darkside

My submission. Download

Seems like I made it this time.

I like this idea.

I thought about doing just that at first but then decided it would be too much of a ripoff to my taste.

It is actually thick, just not very good light here so thickness is not apparent.

I am all for modularity, make separate parts as small as sanely possible, BUT there is only a point in doing so if there is no "intended order" and one can just go crazy and build pretty much anything. If all those parts can only assemble in a specific order to build what was initially intended then no, there is no point.

Mine is on page 2, it is to be used with Real Solar System.

Well, if anyone will make it happen, probably won't be me, I see no point in re-doing what is already done so it is in Starstrider42's hands now. Also I don't see it as a part of the current science system (which I really dislike, not that it is of any relevance).

This is great! I've been working on pretty much the same thing but you beat me to it (well, I barely started). It would be great if there were more customizable characteristics in the cfg, ideally every orbital characteristic with min and max values. I quickly made a config for use with Real Solar System: AsteroidSets { POPULATION { name = Main Belt centralBody = Sun spawnRate = 1 smaMin = 314155528470 smaMax = 493672973310 eccAvg = 0.18 incAvg = 7.5 } POPULATION { name = Near-Earth centralBody = Sun spawnRate = 0.3 smaMin = 29919574140 smaMax = 747989353500 eccAvg = 0.5 incAvg = 7.5 } POPULATION { name = Centaurs centralBody = Sun spawnRate = 0.1 smaMin = 29919574140 smaMax = 2991957414000 eccAvg = 0.5 incAvg = 7.5 } POPULATION { name = Kuiper belt centralBody = Sun spawnRate = 0.05 smaMin = 4487936120000 smaMax = 7479893540000 eccAvg = 0.5 incAvg = 7.5 } POPULATION { name = Kuiper belt core centralBody = Sun spawnRate = 0.1 smaMin = 5983914830000 smaMax = 6731904180000 eccAvg = 0.5 incAvg = 7.5 } } It is not very accurate because I assume a lot will change, so I didn't put too much effort into it, but it works for now. The main issue is that RSS uses inclined orbits for all planets to emulate Earth axial tilt. Seems like we'd need at least longitude of ascending node option in asteroids.cfg to accommodate for that. Also, tracking 70+ asteroids reduces my FPS from 60 to 7 but this is not relevant to the topic. When I was thinking how I would do this thing, I thought about having an asteroid detector, like a PartModule, essentially a telescope of some kind, that would be required to detect nearby asteroids, there could be telescopes of different power so one would have to send it to orbit to detect asteroids farther away from Kerbin and not just have them appear automatically. What do you think?

I am pretty sure that those two pictures weren't taken on the same day. 2nd picture has clear sky with dust almost settled down, in the 1st picture a lot of dust floating in the "air". What I am trying to say, sunset on that day from the 1st picture probably wouldn't look like the 2nd picture. I've read that on Mars the sky is almost black during the day if it has been calm and dust mostly settled down and then it turns blue near the horizon when the sun is setting/rising. If it is just a regular day with all the dust stirred up then it is just yellow/reddish all the time. So there are probably no transition from pic1 to pic2 happening during just one day.

This is going slow. Lots of distractions, can't they see I am busy making parts for KSP. More dynamic shape, very very initial texture with even more initial spec map and baked AO. No normal map yet. Issues with some faces, I should fix those. I am not happy with the shape but I never could come up with a good design. Will try to compensate it with the textures.

Funny thing, I am having exactly the same bug for the first time now. Ah, now I see, it is because of the nature of this part we all working on. Thanks for the solution, didn't try it yet, hope it works.

In the very beginning. Great designs in this thread, I like octagon idea a lot, but what will happen if it mounted on an angled surface like side of Mk1 pod?

I have been working on a similar thing, but my idea was to define special areas in the solar system where asteroids could be detected, like main asteroid belt and Kuiper belt. One would have to send a spacecraft close to this area and to employ special modules like telescopes to detect asteroids. And of course some asteroids would just be detected near Kerbin similar to how it happens in stock now, assuming there are telescopes on Kerbin. Maybe there could be extra powerful telescopes higher up on the tech tree that would allow to detect asteroids very far away, but the main idea is to allow asteroid detection not only near Kerbin which does not make sense but anywhere where there could potentially be asteroids. Seems like people in this thread making something similar, so I should probably stop.

This is what happens. I am guessing that some (many) asteroids spawn too close to Kerbin, within it's enlarged SOI and moving a bit too slow to escape it so they end up in Kerbin orbit from the beginning. Those spawning farther away seem to be ok, so simple fix should be just making them spawn outside of Kerbin SOI.

So far I didn't find a way to make center empty, sun demands to be there and if something is not to it's liking then bad things happen. But keeping it in place just making it 'empty' I didn't think of, possibly it is a good idea. Unfortunately for me it is not 'some of the systems' but actually most of them. Currently I am treating binary stars as secondary star orbiting the sun. In SE binary stars are usually in orbital resonance so even if their orbits are close to each other at some point, the two stars never come close to one another. With the way I have it in KSP there are surely a potential for planets crashing into one another but I tried dozens of systems and it still didn't happen. Anyway, safe distance is very easy to calculate, all required data is there. Also I am switching to Planet Factory CE now and it has makeshift barycenters so it is going to be easier. Yes, with some workarounds it works, not always exactly like it should but close enough.

I made a program, or rather a script because it is written in Perl, that takes a solar system of your choice from Space Engine and tries it's best to build a solar system based on it that can be played in KSP. The only requirement is Real Solar System, it does all the heavy lifting here. Planet Factory is strongly recommended although not 100% required. I haven't come up with a good name so I am calling it Kerbal Space Engine for now, going to change that as it may be confusing. Single and binary solar systems are supported, binary are not done quite right because the sun always wants to be in the center, but I think they are still good enough. Planet Factory is required for binary systems. I was adding the ability to auto import planet textures by the means of a plugin called Texture Replacer, but it didn't work as good as I'd like it to, especially if you try to land on a modified planet. And then (just yesterday) I discovered Planet Factory CE, that seems to be just perfect for the task, so I'll be rewriting my program to work with that and should release soon. Using the program in it's current state is a little complicated so I was going to release it as a web tool, source code of course would be released too. But right now I am looking at rewriting a significant portion of it and also developing a web frontend, so before proceeding with all that I want to make sure that someone is actually interested in such tool. As of right now it is good enough for my personal use but certainly not in shape for public release. So tell me what do you think. And here is an example of it's work and a few pictures. Example RealSolarSystem.cfg includes a system handpicked in Space Engine by me and converted using this tool I am talking about, no editing was done so if you look inside you'll probably see many horrible things. Make sure you have Real Solar System installed, download RealSolarSystem.cfg and put in in your GameData\RealSolarSystem. Back up the original file before overwriting. This particular system requires Planet Factory. Make a new save! RealSolarSystem by NathanKell PlanetFactory by Kragrathea RealSolarSystem.cfg - real scale system - an example of converted system you can try right now RealSolarSystem.cfg - same system in 1/10 scale (WARNING: small scale is broken in many ways and physically incorrect even for KSP, not recommended) In case it is not clear enough, first 5 images are side to side comparisons between SE and KSP, those are SE screenshots overlayed on top of KSP screenshots.

Greenhouse effect maybe. But then there should be a cloud cover. Well, one can always assume that things just work differently in Kerbal universe.