Project Sol minor planets big extension pack

gertz

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GdScq.jpg


Alternative Sol (Sol_ext, this means that all the configs for Sol planets are kept, and bases are kept), with additional minor planet bodies.
Something like that... adding them in such order:
Atens, Apollos, Amors, Centaurs and Scattered-Disk Objects, Transneptunian Objects (IAU lists http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/ ). To make them less or more easily accessible, they will be moved to the end of Sol list and each group will start with a "dummy" invisible body, named in a way to separate the group. Like this:
....
Neptune
"---------Atens----------"
1999 HF1
1998 TU3
.....
"--------Apollos----------"
.....

Orbital parameters are gathered from IAU lists: http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/MPLists.html at 20141209 epoch (the lists are dumped on my PC).
The lists are sorted by absolute magnitude, so to collect the most notable and biggest rocks in first case, also unusual and interesting objects are going to be included... Other available data is to be collected (if present) and represented (physics, mesh, texture). If no - I will use average numbers and make my own meshes, which will be using a set of textures (I want to make a number of shared textures for different groups and sizes). If visual data will be poor, I aim to complete it on my own to achieve convenient look and feel... I will consider to make different archives for exact data, and created by myself, so everyone will be satisfied.

How many MPs I want to add? It took me a day to get used and hour or two to make orbital parameters for 12 Atens (those, you can see on the screen), yet to find/generate physical data and make a custom mesh for each and some textures for all. Once I complete those 12 MPs I will see how much time it took me at all to see how many I can do and in what time.

Naming is like this: Atira 2003 CP20
if no name present, then only a code.

Please, your input.
 

gertz

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I'll bump the thread once, just to check whether the idea is useless or no.
I won't keep it up if there is no need, because I am not going to play it myself.
 

sorindafabico

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I had this idea some time ago, but I don't have enough spare time to implement this. It's quite interesting.

I'd suggest to release this in groups, beggining with the dwarf planets (Pluto, Ceres, Haumea,...) then some groups of asteroids and some NEO.
 

gertz

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So you think it worth trying to be finished?
Besides, by "some" NEO and asteroids I've meant at least 5-10 dozens objects in total...
The thing is that converting orbital parameters and finding physical data (if present, else, generating?) is not really much work, while I still have no plan regarding models.

Initially, the idea was to get quantity over quality. Eventually - push the quality as well.
 

sorindafabico

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An initial release could contain a dozen random models for several bodies, except for bodies like Vesta, Pluto, Ceres and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Then, the models could be further polished, specially after the new Orbiter release (terrain!! :p ).
 

boogabooga

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Piper made a good tool already for adding as many minor planets as you want from an official database: [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=1436"]MPC Database Asteroid Viewer and Exporter v2.0.3[/ame]
This even includes the textures and meshes.

I used to have many minor planets in my Orbiter install.

It is good to have these to make Orbiter into a 3-D astronomy viewer like Celestia, but that is about it. (Actually, Orbiter does a fine job of that!)

If you want to travel to one, then having dozens of them only makes using the appropriate MFDs more difficult, slows down loading times, and bogs FPS. These days, if I want to go to a minor body (and I have), then I edit my Sol.cfg to include ONLY the target(s).

I let Celestia be Celestia.
:2cents:
 

sorindafabico

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FPS is a concern, of course. But you can have a huge installation and comment the lines in Sol.cfg according to the bodies you don't want for a specific mission, can't you?
 

gertz

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The thing is that I did not ever approach seriously any kind of travels, and most of the time I was approaching Orbiter as a modmaking engine.
In other words, for the five years I did't manage to learn transx yet.
You input seems valuable though, I appreciate it.

By the way, I have seen in a thread about integration engine a statement that says you can use fixed time steps to discard FPS influence. If I understood it correctly, it could be a solution?
 

boogabooga

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If there were no consequences to fixed time steps, that is what everyone would be doing.

Fixed time steps means the simulation is no longer real-time. I believe it is meant for debugging, etc.

Again, okay for astronomy viewing, but not for a "first person" travel experience.
 
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