Why are asteroids stationary?

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
(They were almost stationery, but that's another matter).

When I visit an asteroid belt, none of them are moving. They're spinning, and I'm sure that I occasionally see one moving in the distance, but I have never been able to actually locate one moving through the field (e.g. orbiting the planet, or whatever else they are near). I'm sure they should be. If my ship is at 0 (I'm not in SC), then I'd expect to see asteroids moving in relation to my ship's position. And I shouldn't be able to simply park in the asteroid field (well, I should, but I shouldn't expect that I won't get any dents...).
 

Trinity Star

Trinity Star
I'm at a RES that has inner and outer rings, the asteriods at the RES in the inner ring are stationery but you can see the brighter (possibly ice) outer ring moving fast around the planet.
 
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Arindor

Arindor
Good point OP, but PC power is probably the reason behind it. Asteroid fields, IMO, should be hostile environments even while stationary. As they stand, they're pretty dull environments ATM.
 

Steve50

Steve50
purplepomegranite said:
(They were almost stationery, but that's another matter).

When I visit an asteroid belt, none of them are moving. They're spinning, and I'm sure that I occasionally see one moving in the distance, but I have never been able to actually locate one moving through the field (e.g. orbiting the planet, or whatever else they are near). I'm sure they should be. If my ship is at 0 (I'm not in SC), then I'd expect to see asteroids moving in relation to my ship's position. And I shouldn't be able to simply park in the asteroid field (well, I should, but I shouldn't expect that I won't get any dents...).
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Because if they moved, the forum would be flooded by moans about lost ships and asteroid belts too hard to fly in etc etc ;)
 
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Tarman

Tarman
Real asteroid fields are exponentially more boring than this. Han Solo asteroid fields are awesome but completely unrealistic.
 

Snakebite

Banned
Snakebite
I was at a ringed planet last night and I 'parked' in the gap between two ring systems,

I noticed a couple of interesting things.

1) that the asteroids do indeed orbit the planet
2) they orbit at differentts speeds.
3) In this particular case the two rings orbited in different directions, im not sure how common that is.

The reason that you think that the roids don't move is because everything is relative. The roids are moving around the planet but are stationary relative to each other.
Also I noticed that the Frameshift drive is smart enough that when you drop out of SC into an ring it sets your velocity relative to the movement of the rocks, this is why they appear not to move.
 

Obsidian Ant

Obsidian Ant
Tarman said:
Real asteroid fields are exponentially more boring than this. Han Solo asteroid fields are awesome but completely unrealistic.
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It's lways awesome to hear from people with deep space travel experience. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to visit any real extrasolar asteroids fields yet.
 

Tinman

Tinman
Asteroids (at least in rings) are indeed orbiting around the planet. I've taken timelapses before that shows this...they are however "stationary" in relation to each other since they are following each other around the orbit. When you enter a ringsystem your ship matches this speed and follows them around the planet too so even if they (and you) are orbiting the planets it still looks like you are stationary in relationship too one another.

Why they aren't moving in relation to each other is simply due to networking/physics constraints. Calculating these positions accurately in a multiplayer environment and then sending that info across the network to sync everything would eat up way to much bandwidth for to little gain. The same limitations can be seen in pretty much all other multiplayer games.
 

Makaan

Makaan
Mike Evans said:
Worth bearing in mind that 0 speed means 0 relative to the local frame of reference which is a point in orbit around the planet, the same orbit the asteroids around you are taking. Thus you won't see any motion as you're all travelling in orbit around the planet at the same speed.
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^^This, here's your answer.
 

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
Mike Evans said:
Worth bearing in mind that 0 speed means 0 relative to the local frame of reference which is a point in orbit around the planet, the same orbit the asteroids around you are taking. Thus you won't see any motion as you're all travelling in orbit around the planet at the same speed.
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Thank-you. I wasn't aware that speed was relative to your location (and right now, I'm not sure how I feel about that - it doesn't seem right, somehow... I'll have to think on this. :D)

However... There would still be some movement of asteroids... It is highly improbable that they'd all be stationary in relation to each other. Isn't it? :)
 

Tinman

Tinman
purplepomegranite said:
Thank-you. I wasn't aware that speed was relative to your location (and right now, I'm not sure how I feel about that - it doesn't seem right, somehow... I'll have to think on this. :D)
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Speed is always relative to your location (frame of reference).

You think you are sitting still right now? That is only true in relation to Earths frame of reference.

The Earth is actually travelling around the Sun at 30,000 m/s.

And the Solar System is at the same time travelling around the Galaxy at 250,000 m/s.

If it works in the real world it's perfectly fine in a game, don't you think? ;)
 
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Fen Harel

Fen Harel
They are all orbiting, but at the same rate. I always presumed that they were not moving relative to each other because then you'd need to model in collisions between them.
 

ATrifleMiffed

A
Snakebite said:
I was at a ringed planet last night and I 'parked' in the gap between two ring systems,

I noticed a couple of interesting things.

1) that the asteroids do indeed orbit the planet
2) they orbit at differentts speeds.
3) In this particular case the two rings orbited in different directions, im not sure how common that is.

The reason that you think that the roids don't move is because everything is relative. The roids are moving around the planet but are stationary relative to each other.
Also I noticed that the Frameshift drive is smart enough that when you drop out of SC into an ring it sets your velocity relative to the movement of the rocks, this is why they appear not to move.
Click to expand...

Individual rings all "orbit" at the same speed regardless of altitude (as a KSP player I am very annoyed by this), but different rings do have different orbital velocities. If you look at a lower ring from a higher one it will appear to counter-rotate due to ED`s wonky orbit physics not quite knowing how to handle the old altitude=speed and the weird asteroid belt physics at the same time. I`d love to see them behave more realistically, but I doubt we`ll ever see that happen.
 

Vingtetun

Vingtetun
I have come in close to an Asteroid field whilst taking photographs, dropped out of supercruise such that I can see rocks flying past below me at incredible speeds, gone back into s/c and then dropped out closer to the field to be effectively using them as a local frame of reference. Interestingly, I didnt' look to see whether passing moons etc were flying by at the rate the rocks were below me - though, of course, nearby objects could be passing at similar speeds!

Certainly, I've been caught by the twilight areas in RES before at some fast speeds before - probably 20 degrees of the ring I was in during the space of an hour of gameplay.
 
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