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How long will a day be?


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How long will a day (one complete revolution on its axis) be on any given planet? Just finished up a little bit of free roaming in burnout paradise and for those of you that have played the game before, it has an adjustable day/night cycle.

 

With that in mind, another mechanic popped up. Per my recollection, the planets Mercury and Venus, the two closest planets to the sun have very short days while the planets further out have much, much longer days. Would we see something similar wherein some systems the planets closest to their star have a shorter day and those further back have longer ones or will everything be random?

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I think we don't have any information yet about time cycle on each planet.

 

But since each planets are self generated, i think it also includes the planet behavior.

So the planet rotation may be random i guess ? :D

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Our planet Mercury has an extremely long day. It takes so long for the sun's light to get all the way around the planet that Mercury was once believed to be tidelocked.

 

As per your question/suggestion regarding the game, we can't know for sure until we know exactly how planets will end up working in the game. Depends on if they're completely fixed, if they're fixed in space but rotate about an axis, or if they orbit the sun and rotate about an axis. However, no matter what, I would imagine that day length in DU would change with the solar system.

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Our planet Mercury has an extremely long day. It takes so long for the sun's light to get all the way around the planet that Mercury was once believed to be tidelocked.

 

As per your question/suggestion regarding the game, we can't know for sure until we know exactly how planets will end up working in the game. Depends on if they're completely fixed, if they're fixed in space but rotate about an axis, or if they orbit the sun and rotate about an axis. However, no matter what, I would imagine that day length in DU would change with the solar system.

 

I actually hope this IS the case, and devs don't go the lazy rout like some games.

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If it was the case, then some interesting emergent gameplay could happen. 

 

For example blueprints and components to do with lighting would be more valuable on a planet with very short days, than a planet with very long days. Which would create trade routes, actual supply and demand markets, etc.

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I could have sworn they said somewhere that Alioth will be on a five hour day/night cycle. Maybe in one of the pre-alpha videos? Idk, I may just be a crazy loon.

"

That's very right. In the lore, the night and day cycle on Alioth is five hours. Find it here

 

Whether the five hours mentioned in the lore will be real time or not, remains to be seen.

"

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With that in mind, another mechanic popped up. Per my recollection, the planets Mercury and Venus, the two closest planets to the sun have very short days while the planets further out have much, much longer days. Would we see something similar wherein some systems the planets closest to their star have a shorter day and those further back have longer ones or will everything be random?

 

The opposite, actually. Earth and Mars have nearly identical days (24h and 25h) but all the gas giants have much smaller ones (10h, 11h, 17h, 16h). Mercury's is over 58 Earth days (only about 30 shorter than its orbit) and Venus over 116 days. These rotations have little to do with their location in the system. Mercury, for example, is thought to have such a long day because early in its history it was hit by a planetoid so large that its effects rippled through the core of the planet producing marks on opposite sides of the planet. Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction to everything else, so it too was probably hit (so hard that it changed direction).

 

Days will probably be randomised by planet within a certain range. Or maybe NQ will do a little bit of interfering and assign values when they drop the alien ruins they've said they could potentially drop to fit in with some lore.

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Our planet Mercury has an extremely long day. It takes so long for the sun's light to get all the way around the planet that Mercury was once believed to be tidelocked.

The opposite, actually. Earth and Mars have nearly identical days (24h and 25h) but all the gas giants have much smaller ones (10h, 11h, 17h, 16h). Mercury's is over 58 Earth days (only about 30 shorter than its orbit) and Venus over 116 days. These rotations have little to do with their location in the system. Mercury, for example, is thought to have such a long day because early in its history it was hit by a planetoid so large that its effects rippled through the core of the planet producing marks on opposite sides of the planet. Venus spins on its axis in the opposite direction to everything else, so it too was probably hit (so hard that it changed direction).

 

Hmm, interesting, I always thought the innermost planets had spun much faster due to influences from the sun...

 

Guess I'll have to dip back into my early childhood and reread that 300-page book on astronomy!

 

I'd be curious to see how many real life things are brought into the game, not that I'm expecting a simulation game out of this, but then again we are talking about "another universe" (my interpretation of the "dual" part in DU).

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On the one hand ... I think it should be different for every planet.  Axis of rotation different as well... even planets that are tidally locked so one side is always facing their local Star...

 

I think that'd be cool and interesting and give unique flavor to the planets.

 

But I can also see how that could be confusing...

 

if they do the above then there could be large ranges in how long a day/night cycle is or even if one exists...   Planets are smaller than IRL Earth... and travel is way faster than anything we have IRL... So I don't mind at all if day/night cycles are really long as I can just fly to what ever part of the planet has light or darkness as I see fit...  Really short cycles as are in quite a few space games ... if they're ubiquitous would annoy me.  But if a random planet just spins really fast and so has short day/night cycles then that's just an interesting environment to encounter.

 

 

Last I heard they were still uncertain if they'll be able to get planets to rotate at all... They certainly won't be moving in orbits... So what I'm asking for is a bit more complex than anything that's been talked about...  But I really hope they get planets rotating.  If they don't then they're going to have to have the sun for each system move... which will mean every planet in a system will have the same length day/night cycle.  And if that's the case ... at least for the first system... I'd like the day/night cycle to be a full real time 24 hour cycle. 

 

 

 

I'd love to see a planet that's tidally locked... with desert on the side facing the sun... frozen wasteland on the side facing away... and temperate zone in a ring in the twilight zone at the terminator between day and night.

 

Planets rotating on their side so one of the poles of the axis of rotation is pointing at the sun so the sun just makes a circle in the sky with every rotation of the planet...  such a planet would have to orbit the sun to have a day/night cycle... as one pole and then the other pointed at the sun during the year...  I'm having a hard time imagining the code that would be needed to precess the axis of rotation with the planet in place...

 

But I guess you would need to precess the axis of rotation in place of all the planets if you want them to have seasons... again because you aren't having them orbit.

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  • 4 weeks later...

What might be a better way to implement rotating planets is that you have a hybrid the sun moving across the skybox and the planetoids rotating on their axis. This allows different planets to have different day/night cycles and reduces the compensation required to have rotating planets.

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What might be a better way to implement rotating planets is that you have a hybrid the sun moving across the skybox and the planetoids rotating on their axis. This allows different planets to have different day/night cycles and reduces the compensation required to have rotating planets.

That only works ina single-player game and only if you stay on the planet 24/7. Once in flight, the moving stars look ridiculous.

 

A planet could have slower rotations if it's further away from a star, or quite frankly, regardless of its size. The Devs can just simple make a planet take a week to go from day to night and even have certain creautres that spawn in there.

 

Furthermore, the Devs can even add tilted rotations - like Earth's - on planets, thus having certain areas on a planet being in perpetual night or day - but with quite a dizzy sky if you were to look at it.And since it's rotation, there's nothing really holding the Devs back on having the planet going back and forth on its rotation, so there're are "seasons" on a planet.

 

Those are solutions that dont't require NMS gimmicks on stars revolving around a planets, which breaks the whole thing about seamlessly going from a planet to space. The stars are actually there, they are not spotlights on a skybox.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just going to say this, Planet rotation is something they WANT, but they may not be able to get it until after release (its not a priority)

You are correct, it does wonders for immersion and mechanics to have them actually rotate. The next level is to have them orbit the star (I don't expect this until much later) but for now, I will be patient. If I can get my farming before that, I'm happy.

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