brings back memories!
Posted: 14.08.2003, 06:38
Before I go demanding another feature be added to Celestia, let me just say I love the program a lot, and it brings back those memories of my youth when I would sit in front of the Commodore 64 playing "Halley Project"-- anyone remember that game? It was probably the earliest version of celestia. One could traverse the solar system in a spaceship looking for planets and moons.
The controls were primative, the textures of the planets were nonexistant (they were just colored disks), and all spaceflight was confined to a plane-- but it was quite ahead of its day in my own opinion... at least for space simulation games made in the 80s.
Anyway, I was thinking about a possible addition to the next version of Celestia that would include an ETA indicator during spaceflight. It could be part of the object info at the top left side of the screen that tells you how long it would take at your current velocity to reach the object.
Obviously, it would only work when you had an object selected and were actually moving toward it. It seems simple enough. Just calculate the distance between the observer and the object, and divide by the radial component of the observer's velocity, and refresh the value each second.
The only complication I could envision would be if, through an error in trajectory, or by the motion of the object, that the observer is not actually traveling directly toward the object. At some point, as the radial component of the observer's velocity goes to zero, (then negative!), the ETA goes to infinity, then negative.
To skirt that problem, perhaps make ETA functional only in "follow" mode after the "center" function has been applied.
-Randy
The controls were primative, the textures of the planets were nonexistant (they were just colored disks), and all spaceflight was confined to a plane-- but it was quite ahead of its day in my own opinion... at least for space simulation games made in the 80s.
Anyway, I was thinking about a possible addition to the next version of Celestia that would include an ETA indicator during spaceflight. It could be part of the object info at the top left side of the screen that tells you how long it would take at your current velocity to reach the object.
Obviously, it would only work when you had an object selected and were actually moving toward it. It seems simple enough. Just calculate the distance between the observer and the object, and divide by the radial component of the observer's velocity, and refresh the value each second.
The only complication I could envision would be if, through an error in trajectory, or by the motion of the object, that the observer is not actually traveling directly toward the object. At some point, as the radial component of the observer's velocity goes to zero, (then negative!), the ETA goes to infinity, then negative.
To skirt that problem, perhaps make ETA functional only in "follow" mode after the "center" function has been applied.
-Randy
I have a comidor amiga that still runs! And I Still have that game, and it works to 
)
, this is star lion