[Discussion] Tilt Dres 80 degrees on its side?

[regex]

12 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

What about RSS? Nothing seems to be screwed up there. So why shouldn't axial tilt be possible?

RSS doesn't use axial tilt, it artificially cants the entire solar system's inclination to support Earth's axial tilt.

[Matuchkin]

30 minutes ago, regex said:

RSS doesn't use axial tilt, it artificially cants the entire solar system's inclination to support Earth's axial tilt.

I know, but why can't we do that to Kerbol, then?

[regex]

Just now, Matuchkin said:

I know, but why can't we do that to Kerbol, then?

Why ... would you want to?  RSS uses its method as a hack because it can't implement a proper axial tilt.

[cantab]

The thing is axial tilt would be cool, but it wouldn't have much impact on anyone but experienced players, assuming Kerbin doesn't get tilted. And it's been mentioned that modifying KSP to support it would be a lot of work. I think there are much better ways Squad could put in that lot of work.

[Matuchkin]

21 minutes ago, regex said:

Why ... would you want to?  RSS uses its method as a hack because it can't implement a proper axial tilt.

The hack is a method to get axial tilt. We use a method to get axial tilt because we need axial tilt in this scenario. Why not?

[Waxing_Kibbous]

One would think axial tilt would be pretty simple to implement- I'm curious to how the planets are rigged. 3 bones- the parent to follow the orbital path, a child for tilt and a child of that for the rotator would do it.

[regex]

2 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

The hack is a method to get axial tilt. We use a method to get axial tilt because we need axial tilt in this scenario. Why not?

Because it's not correct, and neither is RSS.  Everything effectively has Earth's axial tilt.

2 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

One would think axial tilt would be pretty simple to implement- I'm curious to how the planets are rigged. 3 bones- the parent to follow the orbital path, a child for tilt and a child of that for the rotator would do it.

IIRC, planets use Planetarium.Up as the rotation axis, which means that has to change as well as all the other things that assume the same.  Not particularly hard, I imagine (although it may complicate some other calculations like latitude and longitude), but very tedious poring through code.  It'll take a lot of time.  The devs will weigh whether it's actually worth doing versus how much time it takes to do.

[Matuchkin]

20 minutes ago, regex said:

Because it's not correct, and neither is RSS.  Everything effectively has Earth's axial tilt.

I don't get it. Yes, it is considered that everything in RSS has Earth's axial tilt. But it doesn't have any effect on flight. The planets still travel in the same orbits, relative to each other. That means that there is no alteration to flight. We are simply looking from Earth's reference frame.

[Superfluous J]

Just now, Matuchkin said:

I don't get it. Yes, it is considered that everything in RSS has Earth's axial tilt. But it doesn't have any effect on flight. The planets still travel in the same orbits, relative to each other. That means that there is no alteration to flight. We are simply looking from Earth's reference frame.

No. In real life, Earth's tilt is 23 degrees. Mars' is 25. Uranus' is 82.

In RSS, Earth's tilt is 23 degrees. Mars' is 23. Uranus' is 23. And they all point the same direction as well.

What RSS does is a hack to get the tilt on Earth right, sacrificing correctly tilting everything else.

[regex]

 

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That means that there is no alteration to flight.

Flight, perhaps, but not take-off and landing.

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We are simply looking from Earth's reference frame.

Incorrect, because the individual planets do not all have the same axial tilt as Earth.  If we tilt the ecliptic to match Earth's axial tilt that means that everything shares Earth's axial tilt, which is incorrect.  Mercury, for instance, has an axial tilt of 2 degrees, as opposed to Earth's 23, which means that take-off from Mercury in RSS is vastly different from take-off IRL.

Edited May 6, 2016 by regex

[pincushionman]

 Here's the thing about axial tilt – it doesn't have to be implemented all at once, or even fully.

Step one:  Free the planets axes from Planetarium.Up, but keep everything else the same, as a beta. The modders will go crazy.

Step two: Once we know that works and the bugs have been worked through, add a new body or two that takes advantage of the axial tilt to get players used to it. If "add a new body" by itself causes bugs, I'll eat my hat. 

Step three: Change the axial tilts of the existing bodies. Or just some of them. Or none, and leave it to the modders.

[regex]

The biggest benefit to the base game would be a realism/simulation option for Kerbin to have axial tilt.  Otherwise it's not really something to worry about since delta-V goes so far in the Kerbol system.

[Snark]

Just a note regarding the various folks commenting on how "it would be an easy change":

My impression is that it wouldn't be.  That it would, in fact, be a Big Fat Hairy Deal.  Not because there's any particular reason it ought to be hard... just that I seem to recall reading comments from a Squad dev that the "no axial tilt" assumption got baked into KSP code in a lot of different places, so that it would be a major headache for them to try to weed that assumption out of everything.

Doesn't necessarily mean that it could never happen, just that it sounds like it would be a significant investment of engineering effort, so there's the question of prioritization.