Ship Interiors..... Physical Accuracy.... Do You Care

Mass for each module in the game is listed, from mass you can work out Voulme and Dimensions (apparently), so Nebohtes & FRj using math have worked out the dimensions of any given slot and applied it to thier modeling of ship interiors

FRj did a video of the interior of the Viper MKIII, In it a Class 2 Slot is 4x5meters, now that has to be uniform across the game, you couldn't have different dimensions even if the volume of the class 2 stayed the same. His video is great but in the MKIII he has taken those dimensions and filled the ship based on the modules of the ship, living spaces etc etc.

The first issue i see however is that the Viper MKIV is almost identical in dimensions to the MKIII yet has two class 4 slots, wheres the added space for the slots? theres other evidence of this with the type-9 just being given an extra slot 8, where was the space for that.

I personally dont believe that the ship interiors are already done which leads to the question if the guys are right in their math then the required space for the slots would have to be reduced to make everything fit in the ships as they are now. that leads to complications, if a size 2 slot is 4x5 meters and you reduced the size ignoreing the math just to fit that has a knock on effect for the SRV dimensions

Would you care if the dimensions were 'off' as long as everythig looked pretty, for me a game set in as much real world facts as possible would be a little disapointing if it was just made to fit

I am a huge fan of the idea of ship interiors and would much rather walk around the ship then outside. If the interiors arent done im not critisizing i am just curious as to what others think. if you havent seen Neb or FRjs attempts at interiors i recommend them. Obviously im basing my imagination on the fact these guys are right, cleverer people then me may tell me they are wrong

Nebohtes: Maths & Models
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTWCtbuPB60&t=2s


FRJ: Viper MKIII
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxPkrWe7Q88


By a mostly bored CMDR thinking about the future of elite (stupid lockdown

o7)

yeah sort of, the cockpits of some ships being the size of football fields irritates me, and just smells of lack of imagination from designers.

i mean all that space... and its just empty flooring with a single chair in it? really?

other than that go crazy with ship design.
 
Yeah they do. Even though most of their shapes make them look much smaller, in fact even the Viper is already the size of the space shuttle. And almost all ships are larger than the Viper.


Ship interiors would be very welcome, if done right, in the same way that high resolution textures are welcome if my computer can render and display the scene well enough. If they are just for walking around in, but other people can ride with you, then perhaps they are even more welcome than that. Many people would probably very much enjoy playing the entire game while living and socializing on the same ship.

I think it is definitely possible to do the interiors. I think the ships' interiors probably need to be designed around the socializing/living/walking space. Then the module compartments might be placed throughout the ship in the appropriate places. Think of the modules compartments being on the smaller than realistic size. I mean, make them as realistic as possible but if they are a bit smaller than expected, so be it.

You might get up from your pilot seat and leave the cockpit area and enter a corridor. There would be a food preparation area, restrooms, living quarters, perhaps even sitting rooms, or common areas. These are the things that are important for the interior. Perhaps you might see certain compartments that fit a standard size module 1 as you walk down the main corridor. If it is empty, perhaps you see standard power/data cables nicely wound-up and secured with ties to hold the cables secure during flight. If you filled that slot with a flight assist computer then you would see the front of that slot filled with a dedicated computer in the compartment.

A dedicated flight assist computer that needs a size 1 space might seem unreasonable already, but with some imagination and flexibility, some realism can be added. It would be a disaster if the computer were to fail during docking so perhaps it is a bundle of independent computers. They act as a main computer and perhaps one or two backup computers. They might even have a battery backup too. I don't know, what ever it takes to fill the slot and make it somewhat plausible.

I think all ships can carry an SRV. It would make sense then that the SRV and cargo area would be situated around the loading entrance. That is usually towards the center of the ship, I assume. So the interior in that area on some ships would be where the large module slots are. So yes, I think you should be able to walk into the area where the SRV is located and the larger cargo racks or modules are, but not because the visuals are the main gameplay. Those areas are for a couple of people, who are riding on the ship, to have a quiet conversation where other passengers cannot hear what is said, because the other passengers are too far away.

I think the interiors should definitely be designed with intention of facilitating emergent social gameplay. So the ship should not have just one big chat room. The chatting should model how sound carries and some parts of the ship might be loud and some might be quiet. So, like the schematic for that sound model would be like an electrical circuit where sometimes the sound travels normally and unlike an electrical signal, it only travels a certain distance. Louder areas would impede the sound. Closed doors would block it. Etc. Etc.

Let's face it, if we get ship interiors and now we have first person shooter combat, then people will want to be able to fight on ships too. So you should be able to shoot that flight assist computer, too, and disable it. Yeah, you probably should be able to steal or hijack a ship, if they allow combat.

Do I think we are getting interiors anytime soon? No. Space legs...Odyssey, has to happen first. Ship interiors will probably have to be an update or expansion all of its own, if it ever happens. Not only is designing the interiors a good amount of work but there are many game systems that have to be created and integrated into the rest of the game. How would stealing or hijacking work for the victim? Would they be stranded? Do they have to get to a station to claim the insurance and get a new ship? What happens if you are killed on your ship? Do you claim the insurance? Who owns the hijacked ship? Does that mean we can transfer ship ownership? So on and so on.

The more you think about ship interiors the more complicated they can become. More than just visuals, at least. So they are even more welcome because they bring more socializing and combat opportunities. Who knows what other opportunities there could be. Pets maybe? Crew members? Maybe one day, the kickstarter backers will have to explain how flying used to be a very lonely thing to do, to which some one will respond, "When I was a kid, I had to walk uphill to school, both ways. Yada Yada."
 
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I don't care. You don't care that I don't care, and I don't care whether you care or not. We all couldn't care less, except for Americans, who strangely always say they could care less, but only when they couldn't.
I say, I couldn't care less, when I care to. Usually there's not much point in saying so though, so I generally don't bother. I don't represent Americans, but unfortunately they represent me. I do find it kind of funny when they are stereotyped though, as they're probably one of the more diverse populations, and they often even stereotype each other. 🙃

Anyway... +1 for ship interiors. I can dream.
 
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I've always wondered how the optional modules were placed in the ship. Do they stick it into the cargo scoop as apart of the internal conveyer belt system, or through the rear hatch? Does this mean the modules need assembly once inside the ship or do they unpack themselves?
I've always believed that the "modules" was more of a "concept" than a physical object. Any idea how they get them in and out of the ship, swap them around, etc? Ever see those panels that open up for that? No. You sure as hell can't get them in/out of the airlock, either.
 
I mean, for me I don't care too much about the accuracy of the interior sizing, so much as how good it looks. I'll attribute any difference in weight/capacity to using different materials/configurations for different ships/companies. And then when purchasing modules, while they will always look like the same in the catalogue, that's just the show model and the small print is "actual module may vary based on ship manufaturer".

Plus, who needs all that living space etc. Depending on how the ship is outfitted it could just be that the extra space/apparent shortage is simply that the living/resting quaters aren't installed as the ship wasn't designed for that, so any sleep/food you might wanna RP yourself as receiving only comes when you stop off at a station between misisons.
 
Aside from that, we only need cockpit, some kind of living spaces, outside viewing areas (on ships that have them), the corridors / access areas, SRV/SLF access, external hatch for EVA (when available) and external door. It's enough to make the ships feel alive and a home, and make them actual part of the rest of the game world.
Agreed, mostly, but depending on the ship, do we even need living space? I mean, the Hauler, as it's name implies, is specifically designed for cargo, right? You ever see truckers with "living space"? Not really. They got a truck wide space, approximately 3ftx3ft square behind the driver seat to sleep in and that's about it. In some ships I'd settle for, and even prefer for some, just to have that kind of design in the cockpit space and leave things like living quaters and kitches etc for the bigger, fancier ships and passenger-specific cruise liners.
 
Works fine in Star citizen where all the single fighter ships are smaller than in Elite and fully physically modeled so that you can either press hot keys like in ED or “physically” touch the screens etc.

Except in SC it doesn't work fine at all, and headshots at point-blank range often don't register at all. Not that that means much either way, CIG struggles likewise with advanced gaming concepts like 'doors', 'ramps' and 'elevators'.
 
Elite was originally, loosely, based off of Traveller.

If you use the Traveller ship building foundations, namely Tons which is founded in physics to equal 1m^3, a 35 ton hull gets 35m^3. Given your statement, the size of a shuttle, the whole thing is already broken.

Hey, let's move ahead anyway. Dedicated space in the ship for Hardpoints is equal to 12T. The most Mass intensive Core I could generate came to 41.55T. Subtotal 53.55T and we haven't even gotten into OI or Util. By the logic expressed above, that occupies a box 53.55m^3. According to Wikipedia, the shuttle was only 37.237 m.

Bluntly, Frontier CAN'T do this in a believable fashion because they started with an over simplified system, and, without a total rewrite, nothing they do is going to make sense.

This has bit me a couple of times personally because my Jump range changed between session and the next.

To bring this back around to interiors, how can you design an interior when you don't have standards, don't include things like living quarters and common spaces like a mess, etc in the design. Regardless of the made up claimed size, you're flying a fighter because that is how it is designed.

that's not quite correct, a ton in Traveller was 14m3 and based on the volume taken up by 1 metric tonne of liquid hydrogen.

1 ton = 14m3
1 tonne = 1000kg

Hence 100ton = 1400m3 (plenty of room).

I wasted my youth playing Traveller...
 
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Lazy insults about lazy devs aside, it's mainly down to most of the seats being raised 3 feet higher on a pedestal, which presumably drops back down before the pilot gets off. Or in some cases the seat slides back along rails if I remember rightly.

yes, I'm sure the devs in their infinite wisdom intentionally made it that way and the fault is mine for not seeing that.
 
Not in the slightest. Only thing that matters in those terms is the cockpit or other rooms that are visible from outside. If it's not visible from the outside, FD could go full non-Euclidian to make it work and I'd be all smiles.
 
No matter how u slice the thargoid, it is all high fantasy with a splash of newtonian physics!
If the dev and resource deficient heroes of "Angels Fall First" got that far, I can give fdev nothing to lean on.

And the purported blueprint of all ships may be true but their only rudimentary for overall shape and not total layout worthy??

JUST GIVE ME SOME COMPETENT INTERIORS. Even if it is suspect as the majority of ships designed thus far.

Frontier uses realistic complications when programming is due?
 
Ship interiors could offer so much, but not necessarily in terms of actual gameplay (although there's plenty of potential hooks there for it to be added) but if/when they are done I think it would be fair to allow FD a little laxity in supposed "accuracy" - it would complicate the implementation to a degree that would make the entire project less attractive to even start implementing. Even in other games where it is done, there's a lot more emphasis on the "shape" of the layout being good enough rather than it actually fitting within the "exterior" ship model. There's always going to be a lot less volume you can actually "walk through" than is enclosed in a hull and this allows some "artistic license " over absolute scale, where departures from accurate sizing do not break the players immersion in the game, since there is always going to be some kind of interior-to-exterior transition, whether that's a boarding elevator, an airlock or simply a bulkhead door, where the appropriate "camera tricks" can mask a minor scale shift.

In my opinion, if we are to get ship interiors at all, we ought to accept that FD may consign "accuracy" to the category of "let's not and just say we did" - I'd much rather have that and be able to walk onto the observation deck of my 'conda or find myself putting on an airpack to extend my remlock's endurance in order to access a damaged modules compartment that's open to space and make repairs.... If we demand accuracy, I think it's much more likely we'll never see a ship interior DLC at all.
 
that's not quite correct, a ton in Traveller was 14m3 and based on the volume taken up by 1 metric tonne of liquid hydrogen.

1 ton = 14m3
1 tonne = 1000kg

Hence 100ton = 1400m3 (plenty of room).

I wasted my youth playing Traveller...
Took my quote out of for T:NE, using a different metric.

I am fairly certain you are referring to the older Displacement Tons, in which case, yes, although the 14m^3 is a round up of 13.5m^3.

I think that a large part of the problem is that the current design metric is a haphazard mixture of both metrics, which just emphasizes that it is hopeless. Every ship has it's own physics because of the mandated compartments.

I sum up this entire thread as it occurs in my mind...
0c83b224dac0e40911719b3b5159a2a3.jpg
 
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yes, I'm sure the devs in their infinite wisdom intentionally made it that way and the fault is mine for not seeing that.
This is a weird post. What's your complaint now? That there's something wrong with the seat heights? Or you didn't know they are mostly on pedestals? Or that they did whatever they did "intentionally"?

I don't understand.
 
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