It’s entirely feasible to transition transparently to flight-sim-like flying over a spherical planet. However, it would require much, much more complex procedurally-generated planets, as well as aerodynamic simulation. Also largely rewritten AI. This is doable, but a big, big effort. As in, comparable to the work put into all of Oolite so far.
Some literature worth perusing (on Gamasutra.com, free sign-up required):
Anyways the inhospitable worlds in Frontier had underground stations which essentially amounted to docking ports on the sides of planets.
Hence why the idea came to mind.
I have a neurological condition which, among other things, causes me to be overly blunt at times. I’m not sure that was one of them, though.
Incidentally, the statement that flying over a planet would be a huge amount of work should not be confused with dismissing it out of hand. It is entirely possible to move that way in stages, e.g. by refining/replacing planet generation, then improving atmospheric effects, then further refining terrain generation and working on placement of small features like cities, etc. There’s probably a need for additional instrumentation to locate cities, too. It’s just not something that’s going to happen quickly, or suddenly.
OK, here's a quick and dirty idea to create a planet that might be pilotable in the current version of Oolite:
1: create a 64 segment sphere in Wings.
2: raise some of the vertices in directions perpendicular to the plane of a particular facet, then bevel them. Lower a few too, creating trenches
3: Do this a few times, creating mountain ranges and valleys.
4: Create another sphere, sizing it so that as much of the other sphere remains visible, creating landmasses.
5: colour the 2nd sphere blue to represent water, and colour or texture the 1st sphere to look like whatever sort of land takes your fancy.
6: Then size it all to as big as you like.
7: Write up an OXP with all this in, using Planetinfo.plist to set its position. Don't use addPLanet or whatever. use addShipsAt.
You should be able to fly round this fairly closely without setting off the collision detection. Who knows, you might even be able to fly through the valleys and stuff...
I guess you would have to dock at the space station, transfer to a planet vessel, and do the reverse coming back from the planet. it would be like two separate games linked together via the space station. I like the idea a lot. Wasn't there a game called hard wars or something that did this?
The Grey Haired Commander has spoken!
OK so I'm a PC user - "you know whats scary? Out of billions of sperm I was the fastest"
