Oolite Bulletins

Did a cursory and slightly convoluted search of the wiki, this forum, and the dusty space under my sofa, but I can't find any discussion on the idea of adding multiple suns to Oolite systems. From a realism standpoint, binary systems and multiple star systems are not only common in the galaxy, they're practically a majority-- it's the systems with only a single sun that are fairly rare.

The original Elite was limited to one star and one planet for technical reasons, so having only a single sun in each system is a bit of legacy-coding from that, but has anyone ever tried to create an oxp to add extra suns to a system? Does the core game have limitations that make this impractical/impossible?

Kaks wrote:

Still, binary star systems are not very likely to find their way to the code until EMMSRAN (apparently that's 'short' for even more mythical stable release after next)

This is a useful tool, btw.

Well, there are a lot of systems with 'hot Jupiters' whizzing around their stars in a close orbit, and we ain't got them (yet?).

According to the first reference on this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitabili ... ar_systems

up to two-thirds of all star systems are actually singular (which was news to me: I'd always thought that binary systems were more common, but apparently that may be due to sample bias). Which is not to say that there should be a barrier to having some binary systems in Oolite. We'd have to ignore some of the details of scale (*cough*), but I'm sure that wouldn't be too much of an obstacle. But there might be all sorts of issues regarding having multiple light sources: it's probably a lot more challenging that in sounds.

Disembodied wrote:

But there might be all sorts of issues regarding having multiple light sources: it's probably a lot more challenging that in sounds.

This is the biggest obstacle - all the shaders (OXP included) would need to be rewritten to handle multiple light sources. (We could probably ensure that the locally-brightest star was always source 1, to make older shaders behave reasonably well most of the time)

Other difficulties would include making sure scooping and glare effects worked properly - especially in close binaries - and calculating the heat absorption/dissipation correctly. On an AI level, multiple suns theoretically present issues for spacelanes, but we largely ignore those in the core game now for multiple planets.

I think I've got a half-baked idea for an OXP workaround for binary suns by texturing a planet to look like a sun, swapping places with the real sun depending on which the player is closer to and tweaking ambient light level depending on where the player is (if that's possible) to simulate lighting from the other sun. But cim is right that glare effects, sunskimming AI etc. would be problematic, as well as producing odd looks for distant planets sometimes.

OK, so there's probably a good reason why this won't work but right now I can't think of it...

Re: light sources.

Assuming stars are close, relative to other bodies. Average their position as the light source.
I'd imagine that this 'fudge' would become increasingly obvious the closer you got to the stars, so drastically increase reach/radius of the glare effect in such systems to disguise it.

A ship flying between the two stars is no longer revealing that one (or neither) star is the light source and the lack of correct illumination is masked by the glare. Glare would still be spherical of course but if stars are kept relatively close...

Re: scooping, spacelanes, AI.

Handwave a reason why only one of them is scoopable. AI and spacelanes are also affected by such a choice (and can largely remain as present I should imagine). Place non-scoopable star 'out of the way' of spacelanes to avoid navigation issues for AI.
A massive fudge, admitedly but hey, binary star systems

Just off the top of my head so I might be barking up the wrong lamp-post entirely...

Redspear wrote:

a reason why only one of them is scoopable

Maybe simply the main sun is closer to the planet and witchpoint. The player can skim the second sun using the code in [wiki]Deep Horizons Gas Giant Skimming OXP[/wiki], but NPCs are smart to do not go to the farther sun when there is one nearer.

Norby wrote:

The player can skim the second sun using the code in [wiki]Deep Horizons Gas Giant Skimming OXP[/wiki], but NPCs are smart to do not go to the farther sun when there is one nearer.

Good idea

I would like to see. 2 real Oolite suns in one of the next releases. With blended light support.

Aso to be able so see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... other.html this in game would be very cool. Imagine flying just between in the Jet.