Idea A giant Ringworld, or Halo (not necesarily in the cannon of either series)

[this is an old account]

Okay, so Orbiter doesn't actually support non-spherical planets, and by this I mean a rotating ring with an atmosphere you can land on. So it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Still, I'm going to throw this out there. It would be pretty cool to have a "Ringworld" in Orbiter. That is, a huge, planet sized ring with habitable areas, kind of like HALO, although a larger one like in the Ringworld novels would also be pretty interesting (and would really require its own scenario, since it has a radius of 1 AU).

Just think about the interesting kinds of flights you could do. You could take off, and launch straight up, out of the atmosphere and into the center of the ring, and fly to another area really fast. Re-entry would be really cool as well. You could have bases in different areas around the ring, and then you could take something like an XR5, and fly from one base to the other. The interesting thing is that you wouldn't need to worry about "gravity" unless inside the atmosphere. You could also have a smaller ring inside the larger one, kind of like an orbital ring space-elevator, but the inverse of that.

This would probably require a lot of code to be rewritten, or added, because the gravity would be the inverse of that of a planet, and altitude wouldn't mean much unless you're somewhere inside the ring. Since the atmosphere would be ring shaped, that would also require additional coding.

I'm no programmer but I do know it would be a lot of work. I just want to mention it. I'm not saying this because I want to play Halo in Orbiter, or anything like that. I just think its a good idea.

 

[Hielor]

Orbiter is a realistic simulator.

There's pretty much nothing realistic about ringworlds...

 

[Artlav]

Actually, i considered it back in 2008.

There were problems:
-WILD floating point precision errors
-rendering artefacts on the far side of the arch
-unscalable priority function
-no chance of having an air haze
-no chance of collision detection
-etc.
And it got abandoned.


Come to think of it, FPU issues were solved later, rendering of the far side could be arranged with a trick or two, priority function is a matter of carefully working out the math.
-Air haze is tricky - there is no good solution to it, maybe just ignore for the moment.
-Collision detection is not going to happen, at least not in Orbiter. Neither would landings.
-Instrumentation won't work - solvable by an MFD.
-Basically, all the near-surface part would require implementing large parts of Orbiter engine - like air friction stuff that i don't even have in Spaceway yet. You won't be able to fly around in the air or land.
-OGLAClient only thing, non-existent as far as Orbiter is concerned.

But it would be an awesome sight.

Orbiter is a realistic simulator.

There's pretty much nothing realistic about ringworlds...

Neither is there anything realistic in Star Destroyer or Starship Enterprise, etc. But they are in there just for fun of it.

 

[Linguofreak]

This would probably require a lot of code to be rewritten, or added, because the gravity would be the inverse of that of a planet,

Actually, not a single line of extra code would have to be written to deal with the gravity. As Artlav said, collision detection and atmospheric stuff would be the biggest problems.

 

[Mandella]

There have been a couple of attempts, including this one I haven't tried:

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4809"]Planetring[/ame]

And this one I have. Awesome sight!

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2548"]Earth 2120 Part 1: The Big Wheel[/ame]

Nothing like a full ring you could put around the sun though. And unfortunately, Orbiter has a bit of a problem handling *huge* structures.

Still, one imagines something could be programmed, given sufficient motivation and knowledge. (Not by me yet! This seems a bit beyond "Hello World!")

 

[this is an old account]

A planet sized ring is a stretch, as is one which wraps around the sun. You can imagine a civilization perfecting these techniques over hundreds of years, starting with small ring-shaped space stations. Working their way up, building larger and larger structures as technologies advance and methods of construction evolve, a civilization might be able to construct a planet sized ring.

Even a spaceship the size of a planet-sized ring would be interesting as a start, even though it wouldn't have gravity or anything. It would definitely get the ball rolling. I think I'll even do some work in sketchup myself to try and come up with something interesting.

Maybe the next version of Orbiter will make this concept easier to implement. (Maybe not...)

 

[NukeET]

Someone needs to invent scrith first.

:lol:

Orbiter is a realistic simulator.

There's pretty much nothing realistic about ringworlds...

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. - Robert A. Heinlein

 

[dumbo2007]

I was wondering as to why is there an issue with large structures in Orbiter ? Is it due to the large mass that's assigned to the vessel or is it the large mesh which is not rendered correctly ?

If its just a graphics issue, that the clients can take care to render correctly. The mass for the ring vessel can be kept deliberately low.

I am trying to solve the collision at large distances problem by simulating only the parts where there is focus currently while the rest of the parts are frozen. In this case for example, an object approaching the ring can enter the physics sim only when its quiet close to the surface, similar to collisions with a planet's surface.

 

[jedidia]

Not by me yet! This seems a bit beyond "Hello World!"

Yeah, it's somewhere on the level of "Hello Ringworld"... :shifty:

 

[Andy44]

Orbiter is a realistic simulator.

There's pretty much nothing realistic about ringworlds...

Absolutely incorrect.

Orbiter allows faster-than-light travel with no relativistic effects, and it allows impossibly high or even infinite ISP.

The only real handwavium/unobtanium in a Niven ringworld is scrith, all the rest of the technology, including the electromagnetic ramjets for stationkeeping, are theoretically possible. Maybe scrith is too, who knows.

So there are lots of unrealistic or impossible technologies available for the Orbiter user; ringworlds aren't one of them yet for the practicle purposes listed by other posters here, not because it is unrealistic.

 

[this is an old account]

Yeah, it's somewhere on the level of "Hello Ringworld"... :shifty:

Wow, of all the programming puns I've ever heard...

Anyway, I'm glad to see this is more possible than I had originally thought.

P.S.:
My newest SketchUp model in progress, aside from the other small ship I'm working on, is a ring-shaped space colony 1 kilometer in diameter. Not quite a ring world, but I'm going to go to town on the insides of this thing. It's going to be great! Maybe it will hold me off until we see an Orbiter ringworld...

Which brings me to another point... a planet is just a sphere, so you just need a texture. A ringworld is something else entirely; the question is what will comprise the ring's "thickness". My guess is we would need to use some kind of mesh for the rest of the ring (this would be eye candy, but still). Even if it was a simplistic shape, it would make all the difference. Ringworlds appear mostly flat but they indeed have thickness.

 

[CFGmaker]

I have a ring wourld vessel but how do i convert it into a planet

 

[jangofett287]

You don't really. Planets in Orbiter are spherical. You can make them look like a ring, but AFAIK it will still act as a sphere.