Proposal Discussion Perception of movement in a void?

[Darkflame]

Disclaimer: I tried to search for obvious keywords, but I couldn't find a discussion of this topic. It seemed a rather obvious one to me, so I apologize if I missed it.
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When traveling though space, or any realistic depiction of space anyway, you are dealing with vaste volumes of near total emptyness.
You might see planets or moons near you, but unless your going near light speed, they will be changing in position relative to you very very slowly.

In most cases, it wont feel like you are moving at all.

Lots of games deal with this problem by having "pysdo-stars" or debre that flys past you in proportion to speed.
This is, of course, unrealistic.

Has there yet been in discussion on how Elite plans to deal with this?

My feelings are simply your ships computer should overlay visuals to give you a sense of speed.
Possible a subtle, semi-transparent 3d lattice that your portrayed to be flying though. I could mock this up if people think its worth it.

The idea is it provides a sense of speed, an "excuse" for the effect, and (unlike stars/debree) it also gives you a sense of orientation.
You could even distort the lattice to correctly portray space distortion when your traveling near lightspeed.

Thoughts? Problems I have missed with this? Alternative ideas?

 

[Slythe]

<snip>
Thoughts? Problems I have missed with this? Alternative ideas?

I have no problem with that being in the game (as most people seem to prefer it) but I'd probably want the ability to turn it off.

 

[Kleinholz]

I don't know what exactly you have in mind in terms of visuals when you talk about the 3d lattice, but i think it would feel even more artificial than having dust going past you. In the end it's prolly rather hard to find a feasable solution apart from either 1) increasing ship speeds (which is not an option due to technical limitations) or 2) adding artificial markers, which is where we are at. But a 3D lattice might be a cool option for those who are put of by having visible particles everywhere.

 

[jedt]

hint..... it isn't a space sim..... it's a game

 

[Slythe]

hint..... it isn't a space sim..... it's a game

Yeah, but I remember playing a space-combat game in years past in which the particles they used to give you a sense of motion were so big I was always having to suppress a desire to duck or jink around them.

Since then I've always turned them off in every space game I've ever played.

 

[jedt]

how do you know you are moving?

i hit the forward key

it says in the manual.... hit the forward key to move forward. isn't that enough?

well maybe but can you be sure?

idk... i hit the forward key and i have all these intergalactic camels streaking past me

 

[Bromley86]

You might see planets or moons near you, but unless your going near light speed, they will be changing in position relative to you very very slowly.

Not saying it fixes the problem, as those planets will be very small to the naked eye, but we will be traveling far in excess of lightspeed.

Distance Earth-Jupiter is something like 750 million km.

Game time to travel between the two is unknown, but something like 10 minutes feels right. So average supercruise speed over this distance will be 1.25 million km/s. Speed of light is 300,000 km/s.

Or another example. Earth-Mars is 225 million km on average. Say that takes 10 minutes (different speed to the previous example, assuming that was too fast). 375,000 km/s.

 

[Michael Brookes]

Not saying it fixes the problem, as those planets will be very small to the naked eye, but we will be traveling far in excess of lightspeed.

Distance Earth-Jupiter is something like 750 million km.

Game time to travel between the two is unknown, but something like 10 minutes feels right. So average supercruise speed over this distance will be 1.25 million km/s. Speed of light is 300,000 km/s.

Or another example. Earth-Mars is 225 million km on average. Say that takes 10 minutes (different speed to the previous example, assuming that was too fast). 375,000 km/s.

Super cruise doesn't even come close to light speed.

Michael

 

[Bromley86]

Time for another revolt then, surely.

How can we move around a system at sub-light speeds? Time to fly to the sun from Earth at 2/3 light doesn't sound so bad at 13 minutes or so, but what if we want to fly out to Jupiter? That'd take an hour!

 

[Michael Brookes]

Time for another revolt then, surely.

How can we move around a system at sub-light speeds? Time to fly to the sun from Earth at 2/3 light doesn't sound so bad at 13 minutes or so, but what if we want to fly out to Jupiter? That'd take an hour!

This was in the posted proposal, we want long journeys to be just that - a long journey. You can jump if you want to get there quickly, super cruise is about travel and exploration.

Michael

 

[Slawkenbergius]

Time for another revolt then, surely.

How can we move around a system at sub-light speeds? Time to fly to the sun from Earth at 2/3 light doesn't sound so bad at 13 minutes or so, but what if we want to fly out to Jupiter? That'd take an hour!

Use hyperdrive!

What fun is flying in a straight line through the blackness with nothing but a starfield in view for most of the time anyway? Even 10 minutes of that will be pretty boring! The main job FSD does is let you fly between points of interest you can actually see, like going from Earth to the Moon, or Jupiter to Europa. You could do some flights between planets for fun, when the orbits are in your favour, or take part in the Sol to Jupiter race if you have the time and inclination. The trick would probably be getting the perfect slingshot from Mars...

 

[Bromley86]

Use hyperdrive!

What fun is flying in a straight line through the blackness with nothing but a starfield in view for most of the time anyway?

I see I need to reread the proposal, but I thought it was going to be similar to FFE where you potter around and pirates swoop in (or not). Instead it seems to be more roomy than I'd thought. Not saying that it'll suck, it's just a different beast to what I was expecting.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I see I need to reread the proposal, but I thought it was going to be similar to FFE where you potter around and pirates swoop in (or not). Instead it seems to be more roomy than I'd thought. Not saying that it'll suck, it's just a different beast to what I was expecting.

Hmm... In terms of rooms, it works exactly like FFE (not that I played it much) except you're more limited to moon/planet/asteroid scale distances, rather than interplanetary distances. You can still do interplanetary, but now the game highlights better how big space is. Also, it provides a nice progression between:

• Normal drive: Flying round spacestations etc. but possible to fly from a planet to a moon in a session, if that's your wont
• Frame-shift drive: Orbiting a planet and flying between moons, etc. but possible to fly interplanetary if that's your wont
• Hyperdrive: Quick-travel between planets/moons, etc. and the only way to travel between stars.

Personally I'd like to see hyperdrive limited to long distances, so that frame-shift is really promoted over hyperdrive for short trips, but that will come out in testing I guess.

I hereby invoke the 'IMO clause' for all of the above.

 

[Robbie]

The way I understand this perception of movement with regard to the new proposed cruise speed between in-system celestial objects is that we can now use new super cruise mode to warp away at sub-light speeds from any planet, then while in this cruise mode initiate a hyperspace micro-jump towards another in-system planet/moon, then once the jump ends we return to our maximum sub-light speed we were in before our jump.

So in effect this new combined travel mechanism gives us the perceived illusion of seamlessly moving enormous distances at "FTL speeds" though space - albeit ostensibly - in some kind of extended "super cruise mode."

Edit: It seems this system of travel is flexible enough to allow players personal preference in choosing the in-system travel arrival times that best suits them; so plotting a course from earth to Jupiter each player gets to decide if it takes between x amounts of seconds or x minutes to arrive.

 

[roryscarlett]

Well I-War did exactly that. On the Retro-Lave episode OneVigor mentioned this and how he didn't like it. PsykhoKow and I both said how much we liked it. Must be an age thing!

The point I made was exactly what you have been talking about Darkflame. In space unless you are travelling at relativistic speeds (or very close to small objects ie ships), objects just are not going to move from your point of view. A simple device to illustrate movement would be very helpful.

I have total faith that FD will do this right however!

 

[Darkflame]

Sorry for my late replies, I thought I had notifications on when I didnt

I don't know what exactly you have in mind in terms of visuals when you talk about the 3d lattice, but i think it would feel even more artificial than having dust going past you. In the end it's prolly rather hard to find a feasable solution apart from either 1) increasing ship speeds (which is not an option due to technical limitations) or 2) adding artificial markers, which is where we are at. But a 3D lattice might be a cool option for those who are put of by having visible particles everywhere.

Well, it would certainly feel artificial, but I think thats ok because in this scenario is very explicitly artificial.
Its part of your HUD, simulated by your ships computer.

Anyway...

Heres a short crude render I mocked up of what it would look like;
http://youtu.be/7YUOJzg9ICQ
*edit* Youtube has reduced the clarity of the grid a lot. I should have used a different codec. Hope it still gives the rough idea.

And heres the same scene without the lattice;
http://youtu.be/hcQIElJ_51E



Note; The scale is quite off in both renders. The planet and station are far too close, and the planet is thousands of times too small.
If you see any size changes to the planet as you get closer in the vid, be assured if this was real scale those changes would be far less then a pixel big

 

[Darkflame]

Oh, and I think its worth considering one or more of these effects too if dealing with speeds near C:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/cship.html#missions

Essentially lattice distortions and Doppler shifting of colour due to relativistic effects.

I admit, unlike the base idea, theres not much practical use to these additions. But it would be cool no?

Also, check out how old that website is with the message about JPEGs at the top

 

[Thargon]

You don't move, the universe moves around you

 

[Kerrash]

You don't move, the universe moves around you

Doesn't that require an engine powered by dark matter poop?

 

[Darkflame]

That's a complete load!

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Anyway, here's a new higher res (720p) video of the concept;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7tPav5G8fg&feature=youtu.be

Its still very rough compared to what a real game engine should do (less blurry, more sharp, lines evenly colored rather then brighter were they overlap etc)