Randox

My parents used to have a car with a limiter, but the speed limit was set at 180 km/h, so not typically really a concern. I think the limit was there because by the time you hit that speed, you're really pushing the handling of most vehicles (this one included) to the limit, and driving in anything but a strait line is really taking your life into your own hands for most people at that speed. If you were to try to drive really fast, you'd probably find that many cars do have speed governors, they're just set at speeds no sane person who isn't trying to figure out if they have a governor would drive at. Once you get into the spots cars, those probably disappear altogether, but these cars are also made to be able to do 200 km/h without flying off the road. Or maybe they stopped putting in the speed governors. I don't really know.

Small digression... Throw Ubisoft on that list. Ubisoft is unfortunately an incredibly talented game developer, and I am 100% convinced that the company has never done anything that wasn't backed by a positive cost benefit analysis. In particular, they are notorious for not even acknowledging bugs in their game once the initial sales boom dies down (and I think banning people from their forums who get too insistent that bugs do infact exist). Once you give them your money, they are no longer interested in any kind of customer service, yet they still make piles of money because they are consistently a top developer who turns out nothing but top notch games. I never even heard of Star Wars Galaxies until after Sony was done destroying it, though I did find a screenshot of it, and it looks pretty nice even by modern standards, and incredible by the standards of the time.

For sure. Twallan is the only reason my primary game hasn't long since folded in on itself as a mangled pile of bugs and crashing (my primary save is 200+ hours across 4 save files and growing), and a lot of the features he added are fantastic. Oh, and I tallied up the Steam Hardware Survey results for August. 64 bit systems account for 76.01% of windows operating systems surveyed, which does leave a massive market chunk out of the picture. I do think though that with SSD's becoming cheap and large at the same time, now would be a good time to get more 64 bit games out there. I think without the cheap SSD's it was always impractical because of the absolutely crippling load times you would get with large games, but I think all the technology is in place now.

I think EA got stuck between a rock and a hard place. A sizeable portion of the market is still using 32 bit systems that can't possibly run a 64 bit program, which means Sims 4 will only have the benefit of more powerful processors and GPU's, not more RAM. The problem is that Sims 3 is already bashing into that limit head on, and to make Sims 4 a prettier game than Sims 3 will require larger assets that require more RAM, which EA doesn't have. So, there are a bunch of features, like the open world, and apparently water (actually does make sense. Water is expensive for computers), that had to go because they needed to find a way to free up RAM. Other limitations are probably a result of the rampant bug issues with Sims 3. And I do mean rampant. The bugs in that game will literally errode the stability of your save files over time, and it takes a suite of mods to both combat the effect and deal with the damage to keep older save files from crashing all the time. I still move from town to town via clipboard from time to time to get my families into new, clean, and stable save files when the hours start getting to them. So they have found themselves stuck between market share and a feasible system on which to create the game, and it's a problem I expect to see more of over the next year or two as people finish moving over to 64 bit systems, and hopefully getting large SSD's for their games (I've not donethis yet) to avoid crippling loading times.

I went to a few when I was younger. Actually, quite a few. Many of them were only day camps, but a good number where week long, stay in a cabin or whatever type camps. Honestly, it's some of the best fun I've ever had in my life, speaking as a reserved introvert. I think a week is all I would typically be good for, since I do eventually need a break from people, and there are certainly times when I would like to have some more down time, but by and large the experiences were always worth some inconveniences. A couple of the best camps I've ever been two were two scout Jamborees, just because of the massive variety of things you get to do. I've had opportunities to meet professionals I never could have met otherwise, and become friends with people from cultures I would never normally be exposed to. I can't say I loved absolutely every camp I ever attended, but I would absolutely do it all over again in a heart beat. Most of the camps I've been to had a focus. A fair few are scouting camps (by far the best is fantasy camp, where you spend an entire day playing real life D&D). I've also done stuff like computer camps, or rock climbing, or band camp. It's not like a whole bunch of random kids get thrown together and do random stuff. Almost every time there was some common factor. We were there because we shared common interests, or were training for the same sport. For bonus points, I was always in fantastic shape by the end of summer.

I'm happy to get a more powerful RCS port, even if it is mono directional. A bit more power for forward and reverse would be quite welcome for docking.

No matter how fast they ported, this was never going to be released anytime soon after it was for the old consoles. The timing was pretty much perfect to encourage everyone who doesn't want to wait a year to buy it on the old systems, and hopefully buy it again for the new consoles or PC for the better performance. Certainly not idea from a consumer perspective, but this is the most expensive game ever made, and they'll want to see a matching return on investment. I am hoping that they did take this time to do a quality port. I think that the new consoles being more similar to PC's probably works in the PC's favor this time if nothing else, though PC ports (any type of computer) are still the hardest because you don't know exactly what the end user hardware is going to be.

I don't see an issue. In fact, I am grateful that there are people out there who would be willing to make that one way trip. There are plenty of reasons someone might want to go, or not have a reason to stay, and their sacrifice would earn them a place in history and help pave the way for our future. Scientific progress isn't always safe. At least they would be going into it with some understanding of the danger ahead of time, as volunteers.

Might enjoy this video explaining and demonstrating gyroscopes. Pretty short too:

Particularly with the docking camera, I find the intercepts harder, or at least more time consuming, than the docking. I have perpetualy bad timing, particularly around Kerbin, so I'm often stuck in orbit several times after circularizing waiting until I can plan out a good intercept. Then there was the period of time where I forgot about circularizing after intercepting (I'd create an intercept orbit than try to dock without recircularization). I can dock like that, at least with smaller ships. It's a lot faster to circularize first, and a lot more relaxed.

I don't see performance being the point. A larger pipeline is useful, but it's an enabler more than anything. It allows you to pass through more data, but the real challenge is building better and faster hardware. Memory allows you do more though. Not just a bigger level, but substantially more detail. It dictates how many NPC's can be in the area, how many objects, how much of the area around you is actually simulated. In a really open game, this can become crippling once you can see past the simulated area. Look at Skyrim. Aside from simulating a criminally small area of the world (limited for the consoles), the loading screens. With the full potential of a 32 bit system, there is no reason for the major cities to not be part of the open world. With 64 bit memory, and interior meshes that are the same size as their exteriors, there is no reason for anything not to be in the open world. No loading screens. None. With more VRAM can make more detailed textures, or have more on the screen at once (or both). With more memory, you don't have to try so hard to slice the world up into carefully controlled chunks. I imagine that once we start to see say, the 64bit open world games, older games are going to feel very small. The problem is that across multiple genres, games have been pushed to their limits so hard that we can now see the memory limitations. If you want to have a game with an actual, truly grand battle, or an open world game that really feels like an open world, you need to have more memory. As a big fan of the very open world type of game, this potential gets me excited.

Yeah, same as websites that have to be able to at least deal with people who arrive at them using something like Internet Explorer 6. It's a pain to develop something for both 32 bit and 64 bit, so without any natural backwards compatibility, most developers are still waiting to make that particular plunge. On the upside, the new consoles are 64 bit and 8GB unified memory, with architecture more like a PC than their predecessors. As it applies to this discussion, a game written to take advantage of that memory would be impossible to port to a 32 bit system, but they might still port for 64 bit. That's my hope at least. That the consoles will drag the PC gaming market kicking and screaming into 2007-2009 (or thereabouts).

Tried my first game on hard. I had 4 people left after the first winter. Second game on medium is going much better. Learned to pay attention to food when you are taking people from food production for other tasks. Went into a famine that lasted 2 years, though only a couple people died. I've pretty much exhausted all the natural resources in walking distance. Forestry is going fine, though I might need a third one soon to keep people warm. The quarry is very slow, so I'm thinking I need education sooner rather than later, and I anticipate mining being the same. Also trying to get that town center up and running. Being able to track resources and usage better would be very helpful for planning, and anticipating resource shortages.

Sort of I suppose. I don't send unmanned missions first unless an unmanned mission is the point. I am familiar enough with data lookup and some of the calculations that I can be pretty certain that a ship can do something like return to orbit, and in cases where I am not certain (such as my upcoming flight test on Duna), I have a contingency plan laid out, and everything I need will be in the Duna system with me in the event a manned mission might become stranded. My biggest problem are design oversight and building flaws. Before something is used on an interplanetary mission, I use Kerbin, Minmus, and the Mun as a proving ground. I can simulate an inter planet jump, landing in various situations, aero braking and so on. The idea is to see if I forgot anything, see how the ship performs, and find any design or construction flaws.

Ignoring gravity and atmospheres, the total amount a ship can accelerate is constant. If you are say, fighting gravity on your way to orbit than it does matter. Gravity is applying acceleration to your ship, so the faster you can escape gravity, the less time gravity has to act on you (the further away from the source you are, the weaker gravity becomes). So with no atmosphere on a planet, your most efficient throttle setting to get into orbit is 100% (not strait up, you should still gravity turn). If you want an easy way to see this, think about hovering. To hover a craft above the surface (in this case hover means you are not moving laterally relative to the surface either), you have to continuously apply thrust, so you are always consuming fuel but not moving. In an atmosphere, efficiency is detected (in this game) by terminal velocity. The velocity at which an object in freefall will be in equilibrium between the force of gravity pulling it down, and air resistance pushing it up. In this game, a craft moving at terminal velocity is experiencing the smallest amount of air resistance possible at that altitude. Slower means you are fighting gravity more than you need to, and faster means you are fighting the air more than you need to. If you check out this, they have a table that shows the terminal velocity for Kerbin (and you can find similar tables for the other planets). Follow this table during ascent as best you can, and combined with a gravity turn starting at 10km, you'll be getting into orbit with the minimum fuel required.

Seeing some really nice flags. This is the one I use: Sometime when I am feeling adventurous I might try putting a background on the flag. I like the emblem though.

My new space program seems to be built out of defective pieces. Both my current tug (which forms most of my Kethane miner on Minmus) and the orbital refinery have problems with their RCS systems that have resulted in minor damage to the station. Tomorrow I will be launching a replacement refinery to Minmus which will be establishing an even higher orbit. After that I will launch a newer, slightly heavier tug (bigger and fixed RCS system, more SAS power, improved IVA visibility) which will carry with it a crew return vessel for the extra crew I am accumulating at Minmus right now. The old space station and tug are to be mothballed. I'll be sending along a remote control pod so I can activate the thing in an emergency, and sending it up to a higher orbit so it wont be in the way. Assuming I get some craft that work into this program, I want to finally try out the Kethane jet engines, which means I'm sending an expedition to Duna I think. Ike will have to do for Kethane mining and I'd like to do my first tests on a planet where I already have a ship that will be on hand that can land and ascend from Duna with very little modification (it will need to attach a hitch hiker with some landing gear). Fun day planned out.

I usually use a single tug to bring in the heavy loads. I don't send payloads directly to a station from launch, because by the time I rig the payload to be rendezvous capable I might as well just add docking capability as well. Instead, I use retrieval tugs which start at 33 tonnes (the standard for a tug that can go from Minmus to Kerbin and tow a payload back to Minmus). Since the tugs need refueling anyway, I top them up periodically to keep moving the CoM forward rather than backward. I also normally keep a small RCS boat (just rcs thrusters attached to rcs fuel) which can move ship pieces around (constructing and arranging space stations or multipart ships) at fuel stations. Sometimes I attach it to the back of a payload for the last 100m or so to make things easier.

Restarted a Kethane program since I haven't been playing much this version. First order of business was to harvest Minmus. The miner has serious design flaws coming from both my poor memory and getting cute in the design. The hardpoints don't transfer fuel on their own apparently, so it's 3 manual refuels if the side tanks run dry. God help you if there isn't enough in the central reserve to fill all 3 back up (balance issues). Also, because the mini refinery is on a nacelle, all the fuel has to be moved from the tank it's sitting on. The order of the day is a new top section with fuel lines which should make the fuel flow work much better and largely solve both issues (it doesn't need to refine in flight so it's not biggie). A more pressing concern is that the last time I did it, I was mining in a lake. Considering that I am now mining the hills, going from 6 legs to 3 legs seems less like removing excessive mass and more like penny pinching bureaucracy. For as long as I use that miner (I have another payload I'll be sending with the replacement top half, so I'll be using the 3 legs for a while), I need to make sure I put one leg down the slope. Also some potential to use the Lazor tractor beams as a landing stability system. This miner hit the ground at 1.3 m/s and it was barely able to stay upright.

Of course we have enough parachutes. Let's land!

My launchers are pretty standard. I tend to build to a certain range, and everything leaving Kerbin is usually destined either for a medium-high Kerbin orbit, or strait to minimus where my staging area lives (Kethane mining). For ship design, I mostly use my orbital tugs as a fleet backbone. It's a very capable yet slightly minimalist design. On their own, they move payloads from planet to moon and back (or moon to moon), usually with the understanding that they require refueling at each end of a trip. The idea is that if a mission discovers an unanticipated need, rather than send out a new ship to take over, I can often just design a new module the existing ship can use and send that out.

The most common one for me are mishandling heavy lifter rockets. It's usually a problem when the net TWR reaches north of 2.5 (I've had launches where the payload was much lighter and the rockets go north of 4). At that point, the difference in TWR on the boosters and main rocket become so great that the boosters decide this is all very unfair and split, often with explosive results when I forget to throttle down to keep everything together.

I've landed with a Kerbal on the ladder once before. Messed up a rendezvous (read: accidentally ejected an engine) and ended up with an extra passenger on another craft. It depends on how well your craft can autoland (will it spiral out of control with the engines running and no input) and how comfortable you are switching to the Kerbal a lot during landing. You'll have to constantly control the EVA and move the Kerbal back up the ladder or they're gonna fall off, which means your lander is going to be descending, engines on, and you aren't going to be controlling it a lot of the time. You're also going to need a lot of fuel to keep it to a safe speed (you need to slow down before you deploy chutes). I doubt you could do it with more than one, maybe two per ladder though. They slide pretty fast once the engines are running, and you will need to be able to control the lander for at least a two or three seconds at a time to make adjustments and switch back without them falling off. If you have six, you'd be better off trying to establish a circular orbit and sending another ship to rescue them.

I usually aim for two on any given module that uses them. It's a standard that I find easy to work with and combine. I try not to be overly wasteful, but I'm not here to build fuel sipping econo rockets either. If that means my 100T or less interplanetary package has 4 or 6 LV-N's, that just means my burns are that much more awesome. If I ever need more than one pass to complete a burn, that is entirely unacceptable to me. I want all my burns to be shorter than my average Kerbin takeoff, which puts the ceiling someplace around 12 minutes. Without time compression.

Fun times. The computer parts came, so it's now rocking a new PSU and HD 7950. The parts fit better than I expected, but the PSU has a lot of very long cables. On the surface, a good thing, but they are all bundled up in my case above the GPU (which thanks to the case design, puts the GPU fan facing up), so I imagine the air flow is extremely restricted in the top third of the case right now. This will need testing, and a new case might be coming in the next few months. The ever popular books made their rounds this year, so many hours of reading ahead of me. Always good. I also now own the Star Trek version of Settlers of Catan and Klingon Monopoly (neither of which I was aware of being a thing), some star wars Mr. Potato Heads, and a really nice blender. Add in some money and whatever else I have forgotten, and it was a pretty good year. For bonus points, it started snowing on Christmas Eve and continued through Christmas day, creating a white Christmas the likes of which has only happened one other time for me in living memory (where everything is snow covered when you wake up, and it snows during the day). Just absolutely gorgeous. Also had the grandparents out, and dinner at my brothers place with some of my sister in laws family joining us as well. So yeah, definitely a top 3 Christmas at the very least.