Celestia Forums

She's starting to breath.....I have posted some Screen Captures of the work in progress on the download page. Shouldnt be long til its done. Im thinking of posting what I have in a couple days but the big guns wont be done for about a wek or two. However I am always looking for input so please let me know.

Here the page: http://www.geocities.com/erinpatrickdun ... erv13.html


btw:
for those of you not familiar with geocities there is an hourly limit for downloads. If you get one of those rotten messages saying the page is unavailable then bear with me and give it some time.

Ive posted what I have so far on the download page.

Looks interesting

Hey guys im back....ok its come down to this. I will add an orbital stability calculator for single and binary systems. However it appears that the trinary sytems will be difficult. Without having to tackle the n-body problem I can calculate the stable orbit around a single star at a time. There are no figure 8 or loopty loops stable orbits that i can forsee beeing able to calculate. So as long as the orbit is around one star and not a looping speghetti mess around two or three ... Im down. This means that trinary and more are possible to calculate by simply matching Roche limits and Roche radii between the stars to certify that a peticular stable orbit doesnt intersect with the other stars.

Further more im thinking of embedding some extras.

* Adding a starlist that will automatically populate fields in the orbit calculator for star mass, density, spectral type and temperature for use in identifying a peticular set of surface conditions wanted on an object.

* Adding a wizard to walk one through creating a planet from scratch.

* Adding a specialized data block to each file created by system maker that would store misc. planetary data (e.g. density, mass, specific class type). This data block would appear in the file as several lines commented out at the end of each object record.

* Adding some sort of previewer for the system. However this may be difficult due to the aspect that one ssc file can support the definition of objects in multiple systems.

Anyway I just wanted to run these ideas by you guys let me know what you think.

This all sounds really excellent! I definitely can't wait to play with this sucker. The extra data block sounds especially good, since I tend to add non-Celestia modifiers anyway, such as density and mass, etc.

...John...

It would be really interesting how you would predict stability of a system. I was talking to some of guys I know on another project about some type of system stability predictor, for an n-body situation, and the best recommendation would be to create a gravity simulators and then run multiple simulation to come up with some type of advance logic.

Well, from what Ive read, in order to find a stable orbit in an n-body situation, and i will stress this is not a solve all just a foot in to find a stable orbit of some kind...any kind, is some sort of collision detection between the stars fashioned by calculating the roche radius and limit.
However oversimplistic that seems we must assume, using celestia and/or with multiple star systems that seem to have considerable planets in them in reality, that we are beginning with multiple star orbits that are stable with eachother. From here it becomes more of a quest to find the star whom might have orbital paths that the other two or three dont interfiere with. I know alot of people would love to see the fancy figure 8 and spaghetti orbits for trinary and binary systems. Unfortunately I dont think this is anywhere close to common in the universe today as well as in conjuction with the aspect that celestia doesnt handle akward orbits of this nature that I am aware of.

In any case I am developing a more advanced star refernce in my program with the aspects of each star needed to calculate stable orbits.....Dont get excited yet....My first rendition of this will only handle single sytems thanks to the large ammount of star data I have to reorganize. Not to mention it will only contain stars that have actual names from the star names file. But its coming along slowly

As a side note....I have seen some preliminary math and algorythms for an n-body predictor.....and let me just say Holy @#$%. That is a headache that man invented computers for.

Now on to other things that I find mathematically and logically unpredictable....WOMEN

Women? what's that? I've never heard of this "women." Is it a type of Celestia addon? A name of a new star NASA found? What?

You know the women that cost us a rib when we couldnt afford the ones that cost an arm and a leg.

Anyhow...I just recently added some to the star attribute side of the project. Be patient dear friends ... you see now where this is headed. Ive got all my ducks lined up with the misc object data block, Star ref with attributes. all that is left is the math and a cool splash screen.

Ok gang its finally in there. It may not be sexy but it works. The new orbit calculator window is finished. Just keep in mind that all fields required for calculations must have values. The numbers it comes up with do not take in to consideration alot of misc variants like solar wind, binary star effects, and things of that nature. It only uses mass density and radius to find the perfect orbit of stability. As I have found however many orbits within our own solar system are not perfectly stable. Hence you may wish to fudge some numbers a little before using them.

Let me know if i got it right or if you have suggestions for improvement.

where's the link to the zip?

the only download link i can find is the link to 1.3, not 1.4

its there...the link for 1.3 and 1.4 are the same...follw the link for 1.3 and when you get to the download page scroll down...there you will see 1.4

Monolyth wrote:its there...the link for 1.3 and 1.4 are the same...follw the link for 1.3 and when you get to the download page scroll down...there you will see 1.4

I know. that's what i'm looking at, the download page (http://www.geocities.com/erinpatrickdun ... 13main.htm). the only download i can download is 1.3. i can't find the 1.4 download link.

Its there...but it is as hard to find as George Bush's intentions. Thus it is redisigned.

The new page location is:

http://www.geocities.com/erinpatrickdun ... mMaker.htm

its a little better

12/31/06 * Added "Save Changes" warning reminders to

all record command buttons.

* Tweaked the orbit calculator to automatically

clear the period and/or SMA fields when reselecting them.

* Also fixed the select list in the orbit calc to save changes

made to Period and SMA in all objects when use these values

is pressed.

12/30/06 * Added somewhat extensive help file written in Word

Document format.

* Also added one for online viewing. a link to it can be found

on the download page.

12/29/06 * Redesigned website. Alas this is what you are looking at.

***Im seriously considering adding some sort of STC file editor

to System Maker***

An STC editor would be *excellent*. Many aspects of the ssytems I've designed have required some modification or complete make-over to already extant stars, not to mention those systems with completely fictional stars.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten your PM. I'll be answering that tomorrow, most likely (it's still Sunday, Dec. 31 at my location).

...John...

It's a good idea but it still needs some work:
(Note that some of these may have been repeated by other forum members)

- A tree-like hierachy for bodies
- Inclusion of a *.stc editor (as Dollan said)
- Better ordering of object characterizers. Say:

Instead of the jumble you have on the Elliptical Orbit tab.
- Inclusion of all the characterizers: I notice a distinct lack of more recent ones and of PrecessionRate.

On calculating orbital stability you can use this enlightening discussion I had last year (actually just a few months ago):

http://celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10212

Oh dear, it seems i can't install it . According to me computer it reads:
Class not registered.
You need the following file to be installed on your machine. MSSTDFMT.DLL.

Can anyone enlighten me what this means please .

Captain-insane wrote:Oh dear, it seems i can't install it . According to me computer it reads:
Class not registered.
You need the following file to be installed on your machine. MSSTDFMT.DLL.

Can anyone enlighten me what this means please .

That means that on your system the DLL with the name "MSSTDFMT" is missing or not registered within windows.

MS... probably means it's something from Mircosoft, so just try and search either your system for it (just in case it's already somewhere there) or try to find it at Microsoft.

Once you have it, just open "Start -> Run ->regsvr32 %Path_to_File%/MSSTDFMT.DLL"

And it should be working.

You can get it here:

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-f ... l?msstdfmt