AT&T has been on-site 3 times already to investigate. I’m hopeful that the 3rd time fixed everything, but the next 24-48 hours should tell for sure!

“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.

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.

Thanks for posting your comment. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to get from this Demo! (If any school teachers or homeschooling parents are reading, please chime in with your comments as well!)

With regards to the ship skins, this sounds like an issue with your graphics card. While new models have been added, skins weren’t changed for the pre-existing ones. (In fact, the newest ships use the same texture files as the pre-existing ships). Please send me a screenshot when you get a chance.

If you’re concerned about any files being corrupted on your end, you can rename or delete your asset repository folder. If you have a default installation, this folder is:

[My Documents]\Multiverse World Browser\Worlds\solarsim

If you delete or rename the above directory, you will automatically re-download everything the next time you login to Solar-Sim.

Regarding the motion of solar objects, everything in Solar-Sim moves in real-time. There’s a “checkpoint” every 10 minutes to ensure everything has reached its proper place. Due to a limitation in the current version of Multiverse, fractional movement speeds aren’t possible. The minimum movement speed for any planet, moon, etc., is therefore rounded up to 1. (Try typing “/speed 100″ and then moving around… now imagine going 100 times slower than that!)

Even at that slow speed, at extreme distances from the Sun that is still faster than what some planets actually travel. This means planets like Jupiter reach their 10 minute “checkpoint” earlier than they should. If you have patience, /warp to Jupiter and sit there for 10 minutes. You’ll notice when the checkpoint happens and the planet and all of its moons resume moving.

The last thing I’ll comment on before heading to bed is about planet textures. I’m using cylindrical planetary maps obtained from NASA/JPL, as well as a few other sources. For any given solar object, there aren’t very many options to pick from at this time. When Solar-Sim exits Demo and marches toward Alpha and Beta, I will want to dump a few of the planet’s models and replace them with more sophisticated ones (especially for planets that have atmospheres). This may involve hiring someone who owns a license for Autodesk 3D Studio.

And yes, the end goal is to have all planets and moons rotate in real-time. We’ll see if that goal can be achieved or not!

Also, my original toon has its “skin” turned to black i think you did some changes to the ship skins and that change didn’t revert back to the ships that were made before the patch. not sure, but when I create a new one i can’t get the ship to have the same skin as my older ship (current model for my old ship was 12 male)

I like the planetary movements you added and the MAP works great. thanks for explaining the MAP is only limited to 10 years of time so the tracks are not complete. Whats the planetary movement speed? is this real time, or also an increased time?

I noticed you used current “real” visual photo’s for all the planets, was there a reason why you used a topographical map for earth? No clouds you can see the undersea mountains/trenches? I think it would be neat to see this on all the planets (as far as we know) but to match them all visual would be best for starts.

I’m sure your planning to add the moon rotations to this as well, maybe add the space prob’s tracks, and comets as well with that 10 year limitation.

yes, I’m a picky guy. Looking cool so far, I like what you have done.

Thanks for your feedback! Some responses to your suggestions follow below:

John :

when warping to a location/object, it would be nice to have your “ship” pointing at the planet/moon. or some sort of target/pointer to show you were it was at. I was able to warp to the planets, and moons but sometimes when i warped back to one i had already seen it wasn’t there.

I’m not satisfied with how /warp works yet, so I’ll keep tweaking that. It is “supposed” to point your ship at the object, but I’ve noticed post-warp ship re-orientation works inconsistently.

John :

is there a list of objects we can warp too? how about a faster ship speed, with a target ability (so you can fly too an object)

I can whip together a command that allows you to see a list of objects you can /warp to. I will probably list them somewhere on this website as well.

Adjustable ship speed is coming soon!!!!

John :

Suggestions, might be hard, with scaling issues, but known satilites (Gallilao, Voyager 1,2) would be neet to see. and a command to see listed objects.

I should be able to add active spacecraft. I’ll need to find models for them that aren’t too detailed; 3000 polygons or less would be ideal. Speaking specifically regarding interstellar missions such as Voyager I and II, I’m not sure if I’m going to add those. If I did, I fear the expectation would exist that we could see the Oort Cloud and Termination Shock within Solar-Sim (at Solar-Sim’s current scale I don’t believe I’ll be able to add either of those).