yeah, but can't get handled from within a lua.

try and you get a message that the first body does have not a valid star type.

but also i guess rob wouldn't have missed to put it under constants in the wiki and also to put it under methods to give a short advice.

but that's no problem, i know this will be changed for shure, until it's ok this way (why does this guy selected such a exotic star? i don't know, intention?).

it could be i used it wrong (but then the error msg is different), but after i found it wasn't listed under constants i gave that up, assuming it isn't implemented yet.

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naming could get difficult, i checked randomly some of the systems, most have no "real" name, only their catalogue numbers depending on which you refer.

so to evade the repetive Gliese nnn, you could only use BD, Wolf, or any other to give it a little less monotone appearance.

helpful is Simbad or Sesame name resolver, but not all systems are to find with the description used for pioneer, some i had to go really far to find the proper name/description, sometimes a simple google for the description has brought better results (you will never find a kui 79, it's kuiper79 or bust).

there is a private database containing 120'000 nearest and brightest stars, it's quite comprehensive i guess, unfortunately i can only load ~65000 records in excel.

the full version 2 includes cartesian coordinates for all systems as well as naming etc.

if interested:

http://www.astronexus.com/files/downloads/hygxyz.csv.gz

from here:

http://www.astronexus.com/

if you like to use this database, you will have to resolve the names first and use preferably "hipparc" (HIP / HIC) or "bonner durchmusterung" (BD), these references are complete in the database.

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i've read a interesting article about size and size comparison, it's a whole website:

http://www.foundalis.com/ast/astron.htm

it's worth a try even if you think you know it allready.

a interesting fact i dissolved from is that many (really a lot, read) stars are "invisible", due to their small size (many red dwarfs).

what brought the idea up, that such shouldn't be used or maybe only some (else the sectors will get overloaded) that are named because they are visible from earth since they are close (i.e. barnards star).

it's also interesting and reasonable what he assumes as visible colors, under different stars, like i guessed mostly white except for the red and brown dwarfs.

or all above type K will have white light for our eyes.

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something different.

i'm really bad with numbers 😉

if you have LUA edit allready, with it comes a useful little measurement converter, you can specify in it also custom translations, i.e. AU to km, or more exotic ones, like solar/earth radius to km, helpful to use the data from within the game for a custom system script

if not you can get it from his page:

http://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/

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and sorry if you feel i'm stinky or upset, it's only my job and the back pain that makes me this angry 👿

last week i could have killed someone...

...so better stay out of my way. 😉

well i guess that needs a little more...

it allready refuses to clone, arguing i havn't updated the servers info

i guess something like that makes me nervous now...

so for quite a while i won't use it, i really havn't the nerve now for such.

that i'm natively german speaking didn't helps much and i have to read advices sometimes often until i understand them fully.

costs a lot of time and nerves, both is actually rare (did i told you that i HATE my job? allready i feel i'm gettin agressive because i have to getup in 5hrs).

i guess i have to pause (here) until next weekend, usually when i come home from work i'm to tired to press the button on the remote for the tv (and don't ask me how i feel after a beer). this feeling usually stays until sunday afternoon, right on monday morning when the feeling in your back returns, you will have to robot again, roundabout wednesday you won't feel no more pain until weekend returns. 😯

you will understand that to get entertained, now is more important to me then to entertain others 😉

as i only have to commit models by now (other stuff will follow when it's confirmed), yours will have to obtain them from here or i will mail them to tomm as i did before.

sorry guys 😉

edit: that didn't belongs here

The problem I was referring to will only be apparant IN SYSTEM, not on the system info screen as every star-type shares the same icon no matter what its size.

When you have a star that is 30 AU across it will fill the whole system and you most likely won't be able to use time acceleration.

But anyway I see what you mean now... the Icon of the star is too big, not the star itself... An unfortunate side-effect of the current system.

Hmm, well for say Rob's branch, you only need to enter "https://github.com/robn/pioneer.git" and it should clone the branch just like that. Theres more invlolved if you actually want to push your changes onto teh server, but just to clone a branch should be fairly simple.

There's plenty of tutorials on using Git that can explain it much better than I can 🙂

Intriguing idea Marcel. Witch Space would have some sort of atmospheric or fluidic quality to it? Fans of the original Elite flight model would like this. Dont know though if Pioneer's development has taken a path that would make doing this quite difficult without doing a complete re-write.

I don't think so. Hyperspace would then be implemented as a special kind of empty system with no bodies and modified physics. It'd be a bit of a hack, but not too difficult I think.

Exactly! It would be filled with aether! 😆 Just an idea, but it would make navigating to an exit point interesting, and think of the battles when you're jumped by Shadows or Thargoids or whatever.

Maybe we should only enter hyper/witch space when using a gate. The main use of a gate in Pioneer might be to increase the range of a jump. In other words, a player might be able to enter a gate and exit from another that is beyond the range of the ship. The gates could be ancient alien technology that humans discovered. Using them could be a bit ...risky.

"Which space, Doctor...who?"

I have a minor gripe/comment about the alpha9 autopilot. It generally works quite well, but when docking at a space station you always enter upside down. The station corrects this, but it could cause a problem for a very wide ship at the Elite-type station. I also think ships enter the stations a bit too fast. This is just an aesthetic consideration, but what's the point of playing the Blue Danube waltz when you're barreling in like that?

Wow, this Game is very nice. I like to fly deep over the planetary surface. "ctrl-h" is my favorit option. I think it switch between HDR on and off. Very usefull.

But i miss a button to hide the HUD and a Fov option to Zoom in and out. Maybe whit the next version? ....oh, is it possible to have more surfacequality. A very very very very hight option? My Pc is unchallenged. 🙄

Keep up this good work. 😎

The reason its as you say 'unchallenged' is because its threaded, and calculations for the terrain will never slow the main game down. But your likely to be using about 60% of a quad core pc depending on various things. For me, pioneer uses more of my CPU than ANY other game out there, including so-called 4-core games such as Supreme commander and Crysis.

I'm reluctant to ramp up quality any further, as it would mean I could no longer test it as the loading times would end up being far too long, and Im far too impatient for that 😉

Also there are some issues with the engine, that mean in its current state this is the maximum detail we will ever see, which is still more detail than even Infinity Quest for Earth by a long way... perhaps by a factor of 3 or 4.

What PC do you have btw?

My Q6600 + GTX285 are categorically challenged 🙂 I have also had the pleasure of testing this on an i7 3.2, which was lovely. Probably at least a 60% speed increase over mine... or so it seemed.... However my pc still runs at 60FPS... thats the way Pioneer works... Terrain is just updated at a slower rate.

Graphics cards are far less important for Pioneer. You just need a basic one which can render around 2-3,000,000 triangles with ease, which is quite common these days AFAIK.

...yes, thats right it works fine whit 60fps. But sometimes i wisched to see it in top quality whit 25fps or less for a nice orbital view. Maybe whit a spezialbotton like the "crlt-H" funtion, what ever. Just for the Moment.

Such as GPU, CPU specs....

Hmm. Thats not likely to happen, its just not how Pioneer works. Detail increases as you zoom in, so you would be pretty much screwed if your pc could only just handle the minimum detail... which is orbital view... As every step in quality, is twice as demanding as the previous one.

You can test you pc with this, but you need a version newer than Alpha 9, such as Rob's daily builds (This contains 2 very high quality terrain types which are currently used for all terran type worlds for testing..):

Go to Mars and land... time how long it takes to load up maximum detail. You will know it is at maximum detail because the land will begin to flicker ever so slightly, this is an engine issue with high detail settings. Press Ctrl + I... then tell me the maximum number of triangles it says you have there. Even my GTX 285 begins to slow at maximum detail on a world like Mars, but it takes a long time to load up that detail with my CPU... and all that time the game is happily chugging along at 60FPS Until the highest detail is loaded, then the game will slow to about 45-50 FPS due to Graphics card overload 😀

Edit://

Now I think about it, it might well be possible 🙂 Especially if this is only for Orbital views and not for planetary close-ups. I'll add it onto my ever expanding list of things to try 😀

I have a GTX 460 and a Quad 2.80GHz. Down on the planet are 4030020 triangles and 50000m above only 1108000.

All high whit 60fps and 2500x1440res.

Thx for that "Rob's daily builds" hint. That version looks mutch better. 😎

Don't quite understand what's going on here 😕

12M tris/sec but only 10fps? It's an ATI Radeon HD4850 on a dual-core system.

Hmm. Well I'm not too sure either. The only thing I would suggest is to lower the building density, it looks to be quite high. Landscape/planet quality shouldn't effect it as Earth doesnt have a lot of perlin stuff going on...

I tend to run with the buildings on minimum setting and with the planets on the highest.

more planet less buildings hehe u might not fly into em as much tho thye look good

Well your lucky that it runs so well 😀

How are the loading times for the terrain, do they seem quite acceptable? With my CPU they are too slow on Very very high, but its certainly speedy enough on very high. Better CPUs like your's though should not really have any problem loading up the highest detail in no time at all 🙂 The i7 3.2 I tested was like speedy Gonzales 🙂

When i load a Savegame by a very low position on a planet it need 60-90sec to load to the highest detail. So it isnt fast but for this nice Landscape... 😎

i suggest to replace the city with a copy of city3k (i will upload it here and hopefully on GIThub).

still you shouldn't use full detail level (even if i can't reach a 0 framerate, and my PC is much lower specced, check your drivers and especially if you don't need the DirectX developers issue don't install respectively uninstall it, it contains a open gl relevant library which is much slower then the common version).

triplebuffer in combination with vertical sync helps to enhance the framerate a bit.

texture oversampling can do "miracles" when a lot of textured objects have to be rendered.

dust off your machine, if she isn't allready.

i mean, reduce background processes to a minimum of useful ones.

well that ole' tattery grey... no matter how many cores, still 60 years and dindn't get's younger to.

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i'm aware that the city (even city3k) is a framerate killer, but i'm working on that.

i will have to remove textures from all buildings under a certain distance, this will help when cities get rendered nearly unseen, additionally dynamic stuff must be reduced to material settings foremost, no or only limited true animations or animate only meshes without textures.

one thing i'm not quite shure about, i have two versions of city3k, one pure scripted the other based on wavefront objects.

i wonder now which runs smoother, personally i guess and feel the pure scripted runs better but it's hard to tell anyway (personally i guess it's because texture projection is different, simplier in case for scripted meshes).

the city3k is back in the download area of pioneer

why you should use it?

to replace the (sorry) odd skyscrapers.

remove the complete city folder therefore (and city.lua).

city3k_04-2011_full.zip

[attachment=669:2011-04-16_000832.jpg]

Cool! I vote that this be included in alpha 10, and JamieGrant's icons too! 😀

Well, we're not a democracy, but I'm glad you're enthusiastic 🙂

If someone wants to get the new models into a Git repository, test throughly and help me understand the details of the change so I can be sure that we're not breaking things (I read the engine code to determine this normally, but I don't fully understand the models yet) then I'd be happy to merge it.

We discussed the icons yesterday in IRC. The feeling was that although they're clearly much more pleasant to look at, its not crystal clear what function they refer to. Granted, neither do the current ones, but if we're going to change them it has to be a definite improvement. Right now the consensus seems to be that there's not enough of an improvement and we're likely to have to change it again in the future, so we'd prefer to just wait and do it once and once only.

It's not really a big deal, they are in the download area for you to add yourself, just remember not to copy over the dashboard as this has changed since Jamie created his icon set. 😉

Speaking of icons... would it be possible to move the zoom in zoom out icons further down the planetary screen to the bottom?.

Gargantou wrote on frontier forums;

i had to post that

heard good things about city3k