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12:17 AM
@Hosch250 I think there are a lot of answers that are even better, like some of the ones on Skeet Facts, Worldbuilding memes, and HDE's winter hats answer.
 
 
3 hours later…
3:36 AM
@AndyD273 The chemistry set is on the back burner. My spare mental energy is now consumed on my real life job. I hope I can come back to it sometime.
 
 
5 hours later…
8:24 AM
Nobody around :(
 
there are some people around...
just not much going on ;-)
 
Care to check out my new video? Only 6 minutes long. It would be nice to have some feedback from someone who’s not seen the drafts.
 
hm... ok, can do...
 
ought to be working... but eh, who wants to? ;-)
 
8:35 AM
Working? what time is it there?
 
09:37
not to forget... in your scheme where you explain the Moon orbit and inclination... why, the red line is discontinued from the green line? That looks weird...
at 01:32
also there, your "Earth Axis" does not go through the centre...
 
So, 7 hours ahead of me. Western Europe?
 
actually, officially central...
time zone here is CET ;-)
but yeah...
 
red line? Yea, it has to be discontiguous in order to be at a different angle, right?
 
migth be a taste thing, but I don't like it... ;-)
 
8:42 AM
Ah, that’s not "the" axis, just a stellar longitude line that happens to be handy. Good point; thanks.
 
you use that line generally as a reference
so why tilt it parts of it?
 
How else could it be? The red line is tilted from the green, thus it can't be continuous with it on both sides.
 
make it one ecliptic line... green straight all the way
and then another line to illustrate the different angle
other colour
 
The horizontal line? Green line is earth's path; red is moon's path angle (same as yellow). Actually, that's Earth's orbit around the Earth/Moon barycenter.
Oh, I see: it is not drawn across the picture — It’s 3D and you lose the line inside the Earth.
 
@ 04:10, your red line goes from the middle of the Atlantic up to Madagascar... and corresponds more or less to the parts of the green line that isn't shown...
 
8:47 AM
I get the general point though; for a first introduction to something, don’t rely on narration to describe it; rather, simplify the drawing and customize it more for the "first to be seen" role (it may be a copy of an illustration used later). Many thanks.
 
It's confusing for me. Might be to others as well.
 
If I rework it, I'll have to draw that picture from scratch, not show a zoomed-in planetarium view. I agree there.
 
Another "nice to have" thing, would be... you have several time showed the shadow of the Moon on the Earth... and only once, it's centre marked in blue. I think it might be visually interesting to see the path of that blue dot "marked" on the Earth...
the path of the eclipse as it's being made (or made so far)
so you have a nice build-up to the final path that forms a C
 
The blue dot was challenging to draw. I did not think I could show the track accurately as the planet turned. It was done by hand.
 
Apart form the above mentioned details, I think the video gets the point accross :)
@JDługosz I see... I feared that ;-) bloody tools not taking every single crazy ideas into account!
can you play around with the size of the Moon?
A smaller Moon will make a more precise dot...
 
8:55 AM
Hmm, I wonder if it would be doable to write a separate program that draws a track on an invisible sphere in the same orientation as the Earth in the Explorer view. I guess if I made a version with continent outlines too I could line them up and keep messing with the angle until it matched.
Yea, SE is not “easy”. It is a demo for a game engine, and his focus is on the rendering not the nice controls and whatnot.
 
I think for that illustration, you don't need the draw the continents fully... pick a city, mark a dot on your sphere and let the rest be illustrated
the dot will show the Earth's rotation and help the viewer project the whole map
 
Moon size: No, if I back up along the line connecting the Earth/Moon/Sun and use a telecope to view the Earth, it will asymptotically get down to the actual size difference, no smaller.
 
fair enough
 
I mean, the separate program would need to plot something that I could line up with this image; the outline of the land mass is good.
 
anyway, when people ask me my opinion, I tend to be really picky. Don't take it badly :-)
@JDługosz you could split the screen... your nice view on the left, and on the right or as an insert the other one...
the trick is to align the tempo
 
8:59 AM
Understand. How about the scene cuts and fluidity? Many YT videos do that badly, having extended blank screen, sudden cuts without fading, or leaving something up while moved on the talk about something else.
 
easier said than done, I'm sure
 
Hmm, I wonder if it could be done in Adobe AfterEffects? Not need Newtonian multi-body physics, just a list of points computed elsewhere.
Hmm, is Blender scriptable?
Oh, I even put music in!
On a big screen, the eclipse rendering is quite dramatic, with the city lights and all.
 
@JDługosz it is, AFAIK... but I've never done it ;-)
@JDługosz yeah I noticed that, that's pretty cool!
 
One thing I would have done too is show the changing of the settings to remove the clouds and boost the aurora. Initial view would be very real CGI, then “let's see the land under the clouds...”
Oh, getting screen movies of SE was a real bear.
Oh, did you see the gags?
 
@JDługosz the parrots?
 
9:05 AM
That's one of them.
Diamond's voice was picked up under my talking, so I could not edit it out. So I left it in and drew attention to it instead.
 
I had to pause to read the XKCD... but still did not to read the Japanese-looking thing
 
Maybe he'll become my co-host :)
Yea, Chang’e was just a filler between scenes. I had no real idea and decided to go with a picture of a moon goddess since I had the Green one earlier. Ancient paintings are out of copyright!
Also, it's a bit of an easter egg for space fans. Chang’e 4 is the moon probe that just landed on the far side.
 
they are indeed...
not sure about the terminator though ;-)
 
"they are?" I lost the antecedent.
Chang'e 4 (; Chinese: 嫦娥四号; pinyin: Cháng'é Sìhào; literally: 'Chang'e No. 4') is a Chinese lunar exploration mission that achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019. A communication relay satellite, Queqiao, was first launched to a halo orbit near the Earth-Moon L2 point in May 2018. The robotic lander and Yutu 2 (Chinese: 玉兔二号; literally :"Jade Rabbit No. 2") rover were launched on 7 December 2018 and entered orbit around the Moon on 12 December 2018. The mission is the follow-up to Chang'e 3, the first Chinese landing on the Moon. The spacecraft was originally...
 
@JDługosz I meant that ancient paitings are out of copyrights... but the Terminator isn't very old. Fair use? IANAL.
 
9:11 AM
So you spotted the parrots, Arnold, XKCD, and Chang’e. At least two others worth noticeing.
Did you stay for the post-credit scene?
 
I tend not to focus on those
I've seen Tortuin (or however it's spelled)
 
And Selene pulling the sky-banner behind the moon-chariot.
 
Back to you explaining why the 5° angle makes that effect possible, and providing that you find a way to simulate that as discussed before, it might be interesting to show that having a more extreme angle difference would lead to even more extreme effects...
@JDługosz yep, seen her promoting subscription ;-)
 
Good point. I could do that in Universe Sandbox.
BTW, the full moon used in the chariot and a few other places is a photo I took of a "supermoon". Looks like everyone else's, though.
 
Yeah, the Moon tends to do that... always showing the same face to everyone...
 
9:18 AM
Oh, I forgot. Another filler is a loading... spinner made from moons instead of a plain dot.
Thanks for the chat. I needed that after shipping :)
 
No worries :)
 
If you have any friends at work, maybe you could show it around. It's a freshly made channel so nobody knows about it yet and it won't get recommended 'till it has more views already.
Well, snack time.
’later —
 
Enjoy your snack
 
9:36 AM
@JDługosz btw, I watched it again... for me it's generally fluid and the transitions work. One or twice, your animation are quite long. I like space views, and you added some music, so it's ok for me. But just to let you know, you might get the same argument with slightly higher rhythm... so it's not bad, but it's a choice :)
 
I kept all the animations at the same scale time rate, so the feel of what happens when will match up and you can better consolidate the different views of the same event.
 
 
4 hours later…
1:40 PM
0
Q: The Rules of Human Migration

Ender GamingCan anyone tell me the rules of migration? I have made a decent looking world, but now I'm moving into the man made world.

 
 
4 hours later…
5:33 PM
@JDługosz Yay! You have two subscribers!
I found the view with the blue dot most helpful in keeping track of where the shadow actually was.
Views from the sun-side of the moon didn't help me much.
 
@Green Sup Verde
 
5:49 PM
0
Q: What makes the microfracture-on-a-spaceship question fit for worldbuilding?

FrostfyreQuestion of concern: Microfracture in the ship's structure: good enough excuse to strand my characters? Reading through the question, I noticed a great deal of "This is how I want my story to unfold." The question appears (to me) to be a plausibility check of the OP's plot and, more specifically...

 
6:11 PM
" Over a short burst, however, anaerobic muscle can make a huge difference. In living birds, for example, aerobic capacity tops out around 175 Watts/kg of muscle, but fast twitch fibers in birds can put out 390 Watts/kg. Crocodilians and squamates can get even more power from their fast-twitch fibers."
 
6:37 PM
@Mephistopheles Aren't fast-twitch fibers only usable for short periods of time though?
 
@Gryphon That's why giant pterosaurs only used it for climb out.
 
@Mephistopheles Ah, makes sense. I was wondering how they would be useful for flight, given that flying usually lasts more than a minute or so.
 
@Gryphon I wonder if dragons could use the tactic too.
 
@Mephistopheles The most realistic dragons (imho) are basically pterosaurs with an extra pair of legs, so it's quite possible.
 
@Gryphon Do you think the tail could be used as an anchor for the wings?
 
6:47 PM
@Mephistopheles In terms of muscle attachment points?
 
@Gryphon No, the wing membrane
 
@Mephistopheles Oh! I'm pretty sure there are some bat species like that. I'm not sure if it'd scale up, would have to do some more research.
 
@Gryphon The first question is how much power do you need at the very least (to counteract the weight of the creature), then efficiency, I think
 
@Mephistopheles Remind me exactly how big your dragons are again?
 
@Gryphon A shire horse, roughly.
 
6:53 PM
@Mephistopheles That's pretty hefty. Like 4-ish times the weight of the largest pterosaurs, before mass reductions from not actually being a shire horse.
E.g. being far more flight-optimized in terms of weight than a shire horse.
 
@Gryphon I did plan on adding subcutaneous air sacs and a whole new tissue type (organic closed-cell foam)
 
@Mephistopheles Yeah, it's obviously not going to have the same mass as a horse, despite having a similar volume.
Maybe half the mass, so in the 450-500 kg range. Which is still pretty heavy for flight.
 
Huh, technically snow boots are water shoes for when the water is cold and fluffy...
 
@Gryphon Also, I think their (the dragon's) strength was kinda sorta 20-23, so average (healthy) humans have ST 10, basic lift (how much weight can one lift) is proportionate to the square of ST in GURPS so, 10x10=100 for humans, 400 for ST 20, and 529 for ST 23. Translating that to muscle mass is gonna be harder, and that's for the terrestrial limbs.
Perhaps I can use some leverage...
 
So the wing loading on fruit bats gets as high as 25 g/cm^2. Which would make our 450 kilo dragon have a wing area of 1.8 square meters, which is actually... pretty reasonable.
More reasonable than I thought it'd be.
Now we just need ridiculous muscles to pump a couple of 0.9 m^2 wings at bat-flapping speeds.
 
7:02 PM
@Gryphon Well, the original wingspan, I planned for them, was 11x2 meters, so 22 m^2, not taking chances.
And we already discussed those ridiculous muscles.
at around 20-25% of the body weight...
 
Are you absolutely set on making the dragon have 4 legs? Cutting two would help a lot with the mass. You can look into wyverns for inspiration if you decide to go with a two-legged dragon.
 
@Gryphon which would also make the much more bat like
 
@AndyD273 Well, a lot bigger than bats, but yeah.
 
@Gryphon That's too... easy. I want to suffer! And besides, they look a lot cooler with four legs.
 
@Mephistopheles I honestly think that for not physics-breakingly large dragons, wyverns look cooler. Especially if you have people riding them. You can even keep the front legs but make them very small (a la T-rex with wings).
Of course, if you want to go full Smaug, then yeah, the four-legged version definitely looks cooler.
 
7:21 PM
@Gryphon Maybe the forelimbs are just as lithe as the hindlimbs, with large, hollow bones, protective closed-cell foam padding, and overclocked FG muscles.
FG, as fast-glycotic
 
@Gryphon Hmm, most of the Smaug images have a Wyvern (front limbs are wings) rather than them being seperate.
 
@Mephistopheles So limited ground endurance then.
 
@Gryphon * Smiles in CHARA * I can assure you, I know how they can make up for that... flaw.
 
@AndyD273 The movie version is a wyvern, yes. The Hobbit movies are crap on many, many levels though, so...
I always thought of him as full dragon in my head.
 
7:26 PM
@Gryphon My main complaint was that dwarves are apparently made of flubber.
 
The golden poison frog (Phyllobates terribilis), also known as the golden frog, golden poison arrow frog, or golden dart frog, is a poison dart frog endemic to the Pacific coast of Colombia. The optimal habitat of P. terribilis is the rainforest with high rain rates (5 m or more per year), altitudes between 100 and 200 m, temperatures of at least 26 °C, and relative humidity of 80–90%. In the wild, P. terribilis is a social animal, living in groups of up to six individuals; however, captive P. terribilis specimens can live in much larger groups. These frogs are often considered innocuous due to...
 
Dwarves shouldn't freaking bounce.
2
 
Even most of the older versions are wyverns.
 
@Mephistopheles So it would seem that the way to escape a dragon is to run as fast as possible into dense forest and hope it gets tired before it catches you.
@James That was one of many problems, yes. Another problem can be summarized in the word "Tauriel".
 
7:27 PM
@Gryphon Why would a dragon have to use it's legs to travel on the ground? Especially with back mounted wings
 
@Gryphon They ain't dumb, they'll just run away and get a drop on you later on.
@AndyD273 Good point, the Quetzy could travel between continents.
 
Just pull the legs up, and slither like a snake
 
Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound with the formula H2O2. In its pure form, it is a pale blue, clear liquid, slightly more viscous than water. Hydrogen peroxide is the simplest peroxide (a compound with an oxygen–oxygen single bond). It is used as an oxidizer, bleaching agent and antiseptic. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide, or "high-test peroxide", is a reactive oxygen species and has been used as a propellant in rocketry. Its chemistry is dominated by the nature of its unstable peroxide bond. Hydrogen peroxide is unstable and slowly decomposes in the presence of light. Because of its ...
 
@AndyD273 Fair. Maybe climb a tree? I doubt a 450 kg thing is going to have a lot of climbing capability, and if the forest is dense enough it can't get you from above.
 
>:)
@Gryphon Eh, whatever, I just make up for it with some graphene-infused tissue or some lethal chemical.
 
7:30 PM
There is a book by an author named Frank Peretti called "The Oath" that has a dragon that flies sometimes, but mostly gets around on it's belly, only occasionally using it's legs.
 
Something that makes you burn and scream
 
Yeah the whole dwarf/elf love thing was stupid.
 
@James >comlag
 
it could also change the color of it's scales, like a chameleon, and so had active camouflage.
 
@AndyD273 Or just those nano-fibers on the chameleon's legs
Sorry, gecko
I MEANT gecko, and you can't convince me otherwise
 
7:35 PM
Don't those let it climb things, not change color?
 
@AndyD273 That could be useful, no extra weight and an additional perk if they need to Skyrim their way back to their lairs.
 
@Mephistopheles That's fine. The one in the story I'm talking about didn't have that. Just flight, fire breathing, rapid snakelike ground travel, active camouflage, and human level intelligence.
 
So let's talk about placing dragons next to insects. We really should talk about limb placement and attachment, because this is a travesty
F@ck deviantart!4!
I hate DA links
Next time I choose one as my true name
 
Yeah, umm, where exactly are the muscles for the wings?
 
@Gryphon That's the problem!
 
7:43 PM
@Gryphon That would get in the way of the art?
 
They seem to attach right to the shoulders in that image. Which is a bit of a problem.
 
Sorry
I need more trigger-discipline
 
I mean, it is Deviant Art, not Deviant Anatomically Correct Science. Though they do have other things that are anatomically correct...
 
@AndyD273 Nice bait, Satan
I think we could try to place the wings slightly behind...
 
7:59 PM
 
If you want cool pictures of dragons google the dragon images from the DnD 5e monster manual.
or if you are feeling lazy just click this:
 
D&D? Real nerds play GURPS 4e, with all the realism rules on.
 
@Mephistopheles Try alternity
Besides, realism is annoying.
When I am slaying gods and dragons and liches I don't want to think about mundane things like encumbrance.
 
@James Too many adventurers died because they didn't know Newton's third law.
Besides, physics lets me break any game system
 
@Mephistopheles I play a sorcerer. Physics means absolutely nothing to me.
 
8:13 PM
that's why charlatans will always lose to SCIENCE
 
I rewrite space and time. Science is mine to command.
 
@James You're starting to sound like Timelord Victorious
And that's why we have Mordenkainen's Disjunction.
Here's a silver
 
That second one I posted is silver too
 
@James One from 5e and one from Pathfinder
 
8:30 PM
The 5e art is pretty spectacular.
 
 
3 hours later…
11:43 PM
hey there @James
 

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