Pioneer dev forum

So we can determine when we get into atmosphere.
It would be good to have percent numbers - on fuel / atm density bars, and absolute atm pressure and hull temp numbers.
Something like this:
http://i.imgur.com/Xm0T4uI.jpg

How would this be different from the preassure indicator (visible in your screenshot)?

Bar appears when you enter atmosphere and represents how "deep" you are in it.
Pressure indicator can be in it too.

So the instruments should know what the pressure is on the surface? Where will the atmosphere end? Without a well defined/known upper and lower boundary, it's not very optimal to use a bar. I think showing current pressure and altitude is enough, but contributions are welcome.

Atmospheric density/pressure bar would make sense *IF* we had some sort of max pressure given hull can tolerate.

It would be a good way to distinguish between hulls gameplay-wise and to make surfaces of gas giants unreachable, BTW.

Atmospheric density/pressure bar would make sense *IF* we had some sort of max pressure given hull can tolerate.

Yes, might be something worth looking into; however, it would be a "how much preassure can the ship tolerate", which is a different thing to what OP requested. But that would have well defined range: 0 preassure to max_preassure.

impaktor wrote:

Atmospheric density/pressure bar would make sense *IF* we had some sort of max pressure given hull can tolerate.

Yes, might be something worth looking into; however, it would be a "how much preassure can the ship tolerate", which is a different thing to want OP requested. But that would have clear range: 0 preassure to max_preassure.

And it would be useful - bar full - you die.
:)

The atmospheric density and temperature that a hull could tolerate would be a good way to differentiate between cheap and expensive ships.
Regarding landing on gas giants, I've done the land on Venus thing where you stop above the atmosphere, lower your landing gear and the atmospheric density slows you to a hands-off safe landing. On a gas giant you would reach a density where your ship would float if it could stand the pressure. It would be fun to try to climb back out from there!

I'm not sure we actually need atmospheric buoyancy in Pioneer, though implementing it shouldn't be much of a hassle if we know atmospheric composition as well as density (or pressure and temperature).

Heres a simple way to compute pretty good atmosphere preassure and temperature as function of altitude:
https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/ ... ution/amp/