG tags to show them...

like this

Code: Select all

[img]Direct Link to picture[/img]

Cheers Frame...

[JohnnyBoy]

prolly because of the music festival using up all availeble broadband for broadcasting...

Is that Roskilde? Many years back a couple of Danish girls urged me to go to Denmark and meet up with them at Roskilde. But I never went. I wonder what happened to Janette and Signe....

[Frame]

prolly because of the music festival using up all availeble broadband for broadcasting...

Is that Roskilde? Many years back a couple of Danish girls urged me to go to Denmark and meet up with them at Roskilde. But I never went. I wonder what happened to Janette and Signe....

Nope its Skanderborg... Roskilde is the largest one, then comes Skanderborg. "the most beutifull festival"

if you want to see the program here is a link to the english version of the Homepage for it...

http://www.smukfest.dk/page_eng.asp?id1 ... d3=0&id4=0

Regarding janette and Signe... try facebook...

ohh just found out, i dont have a ticket this year so i´m not participating the festival other than the surrouding area thats cool too..

but it seems they have placed internet ability here and there with big flat screens

here is a pic of it... you need to click a bit
http://www.smukfest.dk/billedegalleri_p ... llede=3535

click ONSDAG which means wensday and click on næste dwon in the right corner until you reach a pic of a tube named "The Real YouTube"

næste contains a special danish charachter, it might not show correct on your screens...

[JohnnyBoy]

Nope its Skanderborg... Roskilde is the largest one, then comes Skanderborg. "the most beutifull festival"

if you want to see the program here is a link to the english version of the Homepage for it...

http://www.smukfest.dk/page_eng.asp?id1 ... d3=0&id4=0

Thanks for the link, Frame. I hadn't heard of the Skanderborg festival before. Now I'm going to look for the town on Google Earth.

Regarding janette and Signe... try facebook...

Yes, I already tried. There are a few girls called Janette Hansen - but not the one I met. And I never knew Signe's surname (although I read that a large proportion of the Danish population shares just 4 surnames - is that true?)

If anyone's wondering who led this thread over the hills and far away... it was me.

[ClymAngus]

OK here's a suggestion (or an idea) moons.

If you really really really want to do something realistic yet still playable maybe take your ideas from what we're seeing in the universe. Maybe making some of the stop off points like Ganymede or Callisto.

So that way you could have your accurate solar systems, you just only see a very small part of it. This would of course make sun skimming a some what more time consuming affair. Some thing at 0.3 LS your talking from earth distance 26 minutes to get there. With a torus your talking about
8.8 minutes. Weather it's still logistically possible with a real size sun I'm not sure.

So where are these pictures we've been hearing so much about eh?

[Ebi]

Hey, don't kill the bearer of bad news! I can have fun with Oolite and Goldilocks physics even without realistic dimensions (sounds like "Size does not count":)). I just wanted to mention it in the discussion forum and was wondering if there is any reason why scaling is not more accurate. Please note, Oolite has scaled down both dimensions and speed. Do larger values effect playability?

Thanks for the photobucket link, Frame. However, the screenshots are not that spectacular that I want to register there. Ebi is very notable for his paranoia:)

[polyh]

Ebi: You can upload you pictures to imageshack.us, it works without registration.

The planets may be small, but small planets are necessarily not unrealistic, although such small objects are called dwarf planets or SSSB. But the stars are all really small, smaller than white dwarfs even. Here's a size comparison between the sun, the planets and some other objects in our solar system:



The NASA has got an size comparison that matches the graphical detail of Oolite:



Sorry, couldn't resist.

Our sun is an average star (in mass, size, temperature and color), it has a diameter of almost 1.4 million kilometers. That could be the next challenge if you've got Elite rank: make an OXP with a realistic sun and fly around it once.

The board software prevents me from linking the images directly or even posting the URLs in a correct manner, sorry. Just remove the spaces.

edit: Now it works! Take this, spam prevention!

[FSOneblin]

Now it works! Take this, spam prevention!

Thats the spirit! Now, If the planets were that big, our games would start to get laggey, and we don't want that! Also, that would be just WAY to big, and all the hermits would start blowing up, so would constores, so we would have to move them back, and then it would take 30-40 minutes to get there, and that is just bad business, and at ppc delivery, we get your precious metals and gemstones FAST


Don't Panic: FSOneblin