Originally posted by aldo_14
A sun, IMO is so gigantic it'd be impossible to see the end of it at a close enough range to be 'pulled in' (as you'd need to be within about 40km max for the FS2 mission cube, IIRC).
I don't think it'd look good....
What everyone should get out of their head/abandon and eradicate is the whole concept of going too close and being pulled in if you aim for scientific accuracy.
It's similar to the myth that their isn't gravity in space so that's why astronauts are in weightlessness.
Nothing is farther from the truth - the reason why astronauts are in weightlessness is that they are constantly "falling" around the Earth.
(A more sci.accurate term is they are in the same inertia system as their ship).
However the ship, the pilots and everything else in orbit are still in gravity. They are constantly accelerating towards the Earth - for that's the force that keeps them in orbit.
There is no point where gravity suddenly starts to take effect - it is always there pulling at you and you have to compensate and take it into account.
This is the reason I started the *abandoned(? - maybe not)* thread Spaceflight 101 to explain how manuevering and changing orbits is done, to clear up some misconceptions.
So near any star, planet, supernova, blackhole gravity is always there always pulling at you.
What's different is the force of the pull - the closer you get the stronger it gets in relation with the
F=C*(1/R^2) function
R = Radius, your distance from the star.
To compansate for this the closer you are the faster you will have to go on your orbit.
I originally found it a bit strange, but the further you are from the source of the gravity the slower you need to go to keep your orbit.
So, IMHO no going close to the star provided you have adequate heat shielding (and good enough predictions to know where solar flares won't happen) shouldn't really be a problem.
You would just have to go *really* fast perpedecular to the stars surface to keep your speed.
This isn't that hard however. You're in the stars gravity well - all the distance you have towards it is potential energy which will be converted to speed when you reach it. - This is actually the reason why shooting something * into*the Sun is hard - by the time the projectile reaches the Sun it will have enough momentum to stay in orbit.
From a game engine point of view you would have to make doing fast orbiting possible - so great speeds should be made aviailible around another model.
However AFAIK this would be really problematic. So there is a better solution:
Fake it. Instead giving the ships a great speed and making huge models, you could trick the whole system inside out.
1) First make some calculations:
How big is the orbited body?
What's the distance at which the ships will orbit?
Calculate the speed needed to orbit at that distance. (It's not that hard to do.)
This is the tricky part: How big wil the orbited object look from that distance?
Now the trick:
Make a model of the obited body as big as it will look from that distance. Put it into a skymap.
Calculate the angle-velocity at which the whole skymap should be rotated around the model along with the model. Make it rotate so.
In mission it would appear as if the ships are in orbit around that body, and everything should appear to be in order.
SCP Needs:
-The ability to rotate the background.
-Ability to put models into the background (already possible since we have the subspace tunnel).
What about changing orbit, or an non-circular orbit? This is a lot trickier - the rotation speed and the size of the model would both change in this one. This could be worked around though IMHO in a similar manner.
What about bodies too big to put into game?
Simplyfy them - make only put in the visible part. Fake the rotation with moving maps (material system will make it possible).
Bobbau's superlodding would even allow making verybig models, and only rendering parts of them. (development time unknown, superdetailing is the babysteps in this direction along and it will need the material system too.)
