Script: time step keys

[Harry]

Hi,

as an answer to this feature request I have written a script which should change the current time by one solar day, one sidereal day or one year for every keypress.

Have a try:
http://www.h-schmidt.net/celestia/timestepkeys.celx

Start the script, select a planet, and press a/A to change by a year, s/S for a sidereal day, or d/D for a normal day.

Problems:
I had to use a fixed table of day/year-lengths because this information is not (yet) available to scripts. I used the values found in solarsys.ssc, but I don't know how to work with them: how do you compute the normal daylength? And I am not sure about the length of an earth-year either (365.25 is used within celestia) etc. The method I used is good enough to make the script usable, but probably not correct - and I am too lazy to look for information about this.

Harald

[don]

Howdy Harald,

That script sure provides an interesting display.

Thanks!

[Harry]

I've just updated the script, and changed the way how the length of the solar day and sidereal year are computed - thanks to Grant for his help.

Please make sure you use suitable frames-of-reference, like
synchronous for solar days (if you want to keep the sun in your view)
follow/synchronous for sidereal days (to make the stars appear at the same position)
universal mode for sidereal years (to see the selected planet return after one year)

The last one is a bit impractical, because you have to press ESC, which also terminates the script - so you have to restart it.

Maybe the script should set a useful frame?

I didn't do a lot of testing, so please report errors here.

Harald