I can't help feeling that a certain famous professor, who IIRC lives in the vicinity of the FDev offices, may have paid Michael a visit and told him to tone down the effects or he'll make the whole FDev staff write lines out on the white/black board a thousand times "I must not contradict the laws of physics"
Let them give us something that makes explorers drop their coffee and grab their stick! Accretion discs (if they come) should be violent and turbulent places with a high value black hole at the center requiring dangerous scanning to tag.
I realise that IRL many objects wouldn't be so 'Hollywood' but it would be exciting.
A question for Michael if you're reading, will we be seeing accretion discs and other dynamic stellar stuff eventually?
I got to my first system with Black Holes today, a O-Class Star with 3 BH. All three had a mass of 17-19 Solar Masses. The effects are indeed minimal, I don't know how realistic it is, but what disturbed me the most was that the BH only warps the light of the BACKGROUND Stars and Nebulas. When I put the BH between me and the system main Star, there was no effect at all. So this is definitively something that is not right as it is and should be fixed.
System
BH warping Background Nebula, 2 Screens to show difference.
I can't help feeling that a certain famous professor, who IIRC lives in the vicinity of the FDev offices, may have paid Michael a visit and told him to tone down the effects or he'll make the whole FDev staff write lines out on the white/black board a thousand times "I must not contradict the laws of physics"
That would be the best solution. There is no reason to drop from SC 50.000 km away from BH when we should be able to come as close as 3x Schwarzschild radius. Maybe even less. Which is aproximately 27 km (3x 9 km) for black hole containing 3 solar masses:
But then, they should try to "upgrade" lensing effect because it falls quite far behind, say, Space Engine.
Although I've never been particularly bowled over by the graphics in Space Engine, I really really like the lensing effect they have in that game. They give a real feeling of something special going on. The lensing effect in Elite has always seemed a bit meh by comparison.
Have to agree on this 90%, with the mild difference that I've found the graphics in Space Engine to be very pleasing overall as well
I was actually a tad disappointed in Elite's gravity lensing, as when you got real close you could see a very clear edged sphere forming which I found rather ugly.
Regarding my previous post: could someone (any astrophysicist around maybe? ) please explain why are we overheating ~0.15 LSs from the "sleeping" black holes? These things are colder than the space vaccum and do not emit radiation. Except the theoretical Hawking radiation which should be minuscule anyway.
I, for one, don't have a problem with realistic approach for as long as it's being applied consistently across the board. But we all know that there are so many things in ED which aren't realistic:
- rings around planets as portrayed in ED (super dense fields of mountain-size rocks) could not possibly survive more than few hundred years - in fact, they couldn't even form to begin with;
I guess rings could start with mountain-size rocks if they formed via a tidal break-up of a moon... but yeah, in that state they would not last long, and could not be dozens of thousands km wide.
- colours and lightning of gaseous nebulas are vastly exaggerated;
- there are supermassive O-type stars 200 million years old, while in reality they shouldn't live longer than few million years;
- some of the "normal" (or worse - giant) stars are making full 360° rotation in couple of minutes or less - in reality, centrifigal force would rip them apart long before they could even remotely reach such momentum;
- old, frozen binary planets are sometimes so close to each other (just few radii) that they should either collide long ago, or at best turn each other into the steaming lava hells due to the immense tidal forces involved;
If they are both tidally locked and the orbital eccentricity is zero (which probably is the case, if you look at the data), then there is no tidal deceleration or heating involved (apart from very minor tidal deceleration caused by the parent star) – the tides can be immense, but they’re static. Io, Europa and Enceladus are tidally heated only because their orbits are slightly eccentric. (The eccentricity is maintained due to gravitational interactions with other, more massive moons – if not for that, the orbits would have circularized due to tidal dissipation.)
That said, views like this do leave me scratching my head: View attachment 16417
While Roche limit derivation does not work for objects of similar mass, so I guess the planets would not tear each other apart, in reality they would be distorted – probably quite visibly – by the immense tidal effects, similar to Beta Lyrae type stars. (Oh, wait – those are not implemented either, are they?)
As for the black holes, I don't mind if you decided to make them alone more realistic. You've toned down gravitational lensing effect and range it begins to manifest... fine. But -and here I am repeating my question- why aren't we allowed to come closer then?
Maybe some of those black holes are supposed to be active, just the special effects have not been done yet… But then, there’s no reason for a BH to be active if there is no nearby source of infalling material. (For stellar-mass BHs, Hawking radiation is currently many orders of magnitude below the microwave background radiation.)
Thanks for backing (and correcting) some of my views, MartinG.
There are so many things we are regularly seeing in ED which can hardly make any sense so I tend to become a bit... itchy when someone pulls out "realism" as an argument. But I am not an astrophysicist, just someone who likes to read stuff about space, so your input was really valuable
Michael... I don't care if it wasn't technically realistic.... it didn't hurt anything and was exciting and enjoyable for players before, and now there is nothing.. literally NOTHING to see! I didn't know about this change until I discovered my first black hole tonight and couldn't believe that there was absolutely nothing to see.. no effects whatsoever. I thought it was just me.. that i was doing something wrong because surely there should be SOME kind of effect to at least acknowledge to the viewer that there is something happening there. The blackhole in Maia was completely invisible.... even at about .15 LS away when I started getting close to burning up. There is a time to be realistic, and a time to put a little fantasy in the game for the enjoyment of everybody and this is one of those times. Leaving cool effects in didn't hurt anything and you have really damaged a big part of the game by removing them, and leaving nothing for us to see when we are exploring.
According to many console gamers, it's bad to have too many features in a video game. Maybe some console gamer whined and convinced FD that black hole lensing was too much for ED.
Maybe some of those black holes are supposed to be active, just the special effects have not been done yet… But then, there’s no reason for a BH to be active if there is no nearby source of infalling material. (For stellar-mass BHs, Hawking radiation is currently many orders of magnitude below the microwave background radiation.)
My guess: unreasonable heat damage is the replacement for the lack of "oh my god it's sucking me in I'm gonna die *get's shredded to atoms by it*".
Or something along that.
Michael... I don't care if it wasn't technically realistic.... it didn't hurt anything and was exciting and enjoyable for players before, and now there is nothing.. literally NOTHING to see! I didn't know about this change until I discovered my first black hole tonight and couldn't believe that there was absolutely nothing to see.. no effects whatsoever. I thought it was just me.. that i was doing something wrong because surely there should be SOME kind of effect to at least acknowledge to the viewer that there is something happening there. The blackhole in Maia was completely invisible.... even at about .15 LS away when I started getting close to burning up. There is a time to be realistic, and a time to put a little fantasy in the game for the enjoyment of everybody and this is one of those times. Leaving cool effects in didn't hurt anything and you have really damaged a big part of the game by removing them, and leaving nothing for us to see when we are exploring.
That's FD for ya, you only get realism where you don't want it, where you'd prefer it you get "gameplay"
- anti turret mechanics, because being better at turreting than the other one at shooting a stationary target is against the rules of combat tactics, and an eagle laterally flying around you in circles keeping you in sights the whole time is clearly not turreting (yeah sure...)
- flight assist off boost speed bleeding, because you should never be able to go faster than your ship's max speed even if you turn off the flight assist, after all is even the vacuum of space full of stuff (this part is actually true) to the point where it will just keep slowing your ship down if you go past maximum speed (this part is not...)
- your ship will get rid of excess momentum for you even if you turn off the engines (try it for yourself, boost and turn off your engines, your ship will come to a standstill shortly after even with the engines module disabled)
MAYBE the lensing was too much for Sag A*, that's something totally possible, but if you make bottom end BH's literally invisible and as interesting to look at as a window (just the glass, this one has no nicely decorated frame, anymore) then you might have done it wrong.
Since I'm currently around Maia, more or less, on my way to HIP 5100 to see my first Wolf-Rayet which will surely also not be anything special like the carbon C class on the way, I'll check the BH there out and see what they look like in 1.3 now.
That's FD for ya, you only get realism where you don't want it, where you'd prefer it you get "gameplay"
- anti turret mechanics, because being better at turreting than the other one at shooting a stationary target is against the rules of combat tactics, and an eagle laterally flying around you in circles keeping you in sights the whole time is clearly not turreting (yeah sure...)
- flight assist off boost speed bleeding, because you should never be able to go faster than your ship's max speed even if you turn off the flight assist, after all is even the vacuum of space full of stuff (this part is actually true) to the point where it will just keep slowing your ship down if you go past maximum speed (this part is not...)
- your ship will get rid of excess momentum for you even if you turn off the engines (try it for yourself, boost and turn off your engines, your ship will come to a standstill shortly after even with the engines module disabled)
And turn rates that depend on your ship’s speed. Speed that is measured relative to whatever the game chooses (remember, speed in space is always relative to something; for example, Earth’s speed relative to Sun is about 30km/s). Reminds me of the obviously plot-controlled gravity in some sci-fi movies (*cough* Armageddon *cough*).
At least the speed limits, unrealistic as they are, have technical reasons to exist (unlimited speeds are really hard to do in multiplayer). Speed-dependent turn rates, on the other hand, exist solely to make space combat feel more Hollywood-like.
Make no mistake: I enjoy E:D very much, I heartily applaud the decision (and audacity) to model an entire galaxy as accurately as possible (it’s a huge improvement over FE2/FFE for sure!), and I recognize difficulties involved in balancing realism versus playability. Speed-dependent turn rates are sort of my pet peeve because, for me, this particular mechanic simply feels wrong in a space sim; and for me, it turned out to be most annoying not in combat but when mining. It’s sort of a suspension-of-disbelief breaker. Well, I perhaps know too much about space mechanics for my own good (although I probably have been spoiled, too, by FE2’s much more accurate treatment of those mechanics, its awful ship control systems notwithstanding).
Since I'm currently around Maia, more or less, on my way to HIP 5100 to see my first Wolf-Rayet which will surely also not be anything special like the carbon C class on the way, I'll check the BH there out and see what they look like in 1.3 now.
Funny thing is, FDEV managed to put a Wolf-Rayet star within 30Ly of Sol (in the LAWD 26 system). Never mind why it is not visible on Sol’s skybox, even though fictional stars like Duamta are. (In reality, a WR star that close to the Earth would be way brighter than Sirius, probably brighter than Venus at her brightest, possibly even bright enough to be visible in daylight. The white dwarf – the real LAWD 26 a.k.a. GJ 293 – would not even be visible in any telescope due to sheer contrast. My guess as to the root of this mess-up is a confusion between the obsolescent lowercase-w prefix, meaning “white dwarf”, and the uppercase-W spectral class, used for Wolf-Rayet stars.)
Well, if you want to know what to expect…
… don’t expect much; it looks like a regular star, its only distinguishing feature being its colour, deeper violet-blue than O-class stars.
As for black holes, I’ve had very little time to play since 1.3 release, but I’ve been to a BH (Mintaka B) when playing 1.2. The lensing effect became visible at a few Ls and the game let me get much closer (I hit the exclusion zone at 148km, at which point, with the Milky Way as a backdrop, the lensing effects were truly astounding) with heat levels only slightly above 50%. So, I guess it’s worth another try.
As for black holes, I’ve had very little time to play since 1.3 release, but I’ve been to a BH (Mintaka B) when playing 1.2. The lensing effect became visible at a few Ls and the game let me get much closer (I hit the exclusion zone at 148km, at which point, with the Milky Way as a backdrop, the lensing effects were truly astounding) with heat levels only slightly above 50%. So, I guess it’s worth another try.
Kilometers? I couldn't get closer than 0.15ls to a BH because my heat would already start spiking there, and these were tiny ones, with matching small lensing (which still seems the same).
Then again, my setup wasn't meant for the best heat radiation and I already noticed that there might be differences between the ships, I had a DBS once for a relocation run and I could sit with that and it's A3 scoop (176kg/s) at max rate at a star and the heat wouldn't go above 60% my Asp can't get closer than 60% scoop rate or it'll go above 65% heat which is the point where it WILL keep going up, I've never had the heat sit at a point past 65% for a while, it just kept going up, slowly but it never settled.
As for the WR, I expected too much from it I guess, though it has a distinctive more saturated blue than anything else I've seen so far.
And turn rates that depend on your ship’s speed. Speed that is measured relative to whatever the game chooses (remember, speed in space is always relative to something; for example, Earth’s speed relative to Sun is about 30km/s). Reminds me of the obviously plot-controlled gravity in some sci-fi movies (*cough* Armageddon *cough*).
I would buy turn rates that depend on acceleration -- assuming the maneuvering thrusters are being helped by thrust vectoring from the main engines -- but I agree it's not really realistic to have them based on speed. But most space combat games are about airplanes in space, really. Having flown a lot of spacecraft in Kerbal Space Program I kind of agree that the "airplanes in space" model is more fun. And I like the way the E : D model keeps the fight moving. It looks more like an aerial dogfight (because airplanes *can't* just stop and pivot) this way.
Someone mentioned planetary rings -- they might actually be one of the least exaggerated things in the game. I think the rock size is exaggerated but probably not the density; in astronomical terms planetary rings are *insanely* dense with objects. Saturn's rings are thought to have objects from a few centimeters up to 10 meters, and on average the objects are only separated by a few times their size. The rings in the game are a bit thicker than Saturn's -- Saturn's rings are only about 1 km thick -- but the general feel of being able to fly through one thickness-wise in a short period of time at sublight speeds is pretty accurate.
IMHO exaggerating the planetary rings slightly is a better approach than the usual game mechanic of making asteroid belts ridiculously dense. In E : D you often can't easily see one asteroid from another, which is accurate.
Also, we are all TREMENDOUS NERDS for caring about this this much.
Braben said in couple of his interviews that work on this front is in plans. Possibly for season 2(my own guess). He added that he really want to see accretion discs and all that good stuff. I think if they will go as far as adding this, they'll fix effects for black holes without any stars around.
