Ultimate space simulation software

 
Mouthwash
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

28 Oct 2017 10:17

When I face the surface of a planet, crank speed up to max and move towards it, I just find myself in the space between galaxies. So I'd guess the answer is no... but maybe it's just too close? I doubt SE simulates the user actually moving through every centimeter of space, so maybe it 'skips' across at intervals.

Could you do it traveling in intergalactic space?
Last edited by Mouthwash on 23 Nov 2017 14:02, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Watsisname
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

28 Oct 2017 18:01

I doubt SE simulates the user actually moving through every centimeter of space, so maybe it 'skips' across at intervals.
Basically this.  No computer calculation can be continuous, so your flying through space is not continuous.  If you are flying at 10c and SE is running at 60fps, then each frame is separated by about 50,000km.  That is several times wider than Earth, so if you were to fly at Earth like this you will almost certainly pass right through it.  At speeds greater than light years per second, you have pretty much zero chance of hitting a planet, or even a star.

I encountered a similar thing in Kerbal Space Program, when putting two spacecraft in exactly the same orbit but in opposite directions, hoping for a high-velocity collision.  I calculated the probability of the two craft being inside each other during a single frame to be about 15%, and indeed it took several times of passing straight through each other before a collision finally happened.
 
Mouthwash
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

28 Oct 2017 18:09

At speeds greater than light years per second, you have pretty much zero chance of hitting a planet, or even a star.
I don't care about the chances. Is it theoretically possible?
 
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Watsisname
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

28 Oct 2017 18:10

There is probably some velocity for which it is fundamentally impossible to hit an object, because it can't load and register a collision in time, but I don't know what it would be and it would probably still be frame-rate dependent.  But if you're cruising at ludicrous speed, even if the probability is not zero, it is so small that it might as well be zero.  At 60fps and 1LY/s, the odds of hitting an Earthlike planet are less than one in a million.
 
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problemecium
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

28 Oct 2017 21:55

Indeed, such an event would be dependent on an extraordinarily fast loading speed. Possibly if you turn on the "Immediate" loading mode it can happen, but at very high speeds if you flew through a galactic core or other dense region with lots of potential collision targets, the game would get horribly laggy.
In intergalactic space it's impossible (barring a glitch... praise the Kraken) because to date SpaceEngine does not simulate intergalactic material of any kind.
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Mr. Missed Her
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

29 Oct 2017 13:06

How does Space Engine simulate a planet's interior? If it doesn't simulate the interior at all, then collisions would only happen when the spaceship is touching the surface or the atmosphere. This would complicate things.
Space is very spacious.
 
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XBrain130
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

29 Oct 2017 17:23

it doesn't simulate the interior at all
that is indeed the case
SpaceEngine's Italian Discord server: https://discord.gg/NhQbEbC
 
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problemecium
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

29 Oct 2017 19:20

SpaceEngine doesn't need to simulate the interior in order to detect when a player is inside the planet - it can simply check whether the distance to the player is less than the planet's radius (plus the terrain height where applicable) and push the player back out.
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teaarmy
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Could you smack into a planet traveling at max speed?

29 Nov 2017 09:16

It should be possible, you just have to be extremely lucky. If you're travelling at 1ly/sec through our solar system with earth exactly on your way, there should be a chance of 8,08*10^-8 or 0,0000000808% to hit the planet. That is four times more likely than to win the lottery (at least where I live)^^

I think you can calculate your luck to hit any object with: speed/framerate*diameter
https://www.youtube.com/user/teaarmy <-- To my Space Engine Videos

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