Elite is a space sim?

[steevaavoo]

I think Elite simulates space pretty well.

As Craig Charles once said "space isn't big, it's something to be big in"

In terms of the vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy - to the best of our current knowledge - and the empty, emotionless, cold expanse of space, I think Elite does a fair job of simulating this.

What we are allowed to do inside this simulation of space is another thing entirely.

In my humble opinion, AFAIK etc. etc. blah blah blah.

 

[Jukelo]

No, ED isn't a space sim, but FD have to advertise it as one to keep all the self important elitists thinking they're doing something smart when playing an arcade shooter, and then buy some more X52s because "that's more realistic".

 

[steevaavoo]

No, ED isn't a space sim, but FD have to advertise it as one to keep all the self important elitists thinking they're doing something smart when playing an arcade shooter, and then buy some more X52s because "that's more realistic".

Hi - self-important Elitist here (well, according to you)

Thought I'd lower myself to the point of interacting with you.

Mostly out of curiosity really.

Why would somebody need more X52s? I don't own a single one. But surely if I bought a second joystick it would be as useful to me as attempting to drive my very, very expensive, solid gold Elitist car with 2 steering wheels?

Not that I drive, I have a chauffeur for that of course, old bean.

<puts on hat and utterly unnecessary driving gloves>

TTFN all. To the golf course Jeeves, I'm done with this one.

As an aside, I'd just like to say: all people who make sweeping generalisations are idiots.

 

[777Driver]

Hi - self-important Elitist here (well, according to you)

Thought I'd lower myself to the point of interacting with you.

Mostly out of curiosity really.

Why would somebody need more X52s? I don't own a single one. But surely if I bought a second joystick it would be as useful to me as attempting to drive my very, very expensive, solid gold Elitist car with 2 steering wheels?

Not that I drive, I have a chauffeur for that of course, old bean.

<puts on hat and utterly unnecessary driving gloves>

TTFN all. To the golf course Jeeves, I'm done with this one.

As an aside, I'd just like to say: all people who make sweeping generalisations are idiots.

Wish I could give you more rep

 

[Mark Lock]

So, I've been hearing that basically since I joined the forums, and frankly, you could have fooled me. So let's get into this. what do expect of a space sim? Well preferably it should simulate space and space travel, but honestly? Elite, any space station that allows a captain to fire their afterburners in the vicinity of the station does not remain a station long, if you catch my meaning. For that matter if you really wanted to simulate space travel there would be a lot more time between jumping into a system and getting to a station, forgiving for now warp jump technology existing at all, fact is, we're simulating space travel, that means long periods of cryo sleep when not warp jumping from place to place. If we accept faster than light travel then how do you explain our field of view not expanding to literally behind us as we outpace the light coming off the star (I'll leave alone that the G-forces of moving that fast would just kill you). Oh, and let's not forget, glass cockpits? On a space ship? that more than likely will be engaging in combat? Sure Elite, that's not a terrible idea in any fashion, really.

My point is this, I like Elite, I enjoy the game a lot. But let's not kid ourselves, Elite is perhaps the most arcadey game. It is far more accurate to call it a massively multiplayer spaghetti western in space. And frankly, doesn't that sound way cooler than space sim? But, if you are interested in a faithful space sim... Scott Manley spotlighted what appears to be a VERY faithful space simulator not terribly long ago. I'm on a limited connection right now, but later on I'll see if I can't find the video, it actually looks really interesting, if only for it's sheer ocean like depth.

What you said is not true, ED is a space sim but instead of using nowadays technologies it uses scientifically speculated space travel technologies like the Alcubierre Drive which is being speculated on nowadays, it provides faster than light travel by contracting the space in front of the ship and expanding the space behind it, basically the ship is not moving in a conventional way but moving to another spot using this method, It is at a level of speculation for now but it's not total scifi, ED is set in the future, a future where FTL travel has been invented and has become mainstream

 

[askavir]

Its a very simplified space sim, to catch a wider audience.

I would like to have more sim-like elements, but not huge travel times or super long take-off procedures... Most days there is only so much time I have to play the game, cannot spend 5 hours on a single trip nor I want to spend hours looking at space waiting to reach a destination.

I would like although more ship systems to manage, a harder landing / takeoff, more manouvering required to enter stations and land, same for exitting, maybe simple things like actually landing and not being automagically picked up by super-magnets, essentially I would like Elite to require way more flying than it actually does, and that ship systems management were not just combat-oriented. Rare random malfunctions would be nice, things that require actually managing ship systems to compensate for failing compontents... I would like to have the cockpit seem more like a cockpit, with multiple information displays on the coickpit itself, others on a HUD display, instead of a simplified overlay which is exactly the same for every ship.

ED at the moment is way too pew-pew oriented, with very little piloting required for everything else. Although I like a some pew-pew, too much pew-pew makes pew-pew meaningless and the game feel less a sim and more an arcade shooter, especially with the addition of things like shield potions and the like.

Still I love the game, and I look forward for what the future updates bring us.

 

[Chaz]

Absolute rubbish, where did you get that idea from?

The auto pilot on a modern jet liner can take off, fly to destination and land with very little intervention. However in the vast majority of cases take off and landing will still be performed manually. Once cruising altitude is reached most flight is then performed by auto pilot. There's nothing rubbish about it. I'm not saying it's 100% safe or advisable, but it can be done.

 

[777Driver]

Random failures are supposed to be coming (we already have basic failures from module damage) Will also be nice to finally land a ship on a planet without that mag lock taking over during the last 50ft.

Am hoping the 1.5 ships update will add a bit more to the complexity of these ships.

One of the main reason I fly 90% FA-OFF is for the extra challenge, FA-ON is basically an autopilot, I find it much more rewarding flying without HAL interfering.

- - - Updated - - -

The auto pilot on a modern jet liner can take off, fly to destination and land with very little intervention. However in the vast majority of cases take off and landing will still be performed manually. Once cruising altitude is reached most flight is then performed by auto pilot. There's nothing rubbish about it. I'm not saying it's 100% safe or advisable, but it can be done.

Chaz, before you say anything else - I have worked in the Airline industry for 20 years, my current job requires me to have indepth knowledge of the A320-214 and Boeing Philosophy, I also get paid to fly LVL-D simulators at our training academy, have flown countless CAT I/II/III approaches. No offence mate, but you are talking rubbish.

I will agree with you on the cruise segment, once in LNAV/VNAV or managed mode on the Airbus, the aircraft will navigate enroute with no pilot interaction except for step climbs. Take off is 100% manual except Auto thrust, Auto land requires a huge amount of concentration and pilot interaction.

 

[PhanttoM]

The thing is that the word space sim has always been a "catch-all" word for in-cockpit space flight games.

X-Wing series was called space sims
WingCommander series was called space sims
Freespace 1 & 2 were called space sims
etc.

None of these were remotely realistic.

The same could be said about the "catch-all" word for flight sims — Very few flight sims come close to something like DCS A-10c or Falcon BMS, but there is no consensus on where the cutoff line between sim, arcade or something in between starts or ends.

 

[Mark Lock]

Its a very simplified space sim, to catch a wider audience.

I would like to have more sim-like elements, but not huge travel times or super long take-off procedures... Most days there is only so much time I have to play the game, cannot spend 5 hours on a single trip nor I want to spend hours looking at space waiting to reach a destination.

I would like although more ship systems to manage, a harder landing / takeoff, more manouvering required to enter stations and land, same for exitting, maybe simple things like actually landing and not being automagically picked up by super-magnets, essentially I would like Elite to require way more flying than it actually does, and that ship systems management were not just combat-oriented. Rare random malfunctions would be nice, things that require actually managing ship systems to compensate for failing compontents... I would like to have the cockpit seem more like a cockpit, with multiple information displays instead of a simplified overlay which is exactly the same for every ship.

ED at the moment is way too pew-pew oriented, with very little piloting required for everything else. Although I like a some pew-pew, too much pew-pew makes pew-pew meaningless and the game feel less a sim and more an arcade shooter, especially with the addition of things like shield potions and the like.

Still I love the game, and I look forward for what the future updates bring us.

Well, the game is set in 3300, why should landing a ship be complicated in 3300? As for the sim part, you can't make it more realistic according to today's standards without having to dedicated hours to space flight, take off from a planet, set your angle so 70degrees to the east, reach 150km , now orbital burn at Apoapsys, adjust AP and PE altitutes, calculate burn to leave orbit and reach destination, burn to set your trajectory to intersect new planet's orbit, once you reach planet orbit, turn retrograde and burn to lower your AP to intersect the atmosphere slightly, turn again and open wings for atmospheric flight, reach the spaceport and land, do all of this at every travel unless you want to get to a station, in this case you need to synch your orbit with the station one, dock . This is how a a sim with todays' technologies would look like LOL

 

[askavir]

Well, the game is set in 3300, why should landing a ship be complicated in 3300?

For the same reason that parking a truck today is more complicated than parking a horse in the Roman Ages Because a spaceship in 3300 is probably a very complex piece of engineering, much more than any vehicle existing today.

But basically because I would like having to dedicate more effort to piloting the ship than to navigating information screens on a space station. And right now, there is very little actual piloting required.

 

[Chaz]

Chaz, before you say anything else - I have worked in the Airline industry for 20 years, my current job requires me to have indepth knowledge of the A320-214 and Boeing Philosophy, I also get paid to fly LVL-D simulators at our training academy, have flown countless CAT I/II/III approaches. No offence mate, but you are talking rubbish.

Hell that's a cool job! Therefore I bow down and submit to your superior knowledge sir.

Now what about the space shuttle though.......

 

[Mark Lock]

For the same reason that parking a truck today is more complicated than parking a horse in the Roman Ages Because a spaceship in 3300 is probably a very complex piece of engineering, much more than any vehicle existing today.

Sure , a piece of hightech with hightech computers with complex algorithms to assist the pilot in everything while it prepares a coffee for you, parking a ship is like parking a city car today , why should it be like parking a truck today? Space is big and the difficulty in parking a truck is cause you need to maneuver in small spaces, do stations look small to you ? Ships are easy to park simply cause you go straight to the landing pad, no need for big maneuvers, it's like parking a boat at the port, you get close to the pier and dock, same here even if it has the feeling of parking a city car , I guess parking capital ships will be more complicated than this

 

[777Driver]

Hell that's a cool job! Therefore I bow down and submit to your superior knowledge sir.

Now what about the space shuttle though.......

haha, I think the shuttle is fully automatic! I would love to study that beast one day

 

[Jason S]

Elite I would say is more an experience than a game or a simulator.

It is a life choice.

But of course it is also a game and part way a simulation, but that belittles what it really is, so I like to think of it as an experience.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

For the same reason that parking a truck today is more complicated than parking a horse in the Roman Ages Because a spaceship in 3300 is probably a very complex piece of engineering, much more than any vehicle existing today.

But basically because I would like having to dedicate more effort to piloting the ship than to navigating information screens on a space station. And right now, there is very little actual piloting required.

Have you tried parking a horse-driven carriage?

No? Me neither, but I'm quite confident I could park a truck, but I'd utterly fail trying to park a roman carriage.

I'd wish for FD to implement a little complexity and depth, but they're taking the opposite route and that's fine - probably gets some of todays arcade kids interested in proper sims like DCS.

 

[Mark Lock]

haha, I think the shuttle is fully automatic! I would love to study that beast one day

I think from takeoff to reaching orbit and docking is all managed by computers today

 

[Hadrian Bently]

If we accept faster than light travel then how do you explain our field of view not expanding to literally behind us as we outpace the light coming off the star (I'll leave alone that the G-forces of moving that fast would just kill you).

You are telling me that higher dimensional manifolds are still restricted to the effects of special relativity?! Care to explain this?!

 

[steevaavoo]

You are telling me that higher dimensional manifolds are still restricted to the effects of special relativity?! Care to explain this?!

Madness!!

Time for my next glass of wine...

Waiter??

 

[Hadrian Bently]

For the same reason that parking a truck today is more complicated than parking a horse in the Roman Ages Because a spaceship in 3300 is probably a very complex piece of engineering, much more than any vehicle existing today.

But basically because I would like having to dedicate more effort to piloting the ship than to navigating information screens on a space station. And right now, there is very little actual piloting required.

Maybe but maybe not. If you have an advanced AI onboard the ship then most of the pilot's work is taken care of. For starters, space travel in the 21st century is a lot less dangerous than it was in 1950. The computers used in the first lunar module were far less powerful than anything that we can fit in our pocket today.