Fundamentally unrealistic

[lanael]

When talking about gameplay, "realism" is often mistake for "immersion" or the concept of "suspension of disbelief".

 

[Winterwalker]

I understand FD want the ship to be something you're inside rather than driving 3rd like a Mariocart. But I don't understand removing that option for people who need/want it. I have two friends who will never be able to play because the first person viewpoint gives them vertigo and makes them nauseous. I can't imagine they are alone in that. Forcing everybody to fly one way seems a bit elitist (in the bad way) to me..

I'd suggest a real life fan / air blower that moves air to you, so you get plenty of oxygen and, blowing in your face, reminds your body that it's "moving forwards". Worth a try ... ?

 

[BrewerGeorge]

I'd suggest a real life fan / air blower that moves air to you, so you get plenty of oxygen and, blowing in your face, reminds your body that it's "moving forwards". Worth a try ... ?

I'll suggest it.

One guy in particular is absolutely crushed because he can't play E|D, having played the original back in the day.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

- It is absolutely not realistic to hear other ships in hard vaccum, as they fly by or explode
- It is absolutely not realistic that rock chunks knocked off with a mining laser fly about 40-50 seconds in a semirandom direction then come to a stop, even in a gravity well
- It is absolutely not realistic that people would engage in space combat in "fighter" spacecraft that have an absolutely terrible field of view, like they do in ED, without supplemental cameras so you could see in your "6 o'clock" arc. In ED, the blocked arc is not "6 o'clock" it's more like "3 to 9pm"
- It is absolutely not realistic to travel faster than the speed of light and appear to arrive at your destination after you departed your origin. Remember relativity? Remember how tachyons would appear to have time run backwards for them? Well, CMDR, you are a tachyon

- Some of the things players undergo, in terms of G forces, would turn them to raspberry jam
- Some of the actions ships take (e.g.: crash stop from 1.2C) would turn them to plasma (where does all the kinetic energy go?)
In order to "realistically" address some of the physics of the game, physics would have to be all wrong (we can fairly confidently say it's not) or there would need to be technology that is essentially god-mode. Inertialess travel? Superluminal travel that's not time travel? Instant dissipation of huge amounts of kinetic energy? Anti-gravity? What are the canopies of craft made of that they aren't immediately and catastrophically eroded by plasma in a solar corona? With the god mode technologies that would be needed to make the game universe plausible, there would be no need to hop in a spaceship to fight - you'd just use a long-distance gravity beam to collapse a target, destroying them before you attacked them (remember - time runs backwards if you're going faster than light)

- Strategically, it's all wrong, too. Since ships can travel in supercruise you could destroy any ship or station instantly and thoroughly by dropping a superluminal marble at it. Warfare would be instantaneous and catastrophic and not very fun at all. Most likely it would all be done by computers, laying out pre-programmed bursts of superluminal sand. A "war" would start and end before the light-cone of the event had propagated within a system; you'd win or lose before your brain was able to realize it.

Shhhhh! *whisper* You're lifting the curtain of the illusion! *whisper*

(also +rep for insightful post)

 

[Morbad]

Think about the amount of training (out-of-game) we receive to be allowed to drive an automobile.

The State of New York gave me a drivers license with no restrictions despite having moderate narcolepsy and having uncorrected vision in the ballpark of 20/200. Yes, it's technically legal for me to drive without my glasses, when I might spontaneously pass out at any moment. I had minimal training...all I had to do was pass a drivers test.

License is still valid and still unrestricted, and I'd be even more of a threat now than I originally was, because I haven't been behind the wheel of a motor vehicle since I got married.

TLDR; No idea how to drive, still have valid license and a spotless record.

Imagine how much it costs in-game to build a station... Do you think they would let a greenhorn pilot anywhere near that?

Yes, but only if the station were equipped with weapons that would obliterate any ship in moments for failing to heed station regulations...

You want to get all "realistic" there is very little likelihood that a planetary government would ever allow privately owned spaceships to fly anywhere near it. Even a smallish ship could do thermonuclear-grade levels of damage to the surface by impacting at a high rate of speed.

Velocities which they cannot reach due to the flight computer nannywear that cannot be fully disabled.

Some drivers seem to have received just about as much training on real-life driving as we do in-game!

Considerably less.

confer no advantage, I think.

Any external view will confer an advantage, in one scenario or another.

I'd probably use it to look around corners while sitting with all my systems shut down as I was hiding behind an asteroid or NPC miner.

- It is absolutely not realistic to hear other ships in hard vaccum, as they fly by or explode

These sounds are created by your ship from sensor telemetry, in order to give you more situational awareness without having to dump everything on your visual system.

 

[Omnar_Grezrad]

There's a factory ship called GSV Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory just near LHS 3447 that churns out 100 Sidewinders an hour.

The Elite Universe works on a "punishment for anything is death" principle, so it's quite happy for any amount of pilots to fly out in a ship worth pennies to it and free to the Commander without any training or education.

Those that survive add to the economy / war effort etc., and those that don't? Well, there's plenty of free Sidewinders ready for more new meat...

so you to read the cuture books created by the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks - those are fantastic

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iain-M.-Banks/e/B000APXAVG

 

[OamodSias]

I agree and disagree with this.

Whilst I would like an external view of my ship, I don't want it flying around or during combat or anything like that, but I'd like to be able to "walk" around my ship at a dock, or even just rotate it in the outfitter. I'd like to be able to admire my ship from different angles for screenies or whatever.

 

[Zvanya]

I was listening to the most-recent LAVE RADIO podcast (great work gang!) when they were discussing external views and how they'd break the realism of the world. (I disagree that it would break the world and would love to be able to admire my own ship externally.)

That made me think that there is a fundamental lapse of realism in the game, from the very beginning of Elite: Dangerous.

It is absolutely not realistic that you would be given a ship -- even a lowly Sidewinder -- without SOME training. More training that the game provides in the tutorials and in the manual. Imagine how much it costs in-game to build a station... Do you think they would let a greenhorn pilot anywhere near that?

Think about the amount of training (out-of-game) we receive to be allowed to drive an automobile. And that doesn't go at light speeds or float in space. Compare that to an in-game space craft. The lack of in-game training is very unrealistic.

Yes they should start you out in unskilled labor on the planet surface. You have to work your way up from Burger King. Fun stuff.

 

[xondk]

Add third person view in outfitter so we can see the entirety of our ship, problem solved?

Third person flying is yes, unrealistic, whatever that would be recording it would be the very first thing destroyed in any combat situation.

 

[Vandyl]

which many people (myself included) seem to want

It's good to want things....

 

[Riedquat]

I could not disagree more.

For me immersion is sitting in the cockpit with the DK2. I feel like I am really operating a space ship and relying on my radar for surrounding space crafts. Seeing little sparks in te dashboard, smoke, broken canopy during fights, that's immersion for me.

External view will break that and will make the game feel very arcade-e, plus will give people an edge during combat as you can have much better view of the battlefield.


Although I am all for a camera drone for photo taking.

You see, for me, Immersion is not realism.

When I become immersed in a game, it becomes more than just a game, it sparks my imagination and starts to create its own story.

I think about that game when I am not playing it, I create content in my mind that doesnt exist in the game, but adds to the story, this story weaves its own web and keeps me wanting to play to feed my imagination.

I can be immersed in a good book, a film, or a play, but what has kept me gaming over the years is the fact that I am able to become part of these games and create my own 'content' and play it out.

I would never feel as though I am operating a real space ship unless I was sitting in one, but that doesnt matter to me, I know the game is far from realistic, but its the content that matters to me.

External views, like a 'fly-by' cam, allow me to become more immersed, just like in films (star wars, star trek - whatever) when you see shots of the ships crusing by, fighting, or going to hyperspace, they are there to feed the imagination.

A slowly panning fly by cam would be so nice to have and I cant see it offering any advantage at all.

I actually liked the idea of a docking camera, that would do the job.

 

[Shads]

Ed is set in a universe where Einstein's theory of special relativity and Newton's First law of motion don't exist and you think its immersion breaking for someone to learn to fly a spaceship in an hour???

 

[iSteel]

Whilst I would like an external view of my ship, I don't want it flying around or during combat or anything like that, but I'd like to be able to "walk" around my ship at a dock, or even just rotate it in the outfitter. I'd like to be able to admire my ship from different angles for screenies or whatever.

This. There should be an optional outside view. Maybe limit it to the hangar, or even better to solo play. In solo play nobody gets any advantage of the non-cockpit view.

At least give us something like this
https://selfiestickme.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/selfie_zpsa23866a2.jpg

 

[lonewarrior]

Very true points

But what if we imagine for a second all possible scenarios

If your planning on being a pirate, maybe you stole the ship without training, plenty of underage kids steal cars and wreck them

Or perhaps your family was rich and bought it for you, and your eager to take it for a test drive

I did the sensible thing and did all the training first, as most people would


If we are talking realism, there are many ways around it, hell you could have built it yourself in secret

 

[OamodSias]

This. There should be an optional outside view. Maybe limit it to the hangar, or even better to solo play. In solo play nobody gets any advantage of the non-cockpit view.

At least give us something like this
https://selfiestickme.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/selfie_zpsa23866a2.jpg

Re: link -> lolol


An idea about this came to me last night as I was fiddling with Voice Attack (having fun trying to make the Starport Services screen completely voice controlled).

If people want an outside view, why not something like this:

Ship Simulator:

• Options:

• Armaments
• Paints
• Decals
• Location (any celestial body you have visited)
• Adjust location from star, planet, ring etc
• Adjust simulation of speed
• Rotate camera to any angle
• Zoom
• Take a screen shot

So, if you wanted the camera to be facing your Cobra MkIII as it travels along a planets ring, with a gorgeous solar-rise in the background .. you can. All from the safety of your simulation.
In addition, the simulator could allow for short videos - which would give the community the ability to make some interesting fan-made stories, events etc.

There should be some limits, such as only being able to access it from a station, or maybe from the start menu? Esc -> Go to Simulator -> Enter simulation building options -> Go.
The sim could also be used to test out various ships in different scenarios so you know what you're buying before you buy it. Bought the Adder can it sucked such huge amounts of lemon juice through a small straw that I had to sell it, lol.

 

[Faerie]

Well, without an external view I'm not going to waste money on ship skins I can't see, which leads me to the vague suspicion that an external camera may arrive as paid for content at some point.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

sorry if already covered, but regarding not being realistic us being given a ship.

iirc back in the days of Elite IV, the original plan I think was exactly that. We started the game with nothing, had to earn our wings before taking contract jobs on loaned vehicles - basically like ETS2 is now (little segue there but I am about to buy my very own 1st lorry in that... yay!)

for what ever reason, this idea was canned... but to be honest I think this is a shame. I would have gone for that, esp if it only took a few hrs to gain enough for your 1st sidewinder.

 

[Imperial Lady]

Wait, do you all fly mass-produced ships with glass cockpits? Are you suicidal? When I custom-ordered my current yacht, I was sure to put the cockpit deep into the center of the ship, and covered it in military-grade armor.

Imagine that, flying a ship with only a flimsy glass cockpit between you and murderous outer space. We have cameras and video displays, you know. I covered the ship in cameras and the bridge walls in displays, you get a neat view of space all around you in it.

 

[OamodSias]

sorry if already covered, but regarding not being realistic us being given a ship.

iirc back in the days of Elite IV, the original plan I think was exactly that. We started the game with nothing, had to earn our wings before taking contract jobs on loaned vehicles - basically like ETS2 is now (little segue there but I am about to buy my very own 1st lorry in that... yay!)

for what ever reason, this idea was canned... but to be honest I think this is a shame. I would have gone for that, esp if it only took a few hrs to gain enough for your 1st sidewinder.

For all it's simplicity, ETS2 is epic. I love taking the long journeys, then I just sit back with a cup of coffee, listening to some English classic rock station and pootle down the highway for hours. ^_^

I think I'd have liked to be able to start Elite like that; would make my first ship feel all the more special.

 

[OamodSias]

Wait, do you all fly mass-produced ships with glass cockpits? Are you suicidal? When I custom-ordered my current yacht, I was sure to put the cockpit deep into the center of the ship, and covered it in military-grade armor.

Imagine that, flying a ship with only a flimsy glass cockpit between you and murderous outer space. We have cameras and video displays, you know. I covered the ship in cameras and the bridge walls in displays, you get a neat view of space all around you in it.

Some of us are but humble peasants, your Imperial Highneyness.