I have a 980 (not even a TI) and play in VR. If you have a 1080, you should be fine.
Sense Of Scale
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
That line is very relevant, I cant remember who it was but someone did the calculation for an anaconda of size and mass.
Because of its size the anaconda must be made out of a material that is lighter than air. Or something along those lines.
Anyway when I sit in an Anaconda I do not feel like im sitting in the Control room of a modern day aircraft carrier sized ship nor do I feel like it handles correctly for its size.
These things distort my sense of scale in Elite.
VR has little or nothing to do with it. A 3D display (be it VR Headset or facilitated on a monitor with nVidia 3D or generic anaglyph type rendering) does not make that much difference either. Sure these things do help a bit in some areas but the available cues are not dependent on such technologies to get the end effect.
Whether VR will work for you is primarily about the numbers and the connectors regardless of what the manufacturers of the cards say. A friend of mine is running a VIVE on a card older than the 9/10 series nVidias.
The basic technical requirements are:-
- Enough rendering bandwidth to support at least 2160 x 1200 at 90Hz (VIVE/Rift display specs)
- Required available connectors are solution dependent
- HTC VIVE
- 1 x HDMI 1.4 or 1 x DP 1.2
- 1 x USB 3.0
- Occulus Rift
- 1 x HDMI 1.2
- 1 x USB 3.0
- 1 x USB 2.0
- HTC VIVE
Last edited:
The general impression I get is that a lot of people think you need the best, top-o-the-line graphics card (or at worst the previous generation) in order to play Elite in VR.
I'm just pointing out that I'm one of many players who get by with graphics cards that are about four or five generations older. It's the difference between buying a $300 graphics card (which you might already have), and buying a $1200 graphics card.
Pretty sure he is talking about his display with a 1080p resolution...
The details are there to see regardless of VR/3D display use - it is however unrealistic to expect the same sense of depth perception in 2D that is achievable with 3D and VR.
If you have an nVidia card though you can get a cheap'o set of anaglyph 3D glasses (think Jaws 3D type cardboard glasses) and set the card to render in anaglyph 3D mode.
I agree.
Last edited:
Ah... that makes more sense. In my defense, usually when I see 1080 and VR mentioned together, they're talking about the nvidia graphics card, not a monitor resolution.
I honestly can say I disagree with the "feels like we're sitting at a desk" perception, it is quite clear that we are sitting quite a way back from the readout panel in front of us. The precise distance will vary at least a little from ship to ship but we are talking about the length of the Avatar's legs - plus or minus a bit.
It's easier to get the sense of scale if you are using VR or some form of head/eye tracking. When your view is static it really does kind of feel like you are sitting at a table top (especially in something small like the Sidewinder). You don't grasp the size of the cockpit unless you look down and realize just how far away from the dashboard you really are.
You do know there are head/mouse look controls in ED?
As for grasping the size of the cockpit, I have never felt like my avatar was sitting at a desk in ED - even before I started using VR (which was for quite a while).
Last edited:
You can also do things like flying up to the windows in stations or ground bases in VR, and then use the external camera to position yourself genuinely close to them, as opposed to what you think is close. Or placing your self on balconies or stairs in the hangers, in the "control tower" by your docking pad, or beside small surface buildings.
My favorite thing to do of all is to park my SRV beside objects, reset my head position while standing in one corner of my VR space, and walk to the opposite corner in order to do a "proper" EVA. Doing that allowed me realize that escape pods are the size and shape of coffins. *shudder*
I swear that when FDEV designed all the ships. Someone in a senior marketing position said, “NOT BIG ENOUGH! NEED MOAR BIGLY SHIPPAGE!”
And the devs just applies a random factor of between 2 and 5.
Some of the ships are horrendously oversized and handle like something far, far smaller.
As an American, my sense of speed is intrinsically tied to MPH. With Alexa's help, I ran some conversions, and it really kinda shocked me. For example, 100 m/s is over 200 MPH. Back when I was a young lad who was into sports cars, I experienced some pretty serious acceleration. Going 0-60 in around 5 seconds will push you back in your seat - you really feel it. With the boost on some of these ships, my eyes should be bloodshot. I get that we might experience this in an SLF or Eagle, since I'm sure pilots catapulted off of an aircraft carrier experience some intense acceleration. In Elite Dangerous, it's the aircraft carrier itself that's being catapulted as if it were an F-18, and that just doesn't "scale".
At least I can control this somewhat. See #3 from my post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/429422-Sense-Of-Scale?p=6787400&viewfull=1#post6787400
Last edited:
If you think the acceleration of pilots off a catapult launch system is bad then you should also consider the relative acceleration of vertical launch space launch vehicles and such vehicles can be far heavier than a fighter jet and possibly heavier than a carrier.
According to one source on the internet the catapult launch system has an aggregate acceleration of 2.5Gs but according to another the instantaneous force could be as high as 4Gs. During a space launch apparently the sustained force on a Shuttle before separation of the SRBs is around 3Gs (according to at least one source).
If you look at the manoeuvrability factors of the different craft in ED they all seem to be in balance wrt their relative size and declared masses as does the integrity loss from manoeuvres. If the acceleration seems off at the higher mass end of the spectrum then it is most likely to be off across the board. It is worth keeping in mind that during super cruise the rate of acceleration can be even higher than what is notionally achieved during normal flight.
1m/s is ~2.24mph or ~3.6kph. The speed of light (c) is ~300 Mm/s or ~671 Mmph or ~1.08 Tmph. In super-cruise we can accelerate by >0.1c/s, or >approx. 3 million Gs which by rights we should be unable to withstand if Earth based frames of reference and current technologies are used as a basis. Mass of a ship only plays a part in so much as to what force a given ship's engines are expected to provide and how much force a ship is subjected to during manoeuvres not how many Gs the pilot is expected to be able to survive.
It does not matter to the pilot what the size of the ship we are in is as to whether they can withstand the G forces involved in acceleration and/or manoeuvres. If we accept that technology has advanced enough for the human race to be able to survive high-G manoeuvres in smaller craft then it is not unreasonable to either allow for such technologies to be able to scale (or for alternative technologies to exist) to protect the vessel we are in to at least some degree.
No, that's 1080P. I have a GTX 960 M on my laptop.
Yep, you got it.
Which doesn't excuse the fact that there are games that convey scale much better than ED. If it really was impossible then I wouldn't mind but that's not the case.