Ship Scale Problem

[Turd Ferguson]

Your post about realism has nothing to do with VR. I quoted you, however I am replying in general.

I agree the ships don't behave like our primitive tech in 2019, not sure anyone disagrees with that.

right, and what I'm getting at is that our brains learn to respond to things in a certain way because of how we perceive the world every day. When things don't behave the way our brains think they should, it looks "fake". What we perceive as "realistic" will probably change over the next 1000 years, but because we're here today and not 1000 years from now, our brains " detector" can only tell us what looks "real" based on it's experiences today...and on some level a giant hulking ship flipping a 180 in in a matter of seconds and zooming off at full speed in another direction doesn't look right.

we can grasp "What if" at an intellectual level, but on some level we know it's not real.

Even in VR, which helps, things still don't behave quite right especially on bigger ships.

Yes people complain that T9's "handle like bricks" and as realistic as it would be for them to handle that way, it's not fun. Dogfighting in an Anaconda IS fun, but the amount of energy wasted slinging that much bulk around....well gameplay over realism.

 

[Decksmeck]

Correct, it is a discussion, I am wondering why realism comes into it.

As was said above, future tech can explain everything, cause, well, who knows. Right?

In the future large ships fly like fighters if you want. I just wanted to point out that humans in the ED future appear to be able to withstand more g-force than we can so it doesn't seem natural to us 21st century humans. That is just perception though. I didn't do any math.

 

[CoyoteXStarrk]

Stop trying to inject reality into my video game. Just let me flip my Corvette around like it weighs nothing at all in peace.

 

[777Driver]

right, and what I'm getting at is that our brains learn to respond to things in a certain way because of how we perceive the world every day. When things don't behave the way our brains think they should, it looks "fake". What we perceive as "realistic" will probably change over the next 1000 years, but because we're here today and not 1000 years from now, our brains " detector" can only tell us what looks "real" based on it's experiences today...and on some level a giant hulking ship flipping a 180 in in a matter of seconds and zooming off at full speed in another direction doesn't look right.

Completely agree, as a fellow VR user you understand that it comes down to two simple things. Scale is absolutely correct, the devs exaggerated manoeuvrability for gameplay reasons. Take yaw for example, a huge amount of cmrds say yaw is too limited, current boost yaw on most ships would do serious damage to humans.

Will someday get around to reading MB's books, he mentions something about gel being pumped into cmdrs bodies via the seats. Whatever it is, we all know the roll/pitch yaw rates are exaggerated for gameplay purposes. I personally don't like it from a VR perspective (Anaconda is far too manoeuvrable for me) but I understand why the devs made the ships that way.

Way back I calculated the g's experienced by the crew at the pointy end of a stock Clipper during a boost turn, it was insane. Yet it feels sluggish to some unless the ships is G5 DDT.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

I think a major problem with why scale seems off in non-VR is the default point of view.

Try a simple experiment. Sit in a chair, and look straight ahead. Unless you have some vision issues, you should be able see your knees and, depending on how you are sitting, your arms and feet.

In Elite, you can only see these appendages in hard turns, accelerations, or decelerations. Essentially, the default point of view in Elite is our pilot looking slightly up, neck bent back. Not forward.

I often play with mouselook on, and the mouse moved to have my view down just a bit, so I can see the tips of my character's hands and feet (I also have a much wider FoV set). It's a small change, but it makes a big difference in actually feeling "there".

One other issue is the chunkiness of the in-game HUD. All lines in the HUD are extremely thick (especially considering how far from the HUD the pilot sits) and this contributes to the "toy" feel of our ships.

 

[Stealthie]

It's pretty obvious that the cockpits of the ships in ED are way too big.

I wouldn't mind betting, however, that it was a deliberate design choice to make them this way.
Depending on what sort of sci-fi you prefer, ships like, say, the Nostromo or the Enterprise are pretty cool but they don't create much of an impression that there are actual human beings somewhere inside.
In fact, directors can rely on shots that start off with a close-up of a person looking out of a window and then pull back to show the whole ship specifically to show how massive the ship is and how insignificant an individual person is, aboard it.

That isn't what ED is all about.

The whole point of ED is that we're all lone "space truckers" out in the void, doing our thing in our trusty ship. Alone.
It'd kind of undermine that idea if, for example, a Cutter was exactly the same shape as it is but the cockpit/bridge was a tiny little blister somewhere on the top which, if you looked really carefully, had a speck of light showing from it.

Complaining about the size of cockpits in a game like ED is kind of like complaining about exposition in movies.
Yes, we should all understand that it's unrealistic but we should also be capable of applying a bit of suspension-of-disbelief and understanding the reasons for it.

 

[Sysmon]

I guess concessions have to be made in the interests of balance of entertainment vs reality. Personally, I would love a more "simmy" Elite, but I appreciate that the developers needed to balance some things in the interests of entertaining gameplay. Anyway, isn't it all achieved via "inertial dampers" ?? ;-) (and shouldn't there therefore be a module for that...?)

Do we really need modules for everything now? Waste disposal modules? Energy distribution modules? Air circulation modules? Pressure modules for hydraulics/pneumatics?

S

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

The only thing that makes scale problems rough in elite is.. because you're stuck in your cockpit, your imagination is all you have for a huge part of the perception. You try to fill the gaps when you're short on detail, and when you go find the detail and its is not believable its really apparent and doesn't look good.

Also, i've never every got elite players insistence in trying to force a round peg into a square hole.. if the game looks wrong, it is wrong. You can't see differently. In the real world, the same situation would immediately call the data wrong, not your eyes. Ie, a cutter is about 120 meters long at most, not 200. Hilarious and odd to see people trying to believe their brains, or what another brain said on the internet, vs their eyes.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

The whole point of ED is that we're all lone "space truckers" out in the void, doing our thing in our trusty ship. Alone.
It'd kind of undermine that idea if, for example, a Cutter was exactly the same shape as it is but the cockpit/bridge was a tiny little blister somewhere on the top which, if you looked really carefully, had a speck of light showing from it.

Flying a Cutter already undermines the "lone space trucker" far more than having a proper sense of scale could possibly do.

Elite long stopped being "about" being a lone space trucker. That's just a possible career choice now. Lone space truckers don't have fleets of ships in storage. They don't join squadrons. They aren't looking forward to building their own bases.

I think having a correct scale for things would actually enhance the "lone space trucker" feel, for those who choose to go that route. It would make most everything else look so much more formidable when starting in your Sidewinder, for example.

What it wouldn't do is let people in Cutters and Corvettes pretend that they're still a "lone space trucker". And honestly? That's a good thing.

Having said that though, if we had correctly-sized cockpits (which would be fantastic, but isn't likely at all), we would almost NEED visible npc crews to fill up the bigger vessels.

 

[Ser Xav]

Do we really need modules for everything now? Waste disposal modules? Energy distribution modules? Air circulation modules? Pressure modules for hydraulics/pneumatics?

S

I meant it (mostly) tongue in cheek!

 

[Juanxlink]

In the future large ships fly like fighters if you want. I just wanted to point out that humans in the ED future appear to be able to withstand more g-force than we can so it doesn't seem natural to us 21st century humans. That is just perception though. I didn't do any math.

Dont we have gravity disruptors? G forces begone. There are also ways to design ships to reduce or minimize G stresses on crew, but it would not be putting them 10 feet in front of the ships hull on a catwalk.

 

[metatheurgist]

You can't use the Anaconda as an example for anything though because its magic hull is made from special fairy dust that is stronger than a Corvette but weighs less than a Gunship.

 

[Guest193293]

First there is nothing wrong with the scale and second:

"The suit also provides performance enhancers and protection against stresses and strains caused by high-G maneuvers"

Flight Suit

Remlok's iconic flight suit has become the staple uniform for countless pilots of all professions. Such is its success that even the Pilots' Federation supply new Commanders with the suit as standard. — In-Game Description The Flight Suit, also known as the Remlok Suit, is a suit manufactured by...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

 

[Captain Willard]

Watching youtube causes brain death.

 

[Morbad]

I think you can help convey scale to the pilot by modeling and portraying the g - force effect on the pilot.

We already have blackout and redout, though our CMDRs can handle nearly an order of magnitude greater sustained more force than real-world humans.

Without that, you can have a million ton ship turning so fast it feels like a fighter but the pilot should have passed out.

Doesn't matter how massive the ship is for this purpose (and none of ours are anywhere near a million tons), it matters how fast the pilot is accelerated, and yes, the forces on the cockpits of many of our ships are extreme.

Agree that heavy ships (in fact all ships) are far too manoeuvrable for us fragile humans, but for a reason, it is a game.

Our CMDRs are not anatomically modern humans, they are heavily augmented transumans from 1200 years[/QUOTE]

because we're here today and not 1000 years from now, our brains " detector" can only tell us what looks "real" based on it's experiences today

The physical laws of nature are unlikely to change in the next 1000 years, even if our understanding of them grows.

I agree that there could be better depictions of the forces involved, but that doesn't necessarily imply more limitations.

Dont we have gravity disruptors?

No.

First there is nothing wrong with the scale and second:

Flight Suit

Remlok's iconic flight suit has become the staple uniform for countless pilots of all professions. Such is its success that even the Pilots' Federation supply new Commanders with the suit as standard. — In-Game Description The Flight Suit, also known as the Remlok Suit, is a suit manufactured by...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

Takes more than a fancy g-suit to keep a person conscious beyond +40g, but I'm sure the suit helps.

 

[TomcatMF]

I've seen a B-52 pull a manuever that should only be possible in a small fighter plane ( or so I thought). Don't think that the size of a vehicle solely determines how well it can manuever.

 

[Bloodsign]

Stop trying to inject reality into my video game. Just let me flip my Corvette around like it weighs nothing at all in peace.

It does weigh nothing in space. Carry on!

 

[DNA-Decay]

I like the way the T9 handles.

But I’ve also watched actual spaceships dock in real time.

A Soyuz in final approach is just crawling in. R e a l l y S. L. O. W.

 

[Morbad]

I've seen a B-52 pull a manuever that should only be possible in a small fighter plane ( or so I thought). Don't think that the size of a vehicle solely determines how well it can manuever.

As Sister Bertrille would remind us, "when lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly."

 

[CoyoteXStarrk]

It does weigh nothing in space. Carry on!

I......but......you can't just........I hate you