Guide to Ambience OXPs
This page focuses on two types of Ambience OXPs - those which affect all solar systems. Not those which just change one individual system such as Tionisla, or those which change minor details of the planets (PlanetForests).
Oolite's collection of Ambience OXPs is a rather rum selection. Some aim at scientific realism in varying degrees. Others aim at spectacular eye-candy. Written by human beings rather than disembodied organic brainlets, some are stand-alones whilst some form part of suites. Some just twiddle with the one thing (eg distance to the sun) whilst others do many different things (distance to the sun, colour of the sun, grade of quirium scooped from the solar corona etc).
Hence Cholly's partial Guide to Ambience OXPS.
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Contents
Suns (distances and varieties)
Tweaking of the distance between the planet and the sun started early. Here are 7 OXPs which do this.
- Kaks Far Sun Simple (March 2008) Just the one .oxp
- Wildeblood’s Sensible Sun before 2011
- Keeper1st’s KeeperSky (Ron O’Dell) inspired by Frontier/FFE (before 2016)
- Knotty’s Realistic Stars (Richard Knott; July 2012)
- Affects look of galaxy, star colour, corona size and distances. Constant size for sun coronas. (RealisticStars & Realistic Stars SSC seem identical)
- Wildeblood’s Distant Suns Simple (July 2014).
- Keeps the same basic distance between the planet and sun but varies it according to sun colour/star type.
- Rustem’s Distant Stars Later (Oct 2017) Combines with cim’s Sunspots.oxp
- As for Wildeblood, but adds variable corona flares, local economy correlated with star type and with observed reality etc.
- Partly done in collaboration with Wildeblood, Stranger & cim.
- Stranger’s Sun Gear Most recent (July 2020 - but started in 2013): part of the Strangers World suite of OXPs for more experienced players.
- Requires Stranger’s Habitable Main Planets OXP which redefines planets radii, and may need a selection of other OXPs from the Strangers World suite.
- Varies distances according to star type. Star types correlated with observed reality.
- Varies star radius and luminosity. Includes solar flares and solar winds.
- An Advanced (Solar) System Data MFD displays 2 pages with data on sun & planets (Lock Advanced Space Compass onto sun or planet and then cycle through your MFD modes).
Stellar OXP comparisons
| FarSun | Sensible Sun | KeeperSky | Realistic Stars | Distant Suns | Distant Stars | Strangers World | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Functionability | Broken? | Broken? | Broken? | Old | Old | Up-to-date | Up-to-date |
| Increases distance to sun | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Changes colour of sun | No? | No? | No? | ? | ? | Yes | Yes |
| Changes size of sun | No? | No? | No? | ? | ? | ? | Yes |
| Affects solar flares | No? | No? | No? | ? | ? | ? | Yes |
| Changes show up on F6 screen | No? | No? | No? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Planets (descriptions, extra planets, moons and extra textures)
This does not include individual planet OXPs (eg Lave OXP, FPO Lave, Tionisla Orbital Graveyard etc.)
Tweaking relationships between planet & F7 description
- Planet Forests and Oceans (2019) ensures Vanilla game planets & F7 descriptions match!
- Famous Planets gives the F7 description (and even some theme music!) for the Povray Planets OXPs - see below.
Tweaking of the Vanilla game's one moonless planet for each sun model.
- The very first attempt to do this was Charlie's. He wrote an inital Plannets.oxp back around 2006, then got distracted by his Orb.oxp, then was swallowed up by Real Life ... and that was that!
- System Redux (Oolite) fully mapped out every system (with planets, moons and stellar environment).
The first version (April-2007) just added extra planets and moons. By mid 2008 it was also changing the main planet to resemble the Vanilla game's F7 description (or the Famous Planets description. Last version was 2011.
- System Demux (Oolite) (2010) provided a selection of textures for planets and moons.
- DeepHorizon - Systems: (2011) Issues with v1.82 and onwards?
- Povray Planets (2013): 8 Povray Galaxy Sets and Famous Planets (F7 descriptions) fully map out every system in the 8 galaxies.
- Additional Planets (SR) adds random textures to extra planets/moons only (2013-7).
- BPlanets for system 1.90 (2020 ...) - Graphics for the 119 earth-like main planets in Galaxy 1 (Jan 2021 - hopes to cover the other main planets too).
- Planetary Systems & Moons in the Strangers World suite - maps out every System's main planet, rest is randomised (most recent versions 2020).
Graphics improvements
Another commander, our most active developer, has been improving the rendering of planets continually with every version since 1.84 (in 2016):
- 1.90 (2020) - Extended graphics capabilities for custom planets, improved and configurable planet atmosphere, filmic tone mapping
- 1.88 (2018) - new lighting system improvements and atmospheres
- 1.86 (2017) - Shader-based atmosphere effects, Perlin 3D-based planet textures, default ambient lighting changes
This means that the most recent OXZs have been able to take advantage of these improvements.
Planetary OXP comparisons
| System Redux | System Demux | DeepHorizon | Povray Planets | Additional Planets | BPlanets | Strangers World | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Functionability | Broken? | Broken? | Unfinished | Old | Recent | Up-to-date | Up-to-date |
| Details all of Galaxy 1 | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| More than one planet? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | No | Yes |
| Moons? | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | Yes | No | Yes |
Skies
There are several OXPs which affect the skies and/or the nebulae:
- DarkSoul Nebulae places 10 nebulae from NASA in your skies
- Darkspace removes the nebulae from the sky and limits the number of stars visible. It's based on the same concept as clearskies.oxp by johnsmith (broken). Useful for old computers whose graphic chips are feeling their age!
- Deep Horizon's Lights Down OXP lowers ambient light within the system to give a more natural feel to planets and ships. It also increases the background star-count, and increases the intensity of the nebulae that appear in the background to give a more cinematic feel.
- Realistic Stars (from above) also affects nebulae & star density to more resemble what we see in our skies
- Submersible Nebulae - simpler - just replaces the four models of nebulae in the Vanilla game with new ones
- Zygo Cinematic Sky & Nebulas - more complex, and if you can tweak, then you can alter all sorts of factors and customise your skies
- Note that the Tianve OXP & the Diso OXP also introduce local lurid nebulae to those systems!
Goodies!
...Rings, Solar flares, Quasars, Binary Stars, Black Holes etc.
Alas, we don't have much of this stuff in Oolite. See Cool OXPs for celestial objects. But we do have:
- A Pulsar - see Tianve OXP
- Planetary Rings - see System Features: Rings
- Solar Flares - see Solar Flares
- Sun Spots - System Features: Sunspots
As regards Black Holes, Charlie of Benolubiweed fame worked on one back in 2006. Sadly, if you look in his Black Hole folder, you will find a Black Hole (and sadly, it seems to have swallowed him, too)!
Links
- BB discussion
- Distance (Oolite)
- Rescaling experiment
More radical rejigging
For more radical options see
- SOTL Exploration - 2 different games with very different maps
- Galaxy Seeds - changing the game code to create a new map
