Does anyone else find Kerbol too big?

[regex]

3 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Yeah, but only at night, to prevent overheating.

I glad this thread was useful for something.

[Superfluous J]

48 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Yeah, but only at night, to prevent overheating.

In Winter, and far from the Equator.

[Dman979]

16 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

In Winter, and far from the Equator.

He brought a parasol, too, so he doesn't get burned.

[nightingale]

17 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

In Winter, and far from the Equator.

Squad needs to support an axial tilt (on the Sun) for that to matter.

[Snark]

True story, from when my son was old enough to be able to know that I was full of it, but not yet old enough to pin me down in debate:

• Me (excited):  "Hey, did you hear the news?
• Son:  "No, what?"
• Me:  "NASA's going to send a mission to land on the sun!"
• Son:  "But they can't!"
• Me:  "Why not?"
• Son:  "Because they'll burn up."
• Me:  "Oh, it's okay.  They're going to go at night."
• Son:  "But... but... the sun shines all the time."
• Me:  "Not at night it doesn't!" (pointing out window)  "See how dark it is?"
• Son:  "But it... you... um... well, you know how, like, when it's in the middle of the night here, but then it's daytime in India."
• Me (rolling eyes, explaining slowly and patiently):  "Yes, but this is an American spaceship."

(Yes, I'm basically Calvin's dad.)

Edited March 6, 2016 by Snark

[AbacusWizard]

That is magnificent. Science Dad troll is best troll.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 3/4/2016 at 9:10 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

regex wanting a stock KSP celestial body to be smaller, am I on the Bizarro World forums again?

Where the moderators are banned, the modders insist on playing stock, and the forum games are... respectful and though-provoking. 

(A prairie home companion reference)

Anyway, I think that Kerbol should not be smaller, because it fills a extremely bright area similar to that of the real Sun's bright area.

[TonyC]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

True story, from when my son was young enough to be able to know that I was full of it, but not yet old enough to pin me down in debate:

• Me (excited):  "Hey, did you hear the news?
• Son:  "No, what?"
• Me:  "NASA's going to send a mission to land on the sun!"
• Son:  "But they can't!"
• Me:  "Why not?"
• Son:  "Because they'll burn up."
• Me:  "Oh, it's okay.  They're going to go at night."
• Son:  "But... but... the sun shines all the time."
• Me:  "Not at night it doesn't!" (pointing out window)  "See how dark it is?"
• Son:  "But it... you... um... well, you know how, like, when it's in the middle of the night here, but then it's daytime in India."
• Me (rolling eyes, explaining slowly and patiently):  "Yes, but this is an American spaceship."

(Yes, I'm basically Calvin's dad.)

Didn't you invert you and your son ?

[Snark]

4 minutes ago, MegaUZI said:

Didn't you invert you and your son ?

No, not really.

[GDJ]

I always thought it was too small. SQUAD could double the size and stretch out the Solar System quite a bit.

But it looks good I admit.

[Enginerdy]

I'm happy with the size of the sun. It's definitely bigger than the sun IRL, but that's fine by me. KSP is a toy solar system the scale doesn't have to be perfectly right, in fact part of what I find fun are the differences with the real solar system. When I found out Kerbin had a second moon I remember how awesome that idea sounded. Having an over sized sun is also a cool thing to imagine.

 

I've read about exoplanets around smaller cooler stars where the habitable zone would be very close to the star. A habitable planet would see the star taking up a large portion of the sky. Of course there are other differences you'd expect to see in the star and the orbit of the planet that don't really line up with the Kerbol system, but again it's a toy solar system, I don't require that it's 100% accurate.

 

Maybe this last thought belongs in the "You know you play too much KSP when..." thread but... I'm going to admit that when I first played RSS/RO one of my initial thoughts was "Doesn't the sun look too small?" Of course it's just as big as it's supposed to be in real life.

[Nicole]

So many times in my own playing, and many videos from different people I watch also, it will catch a cool angle with your ship against the sun or even another planet in there, and it looks beautiful. I think the sun being a bit bigger is very nice for the pretty shots and serves good a purpose for some extra imposition, adding style to it's little star system. Space seems nice and bright too and I like that. Actually on the subject of brightness, I think making it a bit bigger may be helping for the fact that it is not bright like an actual star, because it would cause too much glare and be less fun. Of course I can't know how much any of that would change unless seeing the game with an adjusted sun.

 

[Renegrade]

Re: the size of Kerbol - one thing I noticed when tinkering around with smaller planets (yes -- smaller, denser planets..muahaha.  1% RSS!)  is that the shine of the sun doesn't seem to scale properly to it's physical size (or, perhaps that was just an RSS issue)....

On 2016-03-04 at 2:57 PM, Kerbart said:

Yeah, but only at night, to prevent overheating.

I'm SO glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read this comment.  Cokenose is no fun!

(Whenever I imagine the North Korean announcer discussing that, I imagine his face turning into that troll face meme image, with a "U mad, science?" caption)

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Renegrade said:

Re: the size of Kerbol - one thing I noticed when tinkering around with smaller planets (yes -- smaller, denser planets..muahaha.  1% RSS!)  is that the shine of the sun doesn't seem to scale properly to it's physical size (or, perhaps that was just an RSS issue)....

Yes, it definitely doesn't.  Witness the fact that it's just as bright (in terms of how well-lit things are) when you're out at Jool as when you're at Kerbin.  And going close to the sun doesn't particularly light up your ship very brightly.

I understand why they need to keep things reasonably bright when you're out at Jool, for playability reasons.  But I do wish the lighting would become more dramatic when you get close to the sun.

That's one of the things that I adore about the mod PlanetShine, which I didn't even discover until after I'd been using it for several months.  I got it simply because I wanted the "underglow" effect when you're orbiting above a planet's daytime side.  However, I discovered, much to my delight, that it's also set up to greatly brighten the sunlight effect when you get really close to the sun, so you get that stark blinding effect, where everything is either washed-out white or inky black shadow.  It's really nicely done, and gives a much more visceral "whoa, I'm really close to the sun now" feeling.  I love the visual effect, wish it were part of the stock game.

[AbacusWizard]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Yes, it definitely doesn't.  Witness the fact that it's just as bright (in terms of how well-lit things are) when you're out at Jool as when you're at Kerbin.  And going close to the sun doesn't particularly light up your ship very brightly.

I understand why they need to keep things reasonably bright when you're out at Jool, for playability reasons.  But I do wish the lighting would become more dramatic when you get close to the sun.

That's one of the things that I adore about the mod PlanetShine, which I didn't even discover until after I'd been using it for several months.  I got it simply because I wanted the "underglow" effect when you're orbiting above a planet's daytime side.  However, I discovered, much to my delight, that it's also set up to greatly brighten the sunlight effect when you get really close to the sun, so you get that stark blinding effect, where everything is either washed-out white or inky black shadow.  It's really nicely done, and gives a much more visceral "whoa, I'm really close to the sun now" feeling.  I love the visual effect, wish it were part of the stock game.

Intriguing! I just installed PlanetShine recently; I'll have to keep an eye out for that next time I visit the sunwards planets.

[r4pt0r]

I too was surprised to see who created this thread, I was certain it was snark or sarcasm @regex.

 

So are you proposing just making it look smaller, and not changing any orbits or mass. Just make it toy sized to look the scale of the others? Do I understand that right, just an aesthetic change?

 

 

Edit: seems that what you have said, my phone did not display the entire thread to me.

Edited March 6, 2016 by r4pt0r

[Snark]

5 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

Intriguing! I just installed PlanetShine recently; I'll have to keep an eye out for that next time I visit the sunwards planets.

I haven't noticed any effect on Eve at all, and (IIRC, it's been a little while) not much of one at Moho.  Where it really shows up is if you get significantly inside Moho's orbit.

The reason it took me so long to discover this is that stock KSP doesn't give much of a reason for going inside Moho's orbit, since there's nothing there to visit.  "Get a screenshot with the Sun really big" is about it.  I didn't stumble across it until I was running a mod that gave a reason to do this (Karbonite+), and was then suddenly "whoa, that's gorgeous, when did KSP add this feature?"  Took a little while to realize that it was PlanetShine doing it.

New Horizons is another mod that gives a reason for getting up close and personal with ol' Mr. Sun (it's got some very close-in planets, much toastier than stock Moho).

[Starhawk]

24 minutes ago, Snark said:

I haven't noticed any effect on Eve at all, and (IIRC, it's been a little while) not much of one at Moho.  Where it really shows up is if you get significantly inside Moho's orbit.

The reason it took me so long to discover this is that stock KSP doesn't give much of a reason for going inside Moho's orbit, since there's nothing there to visit.  "Get a screenshot with the Sun really big" is about it.  I didn't stumble across it until I was running a mod that gave a reason to do this (Karbonite+), and was then suddenly "whoa, that's gorgeous, when did KSP add this feature?"  Took a little while to realize that it was PlanetShine doing it.

New Horizons is another mod that gives a reason for getting up close and personal with ol' Mr. Sun (it's got some very close-in planets, much toastier than stock Moho).

There's at least one other reason to go there in the stock game.

Recover Obemy and His Debris from Low Sun Orbit

It would have been nice to have the PlanetShine effect when I did that mission.

I have to say that I never thought about Kerbol's size until I read this thread.  Jool is always the thing where I notice the size difference and think "Boy is that ever tiny compared to its real-life analogue."

Happy landings!

Edited March 6, 2016 by Starhawk

[regex]

6 hours ago, r4pt0r said:

So are you proposing just making it look smaller, and not changing any orbits or mass. Just make it toy sized to look the scale of the others? Do I understand that right, just an aesthetic change?

It's a small thing and easily correctable, and I didn't make it a proper Suggestion for that reason.  Just wondering, really.  The properties of Kerbol don't match the general scaling of the rest of the solar system and it just hangs too huge in the sky.

[m4v]

My biggest complain regarding the sun is that it isn't white outside of the atmosphere. The size never bothered me... perhaps until now.

Edited March 6, 2016 by m4v

[pandaman]

I never actually thought about it until this thread.  The stock Kerbol system, to me, has always been scaled and modelled as it is for game play reasons.

[Randox]

On 3/4/2016 at 8:57 AM, steuben said:

I don't. Stars are mind failingly huge... no they are eldritchly huge.  and kerbol is small as such things go.

I'm with this statement. Aside from trying to closely match the apparent sizes of the sun and moon from the surface, stars are really big. Vanilla hydrogen burning stars (which Kerbol appears to be) should absolutely be these mind bendingly enormous objects at the center of their solar system.

 

Anyway, I like it. If they set things up to look exactly like they do on Earth, that wouldn't feel right. It's an alien planet, and it should feel like an alien planet.

[regex]

40 minutes ago, Randox said:

Anyway, I like it. If they set things up to look exactly like they do on Earth, that wouldn't feel right. It's an alien planet, and it should feel like an alien planet.

Well, see, that's the thing, apparently it was setup to look the way things do on Earth since the Moon and the Sun appear to be the same size in the sky here.  Kerbol, being an alien sun, should respect the general scaling of the rest of the system.

[Archgeek]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

[...]stock KSP doesn't give much of a reason for going inside Moho's orbit, since there's nothing there to visit.  "Get a screenshot with the Sun really big" is about it. 

What, no atmospheric analysis of the sun? XD

[r_rolo1]

Kerbol? What is that? Some kind of sport with a ball? :/ Seriously , when does that name goes to the same bin where it's twin "Kearth" and his cousin "Kars" are for a good couple of years?  

Well, on topic, yeah, THE SUN is freakishly big compared with anything inside the in game planetary system, so I would agree with a slim down.