Actual Math governing the Rocket.

[mcirish3]

I would like to create an open discussion of the actual math behind KSP. Pleas no Orbital mechanics. I mean the nuts and bolts. Such as the drag constant at a given altitude. The quantized length, i.e. the Kerbal planck's length. Things along this line.

[SciMan]

well, I assume that delays due to the speed of light are not simulated, so that means that the speed of light in KSP has a context-dependent value. Specifically, in KSP the speed of light is infinite when measured as directly as possible, but if you were to calculate it from the various optical effects observed (refraction and lens flare, among others) I expect that its value would closely match the real life physics constant "c", the speed of light in a vacuum as.

[mcirish3]

well, I assume that delays due to the speed of light are not simulated, so that means that the speed of light in KSP has a context-dependent value. Specifically, in KSP the speed of light is infinite when measured as directly as possible, but if you were to calculate it from the various optical effects observed (refraction and lens flare, among others) I expect that its value would closely match the real life physics constant "c", the speed of light in a vacuum as.

Hmm, interesting, but since I very much doubt that they included Einstein's relativistic corrections that means that theoretically you could pass up the light. I have gotten space craft to go very fast (over 100,000 meters per second) I find the physics controller breaks around that speed and the rocket becomes uncontrollable. I don't think they can make the light speed infinite strictly speaking what you are saying is they display the light independent of the crafts speed. in other words it simply is. The graphics engine simply draws the light the same no matter the speed of the craft.

[mcirish3]

One thing I know I am going to do once I get all the nuts and bolts put together in my mind, is put all the math info that is already on this forum into one coherent organized post.

[phoenix_ca]

Ships flying apart at high speed is the "Kraken" and should be fixed in 0.17. As for the speed of light, I highly doubt that's modelled at all. Light effects are handled by the engine, and they are anything but something that resembles light rays. (That would require ray-drawing graphics. However while hyper-realistic and relatively fast compared to current raster-based graphics, require custom build GPU architecture, which at least partially explains why it hasn been widely adopted.)

As for accurate drag, I'm not sure but I don't think that part of the engine is complete. The current system is quite basic. That said, maybe it can be expanded later to base behaviour at least partially on an object's mesh. Anything that does that though will be a loose approximation at best. Accurate fluid simulations require immense amounts of computing.

Anything that resembles relativity will probably be kludge-like in nature. As a computer simulation, the space that KSP takes place in is Euclidian, though things are almost certainly complicated beyond my paltry explaination here by KSP's scenes.

Edited October 11, 2012 by phoenix_ca