Universal reference frame

[Crzyrndm]

I'm looking for a reference frame that doesn't depend on the location or orientation of a vessel and doesn't change with time. I'm guessing my best bet is going to be using the the sun, but that breaks down if the sun rotates.

Does the sun transform rotate with respect to the planetary system?

Is there an alternative way to have a constant standard reference frame?

Edited February 17, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Diazo]

An interesting question.

I'd start with looking at the frame of reference the Orbit driver works in, that's the only thing close to a "Universal reference" that I can think of.

D.

[stupid_chris]

I don't think there is any. Even the sun moves, because Krakensbane moves the whole universe around the vessel most of the time. Usually during interplanetary/high velocity flight, the static point of reference is the vessel, and everything moves around it (I believe). You're going to be stuck playing with changing points of reference I believe. Otherwise, you could try setting a closed point in space and changing it's coordinate with the speed of the frame of reference Krakensbane spews out, but that might be tricky.

[sarbian]

I did not play much with those but you have Planetarium.up / forward / right for the celestial frame.

And orbit.getTruePositionAtUT should give you to position in that frame (not tested and from memory but I think it's the good one). (may or may not need a .xzy to order the fields)

[Diazo]

Hmm, I think me and chris answered two different questions.

I answered the question of "I want to put an object at an arbitrary location in the solar system, I don't care about my relation to any vessels in flight, I care about my relation to the solar system itself". Somewhere in the Orbit driver class, this exists, even if it is quite convoluted. (From reading the forum, as I understand it the orbits of planets are defined as an ellipse and then current position is calculated based on time stamp rather then a saved position.)

Chris answered the question of "I want to know the location of things relative to my current vessel, but outside of the current physics bubble". Which is correct as far as I know. Due to the Krakensbane there is no "ship-based" reference that either persists or covers more then just the local region around the vessel. (Each time you spawn a new flight scene, the 0,0,0 co-ordinate resets to the start position of the focused vessel, and then krakensbane confuses things further.)

D.

edit: And then sarbian the ninja comes along and sneaks his answer in.

[Crzyrndm]

I don't think there is any. Even the sun moves, because Krakensbane moves the whole universe around the vessel most of the time. Usually during interplanetary/high velocity flight, the static point of reference is the vessel, and everything moves around it (I believe). You're going to be stuck playing with changing points of reference I believe. Otherwise, you could try setting a closed point in space and changing it's coordinate with the speed of the frame of reference Krakensbane spews out, but that might be tricky.

Movement relative to the vessel is expected (or rather required). So long as it stays constant relative to the position and rotation of the planetary system, it'll do what I want it to.

I did not play much with those but you have Planetarium.up / forward / right for the celestial frame.

Now that sounds hopeful. Experiment time

edit: And then sarbian the ninja comes along and sneaks his answer in.

Thanks for the pointers anyway