pioneerspacesim/pioneer — pull request #879 by johnbartholomew (2011-12-30 16:13:52+00:00)
Title: for #55 -- display "probability of arrival" during hyperspace.

This just adds a little extra interest to the HUD during hyperspace. At the moment the probability of arrival is calculated with the smooth function [(1.0 - exp(-fudge * progress))](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot+%281-e**%28-4*x%29%29%2F%281-e**%28-4%29%29+for+x+from+0+to+1) where fudge is currently set at 4 and progress is the hyperspace progress from 0 to 1. It may be better to make this "lumpy" somehow, or at least make the display more jumpy, to make it more interesting.

From IRC:

is the progression (in distance) through hyperspace linear in time?
It might have been once
s20dan made it dependant upon a number of variables
Two short jumps take less time
if that's any help
I'm talking about how one jump progresses
when you're a quarter of the way through the time required for the jump, have you gone a quarter of the jump distance?
That isn't defined
There's no movement
do you have an opinion on what it *should* be defined as?
(this is for https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/55 )
My gut says to make it a probability density function
As time goes by, it's more *likely* that you're closer
I'm not sure how we'd represent that on the hud
me either (:
probability of arrival: x%
"Probability of arrival: 51%"
"Probability of arrival: 68%"
One it hits 1, you're there of course
and that leaves the door wide open for misjumps
for some reason I find that quite amusing
people will probably wonder what on earth it means :-)
but I kinda like it
"It's quantum."
I'm inclined to make it go up non-linearly, otherwise it's just a boring jump completion percentage
Yeah; probability of arrival shouldn't be low for long
since pretty much every jump completes
It's a vague nod to Douglas Adams, too