Sense Of Scale

I've said it a couple of times, I'm talking about perceived scale which is the capacity to convey the real scale (hard numbers) to the mind of the player, in other words, how big would you think ED ships are purely by looking at the game itself?

So your problem is a lack of reference. I think the ships are quite big since I've driven my SRV around it.
 
Nothing new here.



Pretty much.

Well I believe you when you say that scale feels wrong to you. It's because you are lacking a point of reference. If you think that scale in Skyrim for example looks good that's because the game has trees, doors, flowers, horses, etc. If you'd remove all these assets that you know from the real world there would be no way to perceive scale correctly.
 
Well I believe you when you say that scale feels wrong to you. It's because you are lacking a point of reference. If you think that scale in Skyrim for example looks good that's because the game has trees, doors, flowers, horses, etc. If you'd remove all these assets that you know from the real world there would be no way to perceive scale correctly.

Very much this. There is a famous picture of the moon when it looks like they are driving towards a small hill. It's in fact a huge mountain, it just looks like that because it's difficult to perceive it.

I have had it myself at a volcano on a Greek island. It looked like a small hole I could jump into when it was actually miles wide. And the only time my brain worked it out is when people started walking in it and they looked like ants.
 
Frontier needs to release more videos like this! Perhaps an 'advert' for each one ships we can buy. If we can't have space legs for scale, this is the next best thing.

[video=youtube;idrnfZ-q4X8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idrnfZ-q4X8[/video]
 
Old Duck, i develop VR stuff and can confirm that ED has two issues in VR:

1) Overall scale is smaller. My arms and hands are 15-20% smaller than in real life. I am tall but this also affects the diameter of my wrist.

2) The depth limit is too close. There is a point at which the Vive is unable to give you depth info, but with Elite it feels like the star backdrop is not actually focused to infinity. The result is that the world feels fake, and you feel like you can't quite put your finger on it. Note that the Vive has some limitations of its own but this is the game rendering causing the most of that effect.
 
For what's worth I also think the sense of scale is REALLY off. Not sure exactly why but my feeling is the way everything is seen is as if a MUCH bigger head with much bigger eyes sees everything and presents it on my screen. Like I'm putting my head in a miniature model of a ship and looking around.

Also - a lot of the models of the surrounding structures are not scaled properly - if I land my Anaconda in a large-size hanger looking around it doesn't look like a 100+ metre hangar hosting a huge ship - it looks more like a garage I parked a car-sized ship into. The size and detail of the things you see are basically scaled as if they are human-height size. You can't tell that they are supposed to be as tall as buildings, etc. Other games I play portray such a sense of scale MUCH better, even on a 2D screen. You can simply tell that what you are looking at is huge, takes a lot of space, a lot of area and that you are insignificant and small. Never get that feeling in Elite.
 
2) The depth limit is too close. There is a point at which the Vive is unable to give you depth info, but with Elite it feels like the star backdrop is not actually focused to infinity. The result is that the world feels fake, and you feel like you can't quite put your finger on it.

TIL, thx for that info, was enlightening (not being sarcastic here). Although I never felt the "akwardness" in E: D VR with the star backdrop, I did however had one issue with the size of human hangar exits on the landing pads (external cam view). They felt a bit too small for me in VR, like they were made for children.
 
Well I believe you when you say that scale feels wrong to you. It's because you are lacking a point of reference. If you think that scale in Skyrim for example looks good that's because the game has trees, doors, flowers, horses, etc. If you'd remove all these assets that you know from the real world there would be no way to perceive scale correctly.


Well, you could add more rutinary sized objects around. Nature isn't our only provider of rerence points, otherwise we'd be quite confused in a city or a closed hangar.
 
For what's worth I also think the sense of scale is REALLY off. Not sure exactly why but my feeling is the way everything is seen is as if a MUCH bigger head with much bigger eyes sees everything and presents it on my screen. Like I'm putting my head in a miniature model of a ship and looking around.

Also - a lot of the models of the surrounding structures are not scaled properly - if I land my Anaconda in a large-size hanger looking around it doesn't look like a 100+ metre hangar hosting a huge ship - it looks more like a garage I parked a car-sized ship into. The size and detail of the things you see are basically scaled as if they are human-height size. You can't tell that they are supposed to be as tall as buildings, etc. Other games I play portray such a sense of scale MUCH better, even on a 2D screen. You can simply tell that what you are looking at is huge, takes a lot of space, a lot of area and that you are insignificant and small. Never get that feeling in Elite.

As I explained above, scale in ED is correct but it feels like it's wrong to you because you lack a point of reference. If they would park a car next to your Anaconda in the hangar you would perceive the scale correctly.
 
As I explained above, scale in ED is correct but it feels like it's wrong to you because you lack a point of reference. If they would park a car next to your Anaconda in the hangar you would perceive the scale correctly.

You can "explain" it to me all you want - the "camera settings" are absolutely off. You can put as many points of reference as you want and it would still be off. Things don't "look" as big as they should be, or as far away as they should be. The length of the hangar area in a station is roughly 3km long (if I remember correctly) yet from my pilots seat it looks like several hundred meters. Have you ever been in a city and looked at something 3km away? That is what is missing. The sense of scale.
 
You can "explain" it to me all you want - the "camera settings" are absolutely off. You can put as many points of reference as you want and it would still be off. Things don't "look" as big as they should be, or as far away as they should be. The length of the hangar area in a station is roughly 3km long (if I remember correctly) yet from my pilots seat it looks like several hundred meters. Have you ever been in a city and looked at something 3km away? That is what is missing. The sense of scale.

I give up. Could someone please post the Father Ted gif?
 
My amateur and lacking attempt to get my point across:

According to the ingame external camera there are 800m between my ship and the slot:

Lr3BzbB.jpg


This doesn't look like 800m to me.

Now using the same external camera fully zoomed out:

nUwNczK.jpg


Better! Notice the perceived length of my Corvette. Looks MUCH longer to me too.

Same example, different perspective:

n4LvIDC.jpg


That's my Corvette on 17.

Now with correction:

f2UyiOV.jpg


Better.

Also compare the perceived length of the hangar area. To me the second image conveys a 3km long hangar MUCH better. It LOOKS a lot more believable in terms of length. Of course the images are distorted in the process and look "wrong" but in terms of perceived depth, distance and scale, at least in one dimension, much closer to what I'd consider "right".

It's the same station, same "points of reference" yet in one case it clearly looks bigger.

PS: I do hope the images work with the forum, will try something else if they don't.
 
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How can a cinematic trailer be false advertising?
Because it is very easy for the viewer to assume, that this video contains upscaled, beautified gameplay, which it doesn't. And, to tell you the truth, I feel they're taunting us a bit here. Maybe space legs are not that far off now? Whatever.
 
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