What ARE rings?

[Kasuha]

Well I hope the rings don't just get painted or as fuzzy patches with some rendering effects but are actually implemented as something like this:

http://youtu.be/h7eREddMjt4?t=4m1s

That's a great example of absolutely unrealistic ring material density.

[3mon]

I think one of the new planets in Krag's Planet Factory plugin already has rings, so i guess it can be done. Havent tested myself tho, i dont know how its done, nor how much it might affect the CPU...

[vetrox]

If we have planets with rings in ksp (i know theres a mod that already has one and tbh i dont like the look of the rings around that planet) players are going to fly through them.

Realistic or not the best way for it to be implemented in game is to just have a texture overlay the current skybox and just diplay a dust cloud. (or some similar form of magic)

Or

If anyone has played freelancer. When you get close enough to the ring you get a randomly generated debris cloud. Its hard to explain but if you played freelancer and flew into any of the asteroid fields or debris fields you will know.

Remember that this is still a game. Realism isnt the be all and end all of ksp. If flying through the rings isnt realistic but does adhere to most peoples general perception of what it would be like then all is good. Ie one lump of rock in every 2km or so (like in saturns rings...i think) would be quite boring. But a dense field of 'roids wopuld be quite cool and interesting.

[Kasuha]

If flying through the rings isnt realistic but does adhere to most peoples general perception of what it would be like then all is good.

Most people's general perception is that if you run out of fuel halfway to moon, you'll fall back on Earth.

The thing I like on KSP is that it does not adhere to that perception.

[vetrox]

Most people's general perception is that if you run out of fuel halfway to moon, you'll fall back on Earth.

The thing I like on KSP is that it does not adhere to that perception.

EDIT: Most players*

The game doesnt have to be super realistic (and its not) so why make the rings boring and empty. Especially when you consider how scaled down the ksp universe is.

[Nuke]

That's a great example of absolutely unrealistic ring material density.

you can probibly use some volumetric fog on the inside, and probibly a bitmap ring from a distance. the transition between them will be difficult but doable. freelancer (an ancient game by today's standards) did a pretty seamless transition from background bitmaps to dense debris fields. but making it look convincing is the easy part.

many people would be happy with just the eye candy, but i want at least some physical interaction with objects in a ring system. full physics with all the things in the ring would be computationally impossible. all the objects will be going at orbital velocity. if you take your relative velocity to nearby ring objects and graph it out against your chance of hitting something, at some point the chance of hitting something will be 100%, at this point its a simple killbox. this will likely be fast enough where an object that will hit you in the next frame will not be visible through the fog and probibly slow enough that it wont break collision detection. cross that threshold and boom, otherwise do collision detection as normal on some of the objects. since all the objects are on rails (sort of, they dont exist until you get close to them, and are removed if you get too far away from them), it should be fairly easy to cull out most of them and thus reduce cpu load.

[Skyler4856]

What we could use are the rocks we find on the Mun or Duna to simulate the rocks we find in rings.

[maltesh]

Penetrable, UNLESS you are moving wih hight velocity relativly to this dust. If you are, well your ship becomes penetrable

But i would like to suggest another thing, empty parts in ring structure. Like casini division

Planning your orbit to fly inside such division woudl be nice challenge.

Fun fact: There were initial plans to guide Pioneer 11 through the Cassini Division. They were decided against on the (later-confirmed) basis that there might be sufficient debris in there to damage the spacecraft.

WHen Cassini passed through saturn's rings, they took it through the much sparser area between the F and G rings.

[Zamaszysty]

In order to be even remotely stable, the ring would have to be perfectly balanced in every way, and spinning at extremely high speed, I would think. The slightest instability would cause it to disintegrate, at the very least, due to a difference in the gravitational force from the planet on certain sections of the rings.

No ... as a matter of fact it would not be stable at all as You describe it, and is not possible under ANY condition whjat so ever. Just as You have different orbits with different orbital speed to remain stable, so a solid ring would require a different orbital speed depending on what part of such ring we would look. It would NEVER stay in one piece as the inner sections of such ring would have to rotate faster than the outside. You could have series of rings with each having different roration speed, but that is NOT solid anymore, and in a way that is also the reason why real rings are made of very tiny particles and fragments. Every single one of those has to move with its own speed and it can only do that when it is not "attached" to anything that would have a different orbital speed due to its location.

I hope that explained why solid rings are impossible

[Crush]

A Niven Ring, a rigid, thin ring around a planet or sun, like the Ringworld from he novels of Larry Niven or the Halo from the game of the same name, wouldn't be stable either, even when you asume that it is constructed strong enough to withstand any shear forces. The smallest disturbance of its center of mass would cause it to collide with the body in the center.

See Why Niven Rings are unstable for details.

Edited November 15, 2013 by Crush

[peadar1987]

Not sure about the programming behind it, and how it could work with the game engine, but perhaps it could be modelled as an area with drag, and an effect similar to the "Deadly Reentry" mod, where your spacecraft heats up on passing through it, to simulate the effect of smashing through a cloud of dust at orbital speeds. Do it once, or at relatively low speeds, and you should be okay, try and place your orbit inside it, especially retrograde, and you're going to Hoole your spacecraft