No atmospheric flight on the horizon

[Windscreen Smudge]

The biggest problem I can see you having is the speed and planet scale issues. For example, if your earth atmosphere is 200km thick and you can only travel at ~300m/s its going to take around ten 10 minutes before you are clear of the atmosphere.

Does this mean you will need a cut between a landing mode and a space mode? Or will we be able to travel faster nearer the planets to account for scale?

It'll be faster to turn flight assist off and let gravity do it's thing for a couple minutes. I hope FD changes the speed limit for this.

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Can we have floats for water worlds too?

You won't need then with the average ship's weight to volume ratio.

 

[CMDR Spiegal]

Late to the party but I think this is an interesting little video to show what you can get up in the air!

[video=youtube;OlJGQ92IgFk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlJGQ92IgFk[/video]

 

[DaveB]

I would love to see the combo of thruster class/grade and total ship mass result in a "max surface g" for a normal VTOL approach and departure from a planetary surface (also, that would be a threshold for how far into a gas giant you could go etc - go deeper and its gravity overwhelms your available vertical thrust. At that point you'd better reorient your ship such that the main engines are getting you out of there because if you let it fall any deeper even those won't be enough and you're going to die.)

However that brings up an interesting point - These ships are not rockets designed to balance on their tails. At any angle between pitch 0 and pitch +90 degrees, however, it should be possible to find a combination of ventral and main thruster power that combines to a vertical thrust vector - and the pitch angle to maximize that thrusts magnitude would be 90-atan(1/x) where x is the ratio between main thruster and ventral thruster power. A larger ship could therefore land vertically onto an angled surface in a deeper gravity well than its ventral thrusters alone could overcome (reasonable to assume x >= 1. these are our main engines we're talking about. Even if x=1 and there's no difference in main and ventral thruster power you've still got 1.5 times the vertical thrust by pitching up 45 degrees and running both at full power)

Ventral thrust alone, therefore, would limit a ships "rough field" landing capability - can't land on an unprepared site if you can't do it on ventral thrusters alone. If you've got planetary docking facilities that can present you with an angled surface to land on, along with magnetic clamps to capture you the same as you encounter at space stations, a (very) skilled pilot can land a larger ship in a deeper well. How deep, of course, depends on the value of x (and x will be limited both by the current flight model and how steep an angle of the landing pad FD decides would be "steep enough to be ridiculous" - if landing vertically onto a pad pitched up at 63 degrees is acceptable, for example, x can go as high as 2.0 allowing roughly 4.5 times the vertical thrust to overcome local gravity as would be possible with ventral thrusters alone, if on the other hand, the current flight model says the mains are only 1.5 times more powerful than the ventrals, the max angle you can benefit from pitching up the landing pad to is 56 degrees and you only get 1.8 times the vertical thrust capacity by running mains and ventrals at max at this angle)

 

[Whiterose]

What? Thunderbird 2 DLC confirmed for ED? Where is my wallet?

Me too! makes sense for future expansions. Thunderbird 4 is needed for water worlds.

 

[palazo]

I believe that much remains to be to achieve to fly in atmospheres.

I did a post with ideas for atmospheric flight.
So that does not become boring can create events in the planet's atmosphere at random.

If you got ideas, I would know them, so the add and keep doing diagrams.
Now some time ago that I do not write.

Maybe my English difficult post sorry .

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170582

My post:

 

[Brujah]

The Dropship may, at one point in a couple years, have a purpose after all.

I want to be able to literally drop it onto a planet and it suffer no more than minor cosmetic damage when it lands at several hundred km/h. Then some Space Marines walk off it or something. *whistles*

 

[Kitiara]

Is it possible that if the planet has high enough mass, some ships won't be able to land or take off at all?

Surely they'd be able to "land". At least in the sense of getting onto the ground, perhaps managing to slow the descent enough to survive the landing

After all, heading down a gravity well isn't hard

 

[Bannon_Orcus]

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.

unless it is like frontier, just land a take off, but it added that nice rising into blackness vision, great then, hopefully greater now

 

[lysan]

You should be able to land everywhere. Taking off is another beast. Some like anacondas and T9 should not be able to lift off some planets. Or if they could their fuel tanks should be empty as soon as they get in orbit.

It also make more sense if they carry small ships to transport Their crew down to the planets while the mothership stay in orbit.

 

[re7rix]

I don't think the issue with planetary landing on atmospheric planets is anything to do with flight models or aerodynamics. I think the biggest hurdles is that they would need to add loads of new content. An airless body is pretty much just terrain. If a planet has an atmosphere suddenly you need to add things like oceans, trees/plant life, possibly animal life, and it needs to vary between billions of planets.

Just the concept of oceans alone would mean adding liquids and liquid physics to the game. A game that has never had any form of liquids before at all.

 

[Erimus Kamzel]

Let's help you then.

I think that some planets SHOULD be off limits for some ships for the very same reason outposts aren't available to some. To create variation and purpose when making ship choices. Ships aimed for exploration should obviously be able to land on pretty much everything though.

Big ships could however in theory carry smaller ships in case you really wanted the big one but still the possibility to get down there.

This what I hope for too. A little bit more variation in ship roles rather than having them all being capable of doing the same tasks.

On a semi-related note, do we know if our ships will need any additional mod or equipment fitted before we're able to land... I assume that if we want to explore a surface we'll have to buy a buggy or all terrain vehicle from the shipyard for example?

 

[Lee Storm]

Everything will be fine. Besides, its sci fi.

This ^^ and they did it with the Enterprise ship, so why not these

 

[3941]

Eddie Symons, producer of Horizons, said at Gamescom that gameplay will probably come first.
They have artificial limits for the gravity of objects. So every ship should be able to land and lift off, even if it might actually be impossible.

They do want to make us feel the difference in gravity though.

 

[david6768]

You should be able to land everywhere. Taking off is another beast. Some like anacondas and T9 should not be able to lift off some planets. Or if they could their fuel tanks should be empty as soon as they get in orbit.

It also make more sense if they carry small ships to transport Their crew down to the planets while the mothership stay in orbit.

Well the feature is not implemented yet but from the Anaconda wiki
The Anaconda is the pride of Faulcon deLacy's ship yards. The design was first manufactured in 2856 by RimLiner Galactic. After numerous mergers the template was eventually owned by Faulcon deLacy, who have made only minor changes to the classic design. The Anaconda is a versatile craft that can transport large cargos as well as pack a decent punch. Some smaller navies use the Anaconda in the light cruiser and frigate roles. The Anaconda can also be upgraded with a docking bay allowing small fighters up to Sidewinder size to be carried and launched.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liIlW-ovx0Y[video=youtube;liIlW-ovx0Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liIlW-ovx0Y[/video]

 

[OnePercent]

There is no such thing as velocity in elite: dangerous, all ships have infinite thrust but the computer caps it at a certain speed, if it didn't, any ship would eventually be able to leave any type of gravity well, barring landing beyond the event horizon of a black hole or being melted on the surface of a neutron star. Landing according to the physics of the game should be a non issue for all ships, it's just a matter of time or if the developers wish to limit by implementing rules that govern what ships can land and where.

At the end of the day, all ships will be able to just orbital cruise (warp) out of there anyway.

 

[Poy]

I'm not saying you can fly without aerodynamism and air flow to sustain your flight... actually that's precisely what I'm saying I don't know where I was going with this...

anyway, my job is video, so here is a video:

[video=youtube;KBMU6l6GsdM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM[/video]

And since I really like all of you and I want to share what I enjoy, here is a short animation film featuring what those little buggers could do ! (jump at 3:05 if you're not interested in the short) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doteMqP6eSc

 

[Alric]

I think one of the limiting factors on landing and taking off large ships in atmosphere would not be their raw ability to do it, but the damage their thrusters would do to the surrounding environment.
The noise and heat of a rocket takeoff can already kill creatures in a significant area. Imagine the environmental distress of an Anaconda setting down.

As far as I understand it, while E : D ships can generate energy much more efficiently, they still basically use some sort of thruster to use it.
So for balancing big ships.. do they land on a scorched wasteland, or do they need to be fitted with some other type of landing equipment that is less damaging than their main thrusters (probably also having less thrust and therefore making the operations harder)?

 

[Tinman]

I don't think the issue with planetary landing on atmospheric planets is anything to do with flight models or aerodynamics. I think the biggest hurdles is that they would need to add loads of new content. An airless body is pretty much just terrain. If a planet has an atmosphere suddenly you need to add things like oceans, trees/plant life, possibly animal life, and it needs to vary between billions of planets.

Just the concept of oceans alone would mean adding liquids and liquid physics to the game. A game that has never had any form of liquids before at all.

The next step after season 2 will probably not be planets with life/vegetation. Rather other types of planets similar to Mars/Venus/Titan. Atmosphere, clouds, weather and different forms of liquid. Liquid as such isn't really a major issue. It's not like they are going to simulate actual flow dynamics and liquid physics. A ocean/water shader with a couple changeable parameters to "thickness" and colors will do just fine. Water shaders is pretty standard stuff in game development and other games they've made already has them. Making somewhat believable river networks is however a bigger challenge.

Most of the work here will probably go into procedural weather and cloud systems. Something they have already been working on to some extent. This will also give us access to gas giants by simply adding clouds/atmosphere to airless worlds...and then remove the ground part.

This what I hope for too. A little bit more variation in ship roles rather than having them all being capable of doing the same tasks.

On a semi-related note, do we know if our ships will need any additional mod or equipment fitted before we're able to land... I assume that if we want to explore a surface we'll have to buy a buggy or all terrain vehicle from the shipyard for example?

According to the devs you will need buy both an internal module that will hold/deploy the SRV and of course the SRV itself. There was also some mention of having to be equipped correctly to be able to land, but this was rather vague...

 

[askavir]

The point in the quote was cooling the engine, not fuel? I've edited the quote to avoid confusion.

However, I was just pointing out that the Harrier is a very bad example for sustained "brute force" flight.

Thats because the Harrier, like most jet airplanes and even sport motorcycles (including liquid cooled ones) rely on the flow of air while in motion to help cool the internal components. And i'm not getting to the part where the harrier is a 70's airplane, not a 30th century ship.

Elite ships surely don't rely on air for cooling the engines, as there is no air in space. It sure is not fuel efficient, as they will need the upwards thrusters firing at all time, but it is absolutely possible in a realistic, physics respectable manner.

 

[Captain Torus]

anti-gravity system.
None of the ships in the game would actually work in space either, they are just 3d models and are only viable o a screen, not in actual space, I think a lot of people forget this. It's pixels on a screen, it will work if the coding says it will work.

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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.

The cruise liner could not carry enough fuel for this to work, and adding more fuel adds more weight and the need for more thrust and that burns more fuel.