How do you think rings will work in KSP?

[TheGeoninja]

At the moment no planet in KSP has rings but I suspect that will change in the future and I wonder how rings might work. Will they be a passive image in the game that you can fly right through, will it be an impassable box of death or will it be hundreds of tiny rocks of doom that will create the deadliest debris field known to kerbal. I am just curious to what people opinions are to how rings would work.

[Sirine]

Planet Ring....2.5km...how many ice/rocks are there?

How many "rock object" can your PC handle?

I don't think "Ring" will be available in near future. Except, they make it like Kerbin Ocean...Which is a sheet of...image.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Sirine

[3mon]

I'd go with the passive image thing. I dont think our PCs would be able to survive any of the other options

[Levelord]

Planet Ring....2.5km...how many ice/rocks are there?

How many "rock object" can your PC handle?

http://www.astro.cornell.edu/~randerson/Inreach%20Web%20Page/inreach/saturn/intherings.jpg

I don't think "Ring" will be available in near future. Except, they make it like Kerbin Ocean...Which is a sheet of...image.

KSP handles ground clutter pretty well with the rocks and trees. I think as long as objects don't have physics enabled (meaning you can clip through them and they are on rails) it shouldn't be a problem processing-wise.

[Bartybum]

Saturn's rings are, at most, 15m thick

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

A bit like this:

http://imgur.com/byZfwyq

And this http://imgur.com/DPXGynV

Basically, passive,mother lag would be immense with the other options

[Tex_NL]

At distance: Texture of course. No need for CPU hogging physics if you can't see the results in the first place.

Close up: Terrain scatter mixed with particle effects. But I do hope some day scatter will be solid.

[Whatshtisthis]

A solid ring.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Saturn's rings are, at most, 15m thick

Where did you get that info? Because quite frankly, you should never speak to that source again.

The rings extend from 6,630 km to 120,700 km above Saturn's equator

120700 - 6630 = 114070km.

Edited December 27, 2013 by KvickFlygarn87

[FITorion]

How I'd like it to be:

Billions of independently orbiting hard rocks of small to medium size.

How I'd do it given that the above would melt systems:

A thin but not paper thin Terrain Scatter like object that looks like Billions of rocks but you can pass right through.

How it will probably be done if at all:

A thin but not paper thin Terrain Scatter like object that looks like Billions of rocks but causes instant death upon passing through it.

[FITorion]

Where did you get that info? Because quite frankly, you should never speak to that source again.

120700 - 6630 = 114070km.

That's not the dimension he was talking about... that's the range in altitude... not thickness.

Now I think he's wrong... and it's more like 1-10Km thick but you're more wrong.

[Tex_NL]

Where did you get that info? Because quite frankly, you should never speak to that source again.

The rings extend from 6,630 km to 120,700 km above Saturn's equator

120700 - 6630 = 114070km.

What you're now mentioning is diameter. Bartybum is talking about thickness.

Wikipedia actually AGREES with Bartybum:

The rings extend from 6,630 km to 120,700 km above Saturn's equator, average approximately 20 meters in thickness

Edit: Ninja'd

[wasmic]

Where did you get that info? Because quite frankly, you should never speak to that source again.

120700 - 6630 = 114070km.

I think he meant thickness. That is, if you're flying through the rings from ring-relative normal or antinormal, not wideness, which is where you fly through the rings from ring-relative radial in or radial out.

EDIT: Also ninja'd.

[SSSPutnik]

A nice selection of asteroids we could push around would be fun, especially with deformable terrains.

[mach1]

KSP handles ground clutter pretty well with the rocks and trees. I think as long as objects don't have physics enabled (meaning you can clip through them and they are on rails) it shouldn't be a problem processing-wise.

i'll go for a transparent anular layer with scatters placed all over it.

[Nano606]

I would be happy with either a thin solid line that you cant fly through, or a passive line that is simply textures. I would hope that it would have it's own biome, so that you could get close and 'sample' it.

[Skyler4856]

A scatter layer with a few sub-gilly to minmus sized objects

[Frostiken]

A nice selection of asteroids we could push around would be fun, especially with deformable terrains.

Rings aren't asteroids. There's a few odd boulders here and there, but they've spent literally billions of years smashing and grinding against each other... something science fiction has gotten so painfully wrong it's misinformed everyone. The overwhelming bulk of rings have the consistency of river rock, gravel, and sand. The largest objects are estimated to be temporary groupings in nature until tidal forces will tear them apart again.

Edited December 27, 2013 by Frostiken

[Thomas988]

I'm kind of into the can't-collide-with-the-rocks kind of rings.

[Frostiken]

How I'd like it to be:

Billions of independently orbiting hard rocks of small to medium size.

How I'd do it given that the above would melt systems:

A thin but not paper thin Terrain Scatter like object that looks like Billions of rocks but you can pass right through.

How it will probably be done if at all:

A thin but not paper thin Terrain Scatter like object that looks like Billions of rocks but causes instant death upon passing through it.

If we ever get a damage system (lol, yeah right, I have zero faith in Squad ever making good on these promises anymore) it'd be nice to have areas of decreased density, so you can get orbits going through less dense parts of the rings that just ding up your ship. Might also be more forgiving if you get too close.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

KSP handles ground clutter pretty well with the rocks and trees. I think as long as objects don't have physics enabled (meaning you can clip through them and they are on rails) it shouldn't be a problem processing-wise.

Huh. Kerbin's trees always seem to make my game lag, and they are part of ground scatter, so that might not be true and depend on the model's complexity. But of course, we're talking about rocks here, not floating space trees.

[vexx32]

Moved to Development Discussion. It feels like it suits the decor here better, don't you think?

[LethalDose]

i'll go for a transparent anular layer with scatters placed all over it.

This. Simple to implement.

[Guest Brody_Peffley]

What you're now mentioning is diameter. Bartybum is talking about thickness.

Wikipedia actually AGREES with Bartybum:

Edit: Ninja'd

Nope wikipedia sucks. You should try nasas website some time...

"While the other three gas planets in the solar system -- Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune -- have rings orbiting around them, Saturn's are by far the largest and most spectacular. With a thickness of about one kilometer (3,200 feet) or less"

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn&Display=Rings

[Themohawkninja]

I'm with the first post. One solid 2D image until you get to 2.5 meters away, whereby it begins to render procedurally generated asteroids at random XYZ coordinates.

I'd really like a rocky planet with a ring system. They look so pretty from the ground in Space Engine.