No atmospheric flight on the horizon

[777Driver]

The ships are huge. To keep them airborne they would have to go so fast the slightest maneuver would send them spinning into a mountain. And if FD were to massively neglect realism for the sake of gameplay, the immersion would crash straight into that same mountain!

What does speed have to do with it? Ships in ED don't generate lift, it is purely about thrust to weight ratio. The only hurdle with atmospheric flight is drag, lift will never come into the equation.

Even ships like the Eagle/Cobra/Clipper would generate zero lift, however they would generate less drag than a lakon for example.

 

[nosscar]

This a sci fi game, and as in the movies things can be explained away with logic and reason.
For example, if they can land a Star trek intrepid class on a planet, why not any ship in ED.

http://www.startrek.com/watch_video/landing-the-intrepid-class-starship-a-documentary

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Clearly this man has never seen a flying bathtub.

Or the flying Bomb, where you strap more ordinance to the engine than you do plane.

Or the wingless planes.

Or even the Flying Marital Aide.

 

[777Driver]

Clearly this man has never seen a flying bathtub.

http://www.astrobio.net/images/galleryimages_images/Gallery_Image_7376.jpg

http://www.history.navy.mil/museums/paxmuseum/photos/X32/x32.jpg

Or the flying Bomb, where you strap more ordinance to the engine than you do plane.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/A-1H_602SOS_Jun1970.jpg



Or the wingless planes.



http://www.spacekids.co.uk/conquest/images/x24.jpg

http://prettyawfulthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/plane-2.jpg



Or even the Flying Marital Aide.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6J4og0hLP...qf779fdkRY/s1600/800px-RQ-4_Global_Hawk_2.jpg

Compare the surface of those aircraft with the ships in ED. Our ships have as much lift capability as a brick.

 

[Gidio]

Yeah, let's agree to disagree. Atmospheric flight (especially in higher gravity atmospheres like gas giants) would be quite awesome and would also fall in line with the rest of Elite Lore, since scooping from gas giants is supposed to be better than scooping from suns.
Btw on the point of suns: If you want to be realistic we should immediately burn up or die from radiation exposure if we come that close to suns, so the game should already be completely unrealistic in your point of view.

There are other games that provide pure space realism, like Rogue System. Please don't confuse full realism with fun, it's still a game.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Compare the surface of those aircraft with the ships in ED. Our ships have as much lift capability as a brick.

Some of those planes are basically flying bratwursts, so I don't see the difference.

 

[Magnetic Sun]

No kill-joys here. Look at SC and what happens when you get too ambitious. FD should spend their time working on what they already got, rather than creating a new game to somehow merge into this one.

About flight mechanics, come on guys, the ships are huge and so awkwardly shaped. It would require immense amounts of fuel and yield terrible handling. I for one love the simulation feel of ED. Making ships hover down to fly with the birds would just be plain out silly for this game.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

No kill-joys here. Look at SC and what happens when you get too ambitious. FD should spend their time working on what they already got, rather than creating a new game to somehow merge into this one.

About flight mechanics, come on guys, the ships are huge and so awkwardly shaped. It would require immense amounts of fuel and yield terrible handling. I for one love the simulation feel of ED. Making ships hover down to fly with the birds would just be plain out silly for this game.

We have infinity engines that jump between solar systems in mere seconds using nothing but star farts, and you think that gravity is somehow an issue?

 

[777Driver]

Some of those planes are basically flying bratwursts, so I don't see the difference.

There is a huge difference. The surface that provides lift needs to be completely smooth, that is how those weird shapes can still fly (inefficiently). Take a look at the ships in ED, not smooth

Anyway, as mentioned, it's all about brute force on our ships. Op doesn't need to worry about generating lift or broken immersion!

 

[Gidio]

No kill-joys here. Look at SC and what happens when you get too ambitious. FD should spend their time working on what they already got, rather than creating a new game to somehow merge into this one.

About flight mechanics, come on guys, the ships are huge and so awkwardly shaped. It would require immense amounts of fuel and yield terrible handling. I for one love the simulation feel of ED. Making ships hover down to fly with the birds would just be plain out silly for this game.

There is a good chance the groundwork has already been laid for atmospheric landings.

Besides, if Elite were a real simulation, yaw would be much, much stronger, since its the same thrusters that control the pitch. But it has been designed this way for good gameplay, not for full realism.

 

[Parmo]

Compare the surface of those aircraft with the ships in ED. Our ships have as much lift capability as a brick.

And bricks can fly!

 

[777Driver]

And bricks can fly!

I said produce lift, not fly

 

[Gidio]

I said produce lift, not fly

Tbh, I think with enough force, almost anything can produce lift as long as it can catch some air under it.
And seeing as most, if not all ships are a bit wedged shaped towards the front, I don't think that should be a problem.

 

[777Driver]

Tbh, I think with enough force, almost anything can produce lift as long as it can catch some air under it.
And seeing as most, if not all ships are a bit wedged shaped towards the front, I don't think that should be a problem.

Sorry mate, that's not how lift works. Anyway, I'll repeat myself, ships in ED do not need to produce lift, so the op is worrying about nothing

If you stuck powerful enough thrusters on a cruise liner, and automated stabilization, it would happily fly across the Atlantic whilst producing zero lift

Regarding your point about yaw, It is just a flight control law, absolutely nothing unrealistic about the behaviour. These laws have been in existence since the 1950's, you fly the computer, the computer decides how the machine behaves.

 

[Bacalao]

None of the ships are designed for it and unless we completely neglect any notion of realism, all of them would crash immediately. You need actual wings with engines to fly within an atmosphere.

Then imagine the actual workload for FD. A vast amount of content which would have to look as good as the space flight, but more so the flight mechanics would have to feel right and immersive to the point where you really believe you're landing on an atmospheric planet. Then imagine the combat mechanics and all that balancing.

It's a whole new game and I hope they will never even spend a dime looking into the possibility of landing on atmospheric planets. ED should IMO never go beyond landing on airless bodies, which is exactly where the perfect frontier should be for a Space Combat Simulator.
And, there's still so much to do in space already.

In a decade or so, a new game might be able to pull it off. For now, let's let ED be what it is meant to be.

Anything is possible with the proper application of force. If I can bank my ship against 1G then I can at least float above the surface of the earth can't I? (chemist here, ignore bad physics, or correct please). I think I've gotten a 5G warning in my Viper, so that little puppy can push it's own weight around, it would be fuel intense, very hot and FAoff would get really interesting but to say it's impossible....believe!

 

[Cradle2Grave]

Parachutes.

 

[Gidio]

Ok, let's just say that if OP says that thrusters aren't enough: We get exact replicas of our ships made out of lint when the atmospheric expansion comes. These are filled with helium. There, atmospheric flight.

 

[CMDR Weatherwax]

It's an interesting problem though and I would guess one which could not be overcome even with the best wing and craft design. From my admittedly poor understanding of aerofoil (is that the right terminology) design I thought the lift was due to the underside of the wing/ship shape etc having a greater surface area on the bottom than on the top and the increased speed of the air under the surface generated the lift effect. That's all based on earth's atmosphere and gravity so realistically how much benefit would an aerodynamic shape do with say gravity at 10x earth and maybe an atmosphere 1/10 the thickness (terminology fail again I imagine) anyway?

 

[Cradle2Grave]

Lil shuttles we can deploy?

 

[Nagual]

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Makes me think of this.