Is it Monday yet??!!!
Wait...
I don't have the beta....
...
Is it Monday yet??
Wait...
I don't have the beta....
...
Is it Monday yet??
News Sneak Peek - Europa from orbit
- Thread starter David Braben
- Start date
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Not fair david 
delivering this and not giving us a transition to the surface.......oh you are a sly space dog
delivering this and not giving us a transition to the surface.......oh you are a sly space dog
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No worries. The long and short of it is that gravity decreases according to the square of the distance from the centre of the object. So on Earth's surface (1 radius from the centre), it's 1g (1/1). At 1 radius out (2 radii from the centre), it's 1/4g (1/2*2). At 2 radius out it's 1/9 (1/3*3). Etc.
The scene of the crash. Your final destination. The spot that marks where your impact crater will be.
Wait a second. Europa is known to have cryo-volcanism. I thought volcanically active bodies were off-limits?
No, but volcanic activity and other surface activity will be added later.
No... look closer. In the very same shot you still see the spinning structure of the ship move through the frame repeatedly, and then, in the very same shot you see the shadow of the lander on the surface come into the frame from the bottom. The scale and distance in conjunction with the focal length of the camera are definitely all wrong.
Ya, I thought it was just zoomed in a lot from far away, but the arm has too much parallax on the details, so it does look wrong.
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This reminds me of something:
Since Horizons was announced, I was thinking Frontier (or the OP) could recreate the "Earthrise" photo taken during the Apollo missions with a screen capture from an SRV.
It would be a lot of fun to compare them.
At the very least, I'm putting this on my to-do list for the Horizons beta.
Come to think of it: the earthscape is the Frontier logo. A clip of an SRV bombing around and looking up at the Earth could be a hell of a game launch teaser.
Since Horizons was announced, I was thinking Frontier (or the OP) could recreate the "Earthrise" photo taken during the Apollo missions with a screen capture from an SRV.
It would be a lot of fun to compare them.
At the very least, I'm putting this on my to-do list for the Horizons beta.
Come to think of it: the earthscape is the Frontier logo. A clip of an SRV bombing around and looking up at the Earth could be a hell of a game launch teaser.
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The Moon is off limits until a later update, because it is special and needs more work.
It could be right. The main ship could be orbiting 5 miles above the surface. No air after all. However, the whole "Powered descent" thing is all wrong. The lander would decelerate first retrograde (opposite orbital direction that the main ship is travelling) which would cause it to fall behind the ship, with a sub-orbital trajectory that intersects the surface. Then they'd either coast, which would cause them to accelerate and be ahead of the ship, or do a slow burn, which would keep them behind the ship. The idea being that the majority of the velocity they need to kill for a landing is perpendicular to the surface.
With the lander directly below, it has all the orbital velocity of the main ship, which means it's going to hit the ground going several hundred km/h sideways. Road rash city.
So much fighting over a simple gravity formula... If:
R = Earth's Radius (radius of the body/6371)
M = Mass of the body, again in Earth's masses, luckily this is already given by the game so no further modification is necessary.
Then:
Mass of the body in question = M/R^2
Which for europa would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 0.13 Gs
R = Earth's Radius (radius of the body/6371)
M = Mass of the body, again in Earth's masses, luckily this is already given by the game so no further modification is necessary.
Then:
Mass of the body in question = M/R^2
Which for europa would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 0.13 Gs
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Yeah, I slipped a decimal. The question was at the altitude listed, what is the gravitational pull on the sidewinder vs being on the surface. It was showing 0.1, but Europa has a surface g of .134 (not 1.34 my mistake). The calculations show that at the altitude listed, gravity would be about 80% of Europa surface.
Can't wait to do a full burn down to Crematoria... Avast the fires of Hades....
Thanks for the peeks DB it's almost time to fill the Breed Cup
Thanks for the peeks DB it's almost time to fill the Breed Cup
That's interesting. I guess I didn't think the Moon would be special in 3301AD. Seems to me it would be covered by facilities and trash from a millenia of inhabitants and industry.
But, if the Earth is super-premium realestate, then it makes sense that the Moon is as well. Or a "nature preserve" at least.
Anyone notice the round settlement markings around the equator of Jupiter at about 45s? I don't see any moonlets on the SC scanner at that point. Either they are rendered on the HUD despite the moons being too far away to scan, or they are on Jupiter itself, and the settlement generator hasn't got the message that it shouldn't work on planets with atmosphere.
So, my question is, with the new orbital cruise potentially replacing the blue shimmery haze drop to/from SC, will similar transition smoothing be made available for other assets as well? It'd be great to have controlled-flight transition to stations and deep space objects like nav beacons or wakes, but imagine this system for navigating ring systems.