Kerbal Solar Eclipse

[deadshot462]

So I decided to record a solar eclipse occurring on the Kerbin, and it turned out to be a pretty cool show:

Once planets are out, it\'ll be cool to see their spots move across the sky for all sorts of alignment

[Cooly568]

Epicly Awesome.

[Zephram Kerman]

Hey, that\'s purdy.

[Ascensiam]

I figure it\'s going to take much longer before we get some sort of Corona effect.

[mincespy]

I figure it\'s going to take much longer before we get some sort of Corona effect.

We need a better lighting system.

[marko dash]

shouldn\'t it have gone dark during the eclipse?

[TinnedEpic]

I still think that\'s pretty awesome. Ive yet to see a solar eclipse.

[Max Grant]

shouldn\'t it have gone dark during the eclipse?

It seems that planets and Muns do not truly block each others\' light. I have seen many eclipses and my ship still is showing a clear shadow. I think the only time a planet really blocks light is when you are on its surface and the Sun is on the other side of it. The camera on the dark side of the Mun also shows lens flare while the Kerbol sun is below the horizon.

I don\'t know if that final level of detail would require more rendering power than is worth it. Not knowing fully how the rendering works, I do know that when I used to build Quake, Half-Life, and Jedi Knight levels years ago, you had to pre-render environments with the lighting in place, and the engine probably is saving tons of processing on the fly by eliminating all but direct shadows.

My .02

[vexx32]

Doing a standard raycast would, doubtless, require far more processing power than is useful, just to check for an eclipse. I think a fairly accurate mathematical algorithm could determine when Kerbol would be behind the Mun, and then just dim the light accordingly, perhaps also displaying a corona effect around the Mun. Of course, the algorithm need only be run when the Mun and Kerbol are close to overlapping each other in the sky, and only during the daytime...

[tk5800thesecond]

beautiful, its little things like this that keep me playing

[Picooz]

Beautiful! It\'s the simple things

[TinnedEpic]

Well who says kerbal\'s haven\'t learnt to bend light around their mun to avoid having that solar eclipse?

(though their level of technology and skills in piloting space crafts should suggest otherwise)

It\'s just like the age old question where do kerbal\'s live? (actually now I think about it it\'s nothing like the age old question where do kerbals live, but still none the less another mystery about them we have yet to learn)

[Magpie]

Very cool, but may I ask what is that radar dish for?

[vexx32]

That\'s... the tracking station. Looking at flights in progress and that sort of thing...

If you haven\'t seen it before, then I suppose you\'ve just been using the demo, which doesn\'t have persistence or anything like that, and thus no tracking station.