Has anyone dated the in game solar system?

[Twitchi]

One thing that would help with using out side planning tools for flights in the game would be a data that the simulation starts..

Has anyone else looked into this? Is the system even accurate?

I am trying to compare to online simulations, Maybe 2022 maybe 2036, maybe just not accurate?

 

[Dunbal]

Can't be too far into the future because Oumuamua is still visible in our solar system and 3I/Atlas is hanging around outside the orbit of Jupiter. It won't be earlier in time otherwise I'd expect Oumuamua closer to Earth, so I'm guessing some time in 2026.

 

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

Looking at the Earth from above the north pole, it appears to be close to if not exactly at the Summer Solstice.
Eyeballing the system compared to recent (+/- 10) years at https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar, I find zero even relatively close matches. Jupiter is in kind of the right spot in the late 20-teens, but Saturn is not. And the inner planets don't match ever.

Pluto is roughly at (looks slightly before to my eye) perihelion, which happened in 1989, but Jupiter and Saturn don't match any time near there. Jupiter's right in 1983 or so, Saturn's right in about 1995.

I expect they just picked random numbers, or used some time deep in the past from some catalog and then added the other stuff (like Oumuamua) manually.

 

[silent_protagonist]

Hale-Bopp (which flew through in 1997 and won't be back for ~2,500 years) and 3I/Atlas (which is flying through now and won't be back ever) are both in the inner solar system, so it's definitely not accurate to a real time.

 

[Briar Thrain]

Yes it seems bits and pieces so probably no standard Epoch (date) for everything.

I'm working on a tool to help generate system XML files which you can configure to your own specs for modeling close-ish to real
- which solar bodies to include
- their properties
- their orbital data including where they were at the specified Epoch (time) based on the NASA horizons API system

Orbits are always changing due to interactions - the game is only modeling the universe as all orbits remaining static, so doing what I'm describing can give a reasonable approximation on a small time scale from the initial date, but longer time scales the real orbits will have skewed

The release game is apparently going to use a different solar system anyhow - so the default game system is somewhat of a placeholder until that happens.

 

[bn_]

The Solar System is not in any real configuration at the start of the game because all planets are positioned at perihelion.
The SolSystem.xml has the "MeanAnomalyAtEpoch" parameter, but it is not used by the game (I posted a bug report about that: https://forums.ahwoo.com/threads/so...not-used-all-planets-start-at-perihelion.444/)
If the parameter were used by the game correctly, I would guess we would be on 1.1.2000.

I tried doing a Voyager-2 style mission and had to edit the TimeAtPeriapsis parameters to place the planets in appropriate locations for August 1977. Flew by Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus with relatively minor corrections.