trekkie_

say wha? aww yiss -

this is a horrible suggestion. hover engines aren't necessarily spinning blade fans pushing air. really, what's the point of having it not work in a vacuum? you could just choose to not use it in vacuum.

this

hover my pretties, hover!

The universe will be very much like the chain of life on earth. You will always have more prey animals than predators for example. That's why there's over 70 billion cows on earth. So we will probably have tons more primitive life than advanced life. For all we know, we're the only ones to ever get this far. Technology isn't necessarily created with tools and hands, it can be evolved. We have to realize that we are a natural result of universe physics, which means life, even life similar to us, will develop somewhere eventually. The problem with life is there are soo many criteria that must take place in a somewhat specific order for life to develop, thrive, and evolve. One thing we have to consider is that there may never be a way to go as fast as light, let alone faster. In the universe even the speed of light is rather slow compared to all the space. We may have to expect that even if life is out there, the universe is too vast for interstellar contact. And we're also moving throughout the galaxy. When dinosaurs were alive, the planet was on the other side of the galaxy. We could have already passed up an inhabited world before we evolved, and we'll both probably be extinct by the time it comes around again.

the issue with this concept is it tries to give the illusion of some profound meaning, where there is none. It's just a different perspective of how things move through the solar system, when we're used to just seeing the sun 'still'. Obviously, the universe is kind of like a fractal, in that you will see the same types of things and shapes repeating somewhat from the small scale to the largest scale. What I'd really be more interested in seeing is the path the galaxies take through the universe.

you can definitely run models with thousands of poly's, but KSP generally entails building things out of dozens of parts, all with their own poly counts. simple mesh colliders help with performance, but the GPU still has to draw those models. I see plenty of people get lag well below a reasonable part count with certain mods. it's not so much an issue running a detailed part with stock parts, because stock parts are really low poly. but running tons of high poly mods together can be taxing. plus, there's the memory foot print to consider too. I generally like to keep models well under 1MB. although with 64-bit the memory foot print issue isn't as important as it used to be.

I was thinking that, but also thinking static bases. I wanted to put a static water base with a docking port to land on and transfer resources.

do these static parts have the capability to say, have a docking node and configs?

at this point you might as well make the model for him lol. But there's also a LOT of 3d models out there on the net. So if you're not really a good modeler, maybe you'd be better off starting with reworking existing models into the game. You'll also learn quite a bit about how things are done by observing existing models of things. I personally think the circular indents could be better done with normal/displacement/bump maps. Easier on resources. Keep in mind you don't have to copy something exactly, you can add your own twists to it, for example, the indents could be more easily done with the opposite of an indent, an extrude, with a bump map. OR you can actually just use an extrude bump map on the rest of the sphere, and it will give the illusion that the circular areas are indented. To create a sphere that doesn't have any artifacts from boolean rendering, requires well over a 2000 face sphere, which is quite a lot of faces just to have 3 circular indents in an object. We don't only want people to use our mods or make them look great, we want them to be able to run well enough, because people build stuff with lots of parts and that adds up. You basically want to keep the entire scene in the game below 100,000 poly's. but let's say you add ten 1000 poly parts, then five 5000 poly parts.....that quickly adds up, and that's only 15 parts in total, not including the rest of the game like planets and vabs and their textures, etc. You don't want people to not use your mod because they can barely run it well.

rockets produce thrust because the pressure pushes off the bell curve. what you basically get is molecules bumping off of it at high pressure and heat, producing a force against the inside of the exhaust area. it's like when you blow up a balloon, the air pushes against the insides, outwards, and causes it to expand. except the rocket is open ended. of course, there is a lot of energy loss because not all the exhaust gets turned into usable thrust. as for how an engine fires up, the most simple explanation without getting overly complicated is there are these really really strong liquid pumps that pump both the fuel and oxidizer into a chamber where they either ignite on contact or are ignited through some other means, like electrical or a third party catalyst chemical. and as for the steps needed before maneuvers, well that's highly dependent on the maneuver and the design of the craft. there's always a lot of checks and heating stuff up, etc. But for the most part, astronauts don't really fly things by hand, pre-programming does a lot of that. mostly all an astronaut has to do is make sure the ship is good to go for the maneuver.

want?

The logistics of such a society are rather impossible. But think about it, Imagine a world full of machines that do everything. Does everyone get a boat if they want? do they all have to settle for the same type or size? who decides what their home is like or how much land they get to live on and where. there's soo many things a person could want, there'd have to be limits because resources simply aren't unlimited and supply changes at a moments notice. I mean heck even star trek with their fancy replicators who could refuel years worth in a day, still rations them. Even though they have gotten rid of money, built robots, etc....they still do a lot of work. so really the only way such a society could exist is in a world where everyone has a hive like purpose and rid of self comforts and personal wants.....which is really more horrifying than noble. such a society would be rather bland, even if they do have cool tech. the only freedom you'd truly have is to choose to be an outcast and do nothing with your life....and even that may not be allowable. you could never have a society where machines do everything where people pursue their own personal interests. Imagine for a second electricity was completely free today....you might still use the same amount, but the guy down the street might start using 10 times that. Imagine the strain on the already existing system, even if it was free. Their burden to deliver and keep the power going would grow higher and higher.....and the same applies to a future where machines do everything. when you can just order something from a machine for free, everyone will have to be on board to not abuse it otherwise there simply won't be enough resources available in X span of time. Machines can only mine a finite amount of resources in a given amount of time. it will be very hard to do away with money, because it's actually one of the few things that limits our resource usage. don't have the money, can't expend it. We'd all be using 100x or more resources if we could just tell a machine to make anything for us without cost. But at the same time, the limits themselves are a serious problem, because that means some serious concessions in lifestyle and freedoms. Sure you'll have the freedom to a roof over your head and more than enough food to sustain you.....but so did many slaves. We would be slaves to ideology. But let's go back to the star trek comparison. You often see earth, people go out to eat at capt. cisko's dad's restaurant.......how are they paying if they abolished money? if they're not paying, then he's just running a restaurant to feed people for free, for the fun of it. And I mean these people have replicators in every home that can make anything they want, they don't even need to go out, and he doesn't even need to cook them food. who even decides he can even have his restaurant located where it is? Now think of all those fancy city apartments on earth you see here and there in a few episodes.....who decides who lives in what apartment? who gets the high loft with the fancy view and who gets the first floor apartment if there is no money to decide who gets what based on what they've earned? what happens if two people want to live in the same place? do they live in the same place for the rest of their lives? are they assigned a place to live? do they switch places every now and then and decide 'hey get me a home ready, I'm moving here!'. Do the starfleet admirals live next door to some average joe? From what I've seen they're pretty high rollers. here's another good example: holodecks. do they have enough for everyone in the general population? does everyone get their own if they want? do they have to share? and if so.....who decides how many to build for the general population to share?

you're talking about an effect you're using a shader for and possibly other things going on like ray tracing. these may be ok for CAD rendering, but that often doesn't require dozens of frames to be drawn per second. but there may be some kind of volumetric fires already out there for unity. http://webgl-fire.appspot.com/html/fire.html volumetric shader for unity with self illumination torch shader for unity http://vimeo.com/85930044 fire particle with UV distortion really the effect you're looking for is best achieved with shaders and particles. you can see all the fire effects they have for unity here. https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/fire%20particle but people that make these types of effects typically are selling them for money on the asset store. if you could make the existing particle effects fit to the bounds of those bell shapes, then you'd get somewhat of the effect you're looking for. keep in mind we're talking about unity here, not the cryengine. but technically for some engines the flame doesn't have to really 'move'. a jet engine can be basically no different than a stove burner, just a still blue flame, transparent, with a clear outline and boundary. you could somewhat mimic that effect with an emissive transparent model that also has a point light for illumination. then you'd need to have the model shrink and grow and stretch with throttle, along with the point light dimming with throttle and the brightness of emissive changing with throttle as well. you could even add a transparent texture that adds distortions by the texture itself looping the whole model at X speed. with the right texture moving fast enough you could give off a neat effect that looks like a transparent plume with a clear outline. you could even use a series of fitted copies of the model as layers to create a gradient between the boundaries. it would just be very tedious.

let's keep in mind that they don't really need to bring anything with them on the ship. Even at that distance, they could still get access to the internet and download stuff on their own, or request it in a routine transmission. sure there will be seconds or minutes of delay, but they will still get huge bandwidth. I think they'd want people focused, especially given the cost of a mission. this isn't a military barracks where you can mess around to kill time off duty. you have to be psychologically prepared. I don't think they would want anything that might cause frustrations, so gaming will probably be out of the question. On manned deep space missions, strict control over everything psychological has to be accounted for. The type of people they'll be sending will probably not really be gamers anyways. These types of missions will probably be strictly work oriented. There's always plenty to do. Astronauts are only awake 3/4ths of a day, exercising, eating, etc another 1/4th, and that leaves just 2/4ths of a day to get any actual useful work out of them. There's also no staying up past your bed time in space. Sleep routines are strictly enforced, because in space if you don't have a schedule you'll be all over the place.....and a lack of sleep can result in lost man hours too. Really, deep space travel wouldn't be a picnic. Most people think they could do it if only they had video games or some other media to pass the time. But they're also probably the ones that would go crazy and try to escape out of an airlock.

being reworked, was tested and can't be a single piece hull. has to be a catamaran to balance properly. moved on to the floaty tube part instead, easy and should have no issues since it's basically a static part you attach to make things float.

normal maps aren't really necessary except for where you want to make bump maps. example: a bolt pattern on a texture that extrudes a bit. But if that detail is in the model itself (i.e. actual bolts), then there really is no need for a normal map.

It's best to think of it like this......if you were moving on a train going at the speed of light, you would be effectively going faster than the speed of light, relative to the world outside of the train. But relative to inside of the train, the 'counter' kind of rolls over in a sense. So relative to the inside of the train, you would only be moving as fast as you're walking. Seems logical right? Except it's wrong. We're talking about light, mass and speed here, which involves energy. You reach a point where mass is soo much that it's basically impossible to go any faster no matter how much thrust you have.....and that requirement of energy gets super high long before you even reach the speed of light. I'm not sure your body would even be able to exert enough force to move, even if it could survive the speeds. I think the heat and energy alone would just make soup and break every bond of atom in the ship, including you. high speed = high energy. and that's not even taking into account things like all the deadly radiation and particles you'll be hitting along the way. I mean even if we could reach the speed of light right now through some magical trick of science, any matter would be incapable of surviving the trip intact.

Here's a different version hot off the presses. Single piece hull, fully textured. only thing it would need is a mesh collider, a run through unity, and a config (which if someone wanted to do should step up . I'm not exactly sure how boat hulls work, so I'm not sure if this would be stable on the water in ksp physics without using a very primitive mesh collider or something. I know the config would probably be like a bajillion gallons of fuels to make the necessary weight worth it heh. I'd probably put a bit of each type of fuel, and a player can just siphon off that if they wanted by attaching a fuel depot like construction to it. no need to mess with pesky 3rd party tanks cluttering things up and killing frame rates and causing imbalances unless you want to. This whole part comes in at 1200 poly's, which is pretty efficient and light on resources. The whole part and textures combined are just 400kb, so easy on memory usage too. now what would also be cool is if the whole landing strip lowered into a deck inside of the hull, but I'm not an animation guy. That would give it a massive amount of storage space though. I think it would actually be pretty difficult to even populate the top deck alone, but it has to be big enough to actually have a useful landing strip. you could also probably use the front as a landing pad for somewhat large rockets, or build your own command station. at the size I have it now, it's over 120m long, I don't know if that's big enough or not.

that's the whole point of modular parts. you can't add too many details. you've gotta let people add their own antenna and railgun parts to a base. of course the bridge could be removed entirely or added as an optional part. but I'd say a giant crane would probably be a very useful part to snap on the front

hows about this for a boat.

when I've got enough to make a parts pack. not many people are going to pay attention to just 1 or 2 parts.

here goes something that could be a large pontoon part, little heavy on the poly's though. maybe just shorten it up to 3 rows.

I've been working on making rigs for ocean bases and flotation parts other than intakes. but since there really aren't any stock boat parts, it's hard to make them stockalike other than in texture because there's really nothing to base them off of. another problem with boat parts is they must be modular since the game is based on making things out of many parts. if I gave you some pontoon legs for example, they'd have to have more than just 2 parts you place under an object, they'd have to accommodate different ships sizes, weights, etc without adding too many copies. here's something you could attach to the under or side of a craft to make it float