We were promised atmospheric planetary landings

[Crank Larson]

http://www.gamerevolution.com/featu...e3-2017-including-atmospheric-planet-landings

While not exactly a nail in the coffin it does rather suggest that unlike Horizons, which was sprung upon us expecpectedly because it had been developed behind the scenes in parallel with a lot of 1.x, there is no such parallel development for atmospheric worlds.

In fact, it contradicts the OP's point completely. I'll quote it for you: "Though, Sammarco did share that the team already has "neat" ideas for how to deliver on this idea, so I have every reason to believe it'll come eventually."

"Eventually" is when I expect them to appear.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

...and pressures that would crush even Chuck Norris.

Blasphemy!

 

[Aashenfox]

Blasphemy!

I hear Chuck Norris landed on a gas giant once, instead of being crushed, he death-stared the gases until they dispersed and he was just floating in space.

 

[Thatchinho]

It certainly is curious how they're going to handle gas giants, with atmospheric pressure that would crush the strongest ships and surface gravity of potentially HUNDREDS of G. It's hard enough landing on that high G world in achenar.

Dare I say, some things should remain 'impossible', landing (as opposed to splatting) on the surface of a gas giant is possibly one of them. Even star trek ships rarely attempted to enter the atmosphere of gas giants.

It all sounds very dangerous!

Not sure there technically is a surface for a gas giants so landings are out of the question there anyway. It would all be about the pressure.

It wouldn't just be an issue for gas giants either. I saw a screenshot the other day of a rocky world with a silicate vapour atmosphere where the pressure was 10 million atmospheres (IIRC).

Besides, spaceships are built to hold a pressurised atmosphere in against a lower external pressure, not to withstand a higher external pressure. None of our existing ships would be able to cope with anything much beyond 1 atmosphere. Throw in wind and turbulence and even for 1 atmosphere, planetary landings would be a very risky business for most ships. Wind shear in gas giants would be a huge problem too.

So it's either going to need specialised ships, or very very drastic modifications to existing ships (and it'd probably still be too much of a stretch for a lot of them.) I'd say the most probable scenario is going to be small ship launched atmospheric vessels and a few new specialised larger ships that aren't going to be very effective as actual spaceships. Either that or new shield tech, far beyond what we've currently got. (If only there was some ancient extinct race who had shields much better than ours whose tech we might eventually be able to access and use.. )

...snip... there's also no reason a spaceship could not fly underwater, so there's that to consider as well.

The situation's worse for underwater. The pressure's much higher compared to the relative atmosphere, plus additional propulsion mechanisms would be needed to travel through a liquid medium.

I'd love to see the Moray Starboat in game at some point though.

Anyway, personally I'd much rather FD did a good job of it all and took all this kind of stuff into account rather than rushing it. Definitely seems like it'll be a good while before this would happen though. We'll probably all need a bit of a platform upgrade to be able to run the game at the quality we want when all that comes anyway so a bit of a wait's probably a good thing.

Edit - Ninja'd by GreyArea on gas giant landings!

 

[lysan]

To me the worst thing is that we have very little information on what is already in progress and what is not...
Braben said recently that they had teams working on such advanced features : Space legs, atmospherics, new crafts/srvs, ...
A simple "Here is a list of what we are certain we can do, here is another one for the impossible tasks" would be great news for me.

On the other hand... I've seen what too much hope can do. The hype is 50/50 you know. If you do it right, your game will be surfing on the participation from the community.
But if you do it wrong... well we all know a few games that went too high with their promises (especially in the space genre).

[video=youtube;yYT67u5qUPw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYT67u5qUPw[/video]

 

[IamMe]

I like this, and indeed this is how I imagined it would be. Of course the atmosphere would get thicker and thicker until something that a human might perceive as 'solid' would be reached. But yeh, you'd be at 1000g and pressures that would crush even Chuck Norris.

Gas goes into liquid in most cases!

 

[eqinox]

I do wonder if the reason why we won't be getting atmospheric landings is due to Horizons not selling adequately; while the basegame has done well, the DLC just did not have enough units sold to warrant the investment. Maybe FDev is worried that selling another DLC with atmospheric planets will also fail to sell enough, and investing in Planet Coaster and the new upcoming franchise is a better business option.

 

[Aashenfox]

It all sounds very dangerous!

Not sure there technically is a surface for a gas giants so landings are out of the question there anyway. It would all be about the pressure.

It wouldn't just be an issue for gas giants either. I saw a screenshot the other day of a rocky world with a silicate vapour atmosphere where the pressure was 10 million atmospheres (IIRC).

Besides, spaceships are built to hold a pressurised atmosphere in against a lower external pressure, not to withstand a higher external pressure. None of our existing ships would be able to cope with anything much beyond 1 atmosphere. Throw in wind and turbulence and even for 1 atmosphere, planetary landings would be a very risky business for most ships. Wind shear in gas giants would be a huge problem too.

So it's either going to need specialised ships, or very very drastic modifications to existing ships (and it'd probably still be too much of a stretch for a lot of them.) I'd say the most probable scenario is going to be small ship launched atmospheric vessels and a few new specialised larger ships that aren't going to be very effective as actual spaceships. Either that or new shield tech, far beyond what we've currently got. (If only there was some ancient extinct race who had shields much better than ours whose tech we might eventually be able to access and use.. )



The situation's worse for underwater. The pressure's much higher compared to the relative atmosphere, plus additional propulsion mechanisms would be needed to travel through a liquid medium.

I'd love to see the Moray Starboat in game at some point though.

Anyway, personally I'd much rather FD did a good job of it all and took all this kind of stuff into account rather than rushing it. Definitely seems like it'll be a good while before this would happen though. We'll probably all need a bit of a platform upgrade to be able to run the game at the quality we want when all that comes anyway so a bit of a wait's probably a good thing.

Edit - Ninja'd by GreyArea on gas giant landings!

Gas giants have no surface...? Hm...? This is something the scientific community cannot agree on, what chance do we have!? One thing is for sure. Pressure would compress the gases more and more and the soup will get thicker and thicker until you are standing on something probably amorphous, not crystalline due to heat, but solid due to pressure.

Gas goes into liquid in most cases!

Not in most cases. In one case: when it cools sufficiently.

 

[Cupsuki]

Again they've never said that it isn't coming, they've said that it is hard so don't expect it anytime soon

 

[Schlack]

I'm willing to wait longer for atmo landings if there is something fun and different to do while there.

 

[Crank Larson]

Gas goes into liquid in most cases!

At high pressure it's not uncommon for the liquid stage to be so short as to be essentially missing.

 

[verminstar]

Atmospheric planetary landings are already in game.

No actually there isnt...planetary landings exist...atmospheric planetary landings do not.

While Id love to see them, I dont think we will anytime soon, although I very much doubt frontier will admit that. Not even remotely hopeful to see them anywhere inside the next 12 months...not really hopeful fer much, been there done that and after so many fails, my hype ability got nerfed. Really, at this point Ill be happy if they add nothing that will potentially break the game, and will take a much more relaxed position of just wait and see. Last time they changed something, it turned the forge beige.

Gas giants...that Braben interview was like 18 months ago give or take. Its old news and on the internet, anything over 6 months is past its sell by date, so not expecting anything more on gas giants. I put that down to the rambling of a dreamer, nothing more...not gonna take anything serious from that.

Im skeptical of many things...at this point, the only thing that would make me less skeptical is action because words are cheap. After years of very limited words, the action has been virtually non existent in comparison, so no more hype until theres something to be hyped about. Currently its just forum talk ^

 

[Spacemarkl]

I like this, and indeed this is how I imagined it would be. Of course the atmosphere would get thicker and thicker until something that a human might perceive as 'solid' would be reached. But yeh, you'd be at 1000g and pressures that would crush even Chuck Norris.

Chuck Norris crushes Gas Giants for breakfast.

 

[IamMe]

At high pressure it's not uncommon for the liquid stage to be so short as to be essentially missing.

And pressure is different on different altitudes so it will first be liquid than solid, however as i said depends on temperature and type of gas.

 

[RandomGun]

Enormous waves of high pressure, heavy wind, low gravity water worlds could be something to see. And then you could surf them in your Anaconda.

 

[Stealthie]

Not entirely sure why people are so hot on the idea of this.

I mean, sure, it's something new and if they can do it, do it. I'm just not sure what extra people expect it to bring to the game.

Kerbal Space Program has atmospheric landings - in one system which was hand-modeled - and the planet surfaces are still, erm, "uninspiring" and it also gave them gigantic headaches, lasting for years, with regards to building an aerodynamic system that worked reliably and consistently.

I can imagine it'd present significant challenges to build an aerodynamic model fit for use in ED, where you've got a huge variety of planets and gravitational conditions in operation.
A ship which, for example, has enough thrust to claw it's way into the air on a high-G world with thick gravity is going to travel insanely fast on a 0.1g planet with barely any atmosphere.
And then there's stuff like aerodynamic lift to consider, which presents the opposite problem and means you're often going to need landing wheels in order to move and achieve sufficient lift to get airborne - something which AFAIK, no ship in ED has.

TBH, I'm still not entirely convinced that the thrust model in ED works "properly" as it is.
Only going to make it more confusing in atmospheric flight.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

This guy promised peace on Earth too, and that was just shy of 2000 years ago. At least Frontier delivers faster.

Gas goes into liquid in most cases!

Around here, gas comes out liquid and goes into cars.

 

[Crash1099]

Don't worry you could alway go over to star citizen and wait 50 years till it gets done.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Not entirely sure why people are so hot on the idea of this.

I mean, sure, it's something new and if they can do it, do it. I'm just not sure what extra people expect it to bring to the game.

Kerbal Space Program has atmospheric landings - in one system which was hand-modeled - and the planet surfaces are still, erm, "uninspiring" and it also gave them gigantic headaches, lasting for years, with regards to building an aerodynamic system that worked reliably and consistently.

I can imagine it'd present significant challenges to build an aerodynamic model fit for use in ED, where you've got a huge variety of planets and gravitational conditions in operation.
A ship which, for example, has enough thrust to claw it's way into the air on a high-G world with thick gravity is going to travel insanely fast on a 0.1g planet with barely any atmosphere.
And then there's stuff like aerodynamic lift to consider, which presents the opposite problem and means you're often going to need landing wheels in order to move and achieve sufficient lift to get airborne - something which AFAIK, no ship in ED has.

TBH, I'm still not entirely convinced that the thrust model in ED works "properly" as it is.
Only going to make it more confusing in atmospheric flight.

We do not need aerolift with the ships in ED. They have sufficient power to have vertical take off with ease and you could just go up vertically like that until you hit space. I can image the ships computer controlling that unless you turned flight assist of, but that could be suicidal with the ship in ED as they are not aerodynamic.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Not entirely sure why people are so hot on the idea of this.

I mean, sure, it's something new and if they can do it, do it. I'm just not sure what extra people expect it to bring to the game.

Kerbal Space Program has atmospheric landings - in one system which was hand-modeled - and the planet surfaces are still, erm, "uninspiring" and it also gave them gigantic headaches, lasting for years, with regards to building an aerodynamic system that worked reliably and consistently.

I can imagine it'd present significant challenges to build an aerodynamic model fit for use in ED, where you've got a huge variety of planets and gravitational conditions in operation.
A ship which, for example, has enough thrust to claw it's way into the air on a high-G world with thick gravity is going to travel insanely fast on a 0.1g planet with barely any atmosphere.
And then there's stuff like aerodynamic lift to consider, which presents the opposite problem and means you're often going to need landing wheels in order to move and achieve sufficient lift to get airborne - something which AFAIK, no ship in ED has.

TBH, I'm still not entirely convinced that the thrust model in ED works "properly" as it is.
Only going to make it more confusing in atmospheric flight.

To be honest, they might handwave it by saying look at the Harrier - that lifts off vertically with its engines, so there's no reason why the much more powerful hydrogen fusion powered thrusters in Elite can't do the same thing in an atmosphere. Besides, I know on airless worlds you can just keep flying on the strength of your main engines in normal space until you reach orbit, but maybe they'll adjust that for atmospheric planets (which tend to have higher gravity than their airless counterparts, for the most part) so you can only go so high before needing to engage supercruise (which can ignore the messy business of escape velocity) lest you stall the ship and plummet.