[Starks]

I have sick idea for a mission.

[FireCrack]

animated textures should work...

[StratComm]

On a model, creative use of glowpoints could do nicely as well.  It would make placement a little trickier, but would certainly be doable.

[taylor]

The updated starfield code does make this a more viable option that it used to be.  Previously it would load all bitmaps (into bitmap slots, not into memory) on game startup so animated starfield bitmaps would take up bitmap slots whether you used them or not.  The newer code (part of the update to give stars.tbl dynamic limits) loads the bitmaps only at mission load and removes anything still loaded that isn't needed for the new mission.  This saves greatly on bitmap slots so you should be able to get away with using animated starfield bitmaps (for background nebula and for suns) a bit more easily, though you still have to be careful about using too many in one mission.

[bfobar]

I need to figure out how to do that and make some animated coronas for the suns and stuff. It wouldn't even have to be fast, just change a frame every 15 seconds or so.

[Flipside]

Well, I know this is going to sound really odd, but if you are going to include something with regular flashing periods such as a Pulsar in FS2, try to keep the Flash above about 1.5 seconds. Any faster than that and it has the possiblity of triggering fits in Epileptics etc.

A really odd sounding request, I know, but since Sharon has Epilepsy, these things tend to pop into my head

[WMCoolmon]

Even going that 'slow', it would still be a major distraction in-mission...unless it's supposed to be central.

[Black Wolf]

I have sick idea for a mission.

What, like, molesting baby vasudans?

[bfobar]

Well, I know this is going to sound really odd, but if you are going to include something with regular flashing periods such as a Pulsar in FS2, try to keep the Flash above about 1.5 seconds. Any faster than that and it has the possiblity of triggering fits in Epileptics etc.

A really odd sounding request, I know, but since Sharon has Epilepsy, these things tend to pop into my head

Good point, but luckily if you were actually close to a pulsar in space, you would probably see a small little star with two beams coming out of it. The beams aren't on the rotation axis which gives the pulsar it's pulse if the beam points towards earth. up close it would just kind of look like a couple of searchlights sweeping around so the light intensity wouldn't change and therefore shouldn't cause any problems.

[Col. Fishguts]

You wouldn't see the beams from the side, you only see the light if the beam is directed at you.

From far away it looks just like a blinking star, from up close it would probably look like any ordinary neutron star.

Not that a animated pulsar with visible beams wouldn't look cool, just not very scientific accurate.

[bfobar]

You wouldn't see the beams from the side, you only see the light if the beam is directed at you.

From far away it looks just like a blinking star, from up close it would probably look like any ordinary neutron star.

Not that a animated pulsar with visible beams wouldn't look cool, just not very scientific accurate.

They'd be visible, they just wouldn't be bright compared to viewing straight down the barrel. There is enough material in the space around a neutron star to illuminate the beam. It's like a searchlight. You can make out the light beam of a search light aimed away from you from the faint illumination of the particles in the path of the beam. Aim the searchlight straight at your face and you get blinded.

The beams are also magneto-particle beams so electrons and protons in the beams will scatter and interact, leading to a visible beam from synchotron radiation. (well, visible in the broad sense of emitting em radiation. visible spectrum light may be washed out by the central star in neutron star energy spectra. I'll look that up.)

Here is a picture of a bipolar jet not viewed head on to prove my point. It's from a galactic core black hole in the giant Elliptical galaxy m87, but the physics are the same as a neutron star, and a neutron star polar jet should be just as bright when viewed from within a few AU.


although this image is false color near infrared mixed with near ultraviolet on the red and blue channels, the jet is visible throughout the optical spectrum.

also cool: time lapse video in x-ray and infrared of the crab nebula pulsar.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~bfobar/astronomy/2002-24-a-low_mpeg.mpg

[Col. Fishguts]

Not quite, those giant jets from supermassive black holes are formed of all kinds of very hot particles, thus emitting throughout the EM spectrum.

Pulsars on the other hand are mostly emitting in the radio wavelenghts, that's how they were discovered in the first place. A few were found to emitt X-rays or gamma rays, and if a nebula happens to be near them, they can light the nebula particles up, but that's in the X-ray spectrum too (as in the crab nebula video)

My point is just that a pulsar would be rather boring to look at in the visible spectrum.

[Turambar]

if there are pulsars that emit radio waves, at the really low end of the EM spectrum, and pulsars that emit gamma rays, at the opposite end of the spectrum, it makes sense that somewhere there would be a pulsar that might emit in between the two extremes

at least, simply for the purpose of looking frakking awesome

[bfobar]

Pulsar jets emit because of synchotron radiation. If it emits in gamma rays, it emits in visible light too. From a few AU away, a pulsar probably looks pretty wild visibly.

[Starks]

I have sick idea for a mission.

What, like, molesting baby vasudans?

Space Crack drug busting.