Redshift/blueshift in SC

[glynie]

I mentioned it before in another thread but was just curious what everyone thought. Figured it would be a nice effect (option to turn it on or off in the graphics menu) in-game. When you're in SC, since you're travelling at such insane speeds, I believe a redshift/blueshift of objects and stars should be seen (light getting dimmer or brighter/colour changes depending on your trajectory and speed).

Anyone?

 

[OnePercent]

I mentioned it before in another thread but was just curious what everyone thought. Figured it would be a nice effect (option to turn it on or off in the graphics menu) in-game. When you're in SC, since you're travelling at such insane speeds, I believe a redshift/blueshift of objects and stars should be seen (light getting dimmer or brighter/colour changes depending on your trajectory and speed).

Anyone?

it wouldn't make sense to do this, considering the speeds we can achieve in SC, even a small approach to the speed of light would already give the effect of time dilation and blue shift in the front of your view with red shift in the rear of your ship, Going at speeds in this game realistically will kill you but then again might not because you might go back in time according to the laws of physics.

A certain amount of handwavium is need for this game, thus, Inertial dampeners, Warp drives and an anti time dilation/extreme blue shift radiation + Micrometeorite shield would be needed technically to do what we're doing in Elite.

 

[Loskene]

I figure everything you see in supercruise is your HUD filling in what you wouldn't be able to see normally. You can see the space-warped light cone that forms around other ships in supercruise, yet not your own, leading me to believe no external light can actually reach your ship when you're moving at FTL speeds. There's a few theories about what you'd see if you looked out of the window of a ship that's messing up spacetime with an alcubierre warp drive, but nothing concrete. Frontier have a lot of wiggle room to interpret here, because we just don't know if you'd be able to see anything at all, let alone the clear realtime image we get now.

So I guess if this is the case, the reason there's no blueshifting is that the computer would filter that out.

 

[OnePercent]

I figure everything you see in supercruise is your HUD filling in what you wouldn't be able to see normally. You can see the space-warped light cone that forms around other ships in supercruise, yet not your own, leading me to believe no external light can actually reach your ship when you're moving at FTL speeds. There's a few theories about what you'd see if you looked out of the window of a ship that's messing up spacetime with an alcubierre warp drive, but nothing concrete. Frontier have a lot of wiggle room to interpret here, because we just don't know if you'd be able to see anything at all, let alone the clear realtime image we get now.

So I guess if this is the case, the reason there's no blueshifting is that the computer would filter that out.

I believe the Devs removed that Gfx feature that ships use to make whilst warping around.

 

[glynie]

you might go back in time

Yeah I know what you mean but I think that doesn't apply to warp drives and I'm guessing the FSD is a warp drive...you know, like in Star Trek

 

[OnePercent]

Basically what would happen is all forms of light, be it radiowaves, Microwaves, infrared, visible light etc etc would instantly be blue shifted all the way to gamma rays which would NOT be visible to the human eye and will kill you.

 

[CaptainBinky]

Not having had any first hand experience of faster than light travel, and only having a basic "I read a book once about physics" understanding of general relativity... would you actually see red/blue shift as a result of you travelling at this speed, or would it appear normal since it would be your perception of time which would change? Don't ask me, it's all confusingly bonkers

I have a hard enough time with "Space. It's really quite large"

 

[Chevy66]

At the speed of light stuff coming towards you would be blueshifted right out of the visible spectrum, who knows what would happen above C?

 

[glynie]

Basically what would happen is all forms of light, be it radiowaves, Microwaves, infrared, visible light etc etc would instantly be blue shifted all the way to gamma rays which would NOT be visible to the human eye and will kill you.

lol good point...but if it's a warp drive and we're in a bubble...let's put some nice Star Wars type special effects on

 

[OnePercent]

lol good point...but if it's a warp drive and we're in a bubble...let's put some nice Star Wars type special effects on

Oh I am probably the biggest advocator of star trek like warp experiences. They are awesome, Unfortunately in this game we have to spatially position our selves in supercruise or suddenly a LOT of people will have to learn IFR flight principals LOL

 

[Loskene]

Oh and Frameshift drive is pretty much exactly how I would expect trek's warp drive to work in a practical sense. The only difference I can see is trek ships have more control over their acceleration inside gravity wells, even being able to jump to superluminal inside planet's atmospheres. The two drives even have diminishing returns for the power put into them as you fly ever higher orders of magnitude above C. Warp drive has acceleration in its favour but frameshift seems to give higher top speeds. I got my Cobra to hit Warp 9.6 on the TNG scale before I got bored and jumped somewhere else, but if I let it go for a few days (your average trek interstellar travel time) I'd say it could beat the Enterprise's speed record.

 

[Fen Harel]

There are all sorts of relativistic effects that should be there, I suppose. I do wish there was some indication when we cross the speed of light, perhaps a quick flash or something. Presumably there is a a reason for this involving the nature of the space warping of the frameshift drive, etc. etc., which seems rather ad hoc, The way I look at it: the HUD is compensating and displaying local zero velocity view. In the end I suppose it doesn't matter, it is a very fun game.

 

[Loskene]

There are all sorts of relativistic effects that should be there, I suppose. I do wish there was some indication when we cross the speed of light, perhaps a quick flash or something.

I guess there's no light equivalent of a sonic boom, especially since you're not actually moving relative to the bubble of space you're sitting in.

 

[hjd_uk]

There are all sorts of possible outcomes, the warping of space by the FS drive may counter-act the red/blue-shift, it may increase it, it may lens all real light around you, so that you would end up seeing nothing, or a tiny little blue-white dot in the centre of your view.

Any time-dialation effects would be minimal on the system scale; sitting at <1C at the host star, looking at a planet 1000ls away, you would see it's orbital position 1000 seconds ago. Travelling towards it at 1C+ you would see it approach its actual position as you approached it. However, the distance an average planetary body moves in a thousand seconds is negligible.

Time-dialation effects would be most apparent if you flew away into the furthest reaches of a solar-system, orientated yourself so that the disc was face-on ( orbits were circles on your screen ) then, from light-months out, hurtled towards the system at high super-luminal speeds ( light-days a second ), you would then probably notice the time-accelleration effects of the fasted orbiting bodies.

I would like some more 'tells' that you were travelling FTL but the game is great as is and time-dialation wouldn't make much difference.

PS: Time-dialation would be apparent if a Nova or something travelling at 1C could be viewed, overtaken and then viewed again from 30ls away or something ( that would be neat ).

 

[Zenicetus]

As I understand it, we're supposed to be using some variant of an Alcubierre drive that "frame shifts" space around us. We're not really moving in the conventional sense. Space itself is being shifted around the bubble formed by the drive. Think of it as slow teleportation, or a series of little teleportation jumps at the frame rate shown by the game.

Since the Alcubierre drive breaks the link between space and time (folding space and ignoring the time dimension like teleportation), there are no effects like redshift, blueshift, time dilation, or other relativistic effects that would occur in travel through normal spacetime. Conveniently, you don't worry about running into space dust or other debris at superluminal speeds that way either, which would not be fun.

There is a flaw in the way the game represents things outside our view, in that it always shows a "realtime" view of planets and other objects as we approach them, rather than seeing the earlier frames. That's probably due to streamlining the programming, since there is so much other stuff going on in SC.

 

[SpaceGibbon]

informative video
[video=youtube;NlYiDOsfpWs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlYiDOsfpWs[/video]

 

[glynie]

Ah but here's a thought: The space which occupies the warp bubble (the space the bubble is made of) is presumably being formed from the space outside which is occupied by photons...stretched or shrunk into a distorted bubble...so? I dunno - this is all mental - I just wanna add some special effects

 

[Zenicetus]

informative video

Cool video, but it doesn't apply to how the FSD works in this game. We're not traveling in the usual sense of the word, where relativistic effects would be seen.

 

[DimGook]

would be nice if there were some blueshift effects when you drop out of sc... but meh there's bigger fish to fry

edit: i meant hypercruise not supercruise.

 

[Avnas]

I mentioned it before in another thread but was just curious what everyone thought. Figured it would be a nice effect (option to turn it on or off in the graphics menu) in-game. When you're in SC, since you're travelling at such insane speeds, I believe a redshift/blueshift of objects and stars should be seen (light getting dimmer or brighter/colour changes depending on your trajectory and speed).

Anyone?

i'm about 90-95% sure this is already in the game.; it's just extremely subtle. have you ever noticed a slight blue tinge and the stars getting brighter just before you jump to hyperspace? it's ever so subtle.