Can anyone recommend a book or website (any source for that matter) that I could use to learn orbital mechanics? I am willing to learn all the math.
Best way to learn is through hands-on experience. Play Orbiter It will force you to understand all of that stuff. KSP is good too, though you should use Mechjeb so you can see your orbital elements, that helps with learning what everything means. Supplement those with Wikipedia and you'll have learned pretty much all the basics.
All forum users, please read this! My SE mods and addons Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
Speaking of orbiter, chech out the spaceway project. The experimental is very unstable, but the current build is great (it is procedural and the scale is comparable to that of SE's). It has a similar interface to orbiter but no tutorials, you just pray you don't screw up. Thanks for the tip, though.
I play teh spase engien
Edited by Disasterpiece - Thursday, 14.03.2013, 03:31
Can anyone recommend a book or website (any source for that matter) that I could use to learn orbital mechanics? I am willing to learn all the math.
Hmm, I think this depends on how deeply you'd like to go into it, and how comfortable with math you are.
A thorough and quantitative treatment may be found from a textbook using vector calculus, such as An Introduction to Celestial Mechanics by Moulton, but this might be way too advanced for what you need. Another option if you prefer freely-available online material are these course notes.
For a non-mathy introduction you could try these pages provided by JPL, or to learn basic principles in a novel setting you may try playing around in Orbiter or Kerbal Space Program.
If you run into difficulties or have specific questions you are more than welcome to PM me; I may be able to help.
So I have this "3TB" drive (more like 2.7something, and why I want the marketing people at HDD companies to take a good look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, "is it really worth it at this point? Everyone knows the drives aren't as big as we say, so why be deceptive about it? What am I doing with my life?), and Windows Backup won't create system images on it because of the 4k sectors or something- the point is I'm looking for a new solution. I really don't need something complicated- just something with similar features, but freeware and not bloated.
UltraDefrag is a good example of the sort of thing I'm talking about- I use this to defragment my hard disks and it's never failed me- I highly recommend it. There's got to be some kind of crazy-good open-source simple-easy-backup program, right? It's important to be prepared with backups in today's .97less world.
Made up quotes that are just puns based on classic sci-fi movies- issue 1: "So Mr. Bowman, HAL did you turn off that computer?" Also, I saw the original Solaris recently. I really liked it. Lots of people compare it to 2001, but it's a different kind of film- more focused and quieter. I still like 2001 better- the production values were amazing. Solaris had some really interesting sets too, like Kelvin's bedroom- it was this really cool early 70's modern design- I want my bedroom to look like that! Also, the scene with the car driving on the highway was actually really cool, and the way the contrast increased inside the tunnels.
EDIT:
Quote (anonymousgamer)
How 'bout that Photoshop?
That's amazing. EDIT2: Leaked screenshot from Avatar 2.
They are passing by the planet, nearly ready to brake into polar orbit around Pandora. Many small pods will deploy from the ISV and land all over the planet carrying a genetically engineered supervirus, harmless to Earth-based life but deadly to Pandoran life. They will enter the atmosphere at various areas to maximize the effectiveness of the attack. Each pod will land, and a grey gaseous substance will start pumping out of each pod. Very quickly, plants will wither and die, and the virus will replicate, spreading all over pandora at an exponential rate. The ISV will also send, from orbit, a large aircraft to carpet bomb the tree of souls for good measure. All this will happen very fast- in three days the planet is transformed into a barren desert and the virus will become extinct with nothing left to feed on. Finally, a massive operation to mine Pandora of it's unobtanium will commence. Years after, once the planet has been stripped of it's resources, an experimental bomb will be placed there to de-orbit the planet into Polyphemus, thus completing the RDA's revenge against Jake Sully once and for all. The moral of the story is that Spacefaring civilizations have a military advantage.
So I have this "3TB" drive (more like 2.7something, and why I want the marketing people at HDD companies to take a good look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, "is it really worth it at this point? Everyone knows the drives aren't as big as we say, so why be deceptive about it?
They're not being deceptive. They're using the increasingly common decimal definition of terabyte, while Windows uses the original binary definition (also called a tebibyte [TiB]). It says right on the packaging what definition they're using. Before accusing the manufacturers of being greedy corporate pigs, educate thyself.
Quote (werdnaforever)
Windows Backup won't create system images on it because of the 4k sectors or something
Is there any reason why you couldn't just reformat it with different sector sizes?
All forum users, please read this! My SE mods and addons Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
They're not being deceptive. They're using the increasingly common decimal definition of terabyte, while Windows uses the original binary definition (also called a tebibyte [TiB]). It says right on the packaging what definition they're using. Before accusing the manufacturers of being greedy corporate pigs, educate thyself.
I know all that. I was being a bit silly.
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
Is there any reason why you couldn't just reformat it with different sector sizes?
I've tried it to no avail. From what I understand it's because of the hardware- not the OS. Windows Backup won't play nice with it. EDIT: NTFS supports a minimum size of 4k sectors. So, I tried making two exFAT partitions, one 2TB one for my large PC and one 768GB one for my small laptop, with 512 byte sector sizes. Unfortunately, it won't write system images to exFAT volumes. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2510009 This says something about it. The update it mentions is already installed on my PC. I ran the command it mentioned, and it says that there are 4096 bytes per sector, but for bytes for phyiscal sector it says <Not Supported>, but from the knowledge I've gathered 2.2+TB Drives are generally "4k native", and Windows backup won't write system images to these drives unless they support 512 byte sector emulation. I don't think mine does. I don't get what the big deal is why windows backup can't write system images to 4k native drives, but it seems MS would rather have me update to Windows 8 than release a Windows 7 update to fix this. I understand their motivations, but still...
Edited by werdnaforever - Saturday, 16.03.2013, 02:26
You... you aren't using the updated cloud shaders? AND it's not LOD 2? *AND* you're not using FXAA? I don't even...
I usually use LOD 2, and I was using FXAA, although I heard it doesn't work without lightbloom turned on (bug) and I forgot to turn that on and LOD 2;. I'm on my new 11 inch netbook, and have been pretty busy with other things so haven't done much with SE on it other than copy a fresh installation.
Also, I never really used the updated cloud shaders since I didn't even know about them. And I haven't been doing as much in SE lately since I'm really sort of waiting for v****** 0.**. I suppose I should try them out...
Why ever turn it off? If you don't like bloom then just set the value to 0, that way FXAA can still work.
Quote (werdnaforever)
If it really bugs you, then here
It was the clouds that bugged me most. The default clouds for 0.95/0.96 weren't very good looking, especially on gas giants.
This is a bit better:
And with procedurally generated surface/clouds script for Polyphemus:
Quote (werdnaforever)
Which exact shaders should I download?
Just look in the Mods and Addons section, find the two threads about cloud shaders, and get the versions that SpaceEngineer posted (or you can try Doc's versions, whatever you prefer).
All forum users, please read this! My SE mods and addons Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
Edited by HarbingerDawn - Saturday, 16.03.2013, 06:31
Why ever turn it off? If you don't like bloom then just set the value to 0, that way FXAA can still work.
I've barely got to use SE on my new lappy- I preemptively put it in my sig 'cause I was excited 'bout it coming, and it finally got here a couple weeks ago, and I haven't had time to use SE on it, since most of the time i've spent on it was for installing programs and etc. I've only used SE a couple different times on it. Of course, I do set the value to zero.
ENG
New site
United States 
It will force you to understand all of that stuff. KSP is good too, though you should use Mechjeb so you can see your orbital elements, that helps with learning what everything means. Supplement those with Wikipedia and you'll have learned pretty much all the basics.
Pirate 
AND it's not LOD 2? *AND* you're not using FXAA? I don't even...
