Elite and Newtonian physics - I'm confused

[Trash Gordon]

Infinite speed? *mind blown*

Only if you converted the entire mass of the universe into energy purely to drive that spaceship forward... and you still wouldn't reach infinite speed... I suspect you are extrapolating Newton's original idea beyond the gamut go his original ideas...

Damn, I think I should have had another bottle of wine...

*mind still blown*

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Yes. Absolutely yuck! probably stop spinning, too.

Theres a reason I underlined newtonian and explicitely set it in contrast to relativistic you know[noob].

Also the infinite mass stuff always is specific to the reference frame, and you could argue that we always need to consider the point of view from inside the space ship which would witness itself as resting with its normal mass[wacky].

All of this is only really usefull if implemented with time dilation and related phenomenons.

edit. (yes what I was getting at was that in the original theory by newton nothing prevents infinite speed and einsteins relativistic extension only can be realised when time dilation etc. is introduced which is impossible in mp.)

 

[GraXXoR]

One interesting point about FA-off is that one-or-some of the senior game designers were opposed to it being in the game at all.

Really? I wasn't aware of that. That might be why FA-off hasn't been shown much love. Not a single FA-Off tutorial, for example.
It would be super cool if the Flight assist "module" could get damaged in a firefight.

Then there's the whole "blue-zone" thing, which is entirely understandable from the perspective of heavier than air flight, but which makes no sense at all in space - your rotational thrusters seem to get weaker the faster your velocity. There are gameplay reasons for this, but again in FA-off, it's just weird that it happens, especially given the inexplicable differences in thruster performance between the two modes (given the existence of boost, being able to decelerate is much more important than being able to accelerate, which is precisely what has been nerfed in FA-off.

I personally would prefer the impulse from the thrusters to be the same regardless of mode. I don't mind the speed limit -- it keeps things sane and is based in RL networking -- but why gimp me for wanting to be a spaceman in a spaceship in space?

Personally, I just assumed the blue zone thing was a metaphor for a ship flying at a strategically advantageous speed.... and that faster ships are more difficult to turn, but since the top speeds are not much higher than some 20th Century jet fighters on Earth, they had to simulate the crazy momentum by nerfing turn rates.

You mentioned Boost above... I would have much preferred an afterburner button that could be triggered and released at will rather than the simulated dry rocket propellant mode that we actually got.

 

[Spacecat]

Try playing the free Kerbal Space Program demo.

 

[Kuroshio]

Personally, I just assumed the blue zone thing was a metaphor for a ship flying at a strategically advantageous speed.... and that faster ships are more difficult to turn, but since the top speeds are not much higher than some 20th Century jet fighters on Earth, they had to simulate the crazy momentum by nerfing turn rates.

There is one possible handwave regarding the blue zone in the case of at least some ships, with Cobras being the most visible case I can recall: Thrust-vectoring. Sadly, it only applies to a very limited number of cases. (If all ships were thrust-vectoring, the blue zone was thrust- instead of speed-dependent, and the rotation rates in FA-off were unaffected by the blue zone, it could almost be an explanation ... and flying would be quite different.)

 

[xondk]

I think the newtonians worrying has to do with speed deceleration when FA-off. In space there is not such thing becouse there is no frictional resistance in vacuum - or so I think. We have no way of utilitizing this physical effect. Even in FA-off we decelerate...

In short, this is exactly what is happening with the main outcry in my opinion as well, a game play choice was made, because lets face it, combat without it would be very boring, though I'd love to see examples of combat with such a factor that isn't boring.

If the game followed proper Newtownian physics you'd just be able to keep accelerating while not in supercruise, without the current artificial speed limit - there's no reason an Anaconda couldn't get to thousands of metres a second by just continuing to accelerate. Sensibly designed ships from a realism perspective would probably also be able to turn much faster than is currently possible in game, particularly when it comes to yaw.

As it stands ED is closer to WW2 dogfighting than what actual space combat might look like. Thing is, what actual space combat would look like would be super boring to play in a video game. Imagine all the thrill and excitement of launching missiles at blips on a radar representing ships that are literally tens of thousands of kilometres away and you're starting to get the idea.

Because of supercruise and interdictions you'd still have situations where ships ended up much closer to each other than that in the ED-verse of course, but... It's been discussed at great length in the past. I think it's pretty obvious why removing speed limits from ships and upping their yaw would make the game less interesting, not more.

case and point. But again, it is a game play choice.

 

[xondk]

Things which do not behave consistently with The laws of physics:
• The way your ship handles. - incorrect - it does with only one exception
• Your avatar's hair
• The way your SRV behaves in different levels of gravity. - elaborate? because it seems to handle correctly, look at moon buggy video's from apolo if anything linked below
• The way most weapons work. - technically incorrect if power production was moved from MW to GW, it would make more sense I agree though
• Cargo - how exactly?
• Telepresence multi crew. - see below

Lunar Rover, look at how it drives, seem familiar?
[video=youtube;5cKpzp358F4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cKpzp358F4[/video]

Real life military is increasingly using argumentet reality and sensor input to improve situational awareness, do a little searching and you will see this is the future of combat, telepresence is far from far fetched. Excluding naturally faster then light communication.

 

[Tenshi]

Again, it's not sound that's being transmitted it's a 10000m/s expanding cloud of gas like one that would be cause by and explosive cannon shell. Do you have any experience in what being hit by a very thin but very fast wave of gas in a vacuum is like? No? Then you can't really say if the resulting sounds (of which you admit there would be at least some that your ship could then amplify) are loud or quiet.



Re sound: I do agree that many of the sounds such as your shells hitting distant enemies are computer generated, hit confirmation is very important. I'm just pointing out that not all of the sounds necessarily are.



Again your missing the point. I am only suggesting that many things can be heard in space (via major and micro impacts of high speed particles and gases on your ship), not all things. At one point I readily admitted that much of the sound is probably generated onboard but some of it may be merely amplified. NASA (unsuprisingly) hasn't done tests on if detonating a large bomb near the ISS can be heard by the onboard astronauts so we still don't know what such an even would even sound like.


I'm just sick of people weighing in on these conversations with no more knowledge of astrophysics than "There's no sound and no friction, duh!". While both are these statements are technically true they far from tell the whole story.

No sound can be transmited through a vacuum conventionally... but a lot things would still cause sounds to be heard by nearby ship inhabitants, such as explosions.

No friction will slow down ships... but all ships will have to be able to keep their own speed constantly under control unless they wish to drastically change their orbit.

The sound is space is mentioned in the lore of the game, in that the ships computer actually generates artificial sounds for the crew because in the lore crew who spent a lot of time in space on their own went insane through sensory deprivation. So the Pilot's Federation added in a on board sound generator to make the sounds of explosions and speed for the crew.

As for the sounds in Super Cruise and Hyperspace no one knows if these exist of not so I would like to think we do have strange sounds when traveling faster than the speed of light.

There is air inside the cockpits usually so sound would travel through the hull and the air in the ship, so we would hear the roar of the engines and sound of the guns firing due to vibrations.