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Sat in a Physics lecture


sporkafife

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Sat in a Physics lecture at University and I can overhear a group of other students discussing the new 0.22 update :)

Gotta love knowing there's other people in my class that play this epic game, if you are in my instrumentation systems module and also on this forum, I'm sure you know who you are ;)

P.s. they were also discussing Jeb's awesomeness.

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I was sitting in Modeling Methods lab reading the forums and looking at user submitted spacecraft. After a few minutes I had about 15 people around my computer like I had nude women on it. I imagine this could only happen in a STEM class, but it was still awesome people asking about Kerbal by just seeing some screen shots.

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Haha, that's awesome.

About a month ago on the 20th I was at my gf's apartment and was on the couch playing ksp on my laptop. Well her roommates bf walks in and see's me playing and goes "No way, you play KSP?!" I say "Ya its my favorite game, do you play?"

Well he ends up going back home to grab his laptop and comes back to show me his space program. It was pretty awesome though he uses alot more mods than I. Unite 2013 was that same day so we had a long conversation about what Harvester's talked about with KSP and Unity. It was an awesome surprise to meet someone in person that loves the games just as much as I do.

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would the teacher flip out at the lack of really physics in this game ?

That made very little sense, but I guess you mean "would a physicist be appalled by the unrealistic modelling used in this game?" In fact, KSP is a really good model. Of course it doesn't use n-body approximations, but that's not actually that important and for the purpose of the KSP model using such approximations would likely make it less accurate. For it's purpose, it's a very good model.

Currently sat in a thermodynamics lecture discussing adiabatic systems :)

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As a college professor teaching 200-level physics and 100-level astronomy...

Yeah, KSP is fairly awesome.

The biggest problems I have at this point (remember, still not release-ready) is the lack of heating effects and aerodynamics. A patched-conic approximation for orbits is wonderful; it's all you need unless they added a "double-planet" or Lagrange points. A few weeks ago I downloaded the 0.21 demo... within two weeks my 200-level students were doing a Kerbal-based lab, calculating the thrust of the LV-909 based on the measured performance, taking the changing (and unknown) mass of the spacecraft into account, demonstrating the impulse approximation, calculating the mass of Kerbal itself based on the measured orbital properties, and doing the calculation for a transfer orbit (no, I did not tell them about, or let them use, the maneuver nodes).

Yeah, as a teacher, and physicist... I like it.

It wasn't even hard to set up a lab (set up and copied a saved game, so they wouldn't need to do a launch... fun, but not needed for the lab). I need to figure out how to author tutorials, so I don't have to keep restoring 'normal' games for the next lab.

--

Brian Davis

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As a college professor teaching 200-level physics and 100-level astronomy...

Yeah, KSP is fairly awesome.

The biggest problems I have at this point (remember, still not release-ready) is the lack of heating effects and aerodynamics. A patched-conic approximation for orbits is wonderful; it's all you need unless they added a "double-planet" or Lagrange points.

<snip>

Yeah, as a teacher, and physicist... I like it.

Yes! I found the comment wondering if a physicist would be "appalled" at the physics implementation in the game hilarious. As if physicists just walk around all day scoffing at everything they see everywhere. Usually physicists are the ones playing with games and toys, not scoffing at them due to "imperfect" models - physics has a proud history of fun-loving forebearers (Feynman is an obvious example).

I would have LOVED to have KSP when I was learning physics the first time around. I've taken whole tests about things like orbital mechanics and delta-v (and passed them), but have to say that I haven't really conceptualized what it MEANS until playing KSP.

I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

And even the inaccuracies are a place for education - once you get used to the model as it is, then you could have a whole additional lesson on "how would this be different if the model implemented aerodynamics differently? Or why is it that a patched-conics model can't approximate lagrange points?" Imperfection is a fact of life, and can be learned from as easily as perfection.

-Sam

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Yes! I found the comment wondering if a physicist would be "appalled" at the physics implementation in the game hilarious. As if physicists just walk around all day scoffing at everything they see everywhere. Usually physicists are the ones playing with games and toys, not scoffing at them due to "imperfect" models - physics has a proud history of fun-loving forebearers (Feynman is an obvious example).

-snip-

-Sam

Another physicist over here!

I specialize in nano technology but regard astrophysics as a hobby.

Suuuuure, adding shock heating, and a (simplyfied) 3 body solver would make my day month, but I certainly am not going to let a 'work in progress' thing reduce my enjoyment of this wonderfully insane game!

I'm also from 'this' generation, I grew up with games!

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Yet another Physicist here! We get everywhere you know...

Current gravity model is pretty much fine, I can live without L-points, and as others have said only thing really missing is a better aerodynamics system. Also I'm currently doing a master's in Space Exploration Systems, and most of the core calculations that are done use exactly the same approximations as KSP. Of course final stuff account for various perturbations but back-of-the-envelope is where it's at.

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<--- Not a physicist

<--- Not an astronomer

<--- Not an engineer

Still love the game. Don't know anyone who actually play it. 2 of my coworkers are very interested, but don't play. They are afraid it will suck them in and take away all of their spare time..

They're probably right.

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I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand.

-Sam

Sorry, Sam - but I'm going to steal this quote and use it at work! I'm an avionics technician, and for training they teach us systems from a book. The way I see it, they can spend a day explaining something, or ten minutes showing you something. Your quote is so apt to my cause.

Anyway, as long as they see KSP for what it is, then there should be no need for people to make a dig at the physics engine. If it was true-to-life, then I think a lot of the fun would disappear. It's not a training platform, after all, and the insight it offers currently is more of a byproduct in my opinion.

Although, perhaps eventually modes might be introduced?

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Today, I took my laptop to school, and played a bit of KSP in recess time.

Most of my classmates said it looked stupid. ;.;

*Hugs.

don't worry when there working at Mcdonalds you be on mars... (also they have a very definite lack of taste....also what school do you go to that lest you have recess?)

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Today, I took my laptop to school, and played a bit of KSP in recess time.

Most of my classmates said it looked stupid. ;.;

*Hugs.

Everyone works on their own mindset, which allows them the opportunity to contribute in their own way to the betterment of all. That is how it should be done. Thinking there is only one way to do something is short-sighted and just plain silly.

That being said, ask your classmates how their efforts to be grade school PE teachers is feeling.

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I've showed an N1 flight test video to a couple of (female) friends about a week ago. They were absolutely enamored with the Kerbals. :) Oh, and they loved the rocket, too (thanks, BobCat! :)). I'll be inviting them over to my house to show them KSP in more detail. Oh, and they're management and admin students, very little scientific inclination.

Here in Poland the game is still pretty obscure, but I think it'll be really well received in my institute (I'm already spreading the word, and will bring it on a laptop when I get one). This being Physics, Astronomy and Applied Informatics institute, it's not that hard to guess. :) I've already got one astronomy student invited over, also for N1 demonstration, and either MIR or ISS (depending on how CSS will look at the time).

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I'm an astrophysicist. Believe me, we don't look down on KSP's physics model; it might still have a few flaky bits in it, but it's FAR closer to reality than anything else I've seen in a long time. If I were still teaching college physics, I'd be using KSP as a demonstration tool. The basic principles are sound, and it doesn't bog down the user in pointless detail, so any minor issues can be overlooked. (Plus, it's not like I'll be landing on Mars in reality any time soon.)

What's funny for me is that I visited my parents a couple weeks ago, and the relatives all came over for dinner one night. That's when I found out one of my high school-age cousins also plays KSP a lot, which of course led to us comparing photo albums and videos on my father's computer. The strange part came when the rest of the family started watching over our shoulders, which led to them watching YouTube clips of all the various things other people had come up with in this game. I don't think any of them had been aware this type of game even existed before that night, and they were just amazed to see that gamers could consider this sort of thing to be preferable to a mindless shooter.

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I'm an astrophysicist. Believe me, we don't look down on KSP's physics model; it might still have a few flaky bits in it, but it's FAR closer to reality than anything else I've seen in a long time. If I were still teaching college physics, I'd be using KSP as a demonstration tool. The basic principles are sound, and it doesn't bog down the user in pointless detail, so any minor issues can be overlooked. (Plus, it's not like I'll be landing on Mars in reality any time soon.)

What's funny for me is that I visited my parents a couple weeks ago, and the relatives all came over for dinner one night. That's when I found out one of my high school-age cousins also plays KSP a lot, which of course led to us comparing photo albums and videos on my father's computer. The strange part came when the rest of the family started watching over our shoulders, which led to them watching YouTube clips of all the various things other people had come up with in this game. I don't think any of them had been aware this type of game even existed before that night, and they were just amazed to see that gamers could consider this sort of thing to be preferable to a mindless shooter.

Ehhhh..... I think its more the fact that they dont realize that there gamers that exist that prefer this game. A lot of people have this mindset that gamers are all into guns and violence, thanks in part to the dino-media. Thanks to the ilk of CBS, NBC, ABC, and other alphabet soup "news" stations, people get the impression that any video game is just another shoot-em type of thing. What they fail to realize is that are actually intelligent people out there that would prefer to create rather than destroy. Thats what I've loved about KSP ever since I've gotten the game. The amount of things people come with, even using the stock parts, boggles the mind. Tack on the mods, and you get some pretty cool stuff. Some of that cool stuff happens to be the mods themselves. The learning about orbital mechanics is just a side bonus :P

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