What happens if you keep thrust in the blue zone? Does it still not level to the horizon?
Frontier is trying to prove that the flat-earthers are right after all...
- Thread starter Old Duck
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What happens if you keep thrust in the blue zone? Does it still not level to the horizon?
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Tried it in the blue at 2 pips, nothing. I tried both on my lumbering Keelback and my quicker Dolphin on two separate accounts. After giving it some thought, I'm pretty sure auto-leveling wasn't present in 2.4 either. We did all sorts of calisthenics with our ships during the Enigma Expedition to build various shapes down on the planet, and I never had to fight with auto-leveling - my ship (a DBX at the time) just pointed where I wanted it too.
However, I do vaguely seem to recall this "auto-leveling" affecting my SLFs.. I'll try later, might be a false memory for all I know...
Ideally. TBH the B99 I've been flying for the last few years has never wanted to settle into a satisfactory trim.
First, assign vertical thrust to an axis. Next, turn flight assist off. Now achieve vertical equilibrium. Finally, increase horizontal thrust and you should fly straight and level, unless there are gravitational anomalies. Are there gravitational anomalies in Elite: Dangerous?
I don't think so. I don't even think there's elliptical orbits in the game, which is a shame.
An atmosphereless and gravityless planet... You missed gravity. Gravity is likely to curve your path unless you set correctional thrusters. The more powerful the gravity, the more powerful the curvature... If you weren't careful, you could end up in orbit and any flattards on board would use that as proof they'd reached a massive, flat planet.
That's interesting. I'm pretty sure auto-leveling to the horizon has been in the PC version since 2.0. And I play with a PS4 controller on the PC most of the time, only recently switched to a HOTAS.
This will be more noticeable because the planets we are seeing this on are usually quite small and have a high curvature.
Anyone tried this on a large radius landable?
Anyone tried this on a large radius landable?
Same deal whatever the planet. Back when planet terrain looked amazing, I'd often trade in normal space between planetary ports. You just set PIPS or Thrust, then leave the ship to maintain the horizon.
quick video, am not touching the pitch except to increase it for each demonstration. You can see it auto pitches down when thrust or PIPS are reduced. It's just programmed to maintain Zero pitch and roll, nothing complicated.
Apologies,camera is a bit shaky whilst I put on the rift.
[video=youtube_share;COoos8S2dHM]https://youtu.be/COoos8S2dHM[/video]
It's kinda complicated by ED's not real physics.
Flying over an atmoshpere less planet/moon would in reality work like this (ish).
No thrust i.e rocket off: Unlike ED you would be moving at a constant speed, gravity is 'pulling' you towards the planet/moon so you follow a curved path. You are in orbit, altitude depending on speed and gravitational field strength of the planet.
Thrust i.e rocket on : Unlike ED you would be accelerating which would move you into a higher orbit.
In ED where thrust on = consatant speed (despite lack of air resistance), *waves hands and runs away*
I got it to work! At least in my Clipper on my alt account. I didn't realize that you have to be pretty close to level to begin with for this effect to kick in, and that it takes a moment to adjust. I noticed it when I dropped out of glide at less than 4 pips to engines. I'll experiment to see how pips and throttle settings work on PS4.
It's a very nuanced effect, which I'm glad for (the way some people talked about it, I thought it was going to "wrestle" with me if I got it working).
UPDATE
For me it's not the pips that matter, rather I have to be at exactly 75% throttle. This and the nuanced effect is probably why I've never noticed it before. I wonder if this little detail is in ED's PS4 manual? I better go back and reread it (once Frontier rewrites it for 3.0).
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ED's physics work correctly as long as you can accept the ships have an absurd amount of thrust and fuel efficiency, and that the computer won't allow you to accelerate past a certain velocity.
The ventral thrusters will prevent you from falling despite not having orbital velocity.
There will be no force exerted by the planet causing the ship's pitch to change, so it will continue to fly in a straight line as directed by the flight assist computer.
Outside of ED if we assume a rocket that has infinite fuel and similar accelerations, and no velocity restraints, much the same thing happens, just faster.
I'm just asking for my ship to act like any aircraft and maintain a tangent to the force of gravity.
These aren't aircraft, and there's no atmosphere.
There are most definitely elliptical orbits. Check the eccentricity field in the system map.
You're absolutely correct.
Can't say I've ever seen a highly eccentric orbit highlighted when I have orbital lines turned on, though. They all look perfectly circular.
I won't even begin to explain why the average flat-earther is only half as smart as my footprint. The whole airplane in a straight line argument is just one of countless many illustrations of how these folks simply do not understand things like Science, Gravity, and the Atmosphere.
I'm not asking for autopilot, I'm just asking for my ship to act like any aircraft and maintain a tangent to the force of gravity. What do you think, Frontier, can you make this small change for us? Or do you secretly believe the earth is flat?
A spacecraft is travelling at vastly more velocity than an aircraft - enough to achieve atmospheric escape - never mind the fact that the only planets we can actually land on lack atmospheres... I do believe though, that turning off Flight Assist may give you the effect you're looking for here.
And if the Earth were flat, which it's not, cats would have pushed everything off the edge of it already.
Canned elliptical obits, obviously - you can't enter into any proper orbit in ED, let alone an elliptical (ie. natural) one, in which your speed would necessarily rise and fall outside the narrow range ED is capable of handling.
What that video shows is clearly an artificial effect - achieving a perfectly circular orbit (ie. in which the speed is truly constant, as in that video) is practically impossible, especially on the initial attempt - without calculating everything to five decimal places, you'd inevitably need to be making lots of corrective burns throughout the lap.
Even a geostationary orbit (so not moving relative to the ground) would see you moving at far higher speed relative to space itself, than ED is able to cope with. And if you're thinking that regarding motion in relation to space itself is just idiotic gibberish, unfortunately you'd be right, but regardless, that's how it's implemented in ED - your ship's speed is measured relative to the coordinate space of the instance around you (part of the reason why we're stuck with space speed limits in the first place).
So while in principle it seems it should be possible to orbit a sufficiently low-density object within the confines of ED's space speed limits, we're talking a very low density body, with extremely weak gravity, and thus it would be so slow and low as to be all but impossible. I wouldn't hold my breath for a convincing demonstration from either ground-launch or entry from space (or warp, in ED's case), from any player.. It's a more a matter of fundamental constraints on the game engine and piloting freedom, than anything to do with skill...
ED just isn't physically capable of seamless space travel. It needs to generate instances, which have to be linked via another "supercruise" instance.
Of course in reality, any gravity well at all is going to trap layers of gas, UV radiation (even from distant stars) will cause mineral vapours to slowly accumulate even in the complete absence of any geothermal activity, and ED's ships are so hopelessly crippled they'd be trying to orbit well within that gas envelope..
Yes thanks, I know all this. But for the purpose of the thread without coming across like a know-it-all busybody, I elected to not write a wall of text explaining every nuance of it.