Oolite Bulletins

Appreciate this is an artistic thing, but as an astronomy geek it bugs me whenever I'm looking at the planets.

These things are rotating in minutes and the clouds are moving equally fast. Speed at the surface would have to be hundreds of thousands of miles per hour.

My first rationalisation was that you were in orbit around the planet and so the planet looks like its rotating, but this doesn't explain the clouds.

Even this doesn't work, as you can see the planets rotating from long distance.

I don't mind them moving, it looks nice, but I'd prefer they were slowed down a lot, so that at a glance they looked static, but with another glance you could see they were moving ...slowly...

What do folks think?

Cheers,

Drew.

I like the rotational speeds as they stand - to me, they do seem static at first glance.

On a practical basis, if we're going to have realistic rotations, we might not need to rotate the planets at all. I suspect that most players wouldn't be in-system long enough to notice.

I know what you mean, Drew - was watching a planet zooming round the other day, and thinking it looked wrong. There must be a happy medium between "realistic" and what we have now.

I also think they rotate far too fast to my liking; but then again, it's a game, not Celestia...

I know it sounds like we're moaning for the sake of moaning, but if it could be done without too much fuss, I'd also like to see the rotation slowed down.

Yes, I'm not that bothered, just feedback really!

Is it something that can be customised to taste, like the rollrate of the stations?

Cheers,

Drew.

I’d like to see them slowed down significantly, although still faster than RL.

I'd like to seen them slowed down too, with the clouds being slowed down to ALMOST the same speed as the planet rotation. The planet rotation speed should be halved.

Okay, well the code fixes it at the moment, but in the morning I'll try to remember to set up a planetinfo.plist override for planet rotation speed (or range of speeds).

Fame at last, one of my suggestions gets incorporated. I can retire now!

Cheers,

Drew.

Planet rotation speed has been halved from v1.65 to a value between 0.0 and 0.005 radians/sec.

From v1.66+, in planetinfo.plist you will be able to use <key>rotation_speed</key><real>r</real> to set the rotation speed to r, and use <key>rotation_speed_factor</key><real>f</real> to multiply the given speed (either the random value or r above) by a factor of f.

Is that possible to set negative values to cause the planet to rotate in the reverse direction?

Yes, although this is unpredictable since the alignment of the planet's poles is not obvious.

I remember reading somewhere that the stations also spin too fast, it would not require such a fast speed to create artificial gravity. Though I understand this prevents manual docking from being to easy, I think it is a bit too hard for new players at the speed it rotates now.
(On my first time playing the game, I was killed the first two times I tried to dock. I would assume that pirates or Thargoids would kill more new pilots that the docking bay.) (Thanks Wolfwood for the correction )

Cmdr. Luke wrote:

I remember reading somewhere that the stations also spin too fast, it would not require such a fast speed to keep it in orbit.

They require no spin at all to keep on orbit. Spin has nothing to do with that.

What the spin is for is for the artificial gravity inside the ship (against the outer walls - the way water stays in a bucket if you spin it fast enough). With the speed that stations (some of them - esp. some OXP ones) spin in Oolite, the artificial gravity would prolly crush normal humans...