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by corpsmoderne2 4504 days ago
Hi, dev here. I certify you that the physics are OKish. You should burn at apoapsis to circularize, etc. What prevent you to realize this is that it's hard to know when you're at apo/periapsis, so you're burning with some vertical velocity and that changes how your orbit change. Anyway, this game was really a joke, if you want an educational game, I've also made this: http://deltav.corpsmoderne.net/
4 comments

+1 for the delta-v game!

Here's a reddit thread about the game with a "high score list": http://www.reddit.com/r/gravity_games/comments/1fks9v/oc_del...

If anyone wants to test out their orbital mechanics skillz, you can try to beat my unofficial world record, a grand tour of the Jovian moons:

http://deltav.corpsmoderne.net/game.html?s=Jupiter&prg=QlVST...

I took on your challenge, determined to do it from scratch with no copying, and I have this:

http://deltav.corpsmoderne.net/game.html?s=Jupiter&prg=QlVST...

More points, due to orbits of and impact with Jupiter, but slightly less efficient and elegant overall I dare say - some burns not really at peri-/apo-apsis, and my orbits are generally higher and less circular. Kudos also for motivating me.

This game is super fun even though it's a joke. Might I suggest that once your bird has left the cloud layer, all subsequent burns are purely prograde? (To deal with the edge case where the bird reenters the atmosphere, the rule could be that all burns are purely prograde if the bird has ever left the atmosphere). I think a lot of people will play this game and the Hohmann Transfer concept would be a cool thing for them to be able to take away.
You might want to switch from Eulerian integration to Verlet for more stable orbits. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/15708/how-can-i-i...
> I certify you that the physics are OKish

A++++ would physics again