Speed on conventional thrust

[ESA_Jazz]

I've been wondering about the speed during conventional thrust. What are the units? If my speed is 200; 200 what? Km/h? Knots?

In the other hand, seems to be a bit slow for a spaceship like an Eagle which pretends to be a fighter. I remember the speed of an X-Wing in the final battle of The Return of the Jedi.
[video=youtube;xPZigWFyK2o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPZigWFyK2o[/video]
They give a better impression of fluency and maneuverability. Much faster relative speed between bigger starships. In Elite, flying by a Coriolis station takes quite a while at máximum speed for a such a sophisticated spaceship.. I now, that this sim, doesn't pretend to be a copy of Star Wars. But it would get a much better gaming experience and more addictive.

Another thing to be taking account. G forces. During combat, any turn generates an acceleration and even at slow speeds we should be able to feel the g forces just like airplanes do. In space is even more noticeable since you may be moving at very high speeds. Where are the "G" forces effects on the pilots? Let's say that I'm on an Eagle pulling at máximum rate of turn, and nothing happens to the pilot. In an fighter jet, you could get blacked out.

Talking about physics. If you are in space with zero friction, how come, that after you use your boost, your speed slows down again? It should keep constant since no friction is taking action in space. Using my boost I should accelerate to a relative high speed on conventional thrust, shouldn't it?

Finally, Im wondering how all this is going to be implemented once we are able to enter in a planet's atmosphere. During an orbit flight (you're supposed to be in orbit when you're maneuvering around a station) you'll need to decelerate to enter in an atmosphere. How is it going to be shown in your speed indicator? What units are going to be used? How the transitions are going to be?


Just wondering

 

[adoredtv]

Metres per second.

You can both blackout and redout in an Eagle quite easily though you may need the better thrusters and use flight-assist off.

In answer to your "realism" questions, basically realism gave way to gameplay.

 

[ESA_Jazz]

Well, if those are meters per second, and I'm moving at 160 mps, means that It's equivalent to 320Knots. If you make a tight change in direction at that speed you get some G's. Your pilot should feel the same as fighter pilots feel, shouldn't he?

 

[Xeonyx]

Speed is in m/s, as it is generally the case in space games. Multiply by 3.6 to convert it in km/h ... yes our ships are going fast and pack a monstruous acceleration. Clearin stations take a while because they are THAT big (the ISS could fit in the letterbox IIRC).

 

[Xeonyx]

Your pilot should feel the same as fighter pilots feel, shouldn't he?

Indeed. In fact, given the acceleration rate of most ships, our characters should have a really bad time with Gs in dogfights. But they decided that G-forces simulmation was not interesting for their game and simply left it aside (not necesserily a bad choice, just one of two possible paths). And it could be easily justified by some hanwavium, but I like that they just ignore it completely, as if G-forces are so much a thing of the past for pilots that they are not even worth mentioning ^^

 

[Dogthinker]

Indeed. In fact, given the acceleration rate of most ships, our characters should have a really bad time with Gs in dogfights. But they decided that G-forces simulmation was not interesting for their game and simply left it aside (not necesserily a bad choice, just one of two possible paths). And it could be easily justified by some hanwavium, but I like that they just ignore it completely, as if G-forces are so much a thing of the past for pilots that they are not even worth mentioning ^^

They haven't entirely set it aside, the effect is just so weak that you need quite an extreme maneuver to see it. If I remember right, starting from a very slow speed (<100), hit boost and immediately push the stick maximum up in an A-grade Cobra, and you should get a red-out. I tended to see them a lot when coming out of stations (and almost never when in combat, funnily enough.) I don't think I've seen one in any of my larger ships - perhaps they might not have enough acceleration / turn rate.

EDIT: I rather like the idea of having a ship in the game where the limiting factor is the pilot's physiology rather than the ship performance. Perhaps that'd be the case with those tiny little fighters you sometimes see in conflict zones (the extremely fragile and poorly armed, but extraordinarily agile ones.) It'd be fun to take one of them for a spin

 

[CMDR Skrundarlow]

Talking about physics. If you are in space with zero friction, how come, that after you use your boost, your speed slows down again? It should keep constant since no friction is taking action in space. Using my boost I should accelerate to a relative high speed on conventional thrust, shouldn't it?

You should continue accelerating infinitely, theoretically.

Speed is limited because this is a game and games sometimes need to deviate from reality to be fun and balanced. That's the only reason, because as stated, you are correct.

 

[777Driver]

Talking about physics. If you are in space with zero friction, how come, that after you use your boost, your speed slows down again? It should keep constant since no friction is taking action in space. Using my boost I should accelerate to a relative high speed on conventional thrust, shouldn't it?

Just wondering

No, not if FBW and flight control laws are involved. and regarding G forces, you can actually red out or blackout, managed to do it in an Eagle

The ships in ED are governed by only two flight control laws, we would need the third law (direct law, no more HAL) to be able to continue accelerating. We fly the computer, the computer fly's the ship. Even with Flight assist off.

 

[Kaburan]

You should continue accelerating infinitely, theoretically.

Speed is limited because this is a game and games sometimes need to deviate from reality to be fun and balanced. That's the only reason, because as stated, you are correct.

It's funny to think if this was possible in game with Flight Assist off. Just keep after burners popping until you're near supercruise speed without having to engage jump drives

 

[Soda Popinski]

You should continue accelerating infinitely, theoretically.

Speed is limited because this is a game and games sometimes need to deviate from reality to be fun and balanced. That's the only reason, because as stated, you are correct.

The other reason to have a speed cap is its a multiplayer game. If you're shooting at somebody moving 2000 m/sec with a ping of 50 milliseconds, you're 100 meters off target. This can be alleviated with predictive movement, but that gets messy if the opponent is turning. Or you can do client-side hit detection, but that has drawbacks for the guy getting hit.


If you want to go more into the physics, the stated power usage of these thrusters are WAY below what it would take to move these ships. I think I calculated the time to 300 m/s for a Cobra to be a few minutes with A class thrusters.

Edit:
4.92 MW for the 4A Thrusters. Lets assume 100% efficiency (or close enough), in order to move a 270 ton Cobra to 300 m/s, you need to provide KE=0.5mv^2, or KE = 0.5 * 270,000kg * 300 m/s * 300 m/s = 1.22e10 kg·m^2/s^2 = 1.22e10 Ws. So, divide 1.22e10 Ws by 4.92e6 W = 2480 seconds = 41 minutes to accelerate. Did I do this right?

So clearly, conventional thrusters aren't being used. I will hand wave that to meaning the thrusters are pushing against some magical Ether, which explains both why it's so incredibly efficient AND causes your ship to slow down...

 

[Xeonyx]

Disclaimer : this post a bit off-topic

They haven't entirely set it aside, the effect is just so weak that you need quite an extreme maneuver to see it. If I remember right, starting from a very slow speed (<100), hit boost and immediately push the stick maximum up in an A-grade Cobra, and you should get a red-out.

Oh, really ? That's interesting now !

I've yet to see any G-loc effect since I started to play. Or on any video I've watched for that matter. Yet I've pulled some crazy maneuvers in dogfights, both with my Eagle and Viper, and I'm talking about FA-off turn-boost-strafe offensive reversals here. That's something like 600 to 800 m/s of delta-v spent in around 5s, with at least half of the resulting Gs taken directly "from head to feet". If G-loc effects exist but are not triggered by something like this, they were a nice waste of developper time. But you picked my curiosity, I'll have to do some tests when I get the time.

Even more off-topic now : I'm with you on the fact that the pilot's physilogy is an interesting limiting factor to implement in a sim game. For instance I happen to also be a Star Citizen backer and I love what they've done with the G-loc effects (reasonably easy to trigger the lighter effects, reasonably hard to suffer a total blackout). And with the dogfight dynamics in general (much faster and more intense than ED more "tactical" approach. But in the end, what I love the most is that each of those game have chosen very different paths in many areas because it gives me reasons to play and enjoy both of them, without any of the two feeling better or inferior. Simply different.

 

[Xeonyx]

The other reason to have a speed cap is its a multiplayer game.

Actually, even without considering the multiplayer / networking aspect, any game NEEDS hard-capped speeds in space. Why ? Because speed has to be stored as a variable, and variables have a limit on the value that they can store. Operations also get imprecise when the numbers get very high and the physics engine generally starts doing very weird things because of this. Collision detection can also get mostly impossible (or extremely CPU intensive, depending on how you do it) for object moving extremely fast.

The developpers of Kerbal Space Program found a nice solution for the range of speeds and distances that their game needed : when you reach their speed "cap", your effective speed is reset to 0 and transfered to the rest of the universe, which starts to move around you in reverse. You can then start to accumulate speed again. As for the solar map, it is in fact a second, scaled-down scene. All of this, coupled with double-precision variables, a fair bit of optimisation, clever physics simulation disabling in time warp and dynamic physics slow-down allows the game to come this close to simulate unlimited speed. But these solutions are obviously not suitable for multiplayer. And speed caps are necessary for interesting fights to be possible anyway.

 

[Soda Popinski]

Disclaimer : this post a bit off-topic



Oh, really ? That's interesting now !

I've yet to see any G-loc effect since I started to play. Or on any video I've watched for that matter....

30 seconds on the Google.
[video=youtube;-VioyAzfgkM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VioyAzfgkM[/video]

 

[Xeonyx]

30 seconds on the Google.

So hard to trigger even a redout, so little consequences ... That's indeed some nice way to waste developper time (as the fact that I did not even know that they exist suggested). But I'll still have to test the effects myself, just for the sake of my own curiosity. Still, thanks for the vid.

 

[Shathis]

Indeed. In fact, given the acceleration rate of most ships, our characters should have a really bad time with Gs in dogfights. But they decided that G-forces simulmation was not interesting for their game and simply left it aside (not necesserily a bad choice, just one of two possible paths). And it could be easily justified by some hanwavium, but I like that they just ignore it completely, as if G-forces are so much a thing of the past for pilots that they are not even worth mentioning ^^

well.. you all did forget one tiny thing.... all the ships are made with special materials that mold with the pilot to reduce the g force effects on the pilot.. i remember reading it in the book that came with frontier 2. lol

 

[Xeonyx]

you all did forget one tiny thing

Actually, we did not forget :

it could be easily justified by some handwavium

 

[Soda Popinski]

well.. you all did forget one tiny thing.... all the ships are made with special materials that mold with the pilot to reduce the g force effects on the pilot.. i remember reading it in the book that came with frontier 2. lol

Would that explain the goofy suits we wear with the toe shoes? Need to squeeze the last bit of blood out of my big toe! Personally, I'd rather wear a vest and trousers with a Correllian Blood Stripe.

 

[Lobstris]

I miss both black- and red- outs. Staple of every combat flight-sim, and that other space game has them.