Kepler-186: how realistic is ED's galaxy?

Koen

Koen
Last night, I wanted to see the the first (real, out-of-game) validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone.

According to wikipedia, Kepler-186 is a M1 type dwarf star, with Kepler-186f being an Earth-like planet. The inner planets are rather small.

This image shows how Kepler-186 system looks in comparison to our solar system:
Kepler186f-ComparisonGraphic-20140417_improved.jpg
However, in Elite, it looks very different: it is a class G star with huge inner planets, a small ringed class Y star, and the closest thing that comes to an Earth like is a water world.

Kepler-186.jpg
Kepler-186_7.jpg

So this makes me doubt on how well real astronomical data has been implemented in the game.
 

Thetele

T
You know that the system map isn't representing how the system looks? It isn't in any kind of scale or it isn't even supposed to be on scale or look realistic. The planets are just put next to each other for easy access. The system map is just visual list of what is in the system you look at.Players have long time wanted better map which probably could be on scale. But the systems are realistic if you go visit sol or other systems.
 
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Koen

Koen
Thetele said:
You know that the system map isn't representing how the system looks? It isn't in any kind of scale or it isn't even supposed to be on scale or look realistic. The planets are just put next to each other for easy access. The system map is just visual list of what is in the system you look at.Players have long time wanted better map which probably could be on scale. But the systems are realistic if you go visit sol or other systems.
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This is not about the system map: in Elite, the inner planets are gas giants. In reality, it are small planets.

Mardante said:
2016 vs 3302 ??
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1286 years is very short in cosmological terms. A star might go supernova in that time, but changes such as M1 to G are impossible.

I know that in-game Mars has been terraformed. However, changing small planets outside of the bubble into gas giants is afaik not part of the lore.
 
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cmdr_Havalok

cmdr_Havalok
The Galaxy is mainly procedurally generated so not realistic at all. However, in some cases FD went in and hand-crafted some things but we don't really know how much or what exactly. I would expect stars to be more accurate than planets.
 

goemon

goemon
you have to keep in mind, when the galaxy was created in ED. e.g. newer findings aren't part of it, and if i understood FDevs politics till now, they won't include newer findings (which makes sense with already visited systems).

about 98% of all stars from the hipparchos catalog (HIP XXXX) are included ingame (i found some missing); most of them with fairly aedequat data.

and then there are handcrafted systems, like sag a*.
 

shadragon

shadragon
To keep the E: D galaxy up to par with the volume of new findings would require a half dozen new staff members doing nothing but updating the star charts.

I'd prefer they focus on other things.
 

Ouranos

Ouranos
Bare in mind that how much will it cost, and how much work would be needed to follow a complete galactic catalog,
not to mention stuffs that are really based on calculations.
 

Lobstris

Lobstris
There are a lot of stars that I've flown to in E: D, that I've then looked up on Wikipedia, and found that, whilst the main star might be somewhat 'correct' (e.g. an A0 in real life being A5 in game, with different estimated mass and radius - and not I use 'correct' loosely here), and there were often additional stars (e.g. single systems as binary/trinary etc.) present.

I'm assuming therefore that a lot of stars and locations were imported from catalogues and from certain sky surveys (note all the line-line clusters with similar bearings from Sol across a small arc of space), some were imported by hand (systems with exo-planets prior to release), some were also imported from Frontier: First Encounters (with errors leading to things like the super speedy moon at Mitterand's Hollow) and the 'Old Worlds' from original Elite. However, once these stars and handcrafted worlds were in, they were "fleshed out" using the procedural generation in Stellar Forge (or rather Stellar Forge did everything, then other stuff was imported/overwritten).
 

Weps

Weps
And here I was expecting a rant on the science behind healing lasers.

Yeah, what others have said. You can't expect really recent discoveries to make it into the game. Personally I'm thankful for what we've got.
 

Jools

Jools
its the most realistic in game galaxy to date, no doubt, and it`s a fascinating praise worthy achievement

but... it`s still full of obvious mistakes that stellar forge makes and even the incorporated astronomical data is very off sometimes... It lacks many phenomena too

I actually came to the conclusion that "close to realism" ultimately means "very boring and limited fantasy"... It`s either realistic or not

Personally I would prefer the early, far less realistic, but more vibrant and moody, vision of ED as portrayed in the early videos like this one:

[video=youtube;9NSMMTfwTOU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NSMMTfwTOU[/video]

I`m far more a fan of Fe2 than Elite and I enjoyed the hell out of its blue space and sirocco`s pink atmosphere!
 
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Koen

Koen
Kepler-186f was discovered in 2013 and confirmed in 2014 - that was at the time of Alpha. I do accept that FDEV had other priorities at that time.

LameoveR said:
in 3002 Kepler-186 gone SuperNova and become class G star :)
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That goes in the wrong direction: massive stars go supernova, a smaller star or black hole might be the result of that.
 
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Koen

Koen
OK, I just went to 51 Pegasi, where a hot Jupiter was discovered in 1995 - the first exoplanet which was discovered orbiting a main sequence star.

In game, there is indeed one gas giant.

However, in-game it has a mass of 46.7 earth masses. In reality, this should be 1.06 solar masses, which is about 9.5*10^24 Earth masses.

51Pegasi_b.jpg

Edit: Correction, the above is wrong. The 1.06 solar masses is the mass of the parent star.

So this system is accurate after all - the orbital period (4.2 days) and the temperature ("above 900 K" in-game, 1284 ± 19 according to measurement/calculation) are also right.

I guess Kepler-186f is just too recent of a discovery to have made it into the game, as several replies mention. Thanks all.
 
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Cmdr Mnumen

Cmdr Mnumen
I'm not surprised - there are so many missing or incorrect bits of Astronomy and Astrophysics in E: D - this is just a minor one by comparison.
 

Sentenza

Sentenza
cmdr_Havalok said:
The Galaxy is mainly procedurally generated so not realistic at all. However, in some cases FD went in and hand-crafted some things but we don't really know how much or what exactly. I would expect stars to be more accurate than planets.
Click to expand...

I thought existing known stars were imported from star catalogues? I agree there is not much point pretending authenticity down to little details though. After all we already know it is an alternate universe so just accept there are differences and that's it.
 

EdzUp

EdzUp
One thing that would be cool would be user submitted data for system adjustments. These one ratified would make it into the game keeping it all current as it goes :)
 

Mike Syron

Mike Syron
Talking about realism - I guess it had been said & asked already, but ...

IMHO there are way to much "twin planets" and "twin moons" that look pretty much unrealistic to me, just look at Rhea. Two earth like planets orbiting each other at close range and they are still habitable? What about the tidal forces, they should suffer under constant shaking and tremendous vulcanic activities. And they change their distance to the sun all the time which would cause a hell of a climate at least regardless if they keep being in the habitable zone. Then I often find twin moons orbiting a gas giant being so close together that they either must have insane orbiting speeds or would just crash into each other pretty fast.

Is ED more about spectacular views or more about realism? I do like spectacular views, no problem, but "realistic" and "ED" being in the same sentence doesn't make sense then. If all the stars resemble precisely real astronomical data isn't so much of my concern, I have to say, I don't look them up in Wikipedia. But a lot of those star systems are often literally crazy imho.
 
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