Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

"Physics grids" are one of many meme techs of Star Citizen where they try to make 10 lines of code sound like some sort of gaming revolution. It's obvious from how you can fall through a moving ship that it's no fancier than the moving platform method that everyone else uses where you're copying a parent's translation/rotation and adding a force for gravity relative to the parent.
No. Each vehicle has it's own 'map' with specific gravity, atmosphere, temperature, snaping section for cargo, etc and can contain thousand of objects. When you walk in a tonk : first grid.
While this tonk move in a C2 : second grid.
While flying above Yela : third grid.

Edit : when you fall from a grid it's because the game let you freely leave a grid for another one (no loading section like the teleport in ED to switch between grids). So the server have to constantly check in which grid you are. And if it wrongly see you outside of the grid, it snap you to the parent grid.
 
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Ah ok, your issue is with "required". Fair enough. Not sure if those grids are strictly required but they do seem to exist in Elite. You still need coordinates to track stuff across the whole system. Fidelity or not.

So if you don’t think nested grids are necessary, strictly speaking I suppose one could conceive instead a model where absolutely all object coordinates in a star system in Elite were all directly based on a unique point as origin of coordinates for absolutely everything... Including, say, the coordinates of a player that moves in the interior of a fleet carrier that orbits a planet that is the satellite of a planet that is satellite of a gas giant that orbits around a secondary star that orbits around the focal point of the orbit with its primary star. I would not want to be the dev who has to make the code to calculate all those absolute coordinates plus specific and distinct physics for discrete and arbitrary regions of all that space, all managed from the same single origin of coordinates... I much rather like the idea of managing coordinates and physics on local more manageable grids that are nested to each other like they are in Elite, but hey, I am not a dev 😋

No no, that's not what i'm saying at all. There is no single origin for any character/ship, only within the local coordinate space (map), whether this be flying through SC, regular flight, in a SRV on a planet, etc. The planets also have their own coordinate systems that mean they move/orbit/rotate/etc. But nothing is physical until its close enough to be interacted with.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so...

AbsoluteUnfortunateGuillemot-size_restricted.gif


Does this require physics grids?
 
Here's an interesting idea though. We know planets orbit in real time (with their own plane of gravity) in ED. We know there are some ridiculously close orbits in the game. Can we get a player on one body waving to another on a close body (with their own plane of gravity) that is close enough for you to see them (maybe via an executioner scope)? Would that satisfy you? :p

That wouldn't actually go against what I was saying, and what you are suggesting is probably possible, although would require some careful flying and plotting to make it happen. The reason is thus, when you are on one planet, and another collides with it, the other planet will pass right through you if you are standing there, there is no physics there, no collision map. You can see the same with planetary rings, and if you drop out in one frame of reference and fly into a planetary ring, not only do the rocks fly past at insane speeds (because they are not in your frame of reference) but they are also intangible.

So, let's imagine a really carefully set up scenario, where two players land on colliding planets, and they are positioned so at the start they are are in separate instances, but on a course so the two players will directly hit each other.

If my hypothesis is correct, then both players would simply pass through each other as the planets pass through each other. Each is within their own physics grid, but neither grid is aware of the other and no collision detection takes place as they pass by each other. The only thing that might get collision detection is the players themselves (or their ships if in ships), because i think FD specifically code for that to happen (it happens when players from different instances merge instance bubbles for example), so you might have a funny situation where the grids are passing each other, but the ships/players gets sandwiched together, possibly resulting in either something going boom or being forced through each other or the terrain.
 
No disappointment. More irritation at the chatter when y'all dont really know what is going on.

If FDev had done a post like this talking about their physics grids, sure


if they havent and you have no insider knowledge of some sort you are just :poop: on this thread with page after page of nonsense.

Might as well post about astrology.

And I have plenty of idris's. I dont need any more.

Well, some of us do enjoy discussing tech and programming. Its an interesting question how FD handle physics grids in ED and what similarity or differences they have compared to SC.
 
Can anyone tell me what exactly happens in this clip?

Physics grid fidelity overdose.

Notice how it freaks out as the body floats over the lift platform, which probably has a separate grid intersecting with the main grid. Game gets confused which grid it should be calculating from, hilarity ensues.
 
Ok, you lost me with that one.

Racing in SC is interesting because Odyssey is terrible?

Not surprised by that.

All of the revived interest in SC for racing is due, really, to one player: BlackMaze

His enthusiasm for racing has been fully supported by CIG. They are making race tracks in game based off of what BlackMaze and his group have done.

All of this is due to him.

Before SC, he was a racer/canyon runner in Elite.

Odyssey wrecked that for him.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7xPySeD8B0


you might know him better by this series of videos

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlZ8HdoW0hk


regardless, any of the new racing stuff is directly correlated to odyssey :poop: the bed.
 
Not surprised by that.

All of the revived interest in SC for racing is due, really, to one player: BlackMaze

His enthusiasm for racing has been fully supported by CIG. They are making race tracks in game based off of what BlackMaze and his group have done.

All of this is due to him.

Before SC, he was a racer/canyon runner in Elite.

Odyssey wrecked that for him.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7xPySeD8B0


you might know him better by this series of videos

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlZ8HdoW0hk


regardless, any of the new racing stuff is directly correlated to odyssey :poop: the bed.

Oh, i see.

Hmm.. seems a bit of a stretch, but ok.

In other news...

a28or1chsdoa1.png


CIG have run out of JPGs!
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Lol, Sovapid is right we are way offtopic here. Will try to be brief.

No no, that's not what i'm saying at all. There is no single origin for any character/ship, only within the local coordinate space (map), whether this be flying through SC, regular flight, in a SRV on a planet, etc.

I think you are still confusing a bit instances with grids. If you think that only local coordinates are required then how would you propose that the game recognizes where your “local coordinate space (map)” is with regards to everything else in the system? How could it tell you how far away you are, and at which attitude, from a far away in system star, or a wing mate beacon or a settlement etc?

The game needs a way to place everything interactable or viewable, close or far, in the system with respect to you. Everything needs coordinates for the game to be able to show it to you (be it rendered in front of you if close or in a map or menu if far). Wether those coordinates are based on an absolute and unique origin of coordinates or nested grids can be debated but given often times each grid moves and rotates separately to the others and has its own sets of physics, nested coordinate grids would seem a very efficient way to manage those.

The planets also have their own coordinate systems that mean they move/orbit/rotate/etc. But nothing is physical until its close enough to be interacted with.

I think we are much closer than you think. I actually have been saying something very similar. Generally speaking a player does indeed not need to be subject to another grid physics, collision, gravity etc until you transition to it, but players often need to exchange information with other grids especially regarding coordinates. It happens all the time in Elite.
 
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Lol, Sovapid is right we are way offtopic here. Will try to be brief.



I think you are still confusing a bit instances with grids. If you think that only local coordinates are required then how would you propose that the game recognizes where your “local coordinate space (map)” is with regards to everything else in the system? How could it tell you how far away you are, and at which attitude, from a far away in system star, or a wing mate beacon or a settlement etc?

The game needs a way to place everything interactable or viewable, close or far, in the system with respect to you. Everything needs coordinates whenever something needs to be shown to you (be it rendered in front of you or in a map or menu), whether those coordinates are based on an absolute and unique origin of coordinates or nested grids.



I think we are much closer than you think. I actually have been saying something very similar. A player does not need to be subject to another grid physics, collision, gravity etc until you transition to it, but players often need to exchange information with other grids especially regarding coordinates. It happens all the time in Elite.

Right, so i think you are confusing coordinate systems with physics grids. I am not confusing instances with grids, but grids only exist within instances. So, that planet 0.5 AU away, does not have a grid present. However, when you hit the boundary and transition to regular flight/glide... or, if you are a masochist, fly the distance in regular flight from far away, the physics grid comes into existence when you get close enough to interact with it, whatever distance that is.

As for offtopic/ontopic - well, it did start out as a discussion of how it works in ED compared to SC... so we are tenuously on topic... just need to throw in a reference to SC here and there :p
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Right, so i think you are confusing coordinate systems with physics grids. I am not confusing instances with grids, but grids only exist within instances
I don’t think I am. Hence why I think we are very close. I have been saying precisely that a player does indeed not need to be subject to another grid physics, collision, gravity etc until you transition to it. The game does not calculate any of those until you transition from a grid to another.

But players often need to exchange information with content which is far away and outside from what you call local “instance”especially regarding coordinates. It happens all the time in Elite. Which leads me to a reminder to see if you can answer the question in my first paragraph above. Give it a go.
 
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Wether those coordinates are based on an absolute and unique origin of coordinates or nested grids can be debated but given often times each grid moves and rotates separately to the others and has its own sets of physics, nested coordinate grids would seem a very efficient way to manage those.
Nested grids are only useful if grids can interact directly with each other. When you have loading screens between grids (teleport, glide, space jump, etc) there is need to nest them, only calculation (which are way simplier to manage) is mandatory.

You absolutely not need physic grids just to get coordinates. If an object is out of your reach (another planet) you just need its vector, coordinates, assets, etc to display it but not its physics grid. You need its physic grid only when you interact physically with it = when you glide to it.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Nested grids are only useful if grids can interact directly with each other. When you have loading screens between grids (teleport, glide, space jump, etc) there is need to nest them, only calculation (which are way simplier to manage) is mandatory.
That is the thing precisely, there are no loading screens in Elite Star system maps. And different grids in Elite interact all the time exchanging information, just not bullets.

You absolutely not need physic grids just to get coordinates. If an object is out of your reach (another planet) you just need its vector, coordinates, assets, etc to display it but not its physics grid.
Never said nested grids exchange physics information, that is precisely the point of grids: Isolate physics or their laws of motion. But the same occurs in Star Citizen, grids exchange other types of information though, primarily visual, rendering and related coordinate and positioning.

You need its physic grid only when you interact physically with it = when you glide to it.
Indeed. It is exactly the same in Elite.
 
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