Oolite Bulletins

Hi i'm new to the board and have been an Elite um sorry Oolite freak for as long as I can remember. I love playing the game and I think it's the best freeware ever done but something strikes me as being a bit odd.

Shouldn't the star to planet distance be a lot further then what it is?
I'm not sure if it's the distance or what but I get this feeling that there is also a perspective issue to be resolved. The objects seem very close but they aren't. It's like running backwards on a moving sidewalk or swimming against the current you do a lot of effort to reach something that's close (it's the best way that I can explain it).

Another thing that would be cool to see implemented (I haven't run across it yet so if it's there i apologize) is to have star systems with multiple planets and station like this one Elite remake project used to have that worked really well. Adds variety to an otherwise repetitive A to B affair.


Other then that this thing is a gem and I look forward to future updates.

EAGLE 5 wrote:

Shouldn't the star to planet distance be a lot further then what it is?

To make it realistic, well, yes.

But would you want to travel that distance if you want a sun-skim done?

EAGLE 5 wrote:

perspective...

Well, your in far outer space, a wide open place where things just get that far apart, and to what i see, there's nothing wrong with the perspective.

EAgLE 5 wrote:

Multiple planets and stations

well, a nice idea wich i think we all have had sometime, but I'd like to stick with the classic 1-planet systems. But i wouldn't mind too much if there would be one or two systems with multiple planets in each galaxy...

EEGLE 5 wrote:

Other then that this thing is a jem and I look forward to future updates

apart from the misspelling of 'Gem' , i coulnd't agree more

Doh! it's late and i just came off from a very long playing session so pardon my spelling i'll amend it.

The reason why I would like to see a larger distance between sun and planet is because I'm used to playing the Amiga version where the sun grew progressively larger as you got close to it with the jump drive starting from a disk roughly the size of a coin.
The 68000 version really did an awesome job with the handling of large distances. The jump drive looked, sounded, but most of all worked great! The spacedust streaked by slowly at first then accelerated giving you the right "feel" of speed while covering some pretty vast distances. Also since jumpdriving didn't use up any fuel you could stil do your sun-skimming and reach the station in time for dinner. If an old 1meg 7mhz computer could do it my PC shouldn't break a sweat

This is really what I wanted to touch on with my remark on perspective. It just looks goofy to have a star that close to the planet and making up for the short distances by having a slow ship.

Actually, you'd be surprised how large the distance actually is.

Oh, orright, the earth's sun is a lot further, but still.
The perspective is ok, it's just because both the planet and the sun are very very large, and you can't see the size propaly because there's nothing in the open space to cmpare it to! I must say, yes, the sun is very small in comarison to Real-life earth-sun comparison, but the small size makes it possible for it to be so close!

So eventually, everything in that area is in realistic perspective......

Get it?

To be honest, the distance is about right.

I did a bit of calculation and it takes about 25 minutes at full speed to travel between the star and the planet in a Cobra Mk 3. The max speed of a Coba 3 is 0.3 Light Speed, and it would take 25 minutes for a vessel travelling at 0.3 LS to travel between Earth and Sol.

So the distance is about right, according to admittedly dodgy physics.

Selezen wrote:

So the distance is about right, according to admittedly dodgy physics.

Serendipity (Gotta name a ship that sometime, something in the F-in-fluke class perhaps)

Is LS “officially” defined as light speed? If so, all the “metres” and “kilometres” are a tad off. LS could be, e.g., light-seconds per hour or something…

Uum....
I NEVER SAID ANYTHING!!