Dynamic Gas Giants and Ring Systems

Currently the game has static cloud formations and weather and static ring systems, and it does look amazing. But wouldn't it be even more amazing if ED had dynamic ring systems with turbulence, harmonic resonances, shepard moons, magnetic field auroras, and gas giants with real violent weather? This makes me very excited to see what Frontier comes up with for flying into the atmospheres of gas giants (as terrestrial planets as well obviously!)


[video=vimeo;40234826]https://vimeo.com/40234826[/video]
 
Nice video. Shepard moons Ive been wanting for a while now, I keep checking moons close to rings to see if ED has kinda put them in, but I dont think they are.
Imagine how awesum it would be to have scanning equipment or limpets you could fire into a gas giants atmosphere, to then be told on the read out that the strange giant storm your watching is a rare event estimated to happen once every 500 years, a man can dream....

**edit**
Just thinking about how they will handle gas giants when we get atmospheric flight....more likely to be launch a probe into it?
 
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Nice video. Shepard moons Ive been wanting for a while now, I keep checking moons close to rings to see if ED has kinda put them in, but I dont think they are.
Imagine how awesum it would be to have scanning equipment or limpets you could fire into a gas giants atmosphere, to then be told on the read out that the strange giant storm your watching is a rare event estimated to happen once every 500 years, a man can dream....

**edit**
Just thinking about how they will handle gas giants when we get atmospheric flight....more likely to be launch a probe into it?

I don't think we'll ever have that, but it would be nice to have floating stations in the upper layers!

Ziljan, have some rep, thanks for sharing this beautiful video!

Edit: Watched it already about 5 times. :D
 
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Nice vid. More variance in the galaxy will definitely always be welcome.

Or just bodies really close...
[video=youtube;EnNF3-GpJ2c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnNF3-GpJ2c[/video]
 
I don't think we'll ever have that, but it would be nice to have floating stations in the upper layers!

Ziljan, have some rep, thanks for sharing this beautiful video!

Edit: Watched it already about 5 times. :D

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Check out this video at about 3:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBvpd3_Vqk
He talks a lot about flying through the procedural generated clouds of gas giants and lightning strikes inside them and stuff that makes me smile a bit :)

He does look very serious about it in that video so i hope it'll be possible.

I want pink winglets on my aspx :D
 
They are working on it. ;)

[video=youtube;BCQXXNCawF4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQXXNCawF4&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Don't expect the ring systems to change much though. They are rotating around the planets already by the way so they aren't completely "static". The individual rocks within the rings will never move relative to one another though (and smash into one another) due to the huge bandwidth hit that would take on the networking aspect when keeping that in sync between players.

After the geology aspect of planets are "done" (we still got volcanism to get this season) the next "layer" to add to planets would logically be atmosphere. My guess is that the weather and atmosphere system is built to handle all kinds of planets. So it wouldn't surprise me if we get gas giants at the same time as (or at least in the same Season as) when we get rocky worlds with atmosphere. It would "just" be a matter of removing the terrain of the planets, keep the atmosphere and a gas giant would be born. :)
 
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They are working on it. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQXXNCawF4&feature=youtu.be

Don't expect the ring systems to change much though. They are rotating around the planets already by the way so they aren't completely "static". The individual rocks within the rings will never move relative to one another though (and smash into one another) due to the huge bandwidth hit that would take on the networking aspect when keeping that in sync between players.

After the geology aspect of planets are "done" (we still got volcanism to get this season) the next "layer" to add to planets would logically be atmosphere. My guess is that the weather and atmosphere system is built to handle all kinds of planets. So it wouldn't surprise me if we get gas giants at the same time as (or at least in the same Season as) when we get rocky worlds with atmosphere. It would "just" be a matter of removing the terrain of the planets, keep the atmosphere and a gas giant would be born. :)


Haha!!! Awesome! Thank you Tinman! I had never seen that video before. They must be waiting on something far superior to implement, since the date on that video is 2014. :D If the current realistic planetary landing effects are any indicator, it should be very special indeed.
 
Pretty sure either DB or MB commented in one of the recent(ish) live streams that they were working on something for Gas Giants.. no idea where/when that was tho..
 
Something else interesting here is that we were shown a prototype in the Kickstarter video of the 'low-level' generation, flying in and amongst the clouds, and the video from 2014 mentioned by @Tinman is of the 'high-level' generation showing the large scale of a gas giant. They have been tackling this problem from both ends for some time; bringing them together is crucial - but I wouldn't be surprised if they had already done this. There are, however, other challenges that have yet to be overcome (or at least shown to us, though I'm hoping this will be the big thing for season 3):
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1) The generation needs to produce clouds of different types (gas giant cloud layers should be different from those on an Earth-like World or rocky moons with a thin atmosphere, although there would be some elements in common) and also have the concept of different layers within an atmosphere where different types of clouds form based on the conditions.
2) The flight model needs to be able to address the different handling of ships in an atmosphere in potentially extremely windy conditions. The wind speeds in the atmospheres of gas giants in our own solar system are of the same order as a typical ship's maximum cruise speed, greater in some cases. It would certainly be amazing to have 'Cloud City' type outposts inside the atmospheres of gas giants but could I land an Anaconda rigged for mining in a 200m/s crosswind? Perhaps these outposts would only be built in the eyes of long-lasting storms where the wind speeds are low, although there might be some hidden (possibly damaged or well-shielded) elsewhere, possibly needing assistance, possibly with unusual missions.... (OK, getting myself excited, sry!)
3) Precipitation. Good luck with this - procedurally generating a system that rains/hails/snows the appropriate material in the right places is going to be tough - I would not be surprised if we get atmospheric flight but where worlds with precipitation are off-limits until a later season. From the descriptions of some worlds I have seen, there could be iron rain on the surface - wouldn't want to be out in that in my SRV! With precipitation, there is also the prospect of fluid flow over the surface - your SRV could be washed away in a flash flood! There is a lot to handle for this, so I'm not expecting to see it any time soon - though perhaps some weather effects like lightning discharges may be easier to manage.
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Is volcanism really confirmed as definitely coming this season? I thought it was on the 'maybe if there's time' list. If it is that would be great! The Voyager image of a volcanic plume seen over the limb of Io is one of the classic images of our exploration of the solar system, along with the eruptions on Enceladus seen by Cassini. Even if no particular gameplay is attached, there is plenty of potential for spectacular images and videos of this happening in-game.
 
To be frank, I'm not expecting much, at least not in the near future. From ship flight characteristics (aerodynamics) in various conditions (such as low-high pressure, wind, weather patterns) to believable clouds and lighting, it is gargantuan task. Although I don't play with flight simulators, I haven't seen so far any genuine modeling of "Earth-like" weather system in any game, let alone making it for a wide range of planets.

There are tons of much more simple stuff that could be added, such as comets, more irregular shaped dwarf planets and giant asteroids, stellar events like mass coronal ejection, etc..
 
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