Oolite Bulletins

It would be nice if you could select the station no matter how far from it you are. That way you don't have to fly toward the planet until you get in range. Also there would be no need for the ASC to automatically switch from planet targeting to station targeting when in range, because you pilot has had the option to target the station all along.

It would also be nice if the compass showed the distance to the currently selected compass target (ie planet, sun, witch point). Obviously there is no room left on the panel, but it could be displayed on the hud just above the panel.

AJ wrote:

It would also be nice if the compass showed the distance to the currently selected compass target (ie planet, sun, witch point).

I'm resistant to this because it would reveal one of the big lies about Oolite.

The game is not to scale!

The planet, the sun and the distances between them are much much smaller than they would be in real life, and putting a permanent reminder of this on-screen would be (for me) too much for suspension of disbelief to carry.

Well, I would say that lie was already out of the bag - the enormous sun is a bit of a giveaway, imagine if our sun took up as much sky as the ones in oolite must.

aegidian wrote:

AJ wrote:

It would also be nice if the compass showed the distance to the currently selected compass target (ie planet, sun, witch point).

I'm resistant to this because it would reveal one of the big lies about Oolite.

I'm also resistant to that because it takes away one of the little niggles about the game that actually adds to the experience. It also makes sense of a sort that your navcom would lock on to the planet first and only when a lot closer would it be able to resolve the iddybiddy Station.

Mad Dan Eccles wrote:

It also makes sense of a sort that your navcom would lock on to the planet first and only when a lot closer would it be able to resolve the iddybiddy Station.

Can I just point out here, that you can get a visual lock on the Space Station way before the compass has registered!

Oh, for sure!

NoSleep wrote:

Can I just point out here, that you can get a visual lock on the Space Station way before the compass has registered!

Well that doesn't make sense, if you can see it with your eyes, then surely an "Advanced Space Compass" should be able to detect it.

AJ wrote:

NoSleep wrote:

Can I just point out here, that you can get a visual lock on the Space Station way before the compass has registered!

Well that doesn't make sense, if you can see it with your eyes, then surely an "Advanced Space Compass" should be able to detect it.

It does seem a little odd. I'm sure it could be explained away as a traffic controlling device or something. Perhaps there should be an option to select the space station compass manually once within a certain range, or left to be automatically selected at the usual proximity otherwise?

Well that doesn't make sense, if you can see it with your eyes, then surely an "Advanced Space Compass" should be able to detect it.

Surely it means the Advanced Space Compass just isn't that advanced?

aegidian wrote:

The planet, the sun and the distances between them are much much smaller than they would be in real life, and putting a permanent reminder of this on-screen would be (for me) too much for suspension of disbelief to carry.

Given that the incorrect scaling is obviously at least a little upsetting for you, I was just wondering whether you had ever played a build of Oolite with the numbers tweaked slightly to make thing in scale. I'm now curious what Oolite is like with the scales corrected.

AJ wrote:

aegidian wrote:

The planet, the sun and the distances between them are much much smaller than they would be in real life, and putting a permanent reminder of this on-screen would be (for me) too much for suspension of disbelief to carry.

Given that the incorrect scaling is obviously at least a little upsetting for you, I was just wondering whether you had ever played a build of Oolite with the numbers tweaked slightly to make thing in scale.

I know, I'm curious too. The original reason I didn't go full-scale was because the depth-buffer didn't have the granularity for it to work properly, but I worked around that it the end (by employing the old-standby painters' algorithm).

I agree it would be worth the experiment.

Obviously if you fixed the scaling of the ooniverse, then the sun in a system would be quite small, not much bigger than the other background stars. So some kind of lens flare or other method of representing brighter-than-white might become necessary.

I also always found it a little simplistic that each system had only one planet and one station. It's be cool to have actual solar systems with spare planets floating around (which would be pretty hard to find without a compass, given the distances involved). Maybe even throw in an asteroid belt every now and then which would be a great place to go mining.

It would make docking fun, because the planet would be enormous like in the NASA pictures of shuttles in orbit.

aegidian wrote:

I agree it would be worth the experiment.

Could the game be set so that a gameplay option could be set to enable realism for those of who would enjoy spending crusing the solar system?

If you want an idea of just how difficult it would be to orientate yourself and find things - simply by visual fix - in a realistic universe, try finding, say, the full moon, from low earth orbit, in Celestia (http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/), a few times - it adds a new level of emotion to the phrase 'frustrating'! After you've tried flying from moon to earth and back, in Celestia, you'll find yourself very glad that none of the planets in Oolite have night-sides to them, for instance.

For the moment I'm going to have to say I have too many other things to work on to mess with the scale.

The scale works for current gameplay. A change of scale would change the gameplay and that would lead to a heck of a lot of work. So for the moment, I'll admit it's cartoony, but (as far as my focus goes) it's staying that way for the foreseeable while.

The source is there for anyone who wants to try rescaling. I'd be very interested to see the effects.