Custom Orbit Paths

Hi Kerri,

This is a pretty complex or simple thing to do depending on what type of orbit you are trying to add. 

This will be a quick (relatively) and dirty way of going about this.

We can see some examples of this by checking out a few modules in the application/modules folder.

Let's take a look at Ceres for example. You should see 6 files in there.

 ceres.dds is the mercator projection texture of the object so we can just ignore that for now.

ceres.mod has a bunch of elements that are important and tell Uniview where to place this particular object (or objects)
There are 2 coord sections. The first one tells you where the barycenter for the object should live and what the parent of the object is. For example in Ceres we name the first coord CeresBarycenter to define where the barycenter is. Then we say the parent is the SolarSystem. If this were an object like a moon orbiting jupiter, we would have the parent be Jupiter.

you can also set the scale and units for it as well as the entry distance

then you should see the positionfile, orbitfile and position hook.

The first two will reference modules that have orbital elements in them and the third is what we want to to name the object for the purposes of adding an actual textured object to the orbital path. You should be able to see (by looking through the mod file) how each is related to one another. 

Then at the end of the mod file you will see the object references. The first one basically places it in the dwarf planet catagory on the object tree and allows for each of those objects to be controlled by the parent object in the object tree. in this case "Dwarf Planets" is the parent of Pluto, Ceres, and Eris.

The rest of the information can be looked up under sgOrbitalObjexts in your Run-Time Syntax command help in Uniview.

ceresbarycenterpos.conf  is an important file that basically tells Uniview where to find the orbital elements either in kepler Orbital elements (the simple way) or as a BSP or binary spice file(the more complex way). The BSP file for objects is usally found online for specific spacecraft or objects and takes you down a pretty complicated path which we will avoid right now.

ceres.SGO is where you enter in the orbital elements for the object. It should looks something like this

Inclination 10.587
SemiMajorAxis 2.7678
Eccentricity 0.0774
LongOfAscNode 80.7
DailyMotion 0.214274
LongOfPerihelion 153.681
MeanLongitude 262.19

which I am sure you are relatively familiar with.

ceresorbit.conf this is where we define what the orbit looks like in Uniview along with the period of the orbit. The segments basically defines how many orbital segments (straight lines) the orbit is made of. The higher this number the better looking your orbit will be, but it will also effect performance. 200 generally looks pretty good.

So basically all you need to do is copy Ceres, change the names of the files and then update the SGO and Mod file for your new object (not forgetting what the parents should be) 

I hope this made a bit of sense to you. if you want to go ahead and give it a try and then you can send in the file to us if you are having problems getting it up and running and perhaps we can help you with it.

Also if I have missed something in this description (totally possible) please ask and I will be happy to answer.