Wait, since I'm on autopilot won't the ship just slow down automatically? That does mean I have to do a third video for braking lol.  Question, how come I don't see stars whizzing by like I see in Planetarium mode? They seem like they're blurry and just frozen in place? I remember I was in warp before (over a much shorter distance, I think that was from the outskirts of M87 to its center black hole-- so that was a 28,000 LY trip) and I remember seeing stars streaking by but during this trip they're frozen in place?

As near as I can tell, warp-mode autopilot really only cares about "Effective velocity" (which is really a combination of actual velocity and "Boost factor" (Boost exponent). When approaching your destination, the autopilot will start dialing down the boost exponent, turning off the warp drive. You will still be left with a very high real space velocity relative to your target. It might take days to slow down! :o  And as you have already no doubt surmised, you can turn off your main engines now and crank up the retro engines, but that will also delay your arrival time again.  Then again, given the original subject matter of this thread, perhaps you can get into close fly-by of your target black hole, and with a little piloting skill, that may help slow you down.

As for why you don't see the stars zipping past you — you are in inter-galactic space. There are no stars near you. All those distant objects you see are other galaxies, no doubt also millions of light-years away.

And as for my previous trip — I don't think any of those four pics are related, just some I picked to upload. The first ship is the standard SE Shuttle. It's a part of the standard SE program, you should have it.  The second one (and the one playing lawn darts) is a Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer. Found a Star Wars addon in the Mods and Addons thread on this forum.

Flying in or near rings has always been nice. I believe the new ring particles are currently sprites, so no collisions. Can you imagine trying to run collision detection subroutines with a couple of million objects? :o Oof!

Wait, since I'm on autopilot won't the ship just slow down automatically? That does mean I have to do a third video for braking lol.  Question, how come I don't see stars whizzing by like I see in Planetarium mode? They seem like they're blurry and just frozen in place? I remember I was in warp before (over a much shorter distance, I think that was from the outskirts of M87 to its center black hole-- so that was a 28,000 LY trip) and I remember seeing stars streaking by but during this trip they're frozen in place?

As near as I can tell, warp-mode autopilot really only cares about "Effective velocity" (which is really a combination of actual velocity and "Boost factor" (Boost exponent). When approaching your destination, the autopilot will start dialing down the boost exponent, turning off the warp drive. You will still be left with a very high real space velocity relative to your target. It might take days to slow down! :o  And as you have already no doubt surmised, you can turn off your main engines now and crank up the retro engines, but that will also delay your arrival time again.  Then again, given the original subject matter of this thread, perhaps you can get into close fly-by of your target black hole, and with a little piloting skill, that may help slow you down.

As for why you don't see the stars zipping past you — you are in inter-galactic space. There are no stars near you. All those distant objects you see are other galaxies, no doubt also millions of light-years away.

And as for my previous trip — I don't think any of those four pics are related, just some I picked to upload. The first ship is the standard SE Shuttle. It's a part of the standard SE program, you should have it.  The second one (and the one playing lawn darts) is a Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer. Found a Star Wars addon in the Mods and Addons thread on this forum.

Flying in or near rings has always been nice. I believe the new ring particles are currently sprites, so no collisions. Can you imagine trying to run collision detection subroutines with a couple of million objects? :o Oof!

That would be awesome!  This is like some of the science fiction stories, novelettes and novels I've read come to life haha.  Back in high school I used to read 100 books every year!  This is like a visualization of those books and a much better adaptation than any movie I've seen.
I'm going to have to shorten my voyages in the future.  Based on the limitations we've discussed as far as acceleration and deceleration are concerned, would you say for a 12 hour trip, I should limit myself to, say 5 million LY or less trips or maybe even shorter than that?  I would think Milky Way to Andromeda or Triangulum Galaxy should be doable.  Do you think much longer trips than that should be possible under the 12 hour limit using the black hole slingshot technique?

The autopilot will setup a relative velocity of 10 km/s in the appropriate direction, and then engage the warp drive. I believe a "WarpBoostLog" of 12 (warp engine strength in the ships *.sss file) will give an effective velocity of about 1 light-year per second by default. This will take you a long time to get to other galaxies, let alone to the other side of our own. You could edit that number to give faster warp speeds without having to reach crazy fast real space velocities.

And you may want to rethink the idea of 12 hour videos to other galaxies, even the nearby Andromeda galaxy — it's just a lot of empty space.

The autopilot will setup a relative velocity of 10 km/s in the appropriate direction, and then engage the warp drive. I believe a "WarpBoostLog" of 12 (warp engine strength in the ships *.sss file) will give an effective velocity of about 1 light-year per second by default. This will take you a long time to get to other galaxies, let alone to the other side of our own. You could edit that number to give faster warp speeds without having to reach crazy fast real space velocities.

And you may want to rethink the idea of 12 hour videos to other galaxies, even the nearby Andromeda galaxy — it's just a lot of empty space.

Yes I'm experiencing empty space right now.  Funny how it mirrors the microverse, there's lots of empty space between atoms too.
If I edit warp factor for a faster number, that wouldn't affect the maneuverability of the ship on a planet would it? I like how this ship doesn't fly off into space when I'm just doing a flyover.
Also once I reach Main engines 100 there is nothing further I can do to increase acceleration from within the program correct? I then have to go into the .sss file and change the warp factor if I want to get there faster?

Also once I reach Main engines 100 there is nothing further I can do to increase acceleration from within the program correct? I then have to go into the .sss file and change the warp factor if I want to get there faster?

Just use time acceleration? I don't entirely understand why you don't use it to setup your trips as it would solve almost of your problems.

Also once I reach Main engines 100 there is nothing further I can do to increase acceleration from within the program correct? I then have to go into the .sss file and change the warp factor if I want to get there faster?

Just use time acceleration? I don't entirely understand why you don't use it to setup your trips as it would solve almost of your problems.

It almost seems like a cheat because it skips over parts of the journey.
Also, I was told it has side effects and can make the trip go awry.

I'm not sure about the folder structure of the ship you might want to edit, but I just had a quick look at the Shift-F2 ship editor panel in 990 — some nice improvements in there. Anyway... I tried it with the default Skylone, but that is a ship included with SE, so shows up in the default spacecraft models folder rather than the addons spacecraft models folder.

For example, I just made a quick edit to a camera position for the Skylone and clicked on "Save". The Skylone.sss file showed up in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\data\models\spacecraft\default folder.

If you do it with a ship in the addons folder, it will likely create the *.sss file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\addons\models\spacecraft\  and probably some other addon-specific folder after that.

Try making a small change to a camera position of your ship (or add a new one), save it, exit SE, look for the file, and open it in any text editor.  You will find a line: That is the strength of the warp engine. It is logarithmic. I believe, for example, if 12 gets you 1 light-year/second, 13 will give you 10 light years/second (for the same initial real-space velocity), 14 will give you 100 light years/second, etc. So be careful, you can overdo it rather easily.

And yes, that  particular parameter applies only to warp travel. It will not affect the other engines. (You'll spot the numbers for those easily enough should you decide to edit the file. If you play around with those, then you may have more trouble trying to fly in atmosphere.)

Should you choose to accept this mission, I will disavow any knowledge of ever advising the editing of any SE files.  This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds...

I'm not sure about the folder structure of the ship you might want to edit, but I just had a quick look at the Shift-F2 ship editor panel in 990 — some nice improvements in there. Anyway... I tried it with the default Skylone, but that is a ship included with SE, so shows up in the default spacecraft models folder rather than the addons spacecraft models folder.

For example, I just made a quick edit to a camera position for the Skylone and clicked on "Save". The Skylone.sss file showed up in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\data\models\spacecraft\default folder.

If you do it with a ship in the addons folder, it will likely create the *.sss file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\addons\models\spacecraft\  and probably some other addon-specific folder after that.

Try making a small change to a camera position of your ship (or add a new one), save it, exit SE, look for the file, and open it in any text editor.  You will find a line:

Code: Select all

WarpBoostLog 12

That is the strength of the warp engine. It is logarithmic. I believe, for example, if 12 gets you 1 light-year/second, 13 will give you 10 light years/second (for the same initial real-space velocity), 14 will give you 100 light years/second, etc. So be careful, you can overdo it rather easily.

And yes, that  particular parameter applies only to warp travel. It will not affect the other engines. (You'll spot the numbers for those easily enough should you decide to edit the file. If you play around with those, then you may have more trouble trying to fly in atmosphere.)

Should you choose to accept this mission, I will disavow any knowledge of ever advising the editing of any SE files.  This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds...

haha thanks, I'm down to edit the warp engine since it wont affect anything else.  I'm not sure how the default numbers were calculated anyway since we don't yet have any warp engines in existence.
The camera thing is more of a challenge, I'm trying to visualize where I want the cameras to be placed.  Do the other properties in your camera post apply to both 980 and 990?  About rotation and direction of the camera?

Just use time acceleration? I don't entirely understand why you don't use it to setup your trips as it would solve almost of your problems.

This is sound advice. If all you are doing is travelling between galaxies, there's really nothing to go awry when speeding up time (as long as you slow it down before passing your destination). If you have ships in orbit, however, or in-atmosphere... that's a different kettle of fish altogether.

But I would stick to in-galaxy flights. There's just nothing to see between the galaxies.

The camera thing is more of a challenge, I'm trying to visualize where I want the cameras to be placed.  Do the other properties in your camera post apply to both 980 and 990?  About rotation and direction of the camera?

Yes, pretty much the same. You will see a check box for "Edit behind camera" or some such thing. Check that, and edit or add a camera. The number boxes for position and rotation have buttons above and below them for changing values in increments. If you hold down the shift key those increment values will change. You'll see when you try — pretty self-explanatory.  And don't be afraid to experiment with the cameras. If you don't like it, you go back and change it. And unlike modifying warp strength, you can do the camera edits in SE itself, and see the results in real time. The changes will only be saved when you click on save.

And the reason I suggest editing the camera is that will cause SE to create the *.sss file for you, so you don't have to mess around with 7zip or some such thing to extract it from the *.pak file.  And if you think you've messed it up completely, just delete the *.sss file, and SE will revert to using the original file that is still in the *.pak file.

The camera thing is more of a challenge, I'm trying to visualize where I want the cameras to be placed.  Do the other properties in your camera post apply to both 980 and 990?  About rotation and direction of the camera?

Yes, pretty much the same. You will see a check box for "Edit behind camera" or some such thing. Check that, and edit or add a camera. The number boxes for position and rotation have buttons above and below them for changing values in increments. If you hold down the shift key those increment values will change. You'll see when you try — pretty self-explanatory.  And don't be afraid to experiment with the cameras. If you don't like it, you go back and change it. And unlike modifying warp strength, you can do the camera edits in SE itself, and see the results in real time. The changes will only be saved when you click on save.

And the reason I suggest editing the camera is that will cause SE to create the *.sss file for you, so you don't have to mess around with 7zip or some such thing to extract it from the *.pak file.  And if you think you've messed it up completely, just delete the *.sss file, and SE will revert to using the original file that is still in the *.pak file.

wow nice some of these functions remind me of how my digital cameras work, you can see the results in real time on the screen with those too.
Thanks, so the .sss file will be in one of those two folders (either the default folder or the addon folder)?  I suspect the ship I'm using will put the .sss file in the addon folder because it was downloaded from the Workshop.  I just have to change the warp field in one file and don't have to chase down other files to change it in too do I?

Well, since I want to keep it as realistic as possible, I choose a mission from Earth to the central black hole in M33 as my next target.  Let's see how long it takes to complete this 2.81 million light year trip.  With the prior mission, I noticed my ship was actually decelerating its physical velocity starting about 23 hours before reaching the destination.  So I guess with autopilot breaking happens on its own?

almost 2 hours into the new mission here is where my ship is at right now.

Oh and my procedure is to engage warp before setting up my main engine speed and boost exponent.  Because engaging warp resets those to 0 anyway.  So first thing to do is to set up the target and reference body and then rotate to the target and then enable warp and then set up main engines and boost exponent (and sometimes rotate to the target again because sometimes I get an error like I did this time that I need to do that.)

Here is the starting point from about 2 hours ago

And this is right after I engaged warp.  This is my first trip where Earth was the point of departure.

Question, something weird happened.  On my trip to M33 it said that my target was lost for a few seconds and the engines shut off and I fell out of warp.  And then the target was reacquired and the engines turned back on and warp turned back on automatically too but instead of 4 hours to my destination it's now over 1.26 days even though everything went back to full speed and max warp like before.....what happened?

Looks like physical velocity is starting to slow down little by little too, as is effective velocity and efficiency is down to 93% and boost factor is slowly decreasing (now down to 6.4 x 10^10) and arrival time is slowly starting to increase (now at 1.288 days)  I'm still 2.05 Mly from the target why is everything slowing down?