Biomes for Jool

[Snark]

As it stands right now, Jool itself is a pretty dull place to explore.  There's just nothing there; if you've been one place, you've been everywhere.  Maybe you dip into the upper atmosphere (or low enough to be "flying") to get a science sample, but you do it only once, and you can do it anywhere because everywhere's the same.

Suggestion:  Give Jool some biomes of its own.  For example:

• Equatorial Cloud Belts
• Temperate Cloud Belts
• Polar Cloud Belts
• Great Green Spot (to be accompanied by an appropriate texture update)

The Spot would be a big oval located somewhere mid-latitude.  The others would just be continuous belts running around the planet's circumference, delineated by latitude lines.

Still no surface science, of course, since there's no surface... but there would be "flying at <biome>" and "upper atmosphere over <biome>" and "space just above <biome>," etc.

This would make Jool a more interesting place to visit in its own right, not just as a big gravity well that happens to hold interesting moons to visit.

 

[Edit]  ...Okay, I couldn't stand it so I went and created a mod to do this.   Turns out that biomes work just fine for gas giants, as long as you're just using them for space & atmospheric.

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by Snark
Added link to new mod

[fourfa]

I was just thinking the same thing - maybe this could go together with a texture pack (for EVE or other flavor of the month visual mod) that also gives different-looking cloud layers at different altitudes (with corresponding depth biomes), as well as different latitudes.  There could be a deep-atmo challenge on the order of landing on Tylo, circularizing at Moho, ascending from Eve - possible in stock, but only just.

[tater]

I wish they'd abandon "biomes" for something that doesn't require that there be life.

[Andem]

Yes. this would make dangerous Atmospheric dips around Jool worth it.

[FlyingPete]

12 hours ago, fourfa said:

I was just thinking the same thing - maybe this could go together with a texture pack (for EVE or other flavor of the month visual mod) that also gives different-looking cloud layers at different altitudes (with corresponding depth biomes), as well as different latitudes.  There could be a deep-atmo challenge on the order of landing on Tylo, circularizing at Moho, ascending from Eve - possible in stock, but only just.

"The Jool limbo challenge"

Edited February 1, 2016 by FlyingPete

[harvell64]

 

3 hours ago, Snark said:

As it stands right now, Jool itself is a pretty dull place to explore.  There's just nothing there; if you've been one place, you've been everywhere.  Maybe you dip into the upper atmosphere (or low enough to be "flying") to get a science sample, but you do it only once, and you can do it anywhere because everywhere's the same.

Suggestion:  Give Jool some biomes of its own.  For example:

• Equatorial Cloud Belts
• Tropical Cloud Belts
• Mid-Latitude Cloud Belts
• Polar Cloud Belts
• Great Green Spot (to be accompanied by an appropriate texture update)

The Spot would be a big oval located somewhere mid-latitude.  The others would just be continuous belts running around the planet's circumference, delineated by latitude lines.

Still no surface science, of course, since there's no surface... but there would be "flying at <biome>" and "upper atmosphere over <biome>" and "space just above <biome>," etc.

This would make Jool a more interesting place to visit in its own right, not just as a big gravity well that happens to hold interesting moons to visit.

Wasn't there a custom biomes mod way back that did essentially this?

[Snark]

1 minute ago, harvell64 said:

Wasn't there a custom biomes mod way back that did essentially this?

Could be... any idea what it's called?  Before posting this thread, I searched the "Add-on Releases" forum for "Jool biomes" but came up empty.

In any case... even if there is a mod, would like to see Jool biomes added to the stock game.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Snark

[harvell64]

Abandoned, but here goes.  

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/60163-090-custom-biomes-170-17-dec/&page=1

[cantab]

Agreed with this.

IIRC the way biomes are handled means they couldn't be added to a body without a solid surface, but that could change.

[fourfa]

Isn't there a surface of some sort way down there?  Maybe we need an all-cheats-enabled research mission.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, fourfa said:

Isn't there a surface of some sort way down there?  Maybe we need an all-cheats-enabled research mission.

Nothing provided by the program.  If you take a ship way down there (you have to be patient, it takes forever), it eventually goes kablooie when it gets down to zero meters altitude.  And does so in a very "we didn't really spend any time coding this" way, very krakeny-looking, no visible surface, just a lot of stars-in-the-cellar graphic glitches.  It's a rough edge.  I assume they simply didn't bother spending much time on it because it's an edge case that few people try.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Snark

[AbacusWizard]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

very krakeny-looking, no visible surface, just a lot of stars-in-the-cellar graphic glitches

That sounds almost like it was done deliberately as a 2001 reference.

[pandaman]

The game already knows which biome you are flying over for any particular body. So if Jool had a 'virtual' surface then it could possibly be done that way.

[Warzouz]

Another nice idea. That would give the need to drop some low orbit probes around Jool instead of a one time flyby

[Snark]

I like the idea of dropping probes into Jool, and indeed that was the first thing I did, the first time I ever visited Jool after getting KSP.

Unfortunately, the experience leaves much to be desired. It takes forever for the probe to fall all the way to the "surface" (and get destroyed), and you're "trapped": the game won't let you switch to another ship, or go back to KSC. It just gives that infuriating "cannot switch ships while in atmosphere" message and forces you to sit there staring at it.

I really wish it would give you an option, i.e. instead of just saying "no," it could be a warning "your ship will be destroyed if you do this, are you sure?"

Or else just have a "scuttle" option, which would amount to the same thing. After all, if I can destroy a ship from the tracking station, seems like I should be able to do so from the ship itself.

[Warzouz]

@Snark, I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't speaking of dropping probe in Jool atmosphere, I was speaking of creating dedicated missions to get biome data.

If Jool has no biome a simple flyby is sufficient to get nearly all data. So you don't need any low Jool orbit probe

The same proposition could be done for the SUN. Why not adding biomes to the sun ?

 

[pincushionman]

I believe what some of the above posters are referring to about Jool "not having a surface" is about Jool and the Sun being different types of object (in game engine terms) than the rocky bodies. Probably much simpler, since it doesn't need to support any kind of surface data at all.

The justification is probably that you're not intended to ever get to the surfaces, so why bother? Save some system resources. With the Sun you'll definitely burn up long before you get anywhere close; not so sure about Jool. @Snark, did the probe-dropping experience you speak of happen pre- or post-1.0?

As such, it's not as simple as "add a surface" to Jool; it'd either require changing big J to use the rocky-bodies object, or extending the biome code to include this other planet type.

That said, I'd sure support adding this.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, pincushionman said:

 @Snark, did the probe-dropping experience you speak of happen pre- or post-1.0?

Pre. Very, very pre, as in 0.23.5.  It was so painful and unpleasant that I've been careful never to do it again.  That said, however, I strongly suspect that the issue is still there:  It's still going to take a very long time for a probe to drop to the "surface" (i.e. destruction point) of Jool, and the game still has a feature that refuses to let you switch away from a craft while in atmosphere, and the game still doesn't have any way to scuttle a craft from the craft itself (as opposed to from the tracking station).  So I expect that it's still a problem.

1 hour ago, pincushionman said:

As such, it's not as simple as "add a surface" to Jool; it'd either require changing big J to use the rocky-bodies object, or extending the biome code to include this other planet type.

I'm not convinced (yet) that any changes are necessary, other than adding the biomes themselves.  I've started putting together a mod to add biomes to Jool, just as an experiment.  (If I can get it to work, I'll post a link here.)  I've successfully added a biome map, in the sense that I can start up the game and go to Jool in the map view and toggle "biomes visible" in the debug menu, and my biome map shows up the same as it would for any other planet.  However, I haven't yet had time to send a ship there and check whether the biomes are "real" (in the sense of actually getting science results for them, etc.), so I can't confirm yet whether it actually works.  That'll be the next thing that I check.

Stay tuned. 

[Andem]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Pre. Very, very pre, as in 0.23.5.  It was so painful and unpleasant that I've been careful never to do it again.  That said, however, I strongly suspect that the issue is still there:  It's still going to take a very long time for a probe to drop to the "surface" (i.e. destruction point) of Jool, and the game still has a feature that refuses to let you switch away from a craft while in atmosphere, and the game still doesn't have any way to scuttle a craft from the craft itself (as opposed to from the tracking station).  So I expect that it's still a problem.

I'm not convinced (yet) that any changes are necessary, other than adding the biomes themselves.  I've started putting together a mod to add biomes to Jool, just as an experiment.  (If I can get it to work, I'll post a link here.)  I've successfully added a biome map, in the sense that I can start up the game and go to Jool in the map view and toggle "biomes visible" in the debug menu, and my biome map shows up the same as it would for any other planet.  However, I haven't yet had time to send a ship there and check whether the biomes are "real" (in the sense of actually getting science results for them, etc.), so I can't confirm yet whether it actually works.  That'll be the next thing that I check.

Stay tuned. 

The issue is still there, one of the first topics I commented on was about the bug breaking the game if you tried to "Land" on Jool.

[nikokespprfan]

There was a thread a while back that proposed science biomes (or geomes, if you are bugged about the lack of life) in the outer reaches of the Kerbol system. That thread also has to deal with biomes on surfaceless bodies (namely Kerbol), but I can't find it. 

I like the idea. Biomes around Jool can be a good addition, anbd it improves KSP educational value if done properly.

Also:

Source: Image from the English wikipedia page about saturns hexagon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon

[Workable Goblin]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

Pre. Very, very pre, as in 0.23.5.  It was so painful and unpleasant that I've been careful never to do it again.  That said, however, I strongly suspect that the issue is still there:  It's still going to take a very long time for a probe to drop to the "surface" (i.e. destruction point) of Jool, and the game still has a feature that refuses to let you switch away from a craft while in atmosphere, and the game still doesn't have any way to scuttle a craft from the craft itself (as opposed to from the tracking station).  So I expect that it's still a problem.

Did you use a parachute? Amusingly, falling too slowly is a problem on real gas giant probe proposals (though for rather different reasons, of course; there the goal is to get to a certain depth before the relay mothership goes over the horizon), and to deal with this they plan on cutting the parachute at a certain point. I would expect on Jool that you could simply get away with not having a parachute at all...that would obviously make it take less time to reach the depths. Though it would still take a while.

[Hannu2]

I think this is a good idea and easy and cheap to program into game. Sun's biomes would also fit the game. Actually some real solar probe have used Jupiter's slingshot to achieve high inclination solar orbit to see solar wind and magnetic field from polar latitudes. If surface is necessary there could be simple solid sphere and ship would crash far above it because overheating or pressure implosion. An easy and realistic way to handle approach visually would be to lower light level until everything would be (almost) black at crash level.

It takes maybe ten minutes to hit Jool's crash level if you do not have a parachute and use 4 x acceleration. I think it is not too long time to never try, but it is better to use windowed mode and take other activity during descent. It is very important not to use parachute. Parachute does not give anything but if you use it descent through an extreme souposphere at few meters per second will take annoyingly long time. Solar panels crash in Jool's atmosphere even at very low speed (1 m/s). It is better to take one or two 4k batteries to give power for transmissions of atmospheric detector.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Workable Goblin said:

Did you use a parachute? Amusingly, falling too slowly is a problem on real gas giant probe proposals (though for rather different reasons, of course; there the goal is to get to a certain depth before the relay mothership goes over the horizon), and to deal with this they plan on cutting the parachute at a certain point. I would expect on Jool that you could simply get away with not having a parachute at all...that would obviously make it take less time to reach the depths. Though it would still take a while.

Yes, the parachute is what made it truly excruciating, and back then there wasn't a "cut parachute" option.  So when the terminal velocity on the chute went down to less than 1 m/s .... ouch.

But even without a parachute, it would still be really, really slow.  Typical terminal velocity on Eve is only 50ish m/s, and Jool has a much thicker atmosphere, and it's a lot deeper.  A Jool descent would be like doing several Eve descents in a row.  Maybe without a parachute you'd only be paralyzed and trapped for several minutes instead of over an hour... but that's still really obnoxious.  The game should never put the player in a state where the player is simply trapped with no recourse.

[Snark]

Okay, just a little update-- I went ahead and made a mod to do this. 

It turns out that biomes work just fine on gas giants.  No problem at all, they work exactly the same way they do on planets that have surfaces.  No surface science, of course, but they're good for space & atmospheric science as you'd expect.

Anyway, I've added the link to the original post above, hope folks find it useful.

Enjoy!

Edited February 2, 2016 by Snark

[Tatonf]

According to the Wiki there's science to be done on the surface of Jool (Trivia section).

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Jool#Trivia