JoeSchmuckatelli

Lucky for them it was China. In the States you need to do advanced PR about OPFOR so the locals don't start spray painting "Wolverines" on everything (OPFOR only carry blanks!)

I think there is a significant difference between internally playable for testing builds and anything resembling an internal alpha. From my reading of people who have game writing experience (and from a brief turn of hand at modding Battlefields' Desert Warfare maps and Max Payne maps) its pretty easy to have small chunks that are playable within the studio and still be quite a ways from calling it an alpha ready game. The term itself denotes a level of completeness that I don't associate with needing a year (or more) development time. Needing that much time indicates that a core feature isn't game ready - and yet they're not ready to accept that whatever feature they are trying to horn in (multi-player) just won't work. Prediction: either they solve the problem in the year - or the year gives them a chance to say that they gave it their best shot (and it just won't work), thereby reducing criticism from the people who want that feature

Playing OPFOR is about the most fun you can have during military training exercises. In the Marines we used to call this 'turning your blouse inside out'. (The over-shirt worn by military troops is called a 'blouse' - not to be confused with 'blousing your boots' which is tucking trouser legs into an elastic band so they look tucked into the boots). By turning the blouse around you give a visually different look to people wearing the same uniform. (The camouflage dye is brightest on the outside of the garment). Getting to play OPFOR - you no longer have to 'play by the rules' (aka your own doctrine) and get to do creative, even mean things to mess up the training unit's plan. All 'uniformity' went out the window. Do-Rags, Boonie Covers, bare heads - all of the thing that careerist officers and staff NCO's hate - they got to be worn while playing OPFOR. The good thing for the training unit is that they're forced into having to deal with the unexpected. This is notably different from the 'professional' OPFOR employed by the military (these 'turn the blouse around' situations are done in-unit whenever needed to enhance training). On the professional side; we do employ people who use the uniforms and equipment and sometimes language of potential adversaries, as well as 'in-character non-combatants' to help soldiers and Marines train for real-world scenarios on a messy battlefield.

I think expecting anything new so soon after the most recent "tear the band-aid off -again" video is wishful thinking. They effectively acknowledged that KSP2 isn't anywhere close to being ready for Alpha much less Beta testing... so, my inclination is to believe they will actually slow down releases of information to lower the hype temp. (We were getting pretty hyped there for a while). They may start bringing back the tempo once they believe they've solved the problems that adding multiplayer is causing and they're getting closer to an actually predictable release date.

Country of origin? Chinese civilian called police?

Funny guy.

It's going to be a Kerbal-themed candy crush-like gambling phone game with in-app purchases Because money

The Webb team recently completed the first test to track a moving object. The test verified that Webb could conduct moving target science! As we move forward through commissioning, we will test other objects moving at various speeds to verify we can study objects with Webb that move throughout the solar system. (From the Blog) They're planning to image planets, moons and other satellites, asteroids, KBOs and comets within our solar system as well as exoplanets, distant galactic objects and other galaxies. (I was afraid from something I'd read that they'd not look closer than other stars).

Supersonic passenger jet flight in your (near) future - or will it be FTL? https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/bombardier-confirms-launch-of-global-8000/index.html Failure to Launch

Oh - and one of the problems people have when trying to picture the Big Bang is imagining it from the outside. Like at some point an imaginary observer could have seen an infitesimally small, impossibly dense point of light that exploded outward creating the universe. We then imagine all the 'stuff' flying out into space forming stars and galaxies etc. That is apparently a very wrong way to think of it. There was never a way to see it from the outside. (let that wrinkle your brain for a bit!)

@Ariggeldiggel Expansion is an interesting topic - and subject of fierce debate by cosmologists: https://www.science.org/content/article/recharged-debate-over-speed-expansion-universe-could-lead-new-physics Non-uniform expansion: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/universe-s-expansion-may-not-be-the-same-in-all-directions.html The old belief / assumption was that the expansion had to be uniform - but we keep finding 'structures' (massive, gravitationally bound clusters and filaments of galaxies that force us to change those perceptions: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/science/astronomy-galaxies-attractor-universe.amp.html If you really want to dig in, you will find that while the Cold Dark Matter theory has been successful in describing large scale structures - the model is not without its problems: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07790&ved=2ahUKEwjSwtWkl_j3AhWwIjQIHbnPDdMQFnoECDAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1LJtnkRU_TGs6HA5Knnk8h

I see the likelihood of all currently available (non-mod) features being readily available as part of KSP2. At a minimum, the features developed through the years (placeable science, programmable parts, etc) will be things that the current fans expect as core features of Vanilla KSP2. (I also expect some things that originated as mods being integrated features in KSP2). That said; I also expect that in the years following release, good ideas will manifest and they'll add DLC for us to keep up our interest in the game and extend the lifetime of the title.

This is SLS we are talking about. The PDF likely shows all the dates SLS won't fly.

The first probe sent to orbit Uranus should be named the "Reilly M".

On another note (albeit related to something I posted above) I'm a huge fan of absurdist humor and effective sarcasm. I'm always a bit stymied by people who 'don't get it' and especially by those who 'get offended' by what I recognize as clearly a joke. This is exceptionally notable in textual contexts (forums, etc.) and frankly I've been quite guilty of using absurdism and sarcasm as a stand-in for a fast, impromptu intelligence test. People who 'get it' are clearly smart... and those who don't? Well, that's part of the fun. Sadly, this is sometimes seen as 'trolling' - even though it is not. (Well, not always). Part of this comes from my appreciation of dry humor, and especially Monty Python. How Absurd Comedy Works - The Cheeky Monkey (cheekymonkeycomedy.com) I won't repost my 'sarcasm as humor' links above, but I did find this Harvard article that does give some advice on when and where to use it: Sarcasm, Self-Deprecation, and Inside Jokes: A User’s Guide to Humor at Work (hbr.org)

Primed, likely by the "Pink Floyd" comment, but as soon as I read this... I heard:

That was well done One of those scenes that I watched and then afterwards thought 'yeah, I guess that would work!' ... Elegant

The one on the left

One.

Perhaps it's time to suspend the thread? Kind of hard to maintain hype when, two years after the announcement trailer gets your hype up you get a new 'we hope to release the game this time next year' (hopefully, maybe) announcement. (not that I'm holding anything against them - I trust the dev team knows what they are doing and the product will be great... It's just that hype is now in cryogenic stasis)

...is not a phrase I read often. So to stay on topic - will you expand, describe the purpose of the game engine, the difficulties faced and how the book (see what I did there, @Gargamel?!?) could have helped you in this?

Due to Voyager's interstellar location, it takes light 20 hours and 33 minutes to travel one way ... I already posted about this yesterday - and this morning realized that it's a fun fact as well as science news (related article posted in the Science News thread)

Due to Voyager's interstellar location, it takes light 20 hours and 33 minutes to travel one way https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/18/world/nasa-voyager-1-issue-scn/index.html Amazingly the spacecraft is still functional, but they're getting weird readings from the antenna positioning indicator... Despite that, the signal is still 'strong'.

Can't argue with anything you write - and that's kind of the thing... Just a pure refresh of the original would be a phenomenal undertaking without the added features... But with everything they're hinting at, Holy Schnikes!

My worry is too much feature creep. Is KSP2 a modern refresh of the classic with added features? Is KSP2 a massively multi-player online collaborative space game? Is it a resource management game that allows you to build your own space ships? Or... ...is it trying to be all of those things?