Mirrors!

[JoeStrout]

We've finished adding mirrors to design mode.  There are actually two kinds:

• Primary mirrors, which are the big holed-disc mirrors added as a separate part.  You can adjust the outer and hole diameter, and angle them either up or down, depending on where you need the light to go.
• Secondary mirrors, which appear on the spokes of torus and barbell habitat modules when you have selected windows for lighting.  These can also be pointed up or down, to reflect light from the mirrors into the windows (which face the spin axis in this case).
  

Here's another example, a cylinder with slightly inverted endcaps, windows, and mirrors on both ends:

Fun stuff!  We still have probably another weeks' worth of work to do on version 0.17, but all the big hairy features are now done.  We'll get that update out to you just as soon as we can!

[Pye-rate]

An alternate way. Use smaller self steering mirrors close to the windows.
http://3dprint.com/31444/soft-robots-3d-printed-muscles/
Last week I read about doing the same thing thermalreactively. The item was printed with ten materials resulting in a graduated response bimetal type material. It is probably only a mater of time before it is done opticly.

[JoeStrout]

The primary mirror isn't to close the windows; it's to get sunlight into the habitat at all. Currently the spin axis in High Frontier is always perpendicular to the plane of the Ecliptic. So without the primary mirror, windows in a torus or inverted endcap simply can't see the sun.

Now, if you have a sphere, or a cylinder with convex endcaps, then the windows do see the sun. (All this is calculated in the game in pretty good detail.)

[Pye-rate]

I meant that the mirrors could be smaller and closer to the windows.

[JoeStrout]

(10-02-2015, 11:05 PM)Pye-rate Wrote: I meant that the mirrors could be smaller and closer to the windows.

Wouldn't the ones on the sun side shade the ones in the back?

[Pye-rate]

Not if it is set up like a field of flowers where they can follow the sun and everybody gets enough light.