NBOS AstroSynthesis?

[MGCJerry]

Xenmas, as far as a few links of what the terms are, you can simply punch them into wikipedia and get some info on them.

Heres the ones I know offhand and their simpler definitons:

Albedo
Reflectivity. a value of 1 means the planet reflects ALL light back out into space, thus, any water on the planet would be frozen since the surface reflects all light.

Retrograde Orbit
An orbit of an object that travels in the opposite direction of the other bodies.

Eccentricity
Stablity of the objects orbit. An object that has no eccentricity, revovles around the body in a perfect circle. An object whose eccentricity is a VERY flattened oval, and has an orbit more like a comet, whose orbit varies from really, really close to the sun, to waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there.

Inclination
The tilt or slope in degrees of the orbital path relative to a specific plane. An orbit whose inclination is 90 degrees, orbits perpendicular to the reference plane.

Rotation
The length of the solar/lunar day. The time it takes the body to complete one spin. Earth's rotation is almost 24 hours.

Axial Tilt
The degrees of tilt the body has. Earth's tilt is 23 degrees I believe. A planet with no axial tilt will lack seasons since the same locations always see the same amount of sunlight year round. Between rotation, eccentricity & rotation, determines the varied nature of the seasons and how much they differ from each other.

This wikipedia link illustrates a few of the orbital properties pretty good, but gets really nerdy in explaining it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periapsis

If you're interested in the equations used to figure out specific things with known variables, this link will be of interest. Quite the complex stuff though... Now you see why I had no hesitation to get Astrosynthesis.
http://atmos.nmsu.edu/jsdap/encyclopediawork.html

I'm also still holding out for the Celestia exporter.


What are you waiting for Beowulf, go get it? :p

[Antony]

Just in case people didn't realise, it is possible to get the terrains generated by Fractal World Explorer which is included with AS into Campaign Cartographer via Fractal Terrains.

[RPMiller]

Thanks for the tip Antony, and welcome to the forums! How are things in your part of the world?

[Antony]

Here in the great metropolis that is Bakers Hill (population about 280) things are starting to warm up. The paddocks are already turning brown, thus turning my attention to mapping a desert city.

By no means an expert with mapping programs I have been doing a lot of cross planetary mapping between FWE since I run a SciFi game which uses NBOS for much of its data,and CC2 using the Cosmographer export in FT, for some reason this export does not work with the current vertion of FT and CC3 but only with version 2.2 of FT and CC2.

But back on the subject of Astrosynthesis it is quite versatile and you can define your own custom fields as well. It cannot do everything of course but I find it very useful, even essential.

[RPMiller]

280?! Well at least you have Internet access which is something.

[PlanetDesigner]

I made the TERRAFORMER package for FT PRO to produce maps that were multifunctional. Maps that could not only serve as flat maps - but also textures for 3d model worlds that would be rendered in a 3d app. Astrosynthesis can use FT PRO to generate maps. Terraformer shaders within FT PRO - or saved FT PRO worlds functioning as ASTROSYNTHESIS worlds would render in ASTROSYNTHESIS to appear very VERY realistic.
The Terrafmer shaders can also be used to create planet blazons for system markers that are outstanding!



I created several globe models within BRYCE 5.5 also using the Terraformer shaders within FT PRO to create the model textures.



I am currently working on Terraformer 0.50 - and it should be available for download on your Profantasy Software Product Registration / update Page whaen it is completed.