It's actually a question of scale OP. Some time ago I made a little graphics demo that rendered large terrain, and I came across a similar issue. It turns out that it's remarkably difficult to produce a believable sense of scale, especially if you are rendering something other worldly without an obvious frame of reference (e.g. Landmarks like trees, houses, animals and so forth). This is further compounded when you are limited with the amount of detail you can render, as you tend to be with any real time graphics application, and even more so when you are in motion. When I upgraded from my gtx 950 to a 1060, the sense of scale in Elite's terrain improved greatly. I chalk this up to the graphics engine being able to render small details like rocks, and higher resolution textures at a greater distance from the player's viewpoint.
Visible ground speed seems way too slow
- Thread starter nsharpley
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I enjoyed these answers immensely. [yesnod]
Maybe it's the red wine, but I laughed a lot for at least a minute.
At least! [yesnod]
Hold on to that for the beta
Without VR, the sense of dimensions and distances is highly diminished. The only way to grasp speed / size is by visual comparison between objects of difference size, and our perception of the size of such objects.
The "problem" when playing on a monitor, is that everything in the game is huge. Mountains are huge, plains are huge, rocks are huge, hills are huge, craters are huge, starports, stations, settlements, everything is gigantic. And because of everything being huge, then (on a 2D perspective) nothing seems huge. For instance when we approach one of those larger planetary ports, even at full speed things seem "slow" because the tower is 2 km high, and the starport is g enormous.
The sense of speed (without VR) is directly related to how we see things on the ground (or in space) moving (well it us that are moving but you get the point). But as nearly all the things in the game are enormous, they "move" very slowly, even when the palyer is flying at full speed. And so speed seems to be much slower than it really is.
If there were smaller objects on the ground, the sense of speed would be much higher, and we could see those smaller objects "moving" much faster.
If we get space legs one day, it will help tremendously with grasping the actual sizes of things, beginning with our own ships that appear (in 2D) to be far, far smaller than they actually are.
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Its the lack of objects to compare with: you are flying way higher than you think. Find a flat piece of land, go to 10m high and boost. Or do a lowpass over a base.
I have a vid at <100m somewhere, will post later if you want.
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It is all about perspective. The higher you are, the slower you seem to be moving. The truck and sports car example above is spot on.
Another thing to think about, is how long you have been travelling at high and higher speeds. If you travel for a couple of hours along the motorway at 70mph and then you turn off at the exit ramp and slow down to between 20 and 30mph; it feels so slow, that you could be tempted to get out of the car and walk faster, because everything has slowed down so much. Yet if you did try and get out, you would be splattered all over the tarmac.
Another thing to think about, is how long you have been travelling at high and higher speeds. If you travel for a couple of hours along the motorway at 70mph and then you turn off at the exit ramp and slow down to between 20 and 30mph; it feels so slow, that you could be tempted to get out of the car and walk faster, because everything has slowed down so much. Yet if you did try and get out, you would be splattered all over the tarmac.
Why? Ships and planets are deceptively big!
It's the ships that are slow, not the ground..
FWIW ED fans like being stuck at a crawl. It's safer (they're scared they'll crash). And easier (remembering to slow down is difficult!).
I expect they all mod their rFactor, Assetto Corsa and GTA installs to limits all the cars to 5 mph too, and for all the same reasons.
FWIW ED fans like being stuck at a crawl. It's safer (they're scared they'll crash). And easier (remembering to slow down is difficult!).
I expect they all mod their rFactor, Assetto Corsa and GTA installs to limits all the cars to 5 mph too, and for all the same reasons.
That does look great but you're doing over 500m/s ... but still, thats well over Mach 1.
Heres a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT7qrYi8R_M
At around the 4:30 mark he's doing 450knts (810kph or at about 220m/s) at 250ft ... The ground speed looks way faster than the equivalent speed in ED.
Heres a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT7qrYi8R_M
At around the 4:30 mark he's doing 450knts (810kph or at about 220m/s) at 250ft ... The ground speed looks way faster than the equivalent speed in ED.
Yeah, doing that ... if you look at any vid of a jet flying low on Earth the ground speed looks way faster than the equivalent in ED.
That does look great but you're doing over 500m/s ... but still, thats well over Mach 1.
Heres a good example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT7qrYi8R_M
At around the 4:30 mark he's doing 450knts (810kph or at about 220m/s) at 250ft ... The ground speed looks way faster than the equivalent speed in ED.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
Again the issue really is about reference points. You know how big a tree is, how wide a road is because you see them all the time.
Featureless lumps of rock, not so much. It's one of the things the 'we didn't land on the moon' crowd get wrong too, with no atmosphere and no object to scale items it seems as if some very large objects a long way off are really smaller objects closer, so they don't follow the 'correct' parallax you'd expect.
As others have said, fly a known distance.
Featureless lumps of rock, not so much. It's one of the things the 'we didn't land on the moon' crowd get wrong too, with no atmosphere and no object to scale items it seems as if some very large objects a long way off are really smaller objects closer, so they don't follow the 'correct' parallax you'd expect.
As others have said, fly a known distance.
Field of View is a big factor here. Elite Dangerous lacks the ability to change all aspects of Field of View. Max FoV is still incredibly low compared to other PC games.
The FoV in this game feels very Console like or the default FoV slider for flight sims. I always changed my FoV to the widest on IL2, MSFS, etc. It greatly increased the sense of speed.
The low, cramped FoV is the culprit imo.
The FoV in this game feels very Console like or the default FoV slider for flight sims. I always changed my FoV to the widest on IL2, MSFS, etc. It greatly increased the sense of speed.
The low, cramped FoV is the culprit imo.
After taking photos of people in forests, I started doubting even that. Reasonably big trees are already into the realm of unfathomably tall stuff where the brain just decides that something is bigger than you and the real relations or even absolute measures become meaningless.
Oh god.
I went on a training course where I drove medium-rigid vehicles for a month. I was white-knuckling the first couple days when I got back to my little hatchback.
It's not the game, it's just sense of scale. Putting more details on the planet's surface might help somewhat, but even in real life traveling quickly over the ground can feel like you're floating at a comfortable, breezy pace.
Vast majority of the time you're really not a mere 250 feet off of the ground, either.
Vast majority of the time you're really not a mere 250 feet off of the ground, either.
When you fly really low to the ground the sense of speed picks up.
In this vid I'm pretty low throughout, my Proximity lights are almost always going off (meaning I'm within 16m in the Taipan) and the ground looks like it's going by pretty quickly.
Skip to about 3:15 if you really wanna see the ground whizz by.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vFKlFgaWINQ
In this vid I'm pretty low throughout, my Proximity lights are almost always going off (meaning I'm within 16m in the Taipan) and the ground looks like it's going by pretty quickly.
Skip to about 3:15 if you really wanna see the ground whizz by.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vFKlFgaWINQ
These are barren planets so there's not a lot on the surfaces to provide a sense of scale (and by extension, speed). Probably if you flew across one of these surfaces in real life it would still "look slow".
Still, for the best sensation of speed I find it can be quite thrilling to canyon race while set to the external camera.
Still, for the best sensation of speed I find it can be quite thrilling to canyon race while set to the external camera.