Additional feature idea

[NecroBones]

First off, I must grant the usual praise... An amazing program, beutiful in it's simplicity, and yet elegant in design.

Anyway... I know people have talked about making spacecraft simulations based off of this, but here's an idea for a feature that might satisfy a few people without at all changing the concept of the program.

The "follow", "track", and "sync" options are really nice, but perhaps a new "orbit" feature/selection might be nice. Basically what I'm thinking is to have an option that you can select that will calculate a roughly appropriate orbital period for a circular orbit for the camera, based on the camera's current distance from the object you're locked onto. That way you can follow an object as if you were in orbit around it, rather than always being in geosynchronous orbit all the time, or always watching it at the same angle as you follow it. If you were to change your distance, your orbital period will likewise change... a low orbit will have a fast period, a high orbit will have a much slower one. This would allow you to some degree "pretend" you're watching the planet through a viewport from a spacecraft a little better than is possible now. Right now if you want to approximate this sort of thing, you need to place a spacecraft in orbit by editing the SSC files and then follow it. I love watching the planet slowly roll past in low orbit. :)

Is anything like this on the drawing-board? I realize this would require encoding mass for each object, and that would be a pain... but still, it would be cool, and useful. :)

-Bones.

[Sum0]

You'll find something similar to this in Marc Griffith's Mostly Harmless mod for Celestia...
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=52323
Just press F9 to turn on gravity and speed time up with K and L.