Oolite Bulletins

just figured i'd start the thread now that i've actually made the attempt to convert the dyson sphere model into an oxp.

so far i haven't been able to make it load, either cause my plist is not yet right, or it's showing up inside the planet or star... or something. but i'll keep plugging away at it, and once i can make it load in-game, i'll post a link to my files here so that i can (hopefully) benefit from the collective wisdom of my fellow oolitians.

=D

Have a look in your thread in the suggestions box. Quite some fellow Ooliteers have jumped to your help there.

Just to show how Oolite handles such large, big creatures I enlarged the Globe Station 60x


And same station, now 600 time enlarged. Picture taken from main station and the BIIIIG sphere added at the witchpoint

The first picture shows a practical problem. The scanner shows a big yellow blib for the 60x sphere (diameter 60 000 meters) but when closing in on the 600x enlarged thing (diameter 600 000 meters), this blib fills the complete screen.

To clarify: The big station is filling the complete screen. What you see is part of the entrance section of the globe station. (part of globeStation.oxp, enlarged with dryDock and edited a bit.).
When the outside of the station comes into scanner range, the yellow blib appears on the radar and fills the complete screen. But mass locking does not happen. Probably that only looks at the distance player to station centre. Therefore I could fly at jumpspeed into the docking port. Docking has never been so easy. It is difficult to miss the port.

With this globe station you can't fly inside. The system docks you immediately. Now we just will wait till nijineko designed a sphere with a real inside to see how it behaves.

awesome pics, thank you. i posted a few problems in the other thread. i'll keep poking at them when i can. =D

I forgot to post the most obvious picture: The big overview.

The BIIG station in the background at witchpoint location and Ririor main planet at the foreground.

You forgot to mention another problem: The vertices around the docking slid are distorted. I guess they are in the small version as well, but the bigger the thing, the more you notice.

Oh, and another problem occurs to me, with Oolite's lighting model: You would expect the system outside the Dyson Sphere to be dark, because--if it's a massive thing--it would of course block the complete sunlight from the star. Thats however not how Oolite works. So even outside the sphere you would have the complete lighting from the now invisible lightsource (sun).

interesting! i look forward to seeing it in action. ^^ i just found out that my dat files are completely empty for unknown reason.... so now i have to go check my wings settings and see if i did something wonky over there.

Wings doesn't create dat-files. You have to create them from the format Wing exports into by another application (most notably the python ObjToDat-script). If you're on a Mac, Drydock will do it, too.

ah, yes, i'm on a mac. ^^ i meant that i was wondering if i was exporting from wings into obj wrong, hence when i drop the obj onto the obj2dattex app it was then showing up empty.

Commander McLane wrote:

You forgot to mention another problem: The vertices around the docking slid are distorted. I guess they are in the small version as well, but the bigger the thing, the more you notice.

I noticed it. This station is build from two models. The core is the entity and the sphere is build around it. It could be that subentities will always give alignment problems at this size.
Also the mass is a problem on the scanner. When you come close the complete screen becomes yellow. You could reduce the mass by defining a very low density. However, this will only work when the station has no subentities. Density for subentities is ignored by oolite and the combination will stay heavy with subentities.
Therefor my advise would be to not use subentities for the real Dyson sphere.

Is there also a mass locking problem with something so big?

It might not be possible to get far enough away to actualy ever enter witchspace?

Excuse my ignorance, but what is the point of this, are we going to fly around inside it or something?

Excused. According to nijineko the whole point of it is creating something really big. As the final Dyson Sphere is supposed to surround planet, station and witchpoint as well, I suppose we are supposed to fly around inside it. (Excuse the pun.)

Probably you could be looking for the exit?

Cmdr James wrote:

Is there also a mass locking problem with something so big?
It might not be possible to get far enough away to actualy ever enter witchspace?

No, this thing does not mass lock you, even when you are almost colliding with it. I noticed an other limitation of oolite. It only shows ships closer than a certain distance. When further away ships are not shown. I discovered it because I could not find this big thing in the space. And while flying towards the place I added it, it suddenly appeared. (And disappeared again when flying away). This happens at about 1 280 000 meters from the objects position. Normal ships are already to small to see at all at this distance. This is different with planets. You see those, even when extremely far away.

You want to see it yourself? Download: Large Test Globe
It adds the sphere in every system behind the sun, in line planet<->sun, at the same distance as the planet is from the sun. Oolite is not displaying it when entering the system, but with above info you know witch point to aim for. It will appear when you approach. (don't leave the oxp installed)

It is just an unrealistic big station. To have a sphere to fly in, it needs a design with an interior.

A real Dyson sphere is a terra formed planet that is put around a sun to catch every beam of light the sun is emitting. Space will become quite dark then.

Commander McLane wrote:

Excused. According to nijineko the whole point of it is creating something really big. As the final Dyson Sphere is supposed to surround planet, station and witchpoint as well, I suppose we are supposed to fly around inside it. (Excuse the pun.)

Probably you could be looking for the exit?

I thought I was Ok untill I saw a one-eyed cat coming in, only to discover that it was going out!

Anway for something really big have a lookat LB's gas giants in Assassins, can't remember where exactly but they'd be much biggerrrr! it just takes about 40 mins (real time) flying with the taurus, to get any where near them.