Guide to Ambience OXPs

This page is just started. Factual inaccuracies abound! The oxp's should eventually be listed in tables to enable comparison of features.

Oolite's collection of Ambience OXPs is a rather rum selection. Some aim at scientific realism in varying degrees. Others aim at spectacular eye-candy. Written by human beings rather than disembodied organic brainlets, some are stand-alones whilst some form part of suites. Some just twiddle with the one thing (eg distance to the sun) whilst others do many different things (distance to the sun, colour of the sun, grade of quirium scooped from the solar corona etc).

Hence Cholly's partial Guide to Ambience OXPS.

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Suns (distances and varieties)

Tweaking of the distance between the planet and the sun started early. Here are 7 OXPs which do this.

• Kaks farsun Simple (March 2008) Just the one .oxp
• Wildeblood’s Sensible Sun before 2011
• Keeper1st’s KeeperSky (Ron O’Dell) inspired by Frontier/FFE (before 2016)
• Knotty’s Realistic Stars (Richard Knott; July 2012)

Affects look of galaxy, star colour, corona size and distances. Constant size for sun coronas.

Just the one .oxp. (RealisticStars & Realistic Stars SSC seem identical)

• Wildeblood’s Distant Suns Simple (July 2014).

Keeps the same basic distance between the planet and sun but varies it according to sun colour/star type.

Just the one .oxp

• Rustem’s Distant Stars Later (Oct 2017) Combines with cim’s Sunspots.oxp

As for Wildeblood, but adds variable corona flares, local economy correlated with star type and with observed reality etc.

Partly done in collaboration with Wildeblood, Stranger & cim.

• Stranger’s Sun Gear Most recent (July 2020 - but started in 2013): part of the [Strangers World] suite of OXPs for more experienced players.

Requires Stranger’s Habitable Main Planets OXP which redefines planets radii.

You may need Stranger’s Hard Way OXP to allow refuel skimming from Solar Winds as sun-skimming may now be suicidal. And maybe his SW_HUD_CAI .oxp whose customised altimeter is more useful for landing without crashing on Habitable Planet surfaces than those HUDs with default altimeters.

Varies distances yet again according to star type. Star types correlated with observed reality.

Also varies star radius and luminosity. Includes solar flares and solar winds.

An Advanced (Solar) System Data MFD displays 2 pages with data on sun & planets (Lock Advanced Space Compass onto sun or planet and then cycle through your MFD modes).

Stellar OXP comparisons

	FarSun	Sensible Sun	KeeperSky	Realistic Stars	Distant Suns	Distant Stars	Strangers World
Functionability	Broken?	Broken?	Broken?	Old	Old	Up-to-date	Up-to-date
Increases distance to sun	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Changes appearance of sun	No?	No?	No?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

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Planets (extra planets, moons and extra textures)

Tweaking of the Vanilla game's one moonless planet for each sun model. Here are 7 OXPs which do this.

• System Redux (Oolite) fully mapped out every system (with planets, moons and stellar environment).
• System Demux (Oolite) provided a selection of textures for planets and moons.
• DeepHorizon - Systems
• Povray Planets with Povray Sets (?) and Famous Planets (descriptions) fully maps out every system in the 8 galaxies.
• Additional Planets (SR) adds random textures to extra planets/moons only
• BPlanets for system 1.90 - quite unsure what this actually does, other than look nice!
• Habitable Main Planets & Moons in the Strangers World suite - maps out every System's main planet, rest is randomised.

Planetary OXP comparisons

	System Redux	System Demux	DeepHorizon	Povray Planets	Additional Planets	BPlanets	Strangers World
Functionability	Broken?	Broken?	Unfinished	Old	Recent	Up-to-date	Up-to-date
Details all of Galaxy 1	Yes	No	No?	Yes	No	?	Yes

Links

• BB discussion