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Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

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311–320 of 344 posts

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tiangong in the movie isn't a real space station so if the Chinese were to build it they could put it in any orbit they like, even one hypothetically 10m/s of delta-v away from the ISS and there might even be realistic reasons for them want to be energetically close to the ISS. There are reasons not to do it but if there's a good reason like the Chinese want to keep the option of physically linking to the ISS ope…

That wouldn't make much sense, but even if we grant that, just switch the complaint to Hubble and ISS. We know where both of those are.

When that movie came out, I was studying a basic astronomy course at the university and we were going through some simple orbital mechanics. We had a long discussion about can the debris of Hubble hit the ISS or not.

The conclusion was probably not, but under perfect storm circumstances (and especially timing) a fragment or two might not be out of the question.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#312
post #24

I have a good (bad) feeling that this change will likely mean that, sooner or later, Linux support will be dropped. /bet me it won't...

Isn't Linux becoming more and more compatible with modern games/development?

The problem isn't, and has never been, linux being compatible with games or with their development. The problem is game developers not making their game compatible with linux.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#313

KSP 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…

KSP doesn't have Lagrange points. I mean, it's understandable, the n-body problem is hard.

It's not hard.

> Principia is a mod for Kerbal Space Program (KSP) which implements N-body and extended body gravitation. Instead of being within the sphere of influence of a single celestial body at any point in time, your vessels are influenced by all the celestials. This makes it possible to implement missions that are more complex and more realistic than in the stock game, especially if used in conjunction with a mod like RealSolarSystem which has real-life celestials.

https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#314

KSP 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…

I often think good games are criminally under priced. I must have played Age of Empires a good 1,000+ hours. Possibly even more. That works out to 6 cents per hour of entertainment.

You can see it as taking risk into account. KSP and StarCraft were both cents-per-hour games for me, but I couldn't have guessed that at the moment I was buying them.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#315

Earlier 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…

How do you feel about The Flash? To me, it was fine at first, but as the show went on, too much habdwaiving was used, even for a tv show of its genre and it's becoming increasingly annoying (to me at least). I'm no physicist, though.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#316
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game also has a horrible habit of turning people into arrogant know-it-all armchair rocket scientists. > no longer being able to watch most space movies due to frustration caused by the filmmakers not grokking basic orbital physics Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief? Something about this game…

> Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief? A fun game to play in most action movies is count how many shots are fired before the protagonist has to reload. I wish I had one of those magic magazines.

Watch out for those magic magazines though. They have a tendency to disappear in dramatic moments, so you may suddenly find yourself with no magazines and one bullet in your gun at the exact time you need rounds the most.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#317
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KSP doesn't have Lagrange points. I mean, it's understandable, the n-body problem is hard.

It's not hard. > Principia is a mod for Kerbal Space Program (KSP) which implements N-body and extended body gravitation. Instead of being within the sphere of influence of a single celestial body at any point in time, your vessels are influenced by all the celestials. This makes it possible to implement missions that are more complex and more realistic than in the stock game, especially if used in conjunction with a…

Just because someone did it doesn't mean it's not hard.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more accurate rephrasing would be: The lack of effort toward monetization likely is an effect of the same cause as low developer pay. I was suggesting that the two were linked, but not suggesting the specific causal link from monetization to developer pay of your version. But you are correct that the original was unnecessarily elliptical.

I'm almost certainly in the minority, however, I do so enjoy pedantry. "Everything in its right place."

HN survives on pedantry.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#319
post #317
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard. > Principia is a mod for Kerbal Space Program (KSP) which implements N-body and extended body gravitation. Instead of being within the sphere of influence of a single celestial body at any point in time, your vessels are influenced by all the celestials. This makes it possible to implement missions that are more complex and more realistic than in the stock game, especially if used in conjunction with a…

Just because someone did it doesn't mean it's not hard.

But it's not hard. Especially since KSP would be a restricted n-body problem (only the spacecraft are affected by gravity from multiple bodies) and the "n" in n-body is about 20 (number of massive bodies in solar system).

It's a game design decision not to include gravitation from multiple sources.

Re: Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

#320
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have KSP and I've played around with it. I liked it, however what I didn't like was piloting a launch by hand. Maybe later in the game you don't have to do that or something, I don't know because it wasn't the experience I was looking for. I was hoping for flight computers and programming trajectories.

try mechjeb.

MechJeb doesn't do proper roll, pitch, gravity turn launches either. It does a pre-programmed ascent profile.

In reality all the control of a space launch takes place in the first seconds when the vehicle is subsonic. After that it's just pointing to the direction of travel because any angle of attack in the atmosphere would cause excess aerodynamic stress.

That's why launch controllers say "nominal" that often. There's nothing that can be done, just hoping that the vehicle stays within the planned bounds.

All the accumulated errors from atmospheric conditions and other randomness are corrected by the second stage burn once outside the atmosphere.

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