Navigate by the stars?

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

Just for the heck of it, I fired up the demo coop mission on night and fair skies and wandered over to a hilltop. I looked north for about 20 minutes trying to pick out the North Star and the two Dippers. No luck.

I could have sworn that I was able to successfully navigate at night in OpFlash using just the stars. The night sky in ArmA doesn't seem correct to me. All of the stars seem to have almost identical observed magnitude on my display. Has anyone else tried this?

[ck-claw 1]

im sure someone posted in the 'what do u like about Arma' thread about the acurate stars ?? bout him picking out/seeing Orion etc!

[andersson 285]

I started the demo to check that out, and I found the North Star quite easily. But there are something funky about the two Dippers, but I guess that is because of Sahranis position and I´m used to see them from where I live.

Is it possible to find out where Sahrani is from the star constelation? You have the date and the positions of the stars...

edit: the small dipper looks mirrored, maybe the whole constelation is mirrored? I dont know. I suppose it is because of Sahranis position..

[Dallas 9]

It's possible to navigate by Polaris and the big dipper(Karlsvognen) is correct. Sometimes it's just so high you can't see it.

So far I've see Casiopia, Orino and the twins Castor and Pollux. I bet there are more up there, but I'd have to consultthe books to find more. I've also noticed that the starts turn and twinkel too.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Is it possible to find out where Sahrani is from the star constelation? You have the date and the positions of the stars...

Config says this:

Quote[/b] ]

 longitude = -40.020000;

 latitude = -39.950001;

According to maps.google.com:

Nothing but sea there, which makes sence for a fictional island

[mrj-fin 0]

Is it possible to find out where Sahrani is from the star constelation? You have the date and the positions of the stars...

Config says this:

Quote[/b] ]

longitude = -40.020000;

latitude = -39.950001;

According to maps.google.com:

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/7959/naamloospz5.th.jpg

Nothing but sea there, which makes sence for a fictional island

Correresponding this information we should not never able to see northern earth starry sky and stars like the Pole Star (the North star) and Big Dippers.

[Guest]

Yeap, southern hemisphere. Australians got an advantage.

[NeMeSiS 11]

I think (not sure) that they use the same star-sky-texture as in OFP, but in a higher resolution, to be honest i havent looked much at the ArmA stars yet..

And remember that the LO and LA settings are usually used to get proper dawn/dusk times in the approperiate time of the year (for gameplay reasons, you dont want to play near the northpole and having to wait for a few months to see the sun ). (IIRC they had influence on this, has been a while since i last configged islands )

I dont have OFP installed anymore, but i guess that the skytexture is either from Everon coordinates, or, BI took the texture from somewhere/thing else and we may never know what coordinates fit with this skytexture

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

What about the stars' differences in apparent magnitude being too close to identify them? Anyone else have that problem?

TIA

[suma 8]

Quote[/b] ]I think (not sure) that they use the same star-sky-texture as in OFP

Night sky is not a texture, there is a real star database used for the rendering (about 9000 stars).

Quote[/b] ]longitude = -40.020000;

latitude = -39.950001;

Negative latitude means northern hemisphere in our coordinate system, therefore you should be able to see the Polaris on Sahrani (the june/july is also the season with longest daytime there).

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

I tried again this afternoon and was able to successfully spot the Big and Little Dippers and Casseopeia (sp?). I let the clock go for quite some time and was gratified to see that the stars are rotating around the Pole star.

To answer the question about whether the Little Dipper is mirrored: It's not. I verified it with KStars, a program that tracks the stars in real time. Now that we know the Lat and Long are in negative coordinates, it should be at least theoretically possible to set that position in the program, tell the program to set the date and time to some time mid-summer, and watch the night sky. I'll give that a shot soon.

Thx for the help, all!

[Maximus_G 0]

It's good to stare at the stars and see some familiar constellations in the game, but why would you try to navigate that way - when you always have the compass at hand?

[=jps=sgtrock 4]

There was one old OpFlash mission where you didn't have a compass. A couple of user made SP missions are the same way.

Besides, it's kind of fun to putz around trying different things with this game. It's one of the coolest things that sets this game engine apart from so many others.

[wamingo 1]

It's good to stare at the stars and see some familiar constellations in the game, but why would you try to navigate that way - when you always have the compass at hand?

Yes you do and, oh, wait, showCompass False, now you don't.

But yah, I suppose it's kind of an odd feature, but hey, games often are what they are because of their attention to detail.. And, of course, civilians don't often walk around with compasses, and imagine we could have some civilian uprisings or so, no?

[znashin 0]

Can you set no compass and no map for individual player slots or teams? For instance could you have one side with compass' and the other team without or have only the team leader with a compass and map? I'm fond of forcing team work

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Can you set no compass and no map for individual player slots or teams? For instance could you have one side with compass' and the other team without or have only the team leader with a compass and map? I'm fond of forcing team work

Yes.

[Maximus_G 0]

There was one old OpFlash mission where you didn't have a compass. A couple of user made SP missions are the same way.

Besides, it's kind of fun to putz around trying different things with this game. It's one of the coolest things that sets this game engine apart from so many others.

Alright then, i do admit that kind of gameplay

[NeMeSiS 11]

Quote[/b] ]I think (not sure) that they use the same star-sky-texture as in OFP

Night sky is not a texture, there is a real star database used for the rendering (about 000 stars).

Cool!

(I assume the 000 = 1000? )

[mattxr 9]

ahh stars, sitting on top of a mountain in north sara looking up at the stars [brilliant]

[suma 8]

Night sky is not a texture, there is a real star database used for the rendering (about 000 stars).

Cool!

(I assume the 000 = 1000? )

Typing too quick. It should be 9000. Edited.

The same database was used for the OFP. Given the increased horsepower it could be possible to render more now, but I doubt it is worth the work needed to search for an updated database.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

So putting different coordinates for an addon island would give us different star-coordinates?

[NeMeSiS 11]

Night sky is not a texture, there is a real star database used for the rendering (about 000 stars).

Cool!

(I assume the 000 = 1000? )

Typing too quick. It should be 9000. Edited.

The same database was used for the OFP. Given the increased horsepower it could be possible to render more now, but I doubt it is worth the work needed to search for an updated database.

9000!

Thats what i call attention to detail!

[suma 8]

So putting different coordinates for an addon island would give us different star-coordinates?

Yes, it would. The same is true for daytime duration or sun and moon position. No planets yet, though.

[sniper pilot 36]

So putting different coordinates for an addon island would give us different star-coordinates?

Yes, it would. The same is true for daytime duration or sun and moon position. No planets yet, though.

thats awsome Suma thanks!

[walker 0]

Hi all

Add in the planets and you can do a version for all the budding Sir. Patrick Moore's out there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Patrick_Moore

I saw him once outside the Angus Steak House in Leicester Square once. He like his food does Patrick.

Kind Regards Walker