FA off and thrusters

[LaVie]

I just have a quick question about FlightAssist and the relating physics:

When I disable FA, my ship wont apply any additional thrust to stabilize my ship, right?
Thats why when turning without FA, its faster because my ship isnt working "against" me will by activating the vertical thrusters on its own,
to force the ship into an horizontal position.

BUT:

If I just fly in a straight line with half speed,
why is the ship accelerating to max speed when turning FA off?
That would indicate that my ships backward thrusters were active before, right?
But that is visually not the case.
Even more, to fly with constant speed in space is actually pretty difficult, is it not?
Because you need to "brake" exactly the correct amount to not get slower, and even then the main thrusters need to be disengaged to prevent further acceleration?!

So is this a bug or a feature to show us nice colored engine detailing?

 

[777Driver]

If I just fly in a straight line with half speed,
why is the ship accelerating to max speed when turning FA off?
That would indicate that my ships backward thrusters were active before, right?
But that is visually not the case.
Even more, to fly with constant speed in space is actually pretty difficult, is it not?
Because you need to "brake" exactly the correct amount to not get slower, and even then the main thrusters need to be disengaged to prevent further acceleration?!

So is this a bug or a feature to show us nice colored engine detailing?

FA-ON is a SPEED mode
FA-OFF is a THRUST mode.

With Flight assist enabled your thrusters will maintain whatever speed you have commanded.
With flight assist OFF - your throttle directly controls the amount of thrust that is being generated. To stop accelerating, close the throttle (IDLE thrust)

Thrusters will also automatically cut off if you reach the max speed limit.

 

[V3teran]

noted

 

[Pville_Piper]

I find maneuvering with FA-Off after putting DD5 drives on is very touchy... I can handle FA-Off to some extent but with the mods the ships like the Vulture and Viper III are hard to control.

 

[Arthur Shappey]

...
Even more, to fly with constant speed in space is actually pretty difficult, is it not?
...

If you ignore the generally minuscule and discountable gravitational effects, it is actually very easy to fly at a constant speed in space. You just switch your engines off. Yes - you will eventually be noticeably swayed by one gravitational field or another - but not often before you die [at sub-light speeds]

I don't think "Flight assist off" is a trully unassisted representation of Newtonion/Einsteinian pure thrust models. On a practical note, if it were, it would cause all sorts of game issues for multiplayer. After all - how would the time effects be mimicked?

 

[Madrax573]

If your ship is still accelerating with FA-off I'd suggest that you are using throttle rather than thrust.

e.g. if you are using HOTAS and toggle FA-off but your throttle lever is at 50% you will constantly accelerate at 50% thrust until you reach the speed cap.
So to get your ship to stop accelerating with HOTAS you need to reset your throttle lever to 0 throttle.

Feel free to pop into our discord (in my sig) if you have any FA-off questions as we are all pretty nuts about it really!

 

[kofeyh]

I just have a quick question about FlightAssist and the relating physics:

When I disable FA, my ship wont apply any additional thrust to stabilize my ship, right?
Thats why when turning without FA, its faster because my ship isnt working "against" me will by activating the vertical thrusters on its own,
to force the ship into an horizontal position.

BUT:

If I just fly in a straight line with half speed,
why is the ship accelerating to max speed when turning FA off?
That would indicate that my ships backward thrusters were active before, right?
But that is visually not the case.
Even more, to fly with constant speed in space is actually pretty difficult, is it not?
Because you need to "brake" exactly the correct amount to not get slower, and even then the main thrusters need to be disengaged to prevent further acceleration?!

So is this a bug or a feature to show us nice colored engine detailing?

Throttle becomes thruster with FA-Off. Ergo, if you apply throttle, you are applying thrust (as per 777Driver's comment) up to a maximum value. If your throttle has a 50% detent (as some do) you can set throttle to -50 0 +50 split, rather than 0-100 so that at the detent (notch) point, is zero throttle. In my case, I still have 0-100 because I don't have a middle detent; however I have all thrusters on thumb-switches so I can override.

Also, FA-On the thrusters have near infinite power. I say near, because from a ship perspective, it's near-infinite, however from an external gravity, it isn't (this is because the flight model changes slightly, irrc, over a gravitational body like a planet).

If you turn FA-Off, recommend also disabling rotational correction; as this will stop all non-commander input (beyond the two governing limits; max speed, boost decay) and causing confusion. It is not at all intuitive to do this.

 

[Madrax573]

If you turn FA-Off, recommend also disabling rotational correction; as this will stop all non-commander input (beyond the two governing limits; max speed, and constant thruster power) and causing confusion. It is not at all intuitive to do this.

I haven't noticed any difference with RC on or off. I've done a fair number of tests and I can't see/feel anything changes with it.

It's possible that I'm not testing the right things but I have it on and don't bother to change it.

 

[kofeyh]

I haven't noticed any difference with RC on or off. I've done a fair number of tests and I can't see/feel anything changes with it.

It's possible that I'm not testing the right things but I have it on and don't bother to change it.

Fly into the middle of a station with FA-Off, with correction off, then enable it. Now try landing with it off. Now try taking off again with it on. RC should be off when FA is set to off, by default, because RC is part of flight assist. It's only really relevant if you default to FA-Off 24/7.

Note: if you are simply toggling FA-Off when in combat, or during other maneuvers, and enabling it again, then you'll never notice it; it's purely a function to match the rotational velocity of a station.

My pet peeve is the game remembering RC being off, but turning FA back on (eg switching ships). Please, frontier, can I have a menu option that sets RC and FA to OFF as a default. Let me toggle that on as needed!

 

[Madrax573]

Fly into the middle of a station with FA-Off, with correction off, then enable it. Now try landing with it off. Now try taking off again with it on. RC should be off when FA is set to off, by default, because RC is part of flight assist. It's only really relevant if you default to FA-Off 24/7.

Note: if you are simply toggling FA-Off when in combat, or during other maneuvers, and enabling it again, then you'll never notice it; it's purely a function to match the rotational velocity of a station.

My pet peeve is the game remembering RC being off, but turning FA back on (eg switching ships). Please, frontier, can I have a menu option that sets RC and FA to OFF as a default. Let me toggle that on as needed!

You are talking about RC with FA-on yes? I fly 100% Fa-off and not seen any effect of it being toggled at all.

And yeah I would love to have a permanent FA-off toggle! The biggest pain for me is getting back in my ship from the SRV and finding it back on or when I take back control of a mothership from my crew and have to switch the bloody thing off again.

 

[babelfisch]

You are talking about RC with FA-on yes? I fly 100% Fa-off and not seen any effect of it being toggled at all.

And yeah I would love to have a permanent FA-off toggle! The biggest pain for me is getting back in my ship from the SRV and finding it back on or when I take back control of a mothership from my crew and have to switch the bloody thing off again.

RC only applies when you are at a station. If you want the 'true' FA-Off experience you'll need to turn off RC as well. If you are at a station and have FA disabled but RC enabled you are technically still using flight assist.

 

[kofeyh]

You are talking about RC with FA-on yes? I fly 100% Fa-off and not seen any effect of it being toggled at all.

There are situations where RC applies even with FA-off. Arguably, RC setting should be ignored with FA-Off anyway. It should not matter if it's on or off when assist is disabled. But i've had instances where it's caused unexpected ship input.

Maybe it was fixed at some point? But a friend noticed a difference with rotational correction off, versus on, as they never turned RC off, so I am pretty sure I am not entirely crazy*.

*just a little bit

 

[M. Grey]

...
And yeah I would love to have a permanent FA-off toggle! The biggest pain for me is getting back in my ship from the SRV and finding it back on or when I take back control of a mothership from my crew and have to switch the bloody thing off again.

^^THIS

FAOFF should stay on, be it when changing ships, returning with the SRV, dropping from SC (sometimes), re-logging, ... .

 

[Madrax573]

RC only applies when you are at a station. If you want the 'true' FA-Off experience you'll need to turn off RC as well. If you are at a station and have FA disabled but RC enabled you are technically still using flight assist.

Well as a 100% FA-off pilot I'm technically lying to myself as FA is always in effect or we'd be able to get to silly speeds and crazy rotational movements as well

Thats my question though. I have never seen any effect from RC with Fa-off. With Fa-on RC has a huge effect almost to point of unplayable for me but FA-off......Don't notice any difference.

I'd love for one of the FD programmers to come and tell us what effects it has when FA-off'ing

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

^^THIS

FAOFF should stay on, be it when changing ships, returning with the SRV, dropping from SC (sometimes), re-logging, ... .

sorry fact:
for SRV drive they offer an option to set default for drive assist on or off

same for landing gear they offer a full set of steering overrides,
but for FA-Off they do not offer a change in prefered mouse input

 

[babelfisch]

Well as a 100% FA-off pilot I'm technically lying to myself as FA is always in effect or we'd be able to get to silly speeds and crazy rotational movements as well

True.

Thats my question though. I have never seen any effect from RC with Fa-off. With Fa-on RC has a huge effect almost to point of unplayable for me but FA-off......Don't notice any difference.

I'd love for one of the FD programmers to come and tell us what effects it has when FA-off'ing

AFAIK there is no difference between RC in FA Off and FA On. It just matches your ships rotation with the rotation of the station to make flying inside it easier, nothing else. I could be wrong though.

 

[Madrax573]

True.



AFAIK there is no difference between RC in FA Off and FA On. It just matches your ships rotation with the rotation of the station to make flying inside it easier, nothing else. I could be wrong though.

Thats what I'm getting at though. With FA-off RC does NOT match your rotation. That is all manually controlled like normal FA-off flight.

sorry fact:
for SRV drive they offer an option to set default for drive assist on or off

same for landing gear they offer a full set of steering overrides,
but for FA-Off they do not offer a change in prefered mouse input

He's referring to when you return to your ship after being out in the SRV your FA is returned to the on state. Which as you've noted is different to the Drive Assist that you can select a default off/on in the options. We'd like to see the same but for FA.

 

[babelfisch]

Thats what I'm getting at though. With FA-off RC does NOT match your rotation. That is all manually controlled like normal FA-off flight.



He's referring to when you return to your ship after being out in the SRV your FA is returned to the on state. Which as you've noted is different to the Drive Assist that you can select a default off/on in the options. We'd like to see the same but for FA.

Well that's not how I remember it, but since I don't have the time to check it myself and I am known to be wrong all the time, it's better when I just believe you

 

[Madrax573]

Well that's not how I remember it, but since I don't have the time to check it myself and I am known to be wrong all the time, it's better when I just believe you

This thread has me questioning myself now...might have to go do a video test.

 

[furrycat]

Rotational correction has [size=+4]NO[/size] effect with flight assist off.