Kerbart

Star Theory has bills to pay too, it doesn’t make sense for them to have a marketable, finished product on the shelf without selling it.

And let’s not forget, NASA uses patched conics for planetary mission planning. It’s not as bad as some people claim it is.

You’re not getting information from the black hole; merely the state they were in before entering it. And if they’re still entangled or not. You have two notes of paper, both with the letter “A” on them. You toss one of them over the event horizon. “The black hole nows contains a note with the letter ‘A’ on it.” Does that mean you funneled information out of the black hole?

That depends on the definition of “massively.” If SpaceX manages to get this to work the way they envision it, then they want to launch it *a lot*. Supply and demand; if SpaceX floods the market with launch slots, prices need to go down for demand to go up. And I suspect that’s what SpaceX want, to launch their satellite network, maybe even build their own space station. And other things Elon comes up with. In that scenario the competition is forced to follow quickly as prices will drop rapidly below their current operating cost.

Green is ground, blue is sky... I guess those screens is where Squad got there inspiration from. Where else would they come up with that, after all.

That doesn’t mean freedom of consequences though. Look at No Man’s Sky; it may have turned into a decent game by now, but does anyone care, because they ones that haven’t bought it yet are certainly not planning on going to get burned by it, based in its reputation. I agree that it would be incredibly unbelievable for Star Theory to pull such a stunt. Not just because of their invites and (relative) openness so far, but also because nothing Private Division has done so far points towards “making a quick buck.” If KSP2 indeed turns out to be a graphical update to KSP1 and little else, and basically runs the same code, then it will be a bizar and unlikely long con. What is missing in that scenario: why?

Welcome!

What do you run that in? It doesn't look like a regular console or IDLE window. Try print(sys.executable) although your REPL really should show the path of the python executable without an explicit print statement.

They skimped on the sound. The rovers don't make a whirring sound our "woosh" as they pass by. Crashes without violent explosions? What kind of sorcery is this? We can only assume James Gray is somehow unaware of Kubrick's 2001 Still, it looks entertaining and fun.

It is not uncommon for developers to have multiple versions of Python installed on one machine, for various projects or simply for testing. Virtual environments are there for the same reason. This simply allows you to run Pycharm with different setups and it probably makes an educated guess where to find the Python executable. If it’s guessing wrong, you can ask Python what the path to the Python interpreter is: Start the Python console (or IDLE if you prefer that) Type import sys and press enter Type sys.executable and press enter Whatever that last statement returns is what you need to paste in PyCharm

The Bussard ramjet is not as efficient as it was in the 1970s when Niven used it; modern research revealed significant losses at high velocity. So that one can be taken off the list

Let’s just shortcut this thread to where the tinfoil hat wearers will take us: T2 is planning on charging us with micropayments for liking posts. Bring out your pitchforks! And your torches!

To clarify @Brikoleur‘s correct answer: each frame in video needs a certain amount of exposure time. At 50 fps, that exposure time can be as long as 1/50 s, but with sensitive capture media (and lots of light) it can be shorter. Historically this is being referred to as “shutter speed,” even if there’ll no mechanical shutter involved. The reason motion blur is added is because we’re used to it (from cinema movies) and subconsciously expect to see it. One of the reasons video games require a much higher frame rate than movies (running along at a leisurely 24 fps) is because every frame is razor sharp, requiring many more “in between” frames to depict fluid animation. Adding motion blur fixes that issue. Or so I’m told. To be honest I don’t know to what extend the above story holds true, I’ve never had hardware capable of 60fps to check if all that holds up. Lensflare needs to go though. Lens manufacturers spend millions in research to prevent it, and adding it artificially just feels like any other graphical imperfection (chromatic abberations, distortion, etc) just to “make it real.”

I’m not an expert, but even if Unity is not the best choice for a frame-rate critical game like a FPS, KSP is nit that type of a game. And the bottleneck is never going to be graphical representation; it’s always going to be physics. If there was a compelling reason to switch engines, Star Helix Theory would have done so. It seems unlikely they would have chosen Unity if they felt it wasn’t the right choice.

They are separated in the same sense that driving a racecar and having good eyesight are totally separate things. Yes, they are separate. But that does not make them unrelated. Signal delay does create the need of some automation. And luckily, RT provides that (at least when I played with it), so there is indeed no need to have both. The KOS language and me don’t agree with each other, so I stay away from that. But RT is very playable without it; you can schedule burns with a fairly high degree of flexibility. No need to write code for that. Where you do need advanced automation is when you want to land a probe, especially when you can’t use parachutes for that. That’s where some kind of “autoland” option would come in. If that’s in place there wouldn’t be a need to write code for it, either. Finally, I used the word option. So I don’t understand why it would be “forced” upon players. The very definition of optional is that it’s... well, optional. It’s a choice. Which is pretty much the opposite of “being forced.”

Signal delay, combined with automated execution of maneuver nodes, is an interesting option. RemoteTech shows how it could work, albeit feels clunky at times, because it is bolted on. Integrated into the game would be a lot better! As @Geschosskopfpoints out, the game does need to include a certain amount of automation, or a lot of things are simply not possible. But the same automation would make the game too easy for many, without time delay (auto land/launch for instance). Especially in career mode. Of course we don’t know how career mode works in KSP2, and if (optional) signal delay is included those concerns would obviously be addressed. I would like to see it!

If KSP2 had glorious endless walls of text, that’d kill it for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer the same timezone all year around, but at least for me it means that in the winter my morning commute is in daylight, and it wouldn’t be otherwise. So, not totally useless. Still not worth the rest of the aggravation though.

Geez, that looks a lot like VGA Planets. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VGA_Planets

Proper Beta testing is boring, thankless work. As soon as you encounter something that goes wrong, you’re forced to replay the same scenario, again, and again, and again, and again. Until you’ve finally isolated the bug, when it arises, and what triggers it. Unless... the motive isn’t really testing, but rather getting your hands on the software before everyone else does. Surely the KSP community wouldn’t lower itself to volunteering bug testing for that. Right? RIGHT?! Those with a good memory will recall that Squad came with a similar program—I think it was for the pre 1.0 release. And for some reason—obviously logistical—this program was somehow limited to Steam. Oooh, the furor! My loyalty to Squad got rewarded by seeing how Steam users got to show off their early release! — there were a ton of such reactions, which left the average bystander wonder what exactly the motivation for being in the beta program was. Now, I’m not saying any if you have other motives than true beta testing, absolutely not; but at the same time one cannot blame Star Helix for assuming a lot of beta volunteers do have an ulterior motive, and as a result the Beta program will probably require a bit more than “I volunteer and I really like the game.” Most likely, if there would be an interview round or submission process, the material for review would be less your craft files, and more a portfolio of bug reports written in the past.

You forgot the word preventable as well, to rub some more salt into the wound; I was dumbfounded by the announcement “all upgrades are free” the moment it came out. How do you intend to fund continuous development with one-time revenue? This wasn’t a “who knew?” oversight, but rather something incredibly shortsighted, naive, or a combination of both — probably founded in not believing how incredibly sustainable the popularity of KSP turned out to be.

I disagree. The very first paragraph of the original post: I think we all agree that we don't want “magic” in the game—FTL drives, anti-gravity devices, Klingon cloaking technology, etc. In that context, the question whether a space elevator is feasible in real life is exceptionally relevant.

Easy? Why? Please describe how rewriting the code from scratch can be achieved at zero cost, which is what you are suggesting (by claiming that Private Division should not charge for it)?

That brings back memories of the days before the 1.0 release, when you could go straight up, and then yank your rocket to 45° at 10k altitude without any consequence. or return from Jool, enter the atmosphere at 90° and aerobreak while running the chutes doing mach 10. But I digress... Das Valdez calls it “the circle of safety.” Having a pilot and using the prograde widget also helps.

You’re spot-on with this, and it pretty much all boils down to the fact that while the game tries to depict real life physics, it also wants to be a game. Unrealistic contraptions, lack of gore & blood when things go wrong, the plays on names (but that’s also a link to realism/real world rocketry), etc. I tend to view some of the “unrealistic” aspects of KSP with an attitude of relativism. Fuel lines as depicted in the game are not realistic — pumping fuel flows that would put a Saturn-V through a yellow tube with the thickness of an arm is inconceivable — but it’s more like an indicator: “hey, we’re running a fuel line between these tanks.” Those that oppose to that practice? Don’t use it! Flexing is something similar. Flexing is an issue and problem in real life mechanics. Every bridge flexes when you drive over it, but we don’t see it. As you mention, it would be more realistic to see a rocket explode without advance warning, but not half as fun. Now you get to experience these white-knuckle rides into space! And a learning aspect: a rocket can be strong, but clearly it also needs to be stiff. Yes, you get it! For a Private Division, there’s a serious risk if the game is presented as “this is a highly realistic simulation, offering rewards only for braniacs who are obsessed with space exploration. Don’t bother if you’re not a rocket scientist” and that is, that they end up selling the game only to braniacs who are obsessed with space exploration and who are professional rocket scientists. And that’s not a big audience to sell the game to. Maybe I’m biassed. What sold the game to me was seeing three Kerbals (well, two—Jeb was there) with an expression of terror on their faces as my rocket turned sideways. Had the first dozen failure been just that — dry failures — I probably would have given up. “This game is too hard,” and missed out on a whole lot of things. Instead, I didn’t consider a failure to orbit as a complete failure. I got the crew out alive, after all. Let’s try again! I agree that the true enjoyment in the games comes from the exploration aspect. Not just the grandiose views that will be absolute stunning in KSP2, but also the exploration of your own knowledge; picking up engineering skills, learning orbital mechanics, and reading about astronomy and spaceflight triggered by the game. The Kerballoz have very little contribution to that, true. But to get there, they are indispensable. Making the game more serious might take away a (perceived) annoying aspect of the game that can easily be ignored if you don’t care for it. But it also takes away the opportunity for, thousands of potential players to all the wonderful extras the game has to offer for those who don’t know the game, and who’d feel it’s too “brainy” for them to try it out in the first place, or wrestle themselves through that rough initial learning curve.