Off Topic Thread

[Xrati]

Tired of using the same old thread to go off topic in? Well put it here...

[MarcoPolo]

Ok I have a topic of sorts, given this game centres on planet colonisation, thoughts of Avatar and planet Pandora come to mind, hehe.

In recent years the discovery of exoplanets (planets outside our own solar system) have been on the rise. As instrumentation becomes more and more sophisticated, the likelihood of scientists stumbling upon an Earth-like terrestrial planet in our lifetimes, is ever more probable.

There are even plans by NASA and the ESA in this coming decade to launch satellites with highly sensitive equipment capable of detecting terrestrial worlds upto half the size of Earth. Projects like the ESA's Darwin, COROT and NASAs Terrestrial Planet Finder are among some. Of course the expectations are lofty but within reason, given the advancements in inferometer technology coming along way.

How would this impact human culture and beliefs if another Earth like planet was discovered around Alpha Centauri and would there be a renewed interest in space exploration if this were the case? Given that this scenario is likely to occur within the next decade or so and certainly almost guaranteed within the next 30 odd years.

[Xrati]

"To boldly go, where no man has gone before" comes to mind!

[jars_u]

Sticking to Their Guns: BioShock 2 Devs Revive XCOM… as a First-Person Shooter

http://www.xcom.com/index.html

[InfStorm]

Originally Posted by MarcoPolo

How would this impact human culture and beliefs if another Earth like planet was discovered around Alpha Centauri and would there be a renewed interest in space exploration if this were the case? Given that this scenario is likely to occur within the next decade or so and certainly almost guaranteed within the next 30 odd years.

The impact would be negligeable so long as fusion technology remains outside of our grasp. We simply do now have the technology required to build interplanetary ships, much less interstellar ships that would survive in the cold reality of space. Radiation, water & air requiremets, and survival of several humans stuck into a small space for an extended period of time are huge hurdles we sill need to resolve first, no matter how many earth-like worlds there are.

[Xrati]

Augh!!! Just a few minor details!!!
Let's get going!

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by InfStorm

The impact would be negligeable so long as fusion technology remains outside of our grasp. We simply do now have the technology required to build interplanetary ships, much less interstellar ships that would survive in the cold reality of space. Radiation, water & air requiremets, and survival of several humans stuck into a small space for an extended period of time are huge hurdles we sill need to resolve first, no matter how many earth-like worlds there are.

I'm not sure how essential fusion technology is. For that matter, Orion (the 1950's-1960's one) could quite reasonably have gone interplanetary (and maybe interstellar the slooow way) if people were willing to put up with the downsides.

[Astorax]

Hey guys, thought I would drop by and see how things are going. Would love a status update - project still going, that sort of thing.

Looking forward to this game release!



-Astorax

[Ed Kolis]

Oh, it is still going... sorry for the lack of updates!

This week, along with various behind-the-scenes changes/fixes/additions, there are now realistic units of distance (km, ls, au, ly), and the "mod editor" app now supports saving and loading, though you still can't edit much of anything yet!

The "realistic units of distance" probably merits a bit of explanation: Yes, a planet might have a radius of, say, 5,243 kilometers. And yes, it could be several au from the planet to its star, which might have a radius of 1,000,000 km. And the next star over, yes, that might be 5 ly away!

So how do we display everything on screen without it all being teeny tiny little sub-pixel-sized dots? :P

That's where logarithms come in Since the scale of space IS so vast, we're now using a logarithmic display scale for the zoomed-out views of objects; only VAST differences in size will be noticeable. So Jupiter will look bigger than Earth, but not that MUCH bigger, at least not until you zoom in on it (we're still maintaining the actual sizes for collision detection and zoomed-in views!)

[Astorax]

Hey Ed! Good to hear its still chugging along and making progress. Could you hazard a guess as to how far along you are? Say, half way done? lol, sorry, I'm just anxious for new games and a purported "SE 4.5" catches my fancy!

Been playing Distant Worlds and its pretty good. They are ironing some bugs out but so far so good.

Hope you guys are well.

-Astorax