How accurate is ED Milky Way?

[elayeth]

I wonder how accurate has FD made the Milky Way?

I like the game mostly for the ability to learn about our galaxy. However I recently visited CY Canis Majoris and made some research. In fact - it is said that (depending on wiki language version i.e. Westerlind 1-26 is the biggest star or the 5th biggest). Nevertheless I cannot find any westerlund star (or star cluster) in ED. I have also chacked many biggest known stars - not included in Elite. The same with planetary nebulaes... 80% not there. Mayby its me - who cannot search?
So it seems that FD made some shortcuts... Are the planning on adding real date in the future?

 

[Dommarraa]

Short answer, not very
There is a LOT of realish data in there, but on the Galactic scale, it is tiny.
In RL there is also very little concrete data. Anything that it not quite local is speculative and likely to change. Should they insert lots of dodgy real data that is only a little more accurate that the procedurally generated data ? Not sure it is worth it.

Apparently they have stated that they will add and modify things as they are discovered in RL, but somehow I doubt it somewhat, certainly not on a large scale. What do you do with people Scan data ?

I wish there was more (e.g try looking for known Pulsars, you will get a list with a lot of Xs next to it), but I do not criticize, I think they have done sterling work. In some ways the excellent procedural generator is more impressive that having real data

 

[neXib]

I wonder how accurate has FD made the Milky Way?

I like the game mostly for the ability to learn about our galaxy. However I recently visited CY Canis Majoris and made some research. In fact - it is said that (depending on wiki language version i.e. Westerlind 1-26 is the biggest star or the 5th biggest). Nevertheless I cannot find any westerlund star (or star cluster) in ED. I have also chacked many biggest known stars - not included in Elite. The same with planetary nebulaes... 80% not there. Mayby its me - who cannot search?
So it seems that FD made some shortcuts... Are the planning on adding real date in the future?

You should be aware that a lot of (in fact most of) the stars on most of those "biggest known lists" aren't in the Milky Way at all. But in other galaxies.

ED is still indeed missing some that should be here though. In fact, I'd love a stellar forge update with more variation in types of objects and their looks.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

When I first set out exploring one of my personal goals was the discovery of a Wolf-Rayet. In preparation I googled an image and imagine my excitement when confronted with this:

Wolf-Rayet

My excitement red-lined when I spotted my first system. Ran like the clappers, literally drooling with excitement..........Exited Witchspace and BOOM!!

............

............

Confronted by a White Soccer-Ball.

Oooooommmffff!

My macadamia's are still smarting!

So no, not really accurate at all, not by a looooooong shot.

 

[Jackie Silver]

We do not know enough about the Milky Way for the question to be meaningful, except with respect to the area immediately around (let's say radius 500ly) Sol, and even that is often shaky. Finding distances etc. (and from them other parameters) is *extremely* hard.

FD have done a pretty good job including catalogue stars but the truth is that all the information we have comes with error bars, usually big ones, so we can't compare stars in the game to reality and say "that's right, and that's wrong."

 

[EddyRockSteady]

We do not know enough about the Milky Way for the question to be meaningful, except with respect to the area immediately around (let's say radius 500ly) Sol, and even that is often shaky. Finding distances etc. (and from them other parameters) is *extremely* hard.

FD have done a pretty good job including catalogue stars but the truth is that all the information we have comes with error bars, usually big ones, so we can't compare stars in the game to reality and say "that's right, and that's wrong."

Aye, exactly the reason why there's no excuse as to why they cannot ramp up the eye - candy. Instead we have multi-coloured soccer balls. Hopefully exploration will get some much needed attention soon.

 

[EdzUp]

Until we actually get to be a intergalactic space faring race we will not know how accurate anything anywhere is or how accurate it is in relation to actual spacial bodies. Frontier, FFE and ED all use current data to create set systems and locations BUT its only the current information thats available at a given time the game is created. Personally I do think its ok as it is and does give the game some semblance of real life.

None of this should detract ya from the game though, when we get hyperdrives or the ability to shove a object from x to y it will be VERY interesting to see what is out there, once thing I would love though is the ability to travel 'between' systems manually. Maybe also wormholes in the game to take a ship from x system to y system at a certain x,y,z location its one of the things from Freelancer I would love to see in ED.

 

[neXib]

We do not know enough about the Milky Way for the question to be meaningful, except with respect to the area immediately around (let's say radius 500ly) Sol, and even that is often shaky. Finding distances etc. (and from them other parameters) is *extremely* hard.

FD have done a pretty good job including catalogue stars but the truth is that all the information we have comes with error bars, usually big ones, so we can't compare stars in the game to reality and say "that's right, and that's wrong."

I am under the impression that the math for this is pretty solid. Of course there's a lot we don't know and can't know, but due to some things that are known a lot of things can be calculated by many methods. Very interesting stuff, but can't expect ED to follow up on things that exact, it's not an astronomy sim.

 

[elayeth]

What you all say is mostly true.

It doesn't discourage me from playing this amazing game. However I believe that there are things that are discovered in RL with more or less specified characteristics and yet not included in the game.
Of course - they have made some superb job with the game but I would like to know if they are planning on adding things that are (more all less) confirmed to exist? It would be great. I wouldn't care so much for the "first discovered" list as realism is more important to me than my name on some random generated star.

I.e. VY Canis Majoris has this "shaky" known size of 1300 - 2100 solar radii (different sources) and it is included.
There are different KNOWN stars with defined sizes (as in the case of VY Canis Majoris) such as UY Scuti, WOH G63, Westerlung 1-26 (mentioned before) etc... and yet... these are not included. Why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_known_stars

The same with planetary Nebulaes.
Here is the list of known ones: http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_planetary_nebulae
I visited 2 from the list. I checked 10+ others and I couldnt find any in the game. I hope that they will work on this some they in the future.

 

[elayeth]

I am under the impression that the math for this is pretty solid. Of course there's a lot we don't know and can't know, but due to some things that are known a lot of things can be calculated by many methods. Very interesting stuff, but can't expect ED to follow up on things that exact, it's not an astronomy sim.

It is not - indeed. But they included some real stuff in the game already. One could say - they included what they could with the limited time and resources. So one could also expect to get more in the future...
I haven't seen any comments on that from ED yet. It seems they are busy with different stuff. There is an exploration wish-list so I hope they will work on that along with some real astronomical objects some day.

 

[Ulysses_W]

Aye, exactly the reason why there's no excuse as to why they cannot ramp up the eye - candy. Instead we have multi-coloured soccer balls. Hopefully exploration will get some much needed attention soon.

I cannot agree with this enough.

Maybe one person bagging this drum isn't enough. Maybe a London Olympics type of drum fest is what we need for FD to take notice and inject some science fiction into Elite: Dangerous exploration?

 

[Killerhurtz]

Not very.

The intention was for it too be very accurate.
However the equation for distributiuon of white dwarfs / neutrons & black holes was broken and not caught in beta.
Hence there are no white dwarfs etc outside the few manually entered near sol or bh or neutron or browns.

These items can be found in giant game breaking blocks in the core ( whites/neuts/bh ) and slabs through the middle of the disk ( browns ) commonly refered to as fields by the unwashed masses.

Unfortunettely FD seem to be slipping down the path of least resistance with this issue as it is a difficult fix and there are not many complaining about it, never mind the claims they make for there software on there website.

 

[drkaii]

I know there's been a lot of discussion but let me just chip in what I've gathered.

There are roughly 150,000 objects based on real objects. Their positions are good, especially relative to Sol (and while the distances are always inexact in astronomy, they've put them so they appear in the right places in the sky at Sol, which I think is great). A lot of the nebulae are rough, some stuff has been fabricated or done quite differently like the Pleiades Nebula is made up (or at least, named wrong - it should be the Merope Nebula also known as Tempel's Nebula and NGC 1435), Eta Carinae is done wrong (there is no planetary nebula as far as I can see and it should be in the Carina nebula? Correct me, I haven't been but that's what the galmap shows afaict).

For the other 399,999,999,850 systems, they have used a model based on astrophysics models. They've decided upon recognised estimates of the proportions of stars, the number of systems, and the rough shape and make up of the galaxy. All these things have various models from different groups and so Frontier have just picked whatever they picked, but it IS based on accepted science.

So for using the game to learn about the milky way? You are good to go, there's a lot of real stuff here. If you visit something specific, google it for any incongruities, and always remember that no one knows a lot of the things Frontier have put into the game for a fact (such as the exact shape of the milky way).

You might need to search for stars using alternative names and SIMBAD designations if you can't find them by their popular name: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=55+Cancri

 

[Philip Coutts]

I think it's pretty, roughly, erm, nearishly accurate isn't it? Bottom line they used as much real life data as they could but really we don't know that much about what's "out there". I support whacking in some more brightly coloured planets for the sakes of eye-candy. All for it realism be damned!

 

[neXib]

I.e. VY Canis Majoris has this "shaky" known size of 1300 - 2100 solar radii (different sources) and it is included.
There are different KNOWN stars with defined sizes (as in the case of VY Canis Majoris) such as UY Scuti, WOH G63, Westerlung 1-26 (mentioned before) etc... and yet... these are not included. Why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_known_stars

As I said earlier, that list is largest known stars. WOH G63 isn't in the Milky Way, it's in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, 168,000 light years away. So of course there's stars that should be there that isn't, but let's at least stick to our galaxy

 

[Kolato]

Alot of the planetary nebulas are simply gone in a thousand years time, look at the helix nebula which is just a cloud.

 

[Jackie Silver]

I am under the impression that the math for this is pretty solid. Of course there's a lot we don't know and can't know, but due to some things that are known a lot of things can be calculated by many methods. Very interesting stuff, but can't expect ED to follow up on things that exact, it's not an astronomy sim.

One of the big issues is that a small error in determining one parameter can spiral into big errors in determining other parameters - it's not that the maths / physics models are necessarily difficult but that they have to build upon each other.

As an example, if you look at this paper it boils down to "the distance to the Pleiades (yes, those Pleiades, the ones right on our doorstep) has been in question for a while; there's a whole bunch of measurements which roughly agree but the Hipparcos ones don't; we tried something new and got a better distance; it's important because the Pleiades are the nearest cluster of bright young stars like that and we use the information on them to work out stuff about other bright young stars, so it really matters." There's a good chart included showing the distance estimates from different sources including their error bars.

Thing is so many of the general sources for information about this stuff don't bother to include the vital "...ish" on the details: a nebula is presented as being "at 5000 light years away", or a star is presented as being "150 Solar masses" or whatever, or a map is drawn with spiral arms neatly marked and so on and so on, and people see them and (quite reasonably) think that we know these things to be exactly true. Especially you can take any of the "10 biggest stars" lists with a big pinch of salt.

 

[Dommarraa]

Even the distance to Sag A* varies by 5 Kylie depending on how old the information is

 

[HagbardCeline]

I wonder how accurate has FD made the Milky Way?

Based on our knowledge of it, the game mechanics and process of creating this "play ground" in ED I think is pretty accurate.
Like said earlier, mankind doesn't know much. Most of the stuff we (think) know is based on photographs and math. And like Jackie here pointed out most of the math/physics assumes the previous calculation was correct. NASA still can't calculate a 100% trajectory around earth, why is that? We still have a problem with gravity, the only force we can't bring together with the other 3 force (electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear) via quantum physics. Dishing out more wild theories based on the Theory of Gravity?? Dark energy and matter?? Where is all that in the ED Milky Way? Right we don't need it.

ED has done a great job of mixing Fiction and Science, IMO. They gave us plenty of room(space) and let us travel faster than light, while the stars don't blind us or melt the ship hull within milliseconds.

It's a game.

/HC

 

[CMDR AKIRA MASAKARI]

In my opinion is very good blend between realism and gameplay. Of course it can be improved, as anything can, but the starforge is pretty amazing in generating "beliavable" systems.
Also, regarding me, the game made my curiosity about real astrophysics grow. Beeing aware that Elite is sci-fi, no other game made me go to read wikipedia or buy divulgative books like this one. I'm evening seriously thinking to transform this amateur passion in academic studies.

So elite galaxy is not "realistic", but "beliavable" fro a sci-fi point of wiev.

Expecially distances and proportions, realistc or not, are mindblowing like the real thing. Many other games try to cage you in 100 hand design systems with exploding planets that are only eye candy backgrounds. So i ubuy Elite galaxy very happily.