Solar-Sim Devlog

The /warp command was improved today so multiple ships warping to the same object have a much smaller chance of ending up directly on top of each other. Your ship’s position will be determined by calculating a random point along an orbit 100,000km from the center of the object you want to warp to.

This orbital distance is larger for certain objects:

• Neptune and Uranus: 125,000km

• Jupiter and Saturn: 150,000km
• Sol (the Sun): 2.5 million kilometers

Your ship will automatically re-orient itself to face the object you just warped to. The only caveat with this is /warp won’t adjust your ship’s pitch. This means if you held down your right mouse button and moved your ship’s nose to face the North Star, and then you typed “/warp saturn”, your ship’s nose will still be pointed upwards at the North Star, as in the screenshot below.

Finally, the /zoom command gives you a little more help if you type “/zoom” all by itself. It’ll tell you that 2 options are available.

1. A simpler version, where you can type “/zoom in” or “/zoom out”. The “/zoom in” option will narrow your field of view and also slow down your ship. This allows you to see smaller objects better.
2. For experts, you can specify your own field of view by typing “/zoom #”, where # is a number between 5 and 45. Typing 45 is the same as typing “/zoom out”, and 20 is the same as “/zoom in”. Unlike the simpler mode, this option doesn’t automatically alter your flight speed… and you can narrow your field of view further than with the simpler “/zoom in” option.

The screenshot below shows what a field of view of 5 degrees looks like when orbiting Jupiter. In this view, you can see the Sun rather easily (if your ship is pointed at it). The Sun is very difficult to find from Jupiter when in the default 45 degree field of view; it is easy to miss among the starfield background.