Is ED visual depiction of supercruise sense of speed realistic?
- Thread starter n4p0l3on
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I've never been able fly through a planet. In EVE I did but I've never managed it in ED.
not talking about crashing into a planet, but passing by, fly by over a planet in high supercruise speed... is it any realistic?
I'm convinced.
No. Supercruise involves moving (well, not actually, see Alcubierre Drive) at up to 2001 times the speed of light. Now, I do not know what actually happens when light passes through the boundary of an Alcubierre bubble, but there are (should be - I found only one which was quite old) videos and Thesis papers around which visualize the optical effects when moving at relativistic speeds (the interesting stuff starts at ~0.8 c).
If you're looking for a thesis work, visualizing the view froman Alcubierre bubble might be worth it
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First thing, let's chuck time dilation out of the window for obvious reasons.. The rate at which objects pass you in ED is correct if you ignore special relativity, in other words the rate that a star or moon passes you is correct for the actual velocity in game. In reality (again forget time dilation or the cosmic speed limit) Distance dilates, part of special relativity shows that distances shrink in the direction of motion.
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Seeing as none of us ever have traveled at or near the speed of light, let alone through an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to approximate superluminal velocity, the only possible answer is: We Don’t Know
No, travelling faster than light is not realistic. It's necessary to make a fun game though.
I know people say "Look at the amazing progress we've made, maybe FTL will be discovered in future", but I don't agree. Our understanding of space and time now would have to be really seriously wrong for FTL to be possible, and all the evidence we have says our physics is right as far as it goes.
I know people say "Look at the amazing progress we've made, maybe FTL will be discovered in future", but I don't agree. Our understanding of space and time now would have to be really seriously wrong for FTL to be possible, and all the evidence we have says our physics is right as far as it goes.
Nothing about ED's FSD behavior is realistic. I mean, if you're going above the speed of light, how are you able to observe what's going around you in real time? You're moving away from all EM radiation faster than it's approaching you.
You would probably experience extreme visual distortion, including red/green/blue shifting, and let's not forget about the doppler effect.
All in all, at speeds above 0.5/0.6c you would probably start to see things.
You would probably experience extreme visual distortion, including red/green/blue shifting, and let's not forget about the doppler effect.
All in all, at speeds above 0.5/0.6c you would probably start to see things.
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Being seriously wrong about it currently isn't a stretch of the imagination at all. Humanities capacity for being certain about silly things in the face of facts is astounding.
Well we do know. All ED does is take velocities (flying past a ship at 100m/s) then keeps increasing that velocity. We know for a fact that even if there wasn't a cosmic speed limit, distance dilation would make things seem to be moving towards us a lot faster then our actual speed.
Give me a sec, I'll link to a very good article on this..
Edit - Damn it, on my tablet, don't have the bookmark. Here's a basic example: At 90% the speed of light it would take 11 years to reach a star 10LY away, however for anyone onbaord the ship, the time taken would only be 4.8 years.
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Your HUD projects supercruise graphics onto the inside of your canopy to avoid distortion. It also projects canopy damage, which might have been overengineered to be honest.
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Brrokk covers this ambiguity in their final sentence.
In ED information travels infinitely fast, this neatly sidesteps the time dilation issues.
Not necessarily. While it is true that an object with mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light the principle behind the drive used in this game (itself based on theories by actual smart people) is that the space ahead of the ship is compressed by the drive as you travel. This means that anything not encased in the energy field keeping your ship from being atomised sees you as travelling really fast from their perspective but from your perspective you are not travelling fast, you are travelling less distance. The link above for the Alcubierre drive will explain it properly, but that's the essence of it.
As to whether this will ever prove to be practically possible is anyone's guess but the currently envisioned energy requirements are absolutely enormous.
Those damn German canopy engineers. They always over-engineer stuff.
Gonna have to stop you there.
Last time I checked, planets in ED are very solid in SC - a characteristic that can prove useful when attempting to avoid interdictions.
As for the broader topic of what stuff would look like when you're travelling faster than the speed of light, who knows!?
Personally, I tend to think that a lot of conventional science is conflating the reality of it with what our perception of it would be.
In reality (!) I suspect that FTL travel would end-up being all about calculations and planning and then executing predetermined manoeuvres rather than "flying by the seat of your pants" because you probably wouldn't be able to trust anything you could see or even what sensors could detect.