Solar-Sim Devlog

As there are only 2 hours left in the month, this’ll be my last blog post for April (imagine that!).

I’m quite pleased with the progress made since my last major blog update, so I thought I’d share a few highlights with you:

• Significantly reduced the distance between moons and their “floaty names” (the text hovering above it that tells you which moon it is). Floaty names were previously too high above the object; in some cases a moon that was in the center of the screen had its name appear on the very top of the screen, or not at all.
• Solved the problem where the Sun could not be seen from Jupiter.
• The Sun/Jupiter fix allowed me to increase the scale of Solar-Sim by a factor of 5.  (Meaning all models now appear 5 times bigger than before).  Asteroids and comets are still too small to see, but moons are much easier to see now.
• Added the /zoom command, which enables you to narrow your field of view so smaller objects are easier to see.  This command also slows down your character’s movement speed, so that you move closer to smaller objects without racing past them by mistake.
• Most objects in the Solar System are now textured with realistic images.  Improvements need to be made in this area, and I need to do a thorough review of the image catalog to ensure Solar-Sim isn’t violating any copyrights.
• As noted in my previous post, Solar-Sim’s battery backup system has been upgraded.  We should be able to keep running for up to 2 hours if local power gets knocked out due to thunderstorms.
• Solved the problem where newly-created characters would enter Solar-Sim significantly below the ecliptic plane.   (By “significant” I mean “hundreds of millions of kilometers”).  New characters now enter Solar-Sim close to the Sun… well inside Mercury’s orbit.  Toasty!

The focus for May will be to replace the default fantasy-based character avatars with something more appropriate for space travel.  The new avatars should also get rid of the constant “flickering avatar” problem.

In May I also plan on replacing the sample mini-map that appears in the top-right corner of the screen.  The new map will show an orbital diagram plot for the major planets.   I would like to have it update in real-time to show in “radar” fashion if you’re approaching a planet, but that will require some more research… so I’m not making any promises on that item right now.

Finally, more moons and asteroids will be added as time permits.

See you in May!

Solar-Sim will be offline tomorrow night (April 30) from 7:00PM to 7:30PM US Central time. The server needs to be powered down so I can swap out the UPS battery backup system. Solar-Sim’s current UPS isn’t recharging anymore, so it is time to replace it before the next big thunderstorm hits.

Solar-Sim’s free demo is now online!

As stated in the disclaimer on the demo page linked above, this is a “demo” only; The final product won’t feature a bald guy running around in space wearing a leather tunic That will be fixed when Alpha Test starts later this summer.

A number of improvements were made over the weekend.  Chief among them… well, see below!

This weekend I’m replacing all of the planets’ models.  The bland “white sphere” will be replaced with a model textured with images from NASA.

On an unrelated note, I also corrected an issue this week with planetary movement.  Planets would move in their orbits when the server first started up, but after a while they’d stop moving.

I bought a new machine and did some “surgery” on it to install additional RAM over the weekend.  The website, patcher and asset repository will remain on the older server, but the simulation engine itself that Multiverse connects to now runs on a brand new machine.  The new machine runs dual core 2.0 Ghz CPUs and has 3-GB of RAM.  We’ll run on this machine until we’re ready to start Beta testing and switch to a hosted environment.

Also, I’m not sure how they found us already (as I haven’t advertised or linked us to Google yet), but I’ve deleted our first Spam comment today.

Much has happened since my last post!  Here’s a recap:

• Patcher / online asset repository is online.
• Succesfully tested connecting to Solar-Sim (and grabbing updates from the patcher) from a client PC.
• Replaced 8,000+ star models with a skybox texture, which improved framerates tremendously.  This took a lot of work as I built the skybox texture myself.  Do some Google searches for a realistic starfield skybox texture and you’ll definitely come up short!  (At least I did).  I got around this by writing a Perl script which reads a star catalog and generates textures for all 6 faces of the skybox.  Stars are sized according to their apparent magnitude as observed from Earth.  Especially bright stars are colored according to their spectral type.
• Added the /warp named solar body command (for example: “/warp earth”).  This allows you to instantly travel to any planet, moon, asteroid or comet currently in Solar-Sim.
• Compared screenshots in Solar-Sim against other sites on the Internet that generate 2-D images of solar bodies against a starfield backdrop.  I wanted to check, for example, that if NASA says Mercury is currently supposed to be near the Orion constellation if you’re looking at Mercury from the Sun, that Solar-Sim isn’t showing it someplace else.  One embarassing problem that I corrected with this check was the Big Dipper (and everything else for that matter) needed to be horizontally flipped because I had made a fundamental mistake when converting the star catalog’s coordinate system to Multiverse’s.
• Added Solar-Sim’s first minor planet (“Ceres”), first near-Earth asteroid (“Apophis”), and 14 moons.  (Much more will be coming soon now that I have the basics out of the way!)
• Increased Solar-Sim’s accuracy from 1 hour to 10 minutes.
• The name of each solar body floats above it as you move within range.  More distant bodies can be clicked on to display the name.

Now that all of these changes are in, I’m feeling much more comfortable about opening up Solar-Sim for “demo” purposes.  I’m not ready to call it Alpha testing yet, as there’s still some important changes and features yet to be added.

Chief among the changes needed before moving to “Alpha”:  I need to replace the player avatars from humans wearing leather armor to something a little more survivable in space (I’m thinking spaceships here, folks!).  The mini-map that appears in the top-right corner needs to be replaced as well.

Tonight’s post will be brief:

Solar-Sim’s database, simulation engine and scripts have been migrated to the server.  The server platform will be tested this weekend to ensure the migration went OK.

The server Solar-Sim migrated to definitely isn’t powerful enough to support Beta or go-live;  there will be another server migration prior to starting Beta testing.  Even so, this week’s server migration was still an important step (as all testing and development was performed on the same machine prior to this week).

The next milestone to reach is to setup an “asset repository” on this website.  Alpha testing can’t proceed until this step has completed, as this is what lets the Multiverse Client download everything needed to work with Solar-Sim: icons, textures, 3-D models, scripts, and so on.

I struggled to come up with an appropriate “first post” to inaugurate Solar-Sim.net’s Devlog.

In fact, I’m still struggling.

Setting that aside, I bid you welcome to Solar-Sim and I hope you’ll join me in looking forward to “go-live” day!  So much work has to be done between now and then.  This “Devlog” is where I’ll post updates on how things are going, what has been accomplished, and where we’re headed.  Think of this area of the website as a developer’s status report to Management… and you’re Management.  Try not to let the power go to your head. 

So what has been accomplished so far?

1. The technology platform has been chosen.  We’re going with Multiverse (www.multiverse.net).
2. Database connectivity works.  The simulation’s server can connect to a database in real-time and retrieve appropriate astronomical data.
3. The technology platform passed the initial “proof of concept” test.  8,916 stars, our sun, Earth’s moon, Haley’s Comet, and all Solar System planets were rendered in real time.  The computer running the test was running the database, server and client.  No small feat.
4. A website has been registered:  solar-sim.net.  You’re looking at it.  Catchy name, eh?

What’s next?  (The items in the following list are not listed in order of priority)

1. Implement an online help screen.  Pressing F1 should bring up a screen that shows how to move around within the simulation.  This screen should also appear upon the first login.
2. Replace the bald human male avatar with a spaceship.
3. Improve performance by replacing star models with a skybox texture.
4. Add moons (currently Earth’s moon is the only moon in the simulation), plutoids and asteroids.
5. Add textures for the planets.  Other than their scale, Jupiter and Earth currently look the same.
6. Whether by a slash command or an interface menu, allow players to “warp” to any named object within the Solar System.
7. Add an interface widget that displays the player’s Cartesian X/Y/Z coordinates in real-tme as they move around within the simulation.

I think that’s about enough for my first post.  More updates to follow!