Friday Facts #310 - Glowing Heat pipes

[CzBuCHi]

very nice concept, but i'd say it's not visually perfect yet.
Especially i think it's too bright, and maybe the color tone could be slightly altered? dont know, maybe it's already perfect when it's darker.
kinda like this?

Also im missing on both images red-shifted colors based on temperature: ...

[kingarthur]

Is the heat temp glow limited to heatlipes or can it be used on other things?

[meganothing]

I'm astonished how much I like this heat glow feature

[Schorty]

Those heat pipes are lit! (Sorry for the bad pun)

very nice concept, but i'd say it's not visually perfect yet.
Especially i think it's too bright, and maybe the color tone could be slightly altered? dont know, maybe it's already perfect when it's darker.
kinda like this?

Also im missing on both images red-shifted colors based on temperature: https://i.stack.imgur.com/uGB7l.jpg ...

I was about to post the same thing. The problem here is, that if you would make it "realistic", the color would'nt change when the pipes are hot enough to power the heat exchangers. But I agree non the less. It should be a bit darker.


Anyways: These look awesome as they are. Even without brightness tweaks. Thank you, Ernestas

[eradicator]

While it's pretty it somehow shows how much heat is dissipated without being userful as the heat pipe's thermal insulation is missing.

Let's try this:

Factorio heatpipes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber made of transparent aluminum, they thus lose no heat. This chamber is coated with transparent nano-LEDs with integrated nano-photovoltaic crystals. Thus the "glow" you see is merely a convenient visual representation of the heat measured electronically.

[ownlyme]

very nice concept, but i'd say it's not visually perfect yet.
Especially i think it's too bright, and maybe the color tone could be slightly altered? dont know, maybe it's already perfect when it's darker.
kinda like this?

Also im missing on both images red-shifted colors based on temperature:[color scale image] ...

thats an incredible idea, it would really give it an edge

[conn11]

Not to bee picky, but shouldn't the pipes on a unpowerd reactor also not glow...
Otherwise looking very much forward to this change!

[gorothdablade]

Not to bee picky, but shouldn't the pipe on a unpowerd reactor also not glow...
Otherwise looking very much forward to this change!

The reactor may be unpowered but the attached pipes still have heat. That or the reactor still has heat to dissipate just not generating more at the moment. either way it is neat that the glow isn't linked to there being fuel in the reactor.


(Also resisting urge to make the "bright idea" pun.... not resisting well)

[dee-]

While it's pretty it somehow shows how much heat is dissipated without being userful as the heat pipe's thermal insulation is missing.

Let's try this:

Factorio heatpipes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber made of transparent aluminum, they thus lose no heat. This chamber is coated with transparent nano-LEDs with integrated nano-photovoltaic crystals. Thus the "glow" you see is merely a convenient visual representation of the heat measured electronically.

There is no sound in space. All that "pew pew" you hear is generated by your ship's computer / camera drone so you can feel all of the immeeeeersion.

Yeah, I figured the pipes are probably coated with LED strips for easy visual inspection. How clever of that Factorio-guy doeshehaveaname.

[Theikkru]

Please incorporate color temperature into the glow; I'd expect it to start off very reddish and get both brighter and whiter as temperature rises. It would also help players more precisely perceive differences in temperature.

[kateract]

Am I the only one that thinks that since the pipes are glowing red hot, that maybe they should cause a small bit of damage to the player if they are walked on?

[darkfrei]

very nice concept, but i'd say it's not visually perfect yet.
Especially i think it's too bright, and maybe the color tone could be slightly altered? dont know, maybe it's already perfect when it's darker.
kinda like this?

Here must be more red heat glowing:

[conn11]

Not to bee picky, but shouldn't the pipe on a unpowerd reactor also not glow...
Otherwise looking very much forward to this change!

The reactor may be unpowered but the attached pipes still have heat. That or the reactor still has heat to dissipate just not generating more at the moment. either way it is neat that the glow isn't linked to there being fuel in the reactor.


(Also resisting urge to make the "bright idea" pun.... not resisting well)

Valid, but:

Assuming the green glow is aquivalent to Cherenkov radiation in nauvis (from some really badly shielded power reactors). The other two reactors are glowing because chain fissioning is going on, electrons are released by some decay further down the road and heat is produced therefore their pipes are glowing (so far so good). Since reactors after "burning" their fuel down are loosing heat quite slowly, it can furthermore be assumed that, just like in the real world, decay heat (created by nuclear decay of the fissioning isotopes of your initial nuclear fuel) is a thing here. By looking on the picture all heat pipes attached to the reactors appear to glow on the same level, therefore the temperature in the cores can be assumed to be eaqually high. Following that, the amount of decay products in the unpowerd reactor should be quite high and of corse so their spontaneous decay (due to accumulation by a quite recently terminated fission ) occuring. The cherencov effect is depandand on charged faster than light particels in a transparent medium (e.g. air), mainly electrons. With typical decay products of U-235 fission are 141Barrium and 92Krypton, both short lived isotopes and at least 141Ba having a beta-decay, cherenkov radiation should be emitted.
Ergo: either the green light is missing from the unpowerd reactor, or the its heatpipes are glowing to much.
Not to being over analytic of course

[gorothdablade]

Am I the only one that thinks that since the pipes are glowing red hot, that maybe they should cause a small bit of damage to the player if they are walked on?

no... you aren't.

but, then you would get people using heat pipes as part of their defense. ... now that I write that I am wondering why that would be a problem.

[ownlyme]

but, then you would get people using heat pipes as part of their defense.

ohhhh.. that sounds insanely cool! but we'd need some kind of environmental cooling to balance it.
with lua scripts this is not really possible, it would eat way too many ups. (like canal builder does)

edit: and the damage should be percentual or it wouldn't be balanced for enemy mods.

[gorothdablade]

but, then you would get people using heat pipes as part of their defense.

ohhhh.. that sounds insanely cool! but we'd need some kind of environmental cooling to balance it.
with scripts this is not really possible, it would eat way too many ups.

The balancing I can think of off the top of my head would be that damage done * SOME MULT is taken as heat out of the pipe.

[theolderbeholder]

Am I the only one that thinks that since the pipes are glowing red hot, that maybe they should cause a small bit of damage to the player if they are walked on?

And they can SET TREES ON FIRE!

[conn11]

Am I the only one that thinks that since the pipes are glowing red hot, that maybe they should cause a small bit of damage to the player if they are walked on?

And let's not forget, hot reactor are much more powerful than landmines. Time for nuclear defenses.

[ownlyme]

i don't think they'll add heat pipe damage, but it could be possible with a mod utilizing landmines maybe.. (thanks to conn11 for the idea)

[gorothdablade]

Am I the only one that thinks that since the pipes are glowing red hot, that maybe they should cause a small bit of damage to the player if they are walked on?

And they can SET TREES ON FIRE!

I can see it now
Trees near fully heated pipe have chance to ignite, Nuclear power is no longer pollution free
so much for "green energy"