Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I think all of us here love hacker movies. Sneakers, Hackers, Swordfish, etc. :)
I absolutely hated watching Mr. Robot. Gave up after 4 episodes.
I love Mr. Robot one of the best shows on TV IMO.
Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
291–300 of 344 posts
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#292KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Side effects of playing KSP include: - getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics - finding yourself reading up on actual math to better u…
> If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them.
Not having played KSP, but would do so with my kid, what age do you think would be suitable for them to start playing?
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is not graphics, but rather, the limitations of Unity that make it unsuitable for anything else but lowest common denominator multi-platform games with clearly defined limits. Space Engineers is another game hampered by Unity.
Space Engineers isn't made in Unity, it uses their Custom VRAGE engine. Unity can do far better graphics than KSP has e.g. https://unity3d.com/pages/adam . The fact that there are numerous mods which vastly improve the graphics of KSP is pretty good evidence of this! Where Unity can be blamed for KSP problems is the constant stutters due to GC - Unity uses an ancient garbage collector. Hopefully that's going to get b…
I wrote this elsewhere recently on HN but if you also suffer from GC stuttering, there's a nice little mod called MemGraph[0] which lets you tweak some GC parameters. It definitely made a world of difference on my system with lots of RAM.
[0]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/139128-...
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I'm surprised Factorio hasn't surfaced more frequently on HN. The game's automation play is just as addictive and creative, and it runs on Mac and Linux.
The people who have found Factorio have yet to come back from playing Factorio. Their children miss them.
Factorio has murdered as many hours of my time as OpenTTD has.
What is this "outside world" you speak of?
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
KSP taught me that orbital intercept to rescue Watney was nosense. (The book was slightly more believable here). also the whole swing by Earth and head back at the last minute was wrong. Orbital intercepts between planets requires very precise timing and alignment. A transfer from Mars to Earth is never going to line up with an instant return transfer window back to Mars. On KSP itself, huge weakness for me in the ga…
> A transfer from Mars to Earth is never going to line up with an instant return transfer window back to Mars. The whole point of the Hermes spacecraft as used in The Martian, though, is that it has a high specific impulse, low thrust ion drive, that runs continually during the entire orbit (using power from a reactor to do so). Andy Weir, the author, is a programmer, and he actually wrote a physics simulator to calc…
The reddit did this as a challenge mission, including the Rich Purnell manoeuvre
https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/3q4u4a/...
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gravity was a good movie. And for a movie set in space, it's pretty realistic...ish. But it's orbital physics are terrible. Just terrible. I mean, most movies don't even try. Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars don't deal with orbital physics at all. Gravity tries, and gets it all wrong.
That really is the crux of the issue here. When a movie gets something so essential to the plot wrong, you rightfully dislike the makers for being so damn lazy and not bothering to do their homework. When it's only tangentially related, we're far more forgiving. It can even get downright dangerous when policymakers start getting their ideas from them. For example, shows like "24" that have suspects giving up accurate…
> For example, shows like "24" that have suspects giving up accurate and truthful information under torture, when any expert in the field of interrogation knows it doesn't work that way.
There's a more insidious explanation for this specific case: Viewers are being conditioned to accept torture as a legitimate interrogation technique, at the direction of $AGENCY.
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unity's actually great... the problem is anyone can use it.
Unity's great for small indie games. Complex simulations don't mix well with mandatory GC. Microstutters suck.
If you're playing KSP, you can tame the stuttering with the MemGraph[0] mod. I don't know about other Unity-based games (nor do I even know of any other games that suffer from the issue). Also in my case they weren't microstutters, rather ~1-3 second pauses.
[0]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/139128-...
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics Meh. I've a degree in Physics and I still enjoy Star Trek. I agree with the rest.
Same! And I have theories about it. It's either because 1.) In general Star Trek isn't really about physics, its about sociology or (in the better episodes) political science. 2.) Star Trek gets physics so wildly wrong that its not as grating as a show/movie that tries really hard for realism and still fails utterly. If there's an uncanny valley of scifi physics, Star Trek is definitely standing miles from the opposi…
>1.) In general Star Trek isn't really about physics, its about sociology or (in the better episodes) political science.
I've never watched Star Trek, though curiously I know another show set in space about politics, the anime Legend of the Galactic Heroes; it runs about 100 episodes with a few feature films too. If you're interested in politics, specifically in this case the play between a democracy and rule by one person.
It's also rather quaint, the imperial military is styled in a 19th century German style complete with uniforms, and the republic is styled in a modern futuristic style, not without berets though.
It's great fun, but I don't suggest it be discounted because it's an anime, which is a response I have received before.
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#299KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Side effects of playing KSP include: - getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics - finding yourself reading up on actual math to better u…
The Expanse is actually relatively accurate except for a couple scenes that were purposefully made inaccurate to aid the narrative, as admitted to and apologized for by the writers themselves on social media.
Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive
#300KSP was possibly my best entertainment spending ever. It definitely is the best game for me in terms of costs / time played. If you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and buy it now. If you have a kid with even tangential interest in space, get a copy for them. Side effects of playing KSP include: - getting an intuitive feel for basic orbital mechanics - finding yourself reading up on actual math to better u…
Why would I want to play a game that turns me into a insufferably pedantic jerk who can't let people just enjoy a damn movie?
That's like saying you shouldn't study statistics and probability because it won't be fun to go to the casino.