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Extended downtime – Sept 26-27, 2009

September 26th, 2009
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Solar-Sim has been taken offline for routine server maintenance. When the server comes back up, I will be making some changes that require Solar-Sim to be taken offline again from time to time.

The biggest change I’m making this weekend is to Solar-Sim’s frame of reference. Solar-Sim currently uses an “Earth Mean Equator” frame of reference. I originally chose this because that was the only frame of reference available for the star catalog I used to build Solar-Sim’s starfield background. While this made the planets line up nicely with the constellations, flying around was a bit odd because the Solar System was essentially tilted 23 degrees.

The frame of reference is changing to use the plane of the ecliptic. This means I’ll have to reconstruct the starfield background, but your ship won’t have to be tilted as much anymore when you travel from planet to planet.

Another change happening this weekend is the appearance of some moons and planets will change. I’m conducting a review of all texture maps used by Solar-Sim, and any that are found to be copyrighted will be removed.

Author: Dave Shay Categories: Maintenance, Patch Notes Tags:
  1. Dave Shay
    September 27th, 2009 at 17:08 | #1
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    Solar-Sim is back up! The background starfield, all major planets, and all moons in the inner Solar System have been adjusted to the new frame of reference. Jupiter’s moons have been adjusted as well, and Saturn’s moons are being worked on now.

    The new frame of reference makes things look a LOT better now. To see what I mean, login to the demo (http://solar-sim.net/blog/solar-sim-demo/) and type:
    /warp earth

    The Sun, the Earth, Earth’s moon, and your ship are all approximately on the same plane now. Prior to this change, everything was a bit weird because the Solar System’s plane was tilted 23 degrees to be aligned with Earth’s equator.

  2. Dave Shay
    October 17th, 2009 at 09:22 | #2
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    I’ve been getting rave reviews about this post from comment/link spammers:

    “Very interesting and amusing subject. I read with great pleasure.”

    And….

    “Interesting and informative. But will you write about this one more?”

    OK, gents! If you insist! Sorry about deleting your spam links. :)

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