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Is there a maximum amount of time that can pass?


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Apologies if this has been covered before, but my cursory search did not yield any info...

Is there a maximum amount of time that the game will allow to pass, say 100 or 1000 years? Or is it unlimited?

I ask because I've recently sent a probe on an intercept with a body in the Trans-Keptunian mod (installed on top of OPM) and, well, let's just say that I missed the optimal transfer window and now have to wait 89 years before arrival at the SOI! That should give me plenty of time to do other stuff... Perhaps all the stuffs. It would just suck to get there and then find out I only have 11 more years of game time left. Launch windows, who needs em?

Thanks in advance!

Edited by Project Pluto
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It's probably similar to velocity and distance values. If you reach insane values of those (something like 10x speed of light) you'll encounter glitches. I'd imagine that if you timewarp something like a *trillion trillion years it'll start to behave weirdly.

*probably orders of magnitude more.

Edit- I should point out that you can only get those values by hacking the game or occasionally the kraken.

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My understanding is that time is the only infinite quantity in KSP.

That's what I got out of this old thread I dug up as well.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53161-How-to-break-the-68-years-limit-%28about-2-31s%29?highlight=years

Time is counted as a double floating point number which results in a gazilion years. Practically infinite by human standards.

Only the displayed clock is finite (68 years).

Mind that the thread is 2 years and 11 days old, so I don't know how much KSP has changed in this way, though at the very least you can assume it's not going to be less years ... :)

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That's what I got out of this old thread I dug up as well.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53161-How-to-break-the-68-years-limit-%28about-2-31s%29?highlight=years

Time is counted as a double floating point number which results in a gazilion years. Practically infinite by human standards.

Only the displayed clock is finite (68 years).

Mind that the thread is 2 years and 11 days old, so I don't know how much KSP has changed in this way, though at the very least you can assume it's not going to be less years ... :)

1.7*10308 seconds to be more precise. The thread is still relevant, as long as the game uses C#. Keep in mind terms like Days and Years are modified, since a day is 6 hours.

Edited by Alshain
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A hundred years is definitely fine.

I remember hearing the game's interface having issues after a large but reachable time. Everything still runs fine though, it's just the date displayed gets messed up. Probably means that big time value is being converted into another format with a smaller range.

If the UT is a double, then I'd expect issues when the precision of that double becomes comparable to the framerate. That will happen around 10-100 trillion seconds - a few hundred thousand to a few million years. Unlikely to ever be a problem in KSP.

Edited by cantab
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That's what I got out of this old thread I dug up as well.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53161-How-to-break-the-68-years-limit-%28about-2-31s%29?highlight=years

Time is counted as a double floating point number which results in a gazilion years. Practically infinite by human standards.

Only the displayed clock is finite (68 years).

Mind that the thread is 2 years and 11 days old, so I don't know how much KSP has changed in this way, though at the very least you can assume it's not going to be less years ... :)

Nope: when I traveled to K-Stor Aa in Galactic Neighborhood it showed a max of 233y 33d 3h 33s after the transfer of 1659 years UT. I could say that 68y is the time for the Kerbol system to resume to its starting point, and how much data is stored in the save file, but what I saw was very true.

- - - Updated - - -

I remember hearing the games interface having issues after a large but reachable time.

Well I have found it.

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1.7*10308 seconds to be more precise. The thread is still relevant, as long as the game uses C#. Keep in mind terms like Days and Years are modified, since a day is 6 hours.

If it is stored as a count of seconds in a double, the last point at which it is accurate to a single second is only 2^53. Problems are very likely to start well before this point, although the exact point at which it ceases to be accurate enough to continue running will depend upon the specifics of their program.

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Nope: when I traveled to K-Stor Aa in Galactic Neighborhood it showed a max of 233y 33d 3h 33s after the transfer of 1659 years UT. I could say that 68y is the time for the Kerbol system to resume to its starting point, and how much data is stored in the save file, but what I saw was very true.

- - - Updated - - -

Well I have found it.

A quick check confirms that 233 Kerbin years is about equal to 68 Earth years. So that matches up with what was said.
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Setting it to anything high enough that the precision is no longer enough to store the amount of time elapsed since the last check of the system timer is going to lead to the unfortunate situation where

new_time = current_time + frame_elapsed_time;

will result in the values of new_time and current_time being identical. This means the timer never moves, as it cannot add a small enough amount to it to advance the clock by the amount it wants. This is what cantab was talking about when they noted that you will have problems as the precision you can store approaches the frame rate.

In reality there are also a bunch of other things which could break or cause strange issues as the precision drops.

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