Elite Observatory - Search your journal for potentially interesting objects, or notify you of new ones on the fly while exploring!

[Eahlstan]

Fine, we have a formula for oblate gas giants now.
But what about oblate terrestial bodies?

 

[Heavy Johnson]

Wow, nice job on figuring out the oblate gas giant math. I'll copy the check into my custom file and report findings.

 

[Vithigar]

Fine, we have a formula for oblate gas giants now.
But what about oblate terrestial bodies?

The physics behind why a body is oblate are the same regardless of what that body is made of. I expect the same formula applies, though possibly with a different threshold value, and obviously without the part restricting the check to only gas giants.

 

[varonica]

The physics behind why a body is oblate are the same regardless of what that body is made of. I expect the same formula applies, though possibly with a different threshold value, and obviously without the part restricting the check to only gas giants.

The real world physics are the same, but for smaller bodies the game engine is limited in ways that mean that real world physics doesn't properly apply under a certain radius. For instance the smallest known gravitationally rounded object in the solar system is 198km in radius, Mimas, it also has a fairly low density so it's likely it is icy and requires less gravitational force than a rocky or metallic body to be rounded. In the game the smallest radius body we have is 137km, but they are all rocky or metallic, and all perfect sphere's, normal physics doesn't apply to them so you won't find oblate bodies in that group, however above that and up to 500km radius in game you will find some very oblate bodies. The variation in body curvature reduces as you get closer to the minimum radius body allowed by the game engine.

I have looked into it in the past and can only put it down to limitation in the game engine where procedurally generated bodies are subject to a minimum mesh curvature in the game engine. Go up in radius to 250+km radius and you start to get some really weird shaped small bodies. Above 500km radius they are mostly rounded with as expected oblteness due to normal physics. So keep in mind while the physics are the same in the real galaxy, the actual results in game don't match the expected results for smaller bodies.

 

[Deleted member 240115]

Maybe on on the GitHub page for Elite Observatory? ;-)

Yes, I've been wanting to compile custom xml snippets for a while now just couldn't think of a good place to put them. A spoiler tag in the initial post is as good an idea as any.

 

[Cmdr Miles Long]

OMG this addon is wonderful! I just found something unbelieveably unbelievably!

 

[varonica]

OMG this addon is wonderful! I just found something unbelieveably unbelievably!

Don't hold us in suspense, out with it, out with it!

 

[Cmdr Miles Long]

It was just a very small (292km) body orbiting the planet very close in an undiscovered system and all of them pretty close to the star. I arrived there during the small body eclipsing the star and the views were amazing.

 

[ShadowNUAR]

And only guess from the orbital period.

EDSM - Elite Dangerous Star Map

Галактическая система позиционирования Elite: Dangerous к вашим услугам.

www.edsm.net

2020-01-16 05:18:43 - Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540 A 1 - Non-locked body with fast rotation - Rotational period: 6,2 hours
2020-01-16 05:18:43 - Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540 A 1 - Fast orbit - Orbital Period: 0,2 hours
2020-01-16 05:18:43 - Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540 A - Fast orbit - Orbital Period: 6,5 hours
2020-01-16 05:18:43 - Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540 B - Fast orbit - Orbital Period: 6,5 hours


{ "timestamp":"2020-01-16T05:18:43Z", "event":"Scan", "ScanType":"AutoScan", "BodyName":"Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540 A 1", "BodyID":5, "Parents":[ {"Star":2}, {"Null":1}, {"Null":0} ], "StarSystem":"Kyloabs GD-A d14-5540", "SystemAddress":190362421088763, "DistanceFromArrivalLS":0.335211, "TidalLock":false, "TerraformState":"", "PlanetClass":"Sudarsky class V gas giant", "Atmosphere":"", "AtmosphereComposition":[ { "Name":"Hydrogen", "Percent":74.724426 }, { "Name":"Helium", "Percent":25.275585 } ], "Volcanism":"", "MassEM":99.053421, "Radius":49870380.000000, "SurfaceGravity":15.874261, "SurfaceTemperature":3076.702393, "SurfacePressure":0.000000, "Landable":false, "SemiMajorAxis":98690872.000000, "Eccentricity":0.145538, "OrbitalInclination":-54.426563, "Periapsis":213.812943, "OrbitalPeriod":872.783447, "RotationPeriod":22273.060547, "AxialTilt":-0.065644, "WasDiscovered":false, "WasMapped":false }

 

[Vithigar]

Well that's definitely... something.

Nice find!

 

[malenfant]

send that one off to the Galactic Mapping Project!

 

[Anticon]

And once more to the author - thanks for such a fantastic exploration tool.

 

[3navis]

Thanks

Spoiler

 

[Erratic Spawn]

@Vithigar
One quick thing I noticed the other day and I am not sure it can be fixed. Just wanted to mention it. I had a gas giant with three shepherd moons. EDObserveraty didn't trigger for moon a/b since they were a tidally locked close pair. Only moon c triggered correctly as shepherd moon. This could mean a miss in a case where only such a pair is present. My assumption is that this is related to the fact that such pairs also do not create an orbital line. In any case just wanted to let you know. The system in question is documented here.

On an unrelated note I switched off the "Wide Rings" category, because I had it happen a few times that the pop-up pulled me away from the game during fuel scoop because the wide ring of a class Y dwarf triggered it immediately. The first time it happened I panicked a bit since I was afraid that I would hit the exclusion zone by mistake. Then I had it happen also in a system with a class Y dwarf and when I was arriving through the binary partner star which overheated my ship immediately and at the same time my screen was gone because of the pop-up (I survived). Fun times . That was the moment I switched that particular trigger off. Possibly this trigger should/could be separated for planets and stars although that's might make it overly complicated.

Otherwise I am very happy with the tool. Keep up the good work.

 

[Vithigar]

@Vithigar
One quick thing I noticed the other day and I am not sure it can be fixed. Just wanted to mention it. I had a gas giant with three shepherd moons. EDObserveraty didn't trigger for moon a/b since they were a tidally locked close pair. Only moon c triggered correctly as shepherd moon. This could mean a miss in a case where only such a pair is present. My assumption is that this is related to the fact that such pairs also do not create an orbital line. In any case just wanted to let you know. The system in question is documented here.

You're correct, there isn't anything I can really do about it. Binary objects don't report their orbital distance around the parent body in the journal, just the distance around their barycentre. So I can't know if it's inside the rings or not.

On an unrelated note I switched off the "Wide Rings" category, because I had it happen a few times that the pop-up pulled me away from the game during fuel scoop because the wide ring of a class Y dwarf triggered it immediately. The first time it happened I panicked a bit since I was afraid that I would hit the exclusion zone by mistake. Then I had it happen also in a system with a class Y dwarf and when I was arriving through the binary partner star which overheated my ship immediately and at the same time my screen was gone because of the pop-up (I survived). Fun times . That was the moment I switched that particular trigger off. Possibly this trigger should/could be separated for planets and stars although that's might make it overly complicated.

Otherwise I am very happy with the tool. Keep up the good work.

The popup notification should definitely not be stealing focus from the game. If that's happening it's a huge issue.

 

[Erratic Spawn]

The popup notification should definitely not be stealing focus from the game. If that's happening it's a huge issue.

Perhaps it is my setup, I'll check later. In fact I just recently changed my game setup from Full Screen to borderless Window, which could potentially be of relevance (i.e. it was on Full Screen when that happened what I had described).

 

[Vithigar]

Perhaps it is my setup, I'll check later. In fact I just recently changed my game setup from Full Screen to borderless Window, which could potentially be of relevance (i.e. it was on Full Screen when that happened what I had described).

Oh, interesting. Yeah, the popups don't work properly with Elite in exclusive fullscreen. Didn't realise they would actually pull you out of the game though, just figured they'd not be visible. Still something I'd like to address, but less huge than I originally feared.

 

[Erratic Spawn]

Oh, interesting. Yeah, the popups don't work properly with Elite in exclusive fullscreen. Didn't realise they would actually pull you out of the game though, just figured they'd not be visible. Still something I'd like to address, but less huge than I originally feared.

As it happens I was testing that involuntarily just a moment ago ("close binary trigger") and with the game set to windowed/borderless the popup worked fine. So all is good.

 

[Vithigar]

First Release of 2020 - New features and several bugfixes!

...but still no cAPI support. Sorry, PS4 and Xbone Elite players, but it's coming I swear!
There ended up being more work than I anticipated getting it working, and an ever increasing pile of other fixes and features started to build up in the meantime, so rather than continue waiting for a monster of a release with everything dropping at once I'm withholding my work so far on cAPI support and releasing the rest of what's done. This will also allow a (hopefully) cleaner foundation for the cAPI release, with any bugs in what is being added now resolved before then.
In this update:

• New Features
  • Codex data transmission to the Intergalactic Astronomical Union.
    This data is completely anonymous, containing only information that is found in CodexEntry journal lines (which isn't much). If you want to help a group of players catalogue the various biological and geological signals throughout the galaxy simply enable "Transmit Codex Discoveries to IGAU discovery catalog" in the settings window.
    The foundation of this change was added by @CMDR Urania Minora, so questions about the particulars of why they collect this data should be directed there.
  • Notifications via Telegram.
    You can now receive Observatory notifications via the Telegram messaging service. This feature was added by @MattG. Please direct all questions about this functionality there.
  • "Codex Discoveries" criteria added.
    This setting is independent of the IGAU transmission, you don't need to see the codex lines in order to transmit them. I just figured that while I was reading them I might as well offer the option to see them as well.
  • "All Surface Materials (system)" criteria added.
    Also known as "Gold" systems. These are systems within which every surface prospectable material can be found.
  • Version number added to title bar. (#17)
  • Added "Select All" and "Select None" buttons for built-in criteria.
• Bug Fixes
  • #12 - Window offscreen on startup
    Will now ensure that window location on startup is visible.
  • #16 - Custom criteria error for some users
    Both dots and commas are now treated as decimal separators in customer criteria values, regardless of user regional settings.
  • #21 - Asking for journal location every launch
    Non-standard journal file locations are now remembered and should not be asked for again.
  • Fixed an issue nobody else noticed that would cause Elite Observatory to progressively use more and more memory if a user repeatedly performed "Read All Logs" in a single session.
• Under-The-Hood Changes
  • Tracking materials found now uses enumerated flags instead of crazy string replacement. Should be more performant, but more importantly it's now easier to maintain and expand functionality surrounding materials going forward.
  • Changed internal web requests from System.Net.WebClient to System.Net.Http.HttpClient singleton. Should be easier to add more web based functionality going forward.
  • Improved custom criteria error handling. Users should now see more useful errors in the event something goes wrong.

As usual if there are any issues, please let me know!

 

[Baxder]

Got a Custom Criteria error out the gate that I didn't before...

Cut that section and it works again.