You seem very confused and angry. Scale is something you measure. I measured it. Its correct. Your may feel and believe it is wrong though. I cant measure your feelings and beliefs. They are your own and you should do with them as you please. But the scale is correct. And if you stopped pretending your feelings and beliefs determine reality you could measure it yourself.
Sense Of Scale
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
You seem very confused and angry. Scale is something you measure. I measured it. Its correct. Your may feel and believe it is wrong though. I cant measure your feelings and beliefs. They are your own and you should do with them as you please. But the scale is correct. And if you stopped pretending your feelings and beliefs determine reality you could measure it yourself.
There are a few "leftover" odd choices for scale such as the overlarge lampposts in stations which look like regular lightposts in our world's cities or parking lots, except they are several times larger and taller in ED. This was somewhat mitigated in the asteroid stations where there are arrays of lighting scaffold or such around the landing bays. So sure, there are a few things that could use a tune-up to better convey the scale in the asset details. I've yet to see ED in VR, hmm.
To be fair, FD still have done a decent job and compromise (also maintaining framerates) balance of detail to scale in the massive scope, considering the various types of ships and different views and perspectives available of the ships and the SRV view. The SRV view is rather more like the view from the top of a "Google Maps" camera truck or a guy in a big farm tractor or standing on top of his car. The overall Elite lore and media have not really suggested the cockpit bridges are always cramped where the cobra mkiii can still carry the equivalent of a medium truck. I'd think to get the "cramped cockpit" view, one could just fly an SLF around stations and structures..
As for the StarCitizen video posted, it's really nothing ED couldn't handle with finagling around in the camera view. If you've ever recalled one of the big 3 ships to land from the srv and got near enough, the scale can be more readily more observed. Whether the "big" ships truck along like a freighter or zip more like a fighter/python doesn't necessarily break sci-fi immersion. It can rather depend of the sci-fi world's lore & tech. For example, from TV, ST:TNG's Enterprise-D and "Andromeda" had more manuevability than BSG or even ED's cutter. At some point the handwavium of a sci-fi world even allows massive ships to be somewhat fighter like compared to eventually more gignormous vessels.
Someday, perhaps with spacelegs & atmospherics, the "placeholder" outlined assets will be eventually detailed more for a truly amazing 1st person view of the impressive scale of the ships and the surroundings.
To be fair, FD still have done a decent job and compromise (also maintaining framerates) balance of detail to scale in the massive scope, considering the various types of ships and different views and perspectives available of the ships and the SRV view. The SRV view is rather more like the view from the top of a "Google Maps" camera truck or a guy in a big farm tractor or standing on top of his car. The overall Elite lore and media have not really suggested the cockpit bridges are always cramped where the cobra mkiii can still carry the equivalent of a medium truck. I'd think to get the "cramped cockpit" view, one could just fly an SLF around stations and structures..
As for the StarCitizen video posted, it's really nothing ED couldn't handle with finagling around in the camera view. If you've ever recalled one of the big 3 ships to land from the srv and got near enough, the scale can be more readily more observed. Whether the "big" ships truck along like a freighter or zip more like a fighter/python doesn't necessarily break sci-fi immersion. It can rather depend of the sci-fi world's lore & tech. For example, from TV, ST:TNG's Enterprise-D and "Andromeda" had more manuevability than BSG or even ED's cutter. At some point the handwavium of a sci-fi world even allows massive ships to be somewhat fighter like compared to eventually more gignormous vessels.
Someday, perhaps with spacelegs & atmospherics, the "placeholder" outlined assets will be eventually detailed more for a truly amazing 1st person view of the impressive scale of the ships and the surroundings.
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No. Even a simple implementation would instantly clarify scale. It is about frame of reference, nothing more, and FPS is great for that. Also, space legs isn't 'too hard', thats why DB unequivocally confirmed in 2017 spacelegs is coming.
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What bugs me in VR is when you are sat in the corvette or conda the ship dose not look long enough, also sitting at the back of the station the letter box looks to close compared to 2D.
One of the more lulzworthy aspects of Star Citizen - is the scale has never been determined universe-wide.
It's why years of development vanished. It's why you have to crouch to enter some ships. It's why your head pokes into interiors when you investigate landing gear. It's why you poke into cockpits when you lean forward. It's why certain objects are 40% larger than the exact same other objects because of one model needing to be "bigger", with no regard to "size".
It's because of a weak vision, and a complete inability to deliver that vision.
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
Ah, not meant for any top end in those unless they're race vehicles.
Chenowth rails get bonus points for looking like a Python.
That's basically what I learned to drive in, without the hardpoints unfortunately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Patrol_Vehicle
First off, VR is not exactly gamey. You can to a degree get the same perception with an nVidia 3D Vision system though the head tracking of VR does help with establishing perspective.
Even without VR, scale does not change just your perception of it. With a standard single 2D monitor setup the monitor needs to be positioned appropriately in the real world to ensure that the sense of scale feels right - it is a matter of matching the FoV of the 2D rendering of the 3D world to the physical world viewing angle.
See this reddit thread wrt altering the default FoV to match your monitor and physical world setup.
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We have many frames of reference using headlook. The most telling is looking down at your body... i don't want to say anything because if you haven't seen it...
The buggy also works if you're looking for one.
Free camera in stations will do it too, but that creates more problems than it solves.
EDIT: this video of his i like better:
[video=youtube;6_kLXgo4FC8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_kLXgo4FC8[/video]
The higher fov in elite kinda does but at the same time not even close.
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+1, thats the one I was looking for actually. Post edited.
I honestly feel that designers were suddenly told to make all the ships bigger. Perhaps to match the 1984 Elite ship booklet scale or something.
The sizes are utterly ridiculous. Even the Eagle is monstrously huge.
Not really...
[video=youtube_share;-nDYYYqrhp4]https://youtu.be/-nDYYYqrhp4[/video]
The Eagles and Vipers are all about the size of the American Space Shuttle from the looks of the video.
WRT my earlier statement about the pilot height being between 165cm and 170cm... based on the Video it is more like about 182cm (or about 5' 11" in old money).
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I think the large decks are also in for futureproofing ships for the eventual - warning, dirty word ahead 
- SpaceLegs. You don't want things like SC's Avenger silly proportions where even crouched you head glitch in the ceiling... And with no artificial magic gravity, they had to design ship with zero-g movement ability and ease inside the ships.
[video=youtube_share;GDT-P4hOZsc]https://youtu.be/GDT-P4hOZsc[/video]
- SpaceLegs. You don't want things like SC's Avenger silly proportions where even crouched you head glitch in the ceiling... And with no artificial magic gravity, they had to design ship with zero-g movement ability and ease inside the ships.[video=youtube_share;GDT-P4hOZsc]https://youtu.be/GDT-P4hOZsc[/video]
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I think there are two reasons for the sense of scale issue:
1 - The ideal "viewpoint" to play the game is in the perfect "cockpit" position where you can see all your instruments. Since you spend most of your time there it's kind of like watching TV, the scale always doesn't come through.
2 - Suns are too small. Yeap, we never really get an accurate idea of how big suns are because (a) we can't get close to them, and (b) we can fly loops around them fairly fast.
To put it in perspective (pun intended) our Sun is 99.8% of the mass of our Solar System.
I agree with Graxxor though, the game does feel like everything was designed for a smaller scale, and then someone realized too late that the ships needed to be bigger to be realistic, and they just multiplied all ships' volumes by a constant. I mean, look at the size of the windows on most ships - acres and acres of glass.
I've played Star Citizen, and I can tell you why in it you don't need VR in order to get a good idea of scale while in ED you do - in SC you can see other people (players and NPCs), and the world is full of things that are human scale; starports have shops, vending machines and benches, and ships have consoles, mess halls and even bunks and toilets. In Elite there aren't any people, not even NPCs, so your sense of scale has nothing to compare against until you're in VR, and can walk up to objects and compare them against your own dimensions.
You don't need VR to have a pretty good idea of the size of this ship:
[video=youtube;Poe2UVIIa4o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poe2UVIIa4o[/video]
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Repped your other post. Although I have never personally felt they are too small, have wanted us to be able to dive much closer to stars since early Beta. I can't find the screenshot, FD released a screenshot around Beta, a sidy was incredibly close to a star, condensation dripping down the canopy. I reckon they excluded it from the game because people might of complained about being stuck deep in a gravity well.
I am just under 1 million km from the Star- That is London to Tokyo 96 times
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Mass and volume are two different things (the latter is the true indicator of size)... Most of the time, we do not get close enough to a star to fully appreciate it's relative size in a 2D sense.
The easiest way to confirm that our Sun's scale is accurate is to use the planets and moons as reference points and to replicate total/partial eclipse situations.
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Sterling MH
Banned
What ruins the sense of scale are two things
1) The graphics. The ships look like real physical actual scale model toys. High quality and really good and detailed model space ships to be true, so realistically done they look like they're filmed in a high quality soundstage at the height of the state of the art of practical effects. See the X4 ships to see colouration and style that looks less "mech eng" real but whose graphical representation LOOKS like it is a real ship of moulded alloys and ceramics.
2) No momentum. When you stunt even 60t at 200mph (100m/s) it shouldn't BOUNCE. Don't know about X4, but in X3 your ship did not bounce.
The external lack of scale is also partly due to the fact we "expect" windows to be smaller than they are on these ships but when you get close enough to see the pilot, you can see how greenhouse glass the cockpit is on even the tight cramped quarters of the small ships.
1) The graphics. The ships look like real physical actual scale model toys. High quality and really good and detailed model space ships to be true, so realistically done they look like they're filmed in a high quality soundstage at the height of the state of the art of practical effects. See the X4 ships to see colouration and style that looks less "mech eng" real but whose graphical representation LOOKS like it is a real ship of moulded alloys and ceramics.
2) No momentum. When you stunt even 60t at 200mph (100m/s) it shouldn't BOUNCE. Don't know about X4, but in X3 your ship did not bounce.
The external lack of scale is also partly due to the fact we "expect" windows to be smaller than they are on these ships but when you get close enough to see the pilot, you can see how greenhouse glass the cockpit is on even the tight cramped quarters of the small ships.
Exactly. This is why I believe that the only real fix to the perception of scale problem is going to be spacelegs. This is also why I believe spacelegs is taking a while, it's not as simple as adding a bunch of walking animations and some gameplay to go with it. You need to add a huge amount of, well basically art to be able to convey scale properly. This is another video that illustrates the sort of thing FDev needs to add to properly convey sense of scale, there are thousands of little details that convey the massive scale of the ship (it's currently the largest playable ship in SC, and it does feel enormous). It's a bit smaller than a cutter (Reclaimer is 158m long, 89m wide and 41m high, Cutter is 193m x 111m x 33m):
[video=youtube;pCB_YbkFxjQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCB_YbkFxjQ[/video]
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The iClipper seems bigger than the iCutter when driving the SRV back to the vehicle hanger.