What takes you out of the game?

[Legacy_LuckyLuke]

- Flying at 500 times the speed of light and not experiencing time dilation (I know this would be impossible to implement, but it still bothers me when I think about it) Edit: Totally got this wrong. Warp drives overcome the limitations of special relativity.

This one bothers me too, not just in ED, but other sci-fi shows too. Where did you read that warp drives overcome it? Is this because you are not actually "travelling" at light speed, but instead "warping" from one point to another? EDIT: I just read the rest of the thread and got some answers to the above. It is still an interesting concept though: how to travel through space and time without encountering special relativity.

 

[CMDR Ellegon]

Its just boring. I relogin 2-3 times a week in the hope to have some fun but after 15-30 minutes I quit it because its so boring - and I didnt played it much

Well, since you are the epitome of boring (repeating the same thing over and over again), a "boring" game should be your ultimate fulfillment. There, solved that for you.

 

[Commander William Diffin]

So I'd really like to hear what ruins the "reality" of the game for you when you're playing it. I like hearing about how the sim doesn't match up with the science, but it doesn't have to be about science.

I'm an amateur astronomer and lots of things break the immersion for me. But more than anything else, this:

Why Frontier can't fathom that a partially-illuminated sphere is represented in two dimensions by a semicircle bounded by a semiellipse. It's basic computer programming. This breaks the immersion for me like Christopher Reeve finding the penny in his pocket in Somewhere in Time.

(Talking of time, I don't believe in time dilation or relativity, I think it's the post-modern equivalent of Middle Ages quack alchemy and dogma. 'Thou shalt not travel faster than light'. But travelling faster-than-light you would certainly see wildly unusual vistas that aren't represented in Elite, things that are actually behind you rushing away in front of you in mirror image whilst moving backwards in time. But time isn't actually changing beyond its usual forward motion one second at a time everywhere in the universe at once, the apparent reverse motion of time is just an optical illusion caused by overtaking from behind light that left your point of origin further in the past. It is interesting to consider, that whilst it is theoretically possible to move in such a way as to be able to see backwards in time, as yet at least it is impossible to conceive of moving in such a way as to be able to see forwards in time, into the future. But I don't expect the game to emulate any of that.)

Then I can be exploring a remote unexplored star system lost among millions of unexplored star systems 60,000 light-years from the Bubble, land on a barren virgin world, drive around for about ten seconds and then start finding evidence of human visitation what seems like every five hundred yards or so. All over the globe.

Also the holographic HUD. I hate the HUD. I think someone's girlfriend designed it. Having to roll the ship to be able to read the velocity indicator because it's mashed into something on the scanner. Or dive away from a star because its reflection on the dash is obscuring the ship's compass. Why I can't just have a regular dashboard with properly organized indicators on a black background so I can actually read them. I can't even edit the colour scheme except by hacking an .ini file, and even then it's impossible to select a preferential combination of colours. For such an accomplished game the HUD is unbelievably poor, and it really bothers me all the time I'm playing the game.

The stars are all spherical. There are no grapefruit stars, or stars swapping material, or tenuous stars like bags of cats.

The planet types are all pretty much identical, with globally identical terrain.

The layout of star systems doesn't vary much, IRL there are some wildly eccentric orbits of exotic multiple systems of up to nine stars or more looping in gigantic ellipses, sometimes with immense dust discs.

The Milky Way is bigger IRL.

There are no globular clusters.

There is no evidence of alien habitation on plainly-inhabited (by definition) ELWs (night lights).

I don't expect an astronomical simulation of course, but I really think that the planetary illumination and HUD need fixing as top priorities.

 

[Warmaster Will]

The Mrs.
Each and every time

 

[SpitTheDog]

I don't believe in time dilation or relativity, I think it's the post-modern equivalent of Middle Ages quack alchemy and dogma

Didn't realise that science was a belief system. I thought if anything it was an I agree or I will provide a competing hypothesis with the evidence to prove it (or at least evidence to disprove yours).

Personally I don't believe in gravity. I used to but once I stopped believing I really felt like a weight had been lifted off me.

 

[lysan]

There are of course some issues that take me out of the game. However I like the dense asteroid fields as they give me challenge, and that Star Wars feeling.

What takes me out are stuff that just feels wrong. The keyword are FEELS! it must at least seam plausible in 1000 years time.

So with that in mind.

1. Communications (text spam, I wish I could turn it off)
2. AI issues (we know this will be fixed in 2.1)
3. Graphic poping, low resolutions, blur textures.
4. Graphic issues like square wheels, assets look like a pile of pixels etc.
5. Lack of voice communication in the game. (with the environment NPCS)
6. Empty cities, settlements, outposts and stations. (imagine Planet Coaster without people)

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm an amateur astronomer and lots of things break the immersion for me. But more than anything else, this:

http://i.imgur.com/kmud7Ca.jpg

Why Frontier can't fathom that a partially-illuminated sphere is represented in two dimensions by a semicircle bounded by a semiellipse. It's basic computer programming. This breaks the immersion for me like Christopher Reeve finding the penny in his pocket in Somewhere in Time.

http://i.imgur.com/k4hhnn9.jpg

(Talking of time, I don't believe in time dilation or relativity, I think it's the post-modern equivalent of Middle Ages quack alchemy and dogma. 'Thou shalt not travel faster than light'. But travelling faster-than-light you would certainly see wildly unusual vistas that aren't represented in Elite, things that are actually behind you rushing away in front of you in mirror image whilst moving backwards in time. But time isn't actually changing beyond its usual forward motion one second at a time everywhere in the universe at once, the apparent reverse motion of time is just an optical illusion caused by overtaking from behind light that left your point of origin further in the past. It is interesting to consider, that whilst it is theoretically possible to move in such a way as to be able to see backwards in time, as yet at least it is impossible to conceive of moving in such a way as to be able to see forwards in time, into the future. But I don't expect the game to emulate any of that.)

Then I can be exploring a remote unexplored star system lost among millions of unexplored star systems 60,000 light-years from the Bubble, land on a barren virgin world, drive around for about ten seconds and then start finding evidence of human visitation what seems like every five hundred yards or so. All over the globe.

Also the holographic HUD. I hate the HUD. I think someone's girlfriend designed it. Having to roll the ship to be able to read the velocity indicator because it's mashed into something on the scanner. Or dive away from a star because its reflection on the dash is obscuring the ship's compass. Why I can't just have a regular dashboard with properly organized indicators on a black background so I can actually read them. I can't even edit the colour scheme except by hacking an .ini file, and even then it's impossible to select a preferential combination of colours. For such an accomplished game the HUD is unbelievably poor, and it really bothers me all the time I'm playing the game.

The stars are all spherical. There are no grapefruit stars, or stars swapping material, or tenuous stars like bags of cats.

The planet types are all pretty much identical, with globally identical terrain.

The layout of star systems doesn't vary much, IRL there are some wildly eccentric orbits of exotic multiple systems of up to nine stars or more looping in gigantic ellipses, sometimes with immense dust discs.

The Milky Way is bigger IRL.

There are no globular clusters.

There is no evidence of alien habitation on plainly-inhabited (by definition) ELWs (night lights).

I don't expect an astronomical simulation of course, but I really think that the planetary illumination and HUD need fixing as top priorities.

Firstly, let me congratulate you on digging up a thread from 6 months ago.

Secondly, looking at your concerns, it might be best for you to not play this game, but Space Engine instead, which might be more to your liking in terms of realism.

However, some of your points can be addressed i believe.

Partial illumination: Actually, i never noticed that before. Bizarre. Something for FD to fix perhaps at some point.

HUD: Yeah, can be annoying. Even if you hack the ini files, the light is still going to cause you issues at times though.

Exploring remote systems and finding junk: Yeah, its been commented on many times. in 2.1 they will at least be removing the crashed nav beacons from remote systems.

Spherical stars: Initially all planets were spherical, then they made some of the gas giants ellipsoid. Its one of those things that will slowly change and improve over time. Until then, you'll have to live with spherical only stars.

Planets being identical: Well, not really and yes. Depends on what you mean. For the moment we have non-atmosphere rocky and icy worlds. They are not going to have so much variation. There is only so many variations you can have on rocks/ice. Sure, they might in the future add more terrain features, but its pretty realistic as far as we know for the moment, and there are often amazing mountain ranges and crevasses and other geographical features. Maybe you need to explore more if you haven't seen much diversity. So no, they are not identical.

Layout of star systems: Erm, strongly disagree. Within the bounds of what might exist in reality, there is a lot of variation. From systems with no planets to multiple star systems with really crazy configurations. Maybe you need to explore more.

Milky way bigger: Erm.... its modelled on what we knew when FD rolled the dice a couple of years ago for the final time. There was some news last year that scientists thing the galaxy is bigger than initially expected, but FD can't reroll the dice for the whole galaxy each time some new info is discovered.

No globular clusters: Probably never will be now, since the dice have already been rolled. You'll have to live with this one.

Alien habitation: Umm... you know those lights are from human settlements, not alien right? They only occur in inhabited systems. And so far, we cannot land on those planets. If you are seeing night lights on ELW planets outside the bubble, then you should report it to FD. I've seen plenty of ELWs outside the bubble though, and never seen this. If you mean there should be alien habitations on ELWs outside the bubble, then not necessarily, depends on whether FD add alien species besides outselves that can survive on ELWs. The Thargoids apparently can live on Ammonia Worlds.

---------------------

Anyway, you note your two main issues, the former, if really an issue, needs reporting to FD, who presumably are aware, but if you feel strongly about it, report it anyway. HUD is probably here to stay for a while, change your HUD colours if you wish.

Neither is what might be considered a high priority issue though. Things to be dealt with on an as-and-when-possible basis.

 

[Commander William Diffin]

Didn't realise that science was a belief system. I thought if anything it was an I agree or I will provide a competing hypothesis with the evidence to prove it (or at least evidence to disprove yours).

Personally I don't believe in gravity. I used to but once I stopped believing I really felt like a weight had been lifted off me.

Time dilation and relativity are not established science, they are themselves unproven hypotheses. It's not called the 'Theory' of Relativity for nothing. If you want a competing hypothesis read this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282584399/The-Universal-Observation-Hypothesis

 

[W4rSkuLL]

I just have 2 issues, but I think they are game breaking and after 2 years, you just get enough. It is the spinning ships and the god damn "cracker" missiles which is useless. They only look good and sound good. Although it doesn´t change that I am still on the hype train and I am looking forward to 2.1s updates and bug fixes where these problems should be addressed Im hoping for bigger bang for the buck on the missiles. And that missiles can be hard point restricted so we avoid missile boats. It shouldn´t take more than 1-2 missiles to destroy or cripple a ship if the right modules are hit when the shields are down. Hey its missiles. Why do railguns do so much dmg, and missiles not. Okai I will stop whining, and remain W4rSkuLL dancing tango on the hype train waiting for 2.1

 

[shadragon]

The wife.

 

[Provost Dhorkan]

So, I'm an American and had never heard about Elite until it was featured on an episode of Naked Scientists. Space science is both my hobby and my job and I was really interested after hearing about a 1:1 scale Milky Way Galaxy that you could actually travel end to end in a ship. For the most part I really like the game and have enjoyed exploring and ship combat, but there are a few things that take me out of the game and ruins the verisimilitude:

- Flying at 500 times the speed of light and not experiencing time dilation (I know this would be impossible to implement, but it still bothers me when I think about it) Edit: Totally got this wrong. Warp drives overcome the limitations of special relativity.
- Pirates repeating the same dialogue over and over again
- Pirate names that sound like forum handles
- The lack of dynamic neutron stars with circumstellar disks and polar jets (although I just found out about randomly generated planetary nebula which is cool)
- The drop off in white dwarf density outside of the "bubble". Makes no sense.
- How close together asteroids are in belts. In a belt like the one around Sol you'd be lucky to see two asteroids close enough together to see one from the other.
- I was going to say the HUD with all the different colored triangles, but my canopy partially blew out the other day and you could only see the ship targeting triangles on the parts that weren't blown out. Pretty cool.

So I'd really like to hear what ruins the "reality" of the game for you when you're playing it. I like hearing about how the sim doesn't match up with the science, but it doesn't have to be about science.

Edit: Just want to make it clear that I really like the game I'm not bashing the game or the developers. I understand that E is a game and not the matrix and that it will never be 100% realistic (whatever that actually means). I just think it's fun finding the things that remind you it's a game and not reality, like invisible barrier and doors that can't be opened in other games.

The fact that the game crashes on every other system jump and my ship explodes for no reason when entering signal source, then to top it all off I cant make a ticket as it just says captcha fails constantly.

 

[lysan]

The wife.

You hear it, you remove the VR HMD and see this.

Spoiler

TAKE THE GARBAGE OUT!

Then you know you are back IRL

 

[MottiKhan]

The wife.

^^^ This. +1
Or work or other annoying issues. If we didn't need to eat and have a roof over the computers, I might play more. Oh yeah, and electricity. We need that.

 

[deathmagnet]

Usually a gank squad is what takes me out. I can usually handle anything else.

 

[SpitTheDog]

Time dilation and relativity are not established science, they are themselves unproven hypotheses. It's not called the 'Theory' of Relativity for nothing. If you want a competing hypothesis read this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282584399/The-Universal-Observation-Hypothesis

That is the difference between science and religion. One is an unproven belief that is not meant to be disputed because the true believer needs no proof, whereas the other is a theory that stands until disproved. So many things in science are a theory even many that have been proven as that only supports the theory until conditions under which it no longer stands are found. However as far as 'established science' is concerned so far it seems to be the theory with the most acceptance at the moment (at least as far as I can see). If it is not established science can you point to the actual established science? Not just an alternate theory as that would still not be 'established science'.

Alternatively you could just agree that by established science you mean that it isn't 100% proven yet which pretty much means we shouldn't 'believe' in lots of things.

P.S. are you trying to get me to sign up? The link you gave spent as much time describing a church hall as the actual theory in question and you can't read the last 20-odd pages without signing up. Always bothers me that; when someone uses a church in which a scientist sits as part of their hypothesis. I suppose it shouldn't but it just seems an odd thing to choose.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

So, I'm an American and had never heard about Elite until it was featured on an episode of Naked Scientists. Space science is both my hobby and my job and I was really interested after hearing about a 1:1 scale Milky Way Galaxy that you could actually travel end to end in a ship. For the most part I really like the game and have enjoyed exploring and ship combat, but there are a few things that take me out of the game and ruins the verisimilitude:

- Flying at 500 times the speed of light and not experiencing time dilation (I know this would be impossible to implement, but it still bothers me when I think about it) Edit: Totally got this wrong. Warp drives overcome the limitations of special relativity.
- Pirates repeating the same dialogue over and over again
- Pirate names that sound like forum handles
- The lack of dynamic neutron stars with circumstellar disks and polar jets (although I just found out about randomly generated planetary nebula which is cool)
- The drop off in white dwarf density outside of the "bubble". Makes no sense.
- How close together asteroids are in belts. In a belt like the one around Sol you'd be lucky to see two asteroids close enough together to see one from the other.
- I was going to say the HUD with all the different colored triangles, but my canopy partially blew out the other day and you could only see the ship targeting triangles on the parts that weren't blown out. Pretty cool.

So I'd really like to hear what ruins the "reality" of the game for you when you're playing it. I like hearing about how the sim doesn't match up with the science, but it doesn't have to be about science.

Edit: Just want to make it clear that I really like the game I'm not bashing the game or the developers. I understand that E is a game and not the matrix and that it will never be 100% realistic (whatever that actually means). I just think it's fun finding the things that remind you it's a game and not reality, like invisible barrier and doors that can't be opened in other games.

She who must be obeyed get me out of the game. ;-)

 

[Weps]

SRV fuel
Materials (their current iteration)
Healing lasers

 

[SpitTheDog]

You hear it, you remove the VR HMD and see this.

Spoiler

TAKE THE GARBAGE OUT!
http://41.media.tumblr.com/aa0e7630a285d7166a237c0817cae5a7/tumblr_mxqgrca9UH1rujq2eo1_1280.jpg

Then you know you are back IRL

Thargoids!

 

[DocPossible]

Time dilation and relativity are not established science, they are themselves unproven hypotheses. It's not called the 'Theory' of Relativity for nothing. If you want a competing hypothesis read this: https://www.scribd.com/doc/282584399/The-Universal-Observation-Hypothesis

I know that the Internet is a rich source of, um, independently mind viewpoints, but to say that special relativity isn't established science and is an unproven hypothesis is giving whackjobs a bad name. You might as well say that you don't believe Australia exists because you haven't been there. The evidence is very solid indeed and if it weren't true, large chunks of modern physics just wouldn't work at all. I don't suppose they'll change your mind for one minute but there are a wealth of sites on the net that explain it. You even test it yourself :

http://futurism.com/make-a-cosmic-ray-detector-at-home-and-test-relativity-2/


If you ever use a GPS, General Relativity even rears it's magnificent head :

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1061/why-does-gps-depend-on-relativity

 

[MottiKhan]

I know that the Internet is a rich source of, um, independently mind viewpoints, but to say that special relativity isn't established science and is an unproven hypothesis is giving whackjobs a bad name. You might as well say that you don't believe Australia exists because you haven't been there. The evidence is very solid indeed and if it weren't true, large chunks of modern physics just wouldn't work at all. I don't suppose they'll change your mind for one minute but there are a wealth of sites on the net that explain it. You even test it yourself :

http://futurism.com/make-a-cosmic-ray-detector-at-home-and-test-relativity-2/


If you ever use a GPS, General Relativity even rears it's magnificent head :

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1061/why-does-gps-depend-on-relativity

+1, but arguing with someone that has strong beliefs like that will get neither of you anywhere. All I can say is that Einstein was pretty smart. Anyone saying otherwise is entitled to his/her opinion. Wrong as it might be.