Oolite Bulletins

kwyn wrote:

..lasers..

It would be nice if any-colour-you-like were possible for lasers. If you defined one you didn't like (or couldn't see) you could just change it to one you did like (or could see). I don't see why the darker colours should be "adjusted" by the divinity in the machine, who is unlikey to know what my display settings are when I'm playing Oolite: I have several different settings stored. They are all extreme.

I suppose 'technically', if they are lasers as in 'lasers', they should only be red, green or blue.

Purple lasers always bother me a bit, and as for white lasers... well, you canna change the laws o' physics... Oh, wait a minute...

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

I suppose 'technically', if they are lasers as in 'lasers', they should only be red, green or blue.

Nuffin’ wrong with yellow. Magenta’s right out, though. Maybe we should take a wavelength instead of a colour specifier. :-)

drew wrote:

I suppose 'technically', if they are lasers as in 'lasers', they should only be red, green or blue.

Purple lasers always bother me a bit, and as for white lasers... well, you canna change the laws o' physics... Oh, wait a minute...

Don't worry too much about purple lasers - I have one in the lab at work! With a dye laser, you can get almost any wavelength (see http://www.exciton.com/wavelength_chart.html).

The most powerful lasers - those most likely to be 'weaponised' are infrared (invisible) anyway, so let's just bend those laws!

Eichlan wrote:

Don't worry too much about purple lasers - I have one in the lab at work! With a dye laser, you can get almost any wavelength (see http://www.exciton.com/wavelength_chart.html).

One technical definition of “purple” is “any hue that cannot be achieved with monochromatic light” (i.e., a single wavelength). This corresponds to the straight line on the CIE colour space diagram. This excludes some low-frequency monochromatic colours that normal people would consider purple, though.

Of course, you can achieve the non-spectral colours using two lasers.

My objection is on purely aesthetic grounds, purple lasers are just too 'Barberella'.

Cheers,

Drew.

While all this is very interesting, and recognising that invisible lasers probably have little future is a visual game format pending release of the brainstem plug-in version (via quantum loop head-bud™ technology), my suggestion stems from the display settings I use which distort colours most severely, ranging from mildly psychedelic to the full alkaloid poisoning experience (which enhances nebulæ beyond all recognition).

Oh, almost forgot ..and alters the colours of laser beams

Using multiple emitters in a laser is just plain sensible in this tech level. Different shield configurations will be more/less vulnerable to certain frequencies. If we go a little start-wreck as well, if those vulnerable frequencies shift, then you may well want to be flooding the target with a range of energies anyway, to ensure some of them leak through. And since some of those energies will be visible, then you can end up with whichever colour you want. Plus, of course, don't forget difraction effect from that space dust too...

allikat wrote:

Using multiple emitters in a laser is just plain sensible in this tech level. Different shield configurations will be more/less vulnerable to certain frequencies. If we go a little start-wreck as well, if those vulnerable frequencies shift, then you may well want to be flooding the target with a range of energies anyway, to ensure some of them leak through. And since some of those energies will be visible, then you can end up with whichever colour you want. Plus, of course, don't forget difraction effect from that space dust too...

I used to work with the guys who used to deal with anti-dazzle techniques for military sensors - they could filter out all the known "dangerous" "common" frequencies found in battlefield lasers, of course this would render the sensor completely useless as no useable light would actually end up on the sensor... High speed shutters, scarificial mirrors and some clever stuff I can't talk about were used to get round this issue...

Single color lasers are okayish.

as for realism, it's science fiction.

What i'd like to see is the ability to make our own lasers, with the ability to texture them and remodel them, so if we want we can make a teribbly gaudy and garrish purple laser with a smaller spiralling orbiting beam, something like out of a crappy anime

For semi-transparent cockpits, I'd use a cecquered pattern with the non-transparent bits set to #06060d ( expressed as a hexadecimal rgb ). But it's probably just a question of taste...

ADCK wrote:

Single color lasers are okayish.

as for realism, it's science fiction.

What i'd like to see is the ability to make our own lasers, with the ability to texture them and remodel them, so if we want we can make a teribbly gaudy and garrish purple laser with a smaller spiralling orbiting beam, something like out of a crappy anime

Laser's don't show up in space not enough matter to scatter the energy back to the observer (if the laser was powerful enough, you might see some of the effects of the laser vaporising what few particles did drift into its path but it would still be mostly invisible.

Just as well Oolite is a game then, and not a simulation

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Laser's don't show up in space not enough matter to scatter the energy back to the observer (if the laser was powerful enough, you might see some of the effects of the laser vaporising what few particles did drift into its path but it would still be mostly invisible.

Just as well Oolite is a game then, and not a simulation

Sounds like someone is running low on his Handwavium blood concentration. Prepare the syringe!