Solar-Sim Devlog

All remaining natural satellites for Neptune and Uranus were added today, which brings Solar-Sim population of moons complete for all planets!

List of Uranus satellites in Solar-Sim:
Ariel
Belinda
Bianca
Caliban
Cordelia
Cressida
Desdemona
Ferdinand
Francisco
Juliet
Margaret
Miranda
Oberon
Ophelia
Portia
Prospero
Puck
Rosalind
Setebos
Stephano
Sycorax
Titania
Trinculo
Umbriel

Uranus has 3 additional moons not listed above, but NASA doesn’t have orbital information about these moons yet. They will be added to Solar-Sim at some point in the future after NASA updates their ephemeris data.

List of Neptune satellites in Solar-Sim:
Despina
Galatea
Halimede
Laomedeia
Larissa
Naiad
Nereid
Neso
Proteus
Psamathe
Sao
Thalassa
Triton

All of Jupiter’s known moons are now in Solar-Sim:

2003J10
2003J12
2003J15
2003J16
2003J18
2003J19
2003J2
2003J23
2003J3
2003J4
2003J5
2003J9
Adrastea
Aitne
Amalthea
Ananke
Aoede
Arche
Autonoe
Callirrhoe
Callisto
Carme
Carpo
Chaldene
Cyllene
Elara
Erinome
Euanthe
Eukelade
Euporie
Eurydome
Ganymede
Harpalyke
Hegemone
Helike
Hermippe
Herse
Himalia
Io
Iocaste
Isonoe
Kale
Kallichore
Kalyke
Kore
Leda
Lysithea
Megaclite
Metis
Mneme
Orthosie
Pasiphae
Pasithee
Praxidike
Sinope
Sponde
Taygete
Thebe
Thelxinoe
Themisto
Thyone

All 63 of Saturn’s currently-known natural satellites that have orbital information available via NASA are now part of Solar-Sim. Here is the complete list!

2004S12
2004S13
2004S17
2004S7
2006S1
2006S2
2006S3
2006S5
2007S2
2007S3
Aegaeon
Aegir
Albiorix
Anthe
Atlas
Bebhionn
Bergelmir
Bestla
Calypso
Daphnis
Dione
Enceladus
Epimetheus
Erriapus
Farbauti
Fenrir
Fornjot
Greip
Hati
Helene
Hyperion
Hyrokkin
Iapetus
Ijiraq
Janus
Jarnsaxa
Kari
Kiviuq
Loge
Methone
Mimas
Mundilfari
Narvi
Paaliaq
Pallene
Pan
Pandora
Phoebe
Polydeuces
Prometheus
Rhea
Siarnaq
Skathi
Skoll
Surtur
Suttungr
Tarqeq
Tarvos
Telesto
Tethys
Thrymr
Titan
Ymir

Remember: You can type /warp name (for example: “/warp titan”) to instantly arrive at any of them. You may be surprised to see some of these are pretty far away from Saturn!

Solar-Sim’s network seems to be stable again after AT&T sent 3 line repair technicians. To celebrate, I will be adding more moons to Solar-Sim later today.

I haven’t posted here for quite some time… in fact, not since I upgraded my network to AT&T U-VersE. This greatly increased my speed, but it make it impossible to access Solar-Sim from inside the network. AT&T’s U-VersE router contained a flaw whereby port-forwarding would only be effective for people accessing the site from outside the network.

AT&T recently pushed a software upgrade to the router that seems to have fixed the above issue. If everything works OK, I’ll have no more excuses!!!

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.

Solar-Sim has just been taken offline for routine server maintenance. It should be back up in about 30 minutes.

Solar-Sim and the webserver will both be offline briefly this morning for routine server security patching.

As requested by John in a comment post, a new command has been added today: /list

Typing /list all by itself will display a list of different categories of objects that you can /warp to, such as planets, asteroids, and moons (satellites).

Typing /list category will display a list of all Solar-Sim objects within that category. To see an example of how this works, type this:
/list saturn satellite

You can instantly travel to any of the listed objects with the /warp command!

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.