I wonder if he had to relog to fix the skybox for that screenshot?
David Braben compares in-game Sagittarius A* image (modified) with today's M87 black hole image
- Thread starter StuartGT
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An entrepreneur must be flexible, for the good of the game.
Long ago, gave up believing anything FD says
I just adapt and play what is
M87 has gravity. The last two version of Elite had gravity. ED just has a very poor 'canned' effect - instead of being a uniform acceleration per Galileo's principle (as demonstrated by the Apollo 15 crew with a 'hammer vs feather' drop test), eject from your ship in an SLF whilst it's in free-fall and your ship will keep accelerating downwards away from you! To keep up with it you have to keep thrusting downwards towards it!
ED is utterly contemptuous of all basic physics - especially anything and everything to do with space and spaceflight!
It's incapable of correctly modelling all basic mechanics of motion itself, let alone cosmological effects!
Besides gravity and Galileo's principle, ED violates conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, Newton's 1st, 2nd and 3rd laws - it basically gets every possible aspect of physics wrong, from the ground up! It's an unplayable, barren joke of a game, physics-wise. What was possible 20 years ago on 16-bit machines with 512k of ram, today we can only dream (or reminisce) about.. ED has been a massive retrograde step back for the whole genre. It's lowered the bar both for the Elite marque itself, as well as all other pretenders..
Just the nerve of trying to claim it has any physics credentials whatsoever..(!?) ED couldn't replicate a convincing game of marbles!
ED is utterly contemptuous of all basic physics - especially anything and everything to do with space and spaceflight!
It's incapable of correctly modelling all basic mechanics of motion itself, let alone cosmological effects!
Besides gravity and Galileo's principle, ED violates conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, Newton's 1st, 2nd and 3rd laws - it basically gets every possible aspect of physics wrong, from the ground up! It's an unplayable, barren joke of a game, physics-wise. What was possible 20 years ago on 16-bit machines with 512k of ram, today we can only dream (or reminisce) about.. ED has been a massive retrograde step back for the whole genre. It's lowered the bar both for the Elite marque itself, as well as all other pretenders..
Just the nerve of trying to claim it has any physics credentials whatsoever..(!?) ED couldn't replicate a convincing game of marbles!
It's a game.
In your quote above try replacing "ED" with "Star Trek" or "Star Wars". They ignore the limitations of real physics in order to be enjoyable sci-fi. As does ED.
If you want to try real spaceflight physics then have a go with Orbiter Space Flight Simulator. Doing anything successfully in that is very, very difficult. That would not make for an enjoyable combat / trading / exploration game.
You missed the part where he talked about other games in the Elite series which came out 20 years ago and did it better.
And combat wasn't much fun in those games. Even then there was some velocity fudging going on in combat (try being stationary in a sufficiently tanky ship, you'll find yourself getting moved around). "Better" is subjective. More realistic but poorer gameplay.
ED does actually model gravity accurately, it just imposes its extra unrealistic limits on top of that. If you work out the orbital speed at a given altitude and it's within the capabilities of your ship you can indeed get to that speed parallel to the surface, turn FA off, and you'll orbit.
I'd love an Elite-like game that managed to be realistic as well as entertaining but no-one's managed to work one out yet. I'm all for as few breaks from reality as possible, especially ones that can't be justified with fancy future tech (like FTL travel) but unfortunately something has to give.
I like that. After initially playing elite, i used to laugh when reading astronomynow thinking 'that's not news, i went to one of those on the weekend'.
Its funny every time you see science playing catchup to elite..
Oh wait nevermind
Well... it was elite, not science, that taught me about multiple star systems being common / more common than single star systems, and the nature and frequency of planetary bodies. Mainstream astronomy is focused on our solar system being the center of the universe (because its just beginning to find the rest of it sure).
Elite also can easily demonstrate the philosophical patterns of scale if you havent seen those yet.. think atoms in a glass of water -> milky way -> universe.. and however they extend in both directions.
Some things are obviously garbage though, the treatment of gravity, colors and brightness of starlight, and planet colors.. some of the color combinations / results don't seem likely at all... there's some really wacky planet colors out there.
Its funny every time you see science playing catchup to elite..
Oh wait nevermind
Well... it was elite, not science, that taught me about multiple star systems being common / more common than single star systems, and the nature and frequency of planetary bodies. Mainstream astronomy is focused on our solar system being the center of the universe (because its just beginning to find the rest of it sure).
Elite also can easily demonstrate the philosophical patterns of scale if you havent seen those yet.. think atoms in a glass of water -> milky way -> universe.. and however they extend in both directions.
Some things are obviously garbage though, the treatment of gravity, colors and brightness of starlight, and planet colors.. some of the color combinations / results don't seem likely at all... there's some really wacky planet colors out there.
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The M87 image brought back bad memories and reminded me why I dropped out of proctology school....
Something I would note for Elite.
In-game Sagittarius A*:
M87 black hole:
In-game Sagittarius A*, with adjusted brightness, contrast and a load of Gaussian blur:
Great job Elite team! o7
Is that maybe they need to Change the Graphic from the Black Holes in Elite to contain a bit more Black in the Center and Limit the Light Bending Effect more towards the Border.
The Real Black Hole seems to have a Light Bending Effect but since the Black Hole itself is not reflecting Light. The Bigger Part of the Middle your Looking at should not produce Any Light.
Thus only the Borders being seen due to Light being Bended over it.
You can see that in the Second Comparisson as well.
The Real Black Hole Picture has a way Bigger Part which is simply Black and devoid of Light.
While the Black Hole in Elite seems much Brighter.
That wasn't the conversation but thanks for jumping in I guess. ED doesn't model anything accurately. It's not starting with a base of realism and then fudging a little bit here and there to get back to something playable and fun. That's what the older games did. Instead, Elite is starting with nothing and shoving some pseudo-physics into the mix to give the vague impression that something complex is going on. It's a bespoke collection of hand-tweaked pitch-yaw-roll-acceleration-top speed variables with no connection to gravity or physics of any kind. And even then it's only when you drop out of supercruise, which is where 90% of your spaceflight takes place and has NO physics at all. If you think that's a superior approach then yay for you.
Agreed. This is over a thousand years in the future, and the knowledge we have today of Sgr A* would be out of date by ~27,000 years in the local spacetime of the center of the galaxy! For all we know Sgr A* is active with an accretion disk from a cluster of infalling stars in that time period.
The flight model is what you describe, whether that's the fundamental of it with a hint at physics on top, or whether it's starting with a physics model but adding arbitrary speed and control limits to it I couldn't say although the latter is probably easier. It was the conversation because that's fundamental to why it's put together as it is.
Of course supercruise doesn't have any physics model, it's going to be a slow game if you're limited to the speed of light. When you've got to use some sort of FTL travel anyway then you can get away with more breaks from reality, it then becomes more a matter of being internally consistent. You could argue that was part of the mistake for including multiplayer (time acceleration works perfectly well in single player).
I normally hate "well what do you suggest?" because it's usually an excuse to try to dismiss a valid issue but this sort of game needs a flight model that produces decent gameplay and as far as I'm aware no-one has come up with one. You haven't, "yay for you" doesn't address it. The older games didn't make good gameplay from it. Yes, it's disappointing that you have completely immersion-breaking speed limits and rotation rates that vary as a function of speed, but it's not clear that the alternatives anyone's got are any better. I really hope they're working on trying to find one, if not for E: D then for some future sequel, because anyone who succeeds will have a much better game (at least in that aspect).
This is precisely how i feel, except i'm so choked up about it i can't express it in less than 10,000 words (sorry all).
'The game' is the physics engine - keeping it all together, handling the physics.. that's what i want to be occupied with in Elite. Everything else should revolve around that. It's the pretext for the trading, travelling, exploring and upgrading etc., the foundation and framework of the whole edifice. It's the core context for everything else, that gives everything else a reason to exist.
Instead, it seems like FDevs knocked up everything else as if from a checklist, and then bolted on rudimentary pseudo-physics almost as an afterthought, as if it were just another checkbox.
Most depressing is that FDevs - and DB himself - seem incapable of understanding this. Their attitude seems to be "it's got spaceships and pew-pew and trading - et voila, an Elite sequel! What more could you want? There's just no pleasing some people!" - as if they don't really understand or appreciate their own capital; their flagship IP, no less.
It'd be like the reincarnation of Beethoven producing a One Direction album - "Wassa matter? It's got rhythm and harmony, just like the 9th!? No pleasing some folks"..
How could it be that FD are incapable of grasping what they're sitting on? Just, double face-palm, all day long..
Again... It's already been done, 20 years ago!
How can you possibly claim "the older games didn't make good gameplay from it"? Why do you think some of us are still playing them instead of ED?
Surely you can appreciate that if ED really was an authentic Elite revamp, someone like me would be all over it? I'd be its #1 advocate!
Multiplayer places certain constraints (such as syncing clocks) however i don't accept that it necessitates space speed limits and fudged rotation rates etc., since uncapped velocities actually assist bandwidth and latency issues, if implemented intelligently - for example real-world inertial navigation systems can have been able to maintain accuracy down to tens of meters over many hours of supersonic flight for over 50 years (look at the SR71's inertial / stellar guidance system for example) - today we have gigahertz processors and millisecond network latencies, and obviously, the faster relative speeds get, the more certain positional accuracies get, not less... But instead of basing the physics and network code around relative velocities, they've implemented absolute velocities with respect to coordinate space, thus two client ships on parallel vectors start rubber-banding past some given speed once their absolute velocity exceeds the network latency limits, even though their relative velocity is zero (hence no data at all needs communicating)..
IOW instead of being an impediment, done properly realistic speeds would work to the advantage of network latency! It's just face-palm design-decisions from the very foundations upwards..
LOL, they say it's "non-Newtonian" but precisely the opposite is true - ED is ultra Newtonian... only, on all the things Newton got wrong (ie. that motion is absolute relative to space itself - the ultimate physics heresy today).. just.. don't get me started!!
...OK too late, i'm warming to a theme now..
ED's far too Newtonian. Like, OTT Newtonian, out of all proportion to reality..
Take gravity for instance. We've known since Galileo that it's not actually a force, but rather a uniform acceleration. It's actually an ambient, constant, time rate of change of momentum, to be somewhat more precise. So whereas Newton's 2nd law defines 'force' by 'mass times acceleration', gravity renders an effective N2 violation; the acceleration is NOT a function of the mass:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk
Yet in ED, launch an ELF whilst in 'free-fall' and you'll have to keep thrusting downwards to keep up with your heavier ship! The problem? It's TOO Newtonian, when it shouldn't be..
Or take the very nature of motion - the rock-bottom basics of "stuff wot moves"; Newton thought that motion was absolute - as if relative to Cartesian coordinate space itself. This was his attempt at an explanation for 'inertia'. Liebniz, and later, Mach, showed it was purely relative to other inertias - something we now pretty much all grasp intuitively; motion's relative, right..?
Not in ED mate. It's 'relative', alright.. to coordinate space! Hence you have 'max speeds' - higher relative velocities come up against network latency! The irony is, if momentum were conserved then positional projections get MORE accurate with velocity, not less so.. yet the net momentum of ED's galaxy is a variable average of how many ships are thrusting in various directions! Its whole universe is wobbling and WHY? Because it's too damned Newtonian, when it shouldn't be!
It's pretty much strictly Newtonian...
...on all the things Newton got wrong.
Whereas, Subnautica, say, is fully-Newtonian.. save for the occasional glitch.. yet you wouldn't think of it in such terms - it's just submarines, doing submarine stuff..
..like Elite used to be all about the spaceflight..
ED's far too Newtonian. Like, OTT Newtonian, out of all proportion to reality..
Take gravity for instance. We've known since Galileo that it's not actually a force, but rather a uniform acceleration. It's actually an ambient, constant, time rate of change of momentum, to be somewhat more precise. So whereas Newton's 2nd law defines 'force' by 'mass times acceleration', gravity renders an effective N2 violation; the acceleration is NOT a function of the mass:
Yet in ED, launch an ELF whilst in 'free-fall' and you'll have to keep thrusting downwards to keep up with your heavier ship! The problem? It's TOO Newtonian, when it shouldn't be..
Or take the very nature of motion - the rock-bottom basics of "stuff wot moves"; Newton thought that motion was absolute - as if relative to Cartesian coordinate space itself. This was his attempt at an explanation for 'inertia'. Liebniz, and later, Mach, showed it was purely relative to other inertias - something we now pretty much all grasp intuitively; motion's relative, right..?
Not in ED mate. It's 'relative', alright.. to coordinate space! Hence you have 'max speeds' - higher relative velocities come up against network latency! The irony is, if momentum were conserved then positional projections get MORE accurate with velocity, not less so.. yet the net momentum of ED's galaxy is a variable average of how many ships are thrusting in various directions! Its whole universe is wobbling and WHY? Because it's too damned Newtonian, when it shouldn't be!
It's pretty much strictly Newtonian...
...on all the things Newton got wrong.
Whereas, Subnautica, say, is fully-Newtonian.. save for the occasional glitch.. yet you wouldn't think of it in such terms - it's just submarines, doing submarine stuff..
..like Elite used to be all about the spaceflight..
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Everyone knows and remembers this. We differ on what makes a good entertaining game that's all.
I think some people missed the context that the guy was making a reply (and incredibly good at that) to a claim that ED is accurate.
And as for the post - well, that's just a straight up manipulation of facts. Shame, D, really sad. It's great that it looks the same on a FLAT IMAGE but the image is composed of entirely different elements and you know this.