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Velociraptors? Xenomorphs? Or a large outdoor play area with a bunch of players working together to bring down a really massive monster. Harry Potter wand duels? Fight as a superhero with powers? Play "Rainbow Six" in your house? Personally, I really want to partake in a Battle of Hoth scenario, with full-size AT-AT's stomping around. The possibilities presented by this are endless. They'd better not screw it up.

I don't think the tech is that far along yet. It works fine indoors, but I don't know how much space it can 'remember,' so a battle encompassing the whole neighborhood would probably be too much for it. I'm sure someday it'll be possible though. And I suspect that laser tag arenas will incorporate it soon enough, for both that and who knows what other kind of events. Tron disc wars? Pac Man?

If you're going to do this, might as well have a corporate space race going on, where you actually have to compete for contracts with rival groups.

Well, yeah. Though knowing that you can use a 'camera' to watch what the player is doing, I suspect it will be possible to synch a portable device to it and use that as a 'viewing portal.'

I don't know about that. Pluto certainly hasn't been wanting for love recently. - - - Updated - - - You think planets in KSP need lifeforms in order to be interesting? No, I don't think so. No more interesting than building rockets would be for a non-space nut anyhow. Those of us who play this game hang on every new news byte that comes from NASA or ESA, things that seem trivial to the majority of people. So, why couldn't discovery be that intricate in KSP?

Just imagine what will be possible with this after another decade of development. I think the last time I was this excited about a new piece of tech was the Pentium processor.

One of my crazy ideas in my teen years for a futuristic 'minigun' was something like this. A handheld particle accelerator in the shape of a tightly-bound helix with an opening at the end. Yeah. A million years from now.

I almost immediately made it a habit to construct a Kerb'd base on the Mun that was self-sufficient and capable of gathering ALL of the science there and transmitting it home, just because it was more interesting to do it that way than what was probably intended.

Small-scale models of the ships that made the journeys? Might be a memory nightmare, but maybe not if no functionality is being calculated and it JUST uses the part models.

Random thought: I hope the reason this wasn't in stock already because the devs put these kinds of graphics enhancements (particularly the ones that result in prettier planets) in the category of "weather." For me, weather is lightning, rainfall, and dust storms. Clouds in a flight sim isn't weather, that's just 'the sky.'

I posted similar concepts this under suggestions on more than one occasion and nobody even seemed to grasp what I was getting at (and why ISN'T this in the development discussion forum?). Yeah, there need to be more complex things happening on different worlds. Ones that would require more planning. Contracts 'sort of' did that, but it's nowhere near as interesting as it could've been. Just a basic one, the 'anomalies' could have been more than just oddities to come across and get an achievement. Such things should be something to investigate further. Just look at how we have progressed with Mars as an example. The discoveries across multiple rovers have been a slow-burn that are just now beginning to show signs of something truly astonishing. Science in KSP shouldn't be a simple form of currency, but something with more substance. And sometimes getting it should be more involved than just doing the same "click from a certain location" that is the guts of exploration in the game. Currently a manned landing really has no further purpose than getting off the ladder, grabbing your sample, and then taking off again. And that's just sad. There's so much more that could be going on in the game than there is, and it's so disappointing that we're not there. Summary of my rambling: Getting there shouldn't be the end of the adventure. It should be the beginning of it.

I was thinking more along the lines of rovers with 'jump jets,' but that works too.

I'll be darned if someone didn't think of this idea only AFTER playing KSP.

While we're on that subject, I've sometimes wondered how an 'automated aperture' view would work in the game. By that I mean something that mimics what our eyes do when looking at bright or dark objects. That way, for instance, really bright rockets wouldn't look quite as bright, and when looking at the Mun at night from Kerbol, it wouldn't look dark gray.

Sorry, but no. The possibility of life on other planets needs to be approached with a pretty open mind. We can use the very narrow view of what all life on this planet is like, and use that as a basis to look for it elsewhere. But we need to be REALLY careful while we're exploring. There's no reason to assume that all living things have DNA. Doesn't mean they don't have something similar, but it might not be something we would immediately recognize. We have no clue how diverse life might be. It'd be nice if we made sure before we steamroll and destroy all evidence of it.

I-95 runs all the way to Florida. Plenty of good places to do it further south.

When is the last time that would've happened though? I think after a few billion generations of microbes, it's safe enough to classify them as being Martian. Unless Mars has a really big problem with Amnesty. I'm not one to assume alien abduction is real. If it is, there's probably only ONE case that someone reported that was genuine, and everybody else just leeched from it like a game of telephone until the original concept was completely lost. However, I do find it strange when people talk about it like, "Why would aliens EVER do anything like that?" All I can think about is how wild animals get tested. Someone tranqs them, sticks a tag on their ear, does a bunch of tests, and then leaves them somewhere to wake up with a migraine. From the animal's perspective, that sure sounds like the same darned thing. But, yeah. On a subtler note, I think we can all agree that if knowledge of an advanced civilization were to come out tomorrow, we'd have total chaos on this planet. We know it, so the E.T.'s surely know it, and they're doing the responsible thing by NOT landing on the Whitehouse lawn.

Are you talking about the actual light casting on the rocket, or the particle effects? Cuz there's an issue with the particles too that can't really be solved with simple additive blending (which pretty much every single game that has anything in it that glows, uses).

Trust me, if we can ever find a way to get people to the moon as easily as we ship people from one continent to another on a boat, the psychological impact alone would make it worth the trouble. Looking back at the blue orb, and all that the image entails. That's society's best opportunity to finally "get it." ...and playing football there would be fun too.

The "tooth fairy" rhetoric is REALLY getting old. Like, "I'm going to prove you're a sinner," level of old. Even at FTL, Warp 100, or whatever Ludicrous Speed, pretty sure our sun would poof before we got to the edge of the universe.

Jeeze, I knew both of the "Major Tom's," but hey, another David Bowie space-themed song I didn't know about!

I've had unusual results with different kinds as well. I'll NEVER touch Jack Daniels again. For some bizarre reason, it brings me to an "I feel like I'm possessed by a demon" level of anger. Things were irritating me that even when I thought back on it, couldn't figure out why they were irritating. All other drinks just enhance my normal personality. Jack turns me into a completely different person, a person that I never wish to meet again.

Better than adjusting the 'exposure' of the scene is to just have a hard limit on how much light can get cast on a rocket from its own light sources. You can make it more complex than that by having it take into account the total number of engines in a stage, and other such things. So in a stage with 4 engines burning, instead of the light source for each engine having a range of 0 and 100%, divide the maximum brightness by the number of engines so each light source maxes out at 25%. That's probably overcompensating since a rocket can handle more than one light source at 100%, but you get the idea.

Well, the video game results are pretty elementary. Drunk: "Whoa, I've never been to this level before. Or this one. Or this one. Sober: "Why can't I get to that level again?" Rinse, repeat. Answering more with the next question at the same time... A little writing, a little graphic design, a little game development - some for my own projects and others to pseudo-GM for MMO players. The results are staggering at times. Eureeka! moments. Like having a plot hole that I can't find a way to fix after wracking my brain for months. But then I think about it under the influence and then suddenly this unbelievably awesome thing shows up that connects 10 different arcs and even accomplishes more than I needed it to. My words tend to have a smoother poetic element too if I write in that state - and generally I'm terrible at poetry and always feel like I'm typing up a thesis. Heh, the "Green Faerie" of Bohemian fame crossed my mind a few times with this. Your assessment certainly explains a lot. @Jebkerboom After that Ballmer Peak cartoon, I actually stumbled upon an article suggesting that we may see alcohol become more acceptable in the workplace, provided that consumption can be regulated. http://www.businessinsider.com/having-a-drink-or-two-at-work-could-boost-your-productivity-2012-3