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Sideways Duna


nubeees

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Several people have mentioned the day/night terminator on Duna in the trailer (or what looks to be Duna) is sideways, with the polar ice cap pointed directly at the sun.

Any theories as to what's happening here? Rendering error in the trailer? Kraken attack? A giant impact? Ike does seem to be missing from the camera shot, afterall.

Screen-Shot-2019-08-19-at-2.45.37-PM-640x400.png

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That'd be cool, hopefully planetary tilt is now a thing. I actually think it would be easy to do animation-wise using bones along a path- the path is the orbit, the bone is constrained to the path and moves along it, and you can rotate the bone for planetary rotation and tilt. A system like this would be cool for modders as well.

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If Duna is supposed to be a Mars Analogue then it should tumble on it's axis; this would be observable over years. Tbh it would be awesome if KSP2 had like a "Planetary Encyclopedia" that started off with a bare minimum of information based on direct observations with telescopes and you could get science by doing long-term probe surveys revealing little things like this. Also getting science for discovering additional moons (Voyager 1&2 discovered dozens of previously unknown bodies) or just finding interesting stuff in general (Ice VOLCANO BOIS). 

This could also tie into colonization; Geysers could be used as potential sources of geothermal energy for colonies but only if you had known the lay of the land decades beforehand and perfected systems for it. If not then you're stuck with nukes or solar. 

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Yeah, I think it's just to look better. 

However, I hope for proper axial tilt in the game. I mean, it has to be done if these binary planets are going to orbit around each other with some inclination. They seem to be tidally locked, but I highly doubt they're gonna just move near the equator.

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3 hours ago, nubeees said:

Several people have mentioned the day/night terminator on Duna in the trailer (or what looks to be Duna) is sideways, with the polar ice cap pointed directly at the sun.

Any theories as to what's happening here? Rendering error in the trailer? Kraken attack? A giant impact? Ike does seem to be missing from the camera shot, afterall.

Screen-Shot-2019-08-19-at-2.45.37-PM-640x400.png

Most people consider this to not be duna but we do get some kind of look at duna:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-3.png

You can tell with the Ike in the background

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2 hours ago, Goody1981 said:

Surely an effect/rendering error ... otherwise the ice caps would be in a different place!

This was my original assumption-- they shifted the sun angle for lighting but left the planet in its original orientation.

 

14 minutes ago, Nightside said:

It’s obviously  a tidally locked planet with a dry salty lakebed facing the sun.

I really like this theory!

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8 hours ago, Nightside said:

It’s obviously  a tidally locked planet with a dry salty lakebed facing the sun.

:) fun idea, and yes it might well be in another star system. 
Ship in foreground is an Orion, and it looks like the bomb magazine is oversized being longer than the entire engine. 

Perhaps they add that into game now :) 

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Icecaps cannot form anywhere else than on the poles, so that image is just plain wrong - that way the caps would just holahoop around the equator day in and day out - though I am pretty sure they did that on purpose.

That intro video.... its not supposed to be in-game graphycs, right? Just a promo developed for the occasion. Or is it?

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17 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

Icecaps cannot form anywhere else than on the poles, so that image is just plain wrong - that way the caps would just holahoop around the equator day in and day out - though I am pretty sure they did that on purpose.

That intro video.... its not supposed to be in-game graphycs, right? Just a promo developed for the occasion. Or is it?

Yep. So just a small (though large effect) error in the video. To get a nice image, they thought "oh, the shadow would look nice here" without checking if it's possible, or the correct direction.

PS, looks like "scene lighting", which assumes the sun/light to be above the scene/layout/image. Thus not to the right/left as in real life (from that angle, not from universal spatial co-ordinates ;) ). So they put a planet in the render engine, and forgot to "move" the sun from being above it. XD

Edited by Technical Ben
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So I thought about this.... if they had extreme axial tilt, maybe this could work. If the planet was inclined 90 degrees to the ecliptic (sort of the opposite of Uranus, which has a low inclination, but large axial tilt), then during the extreme winter of 1 pole, an ice cap could form. If it was thick enough, it might be a glacier, and spend all summer melting.

I don't think that is what is going on here, but its an interesting thought... but then you'd expect the ice to melt slowest along the terminator, but maybe if the ice was thickest at the glacial cap it would all be sequestered there?... I doubt it would work, but that's my best attempt at explaining it

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2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

So I thought about this.... if they had extreme axial tilt, maybe this could work. If the planet was inclined 90 degrees to the ecliptic (sort of the opposite of Uranus, which has a low inclination, but large axial tilt), then during the extreme winter of 1 pole, an ice cap could form. If it was thick enough, it might be a glacier, and spend all summer melting.

I don't think that is what is going on here, but its an interesting thought... but then you'd expect the ice to melt slowest along the terminator, but maybe if the ice was thickest at the glacial cap it would all be sequestered there?... I doubt it would work, but that's my best attempt at explaining it

If reflected on the surface as we are say, roving on it, this would be awesome.
It certainly would make the world unique.

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They have some pretty good advisers and are all smart folks. Perhaps this was put in there just to mess with everyone and get them talking...

 

A good promotion would be a contest: Come up with most plausible and/or Kerbal explanation for odd planet.  Winner gets free game.  Right now, I would vote for @Nightside

Edited by Klapaucius
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1 hour ago, Klapaucius said:

They have some pretty good advisers and are all smart folks. Perhaps this was put in there just to mess with everyone and get them talking...

 

A good promotion would be a contest: Come up with most plausible and/or Kerbal explanation for odd planet.  Winner gets free game.  Right now, I would vote for @Nightside

Ooh, I have another one: 

This lets the icecaps point north/south. we are seeing a partial lunar eclipse by a much larger body on a moon with a very elliptical orbit.

Both sun and eclipsing planet are directly behind camera.

edit:

therefore 3/4 of the planet surface is in shadow.

Edited by Nightside
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Being an animated trailer, the main intent is to show the game's existence and to hint - more or less subtly - at what will be in the game. One of the most important things in presenting a soon-to-be-released product: Make it look good. People will dismiss your product if it doesn't look promising. First glance matters a lot.

Lighting "errors" are conscious decisions, the animators felt it adds to the atmosphere or otherwise contributes positively to the way the scene looks. These "errors" actually occur throughout the entire trailer.

For instance: the planet seen at the very end (the ringed one) shows a near vertical terminator, so on the moon the sun should be near setting/rising.
Nope, the ratio between building height and shadows is nearly 1:1 - 45°, not really what I'd consider to be a sunset.

But these lighting conditions make both the planet and the moon look better respectively, so they went with it instead of a realistic light approach.

Edited by Delay
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Perhaps the sun is just sideways?

.... /s

I'm taking notice of all the space clouds in the back, and thinking this may be in a nebulea? The nearby space clouds are lit only from the top, whereas the distant background clouds are lit diffusely from the back.  If it's a stellar nursery, perhaps there's an interesting nearby feature temporarily lighting the otherwise nighttime side of Duna? Sounds good anyways! Gonna wreak havoc on the orbits though....

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I'm kinda hoping this isn't just a dramatic cinematic piece for the trailer, but in-fact a hint at some sort of kerb-tastic catastrophic story-line within career mode. Perhaps Jeb accidentally de-orbiting Ike, giving cause for the kerbals to flee the kerbol system for interstellar space in search of a new home.

 

I actually would really like some sort of accompanying story-line to play through through-out the career mode to give more meaning to the things I'm doing. 

Edited by Rpatto92
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It seems that folks at Star*Theory have finally implemented n-body physics in KSP2. They didn't take into account that the Kerbolar system is quite unstable, however, so when they took their fancy new interstellar spaceship for a 100,000 ly spin around the galactic neighborhood, they returned home just in time to see Duna being ejected from the system at a high inclination over Kerbol after a 455-hole gravity assist from Jool.

Pretty straightforward if you ask me.

Edited by Yakuzi
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