Elite / Frontier Elite 4 - Realistic to real life physics and atmosphere?

[DrBaggy]

With you there Steve. This debate takes us back to what makes the Elite series special. Because the physics was right and space felt big the universe created felt "real" even when it was wireframe grahics, blue space or buildings floating off the ground. Other much more graphically realistic space sims just don't have that feel.
This must be something to do with the way our brains work: I don't pretend to understand it, but it's really important to the success of Elite 4 imho. So eye candy yes, as long as is consistent with our understanding of how the world acts. It's about making the universe believable (and fun to be in ), graphics are only a small part of that.

 

[Steve O B Have]

I agree - altho I personally have a huge hankoring for some lovely graphics and what will hopefully induce a new appreciation for the space sim genre - I think that getting the depth of the environment and the feeling of the player vs environment interaction is a solidly integral thing.

I would love to fly to jupiter and skim through the atmosphere and see the clouds as you get closer. It would be cool at actually have to physically skim through the cloud layers to gain fuel.

Explanation: Every day is a cloudy day on Jupiter, the Solar System's reigning gas giant. This 3-dimensional visualization presents a simplified model view from between Jovian cloud decks based on imaging and spectral data recorded by the Galileo spacecraft. The separation between the cloud layers and the height variations have been exaggerated. The upper cloud layer is haze a few tens of miles thick. Heights in the lower cloud layers have been colour coded; light bluish clouds are high and thin, reddish clouds are low, and white clouds are high and thick. Streaks in the lower layer suggestively lead to a dark blue area, a relatively clear, dry region similar to the site where Galileo's atmospheric probe made the first entry into a gas giant planet's atmosphere on December 7th, 1995.

 

[DrBaggy]

Absolutely! My ideal is a photorealistic procedurally generated universe to be explored, with outer regions more dangerous but with stuff to be discovered that isn't on the more civilised planets, a sense of excitement and uncertainty every time you take off.....so, yes, realistic in terms of physics, but also huge, pretty (in between lots of black stuff to make the pretty stuff more amazing) ....and this year please?
Not too much to ask?

ps great images again Steve. Amazing to think that's real data, not a computer simulation

 

[Sir.Tj]

Absolutely! My ideal is a photorealistic procedurally generated universe to be explored, with outer regions more dangerous but with stuff to be discovered that isn't on the more civilised planets, a sense of excitement and uncertainty every time you take off.....so, yes, realistic in terms of physics, but also huge, pretty (in between lots of black stuff to make the pretty stuff more amazing) ....and this year please?
Not too much to ask?

ps great images again Steve. Amazing to think that's real data, not a computer simulation

You've summed it up really well there. I want it to feel real without going over the top.

 

[colourless]

Absolutely! My ideal is a photorealistic procedurally generated universe to be explored, with outer regions more dangerous but with stuff to be discovered that isn't on the more civilised planets, a sense of excitement and uncertainty every time you take off.....so, yes, realistic in terms of physics, but also huge, pretty (in between lots of black stuff to make the pretty stuff more amazing) ....and this year please?
Not too much to ask?

ps great images again Steve. Amazing to think that's real data, not a computer simulation

That is exactly what I want out of Elite IV aswell as many other veteran players. I hope David B sees this and puts this into the game.

 

[Steve]

....and this year please?
Not too much to ask?

Yeah, right!