Ideas for Supercruise Gravity Well and World Surface Topography Overlays

[WR3ND]

These have come from another thread where some of us are discussing supercruise and some people feeling "burned out" with the mechanic or play style of waiting to arrive at target destinations in supercruise here. → https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/446724-Anyone-else-get-burned-out-from-Supercruising

Not wanting to derail that thread nor get lost in the minutia of its context, I thought starting this one to discuss these ideas more specifically would be appropriate.

Myself as well as some others were thinking that an optional canopy overlay in supercruise showing the transitions between higher and lower gravity fields across system space could make for a more engaging and cool looking experience, providing players with a nice sort of retro sci-fi aesthetic and an additional visual feedback tool for determining desirable trajectories and paths to shorten travel times.

This is more or less what I had in mind. The relative scale of the warped cubes could potentially also change based on supercruise speed so that they remain visible regardless of how fast players are traveling "through" them and so that they don't obstruct the view.

Another somewhat related idea I had was that a world surface topography canopy overlay for the dark sides of worlds and for those areas on a surface that are shrouded in shadow would make for a nice option as well, especially for things like nighttime canyon racing, or more practical things like just navigating the terrain.

Something like this is what I had in mind, though without the transparency aspect so as to not be able to see through the surface, which seems a little unfitting to me and could likely also be disorienting. It wouldn't need to be a grid; something like scan lines or something else might do just as well.

Someone else had mentioned that these features should be tied to having ship scanners. Having the supercruise gravity well overly tied to discovery scanners and the topography overlay tied to surface scanners makes sense to me, though naturally some might not care for those ship loadout requirements. I mostly just think that they'd be pretty cool features to have in the game, and might make the game feel more engaging to some other players as well.

So anyway, feel free to continue the conversation here and let me know what you think.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Wouldn't the first idea make it too easy though? We all try to be aware of this but its a "gut feeling" at the moment. I liked the 75-80% trick when first learning about it, but i find it too clinical and have gone back to throttle by sight now, even when grinding. Having said its invaluable for console controllers.. definitely!

Love the idea for ground topography.. we already get this when landing gear is down?

 

[WR3ND]

Wouldn't the first idea make it too easy though? We all try to be aware of this but its a "gut feeling" at the moment. I liked the 75-80% trick when first learning about it, but i find it too clinical and have gone back to throttle by sight now, even when grinding. Having said its invaluable for console controllers.. definitely!

Love the idea for ground topography.. we already get this when landing gear is down?

I do happen to use a controller, but I manage well enough as it is. I just thought these might be some cool things to have in the game.

Regarding the topography, yes, we do, but not as a canopy overlay on the visible or shadow-obscured surface itself, so it would be in addition to that. Having it dependent on having a surface scanner for this additional feature makes sense to me. This overlay could be viewed from higher altitudes and over the surface of the terrain, perhaps even from supercruise on the dark side of a world.

The pictures I posted unfortunately don't quite do justice to these ideas. The idea is that they'd look like they were a part of the space within a system or a part of world surfaces as viewed by Commanders, unless whatever requirements weren't met, the option wasn't enabled, or a ship's canopy blew out.

For the surface terrain, I think this would make for a rather cool looking hybrid effect, transitioning between the visible surface that is illuminated and the topography grid overlay in the shadows.

 

[Darkfyre99]

Regarding a graphical display of “gravity wells”: Speaking as a player who does use gravity breaking on a daily basis, and one of the handful of players who apparently who would like to be able to permanently turn on the edge of the orbital and glide/crash zones, I think that would make the view way too ugly to be used.

With the exception of a system’s “asteroid belts” and a handful of comets, you can see where the mass of a system is, and avoid it. The only time where such information could possibly be useful is during the four second window of my maneuver, and the only information I care about at that time is the edge of the orbital and glide/crash zone, so I can get as close to it as possible without entering them.

Regarding the topographical display at night: it would be a more interesting alternative to using “night vision mode” aka turning the gamma up. Of course, many players turn up the gamma anyway to make the sky box more visually interesting anyways, so...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Regarding a graphical display of gravity wells: Speaking as a player who does use gravity breaking on a daily basis, and one of the handful of players who apparently who would like to be able to permanently turn on the edge of the orbital and glide/crash zones,

Seriously, if not permanently on, then at least consistently appearing at a greater distance!

The engine sounds, handling variations, and existing instruments give more than enough information between them to tell how gravity is affecting your ship and tune the approach.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I discussed current / then planetary dark side issues with devs during Frontier Expo, and I pitched idea or this '3D surface a la old Elite' for night view. It seems devs had very similar ideas and were very happy about it. Good question would it work and how it would work.

It will be interesting how they will implement something - anything - so we can see at dark side of planet. As that code will get rewritten I hope they don't go for automatic increase of visibility, because it has been quite jarring and never fully worked properly.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Apart from long supercruise travels (about >15 min if it's just for standard gameplay) my main gripe with supercruise are the inexplicable slow-downs in the middle of nowhere. They say it's unrendered bodies, I don't know. An overlay of gravity influences might help there.

 

[Canasta]

I think they should introduce the wireframe landscape as part of the standard HUD without a module requirement. Then we could do away with the artificial planet lightening effect that happens when you fly to a planet dark side.

It would look cooler as well

 

[rhiz]

Regarding a graphical display of “gravity wells”: Speaking as a player who does use gravity breaking on a daily basis, and one of the handful of players who apparently who would like to be able to permanently turn on the edge of the orbital and glide/crash zones, I think that would make the view way too ugly to be used.

With the exception of a system’s “asteroid belts” and a handful of comets, you can see where the mass of a system is, and avoid it. The only time where such information could possibly be useful is during the four second window of my maneuver, and the only information I care about at that time is the edge of the orbital and glide/crash zone, so I can get as close to it as possible without entering them.

Regarding the topographical display at night: it would be a more interesting alternative to using “night vision mode” aka turning the gamma up. Of course, many players turn up the gamma anyway to make the sky box more visually interesting anyways, so...

The discussion arose from a thread about the fact that many players find supercruise dull, so that’s the original context. More advanced pilots like yourself probably don’t feel this way, but I’d wager that a significant proportion of players aren’t really aware of the nuances of supercruise, either reacting to gravity instinctively or simply setting off to their destination in a straight line without giving it much thought. I think that it would be a good idea to make these things a little more explicit to players, providing a kind of mini-game during supercruise and revealing mechanics that are already there, but without holding our hands too much.

I agree that a persistent overlay would be quite ugly – I mentioned the sonar effect in Subnautica which temporarily reveals local topology (and importantly, it looks ace ).

 

[Cmdr Ultra]

I like your ideas OP. The first graphic looks great.

We have gravity braking in Elite but we need to be able to slingshot our ships with the add of gravity as well.

 

[Non Grata]

Yes to gravity wells for the retro thing, plus encouraging slingshotting/braking.

Yes to topography - on the scanner as now is fine.

No to requiring disc scanners.

 

[WR3ND]

...

Fair enough, though I personally think it looks pretty cool. Ideally these would be additional optional features, able to be turned on and off at a player's discretion. For the first year or so playing the game I even had orbital lines turned off so as to not get in the way of or rather clutter up the system view, including during my trek out to Sgr A. I think I eventually turned them back on to help visually locate hidden black holes and the like so I could avoid crashing into them after landing a high jump. They also make staying out of the exclusion zone while fuel scooping a bit easier.

 

[Iskariot]

These have come from another thread where some of us are discussing supercruise and some people feeling "burned out" with the mechanic or play style of waiting to arrive at target destinations in supercruise here. → https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/446724-Anyone-else-get-burned-out-from-Supercruising

Not wanting to derail that thread nor get lost in the minutia of its context, I thought starting this one to discuss these ideas more specifically would be appropriate.

Myself as well as some others were thinking that an optional canopy overlay in supercruise showing the transitions between higher and lower gravity fields across system space could make for a more engaging and cool looking experience, providing players with a nice sort of retro sci-fi aesthetic and an additional visual feedback tool for determining desirable trajectories and paths to shorten travel times.

This is more or less what I had in mind. The relative scale of the warped cubes could potentially also change based on supercruise speed so that they remain visible regardless of how fast players are traveling "through" them and so that they don't obstruct the view.



Another somewhat related idea I had was that a world surface topography canopy overlay for the dark sides of worlds and for those areas on a surface that are shrouded in shadow would make for a nice option as well, especially for things like nighttime canyon racing, or more practical things like just navigating the terrain.

Something like this is what I had in mind, though without the transparency aspect so as to not be able to see through the surface, which seems a little unfitting to me and could likely also be disorienting. It wouldn't need to be a grid; something like scan lines or something else might do just as well.



Someone else had mentioned that these features should be tied to having ship scanners. Having the supercruise gravity well overly tied to discovery scanners and the topography overlay tied to surface scanners makes sense to me, though naturally some might not care for those ship loadout requirements. I mostly just think that they'd be pretty cool features to have in the game, and might make the game feel more engaging to some other players as well.

So anyway, feel free to continue the conversation here and let me know what you think.

Nice ideas.

 

[WR3ND]

...

I quite like the Subnautica visual sonar type effect as well. I'll add the video you posted in the other thread below for those who haven't seen it. My only issue with it applied to this is that it's more of a 2D surface barrier instead of showing the 3D transition of gravitational force magnitude. I suppose a similar type of proportional wave effect could be applied to the graphic above as well, revealing these force lines, as it were, as a player moves their ship through the areas while in supercruise. They could also fade out as a player's throttle decreases. That might look quite cool, actually. Main thing for me though is to keep the functionality of it for those who might want it.

Here's that Subnautica video...

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;JObODeJVBJ0]https://youtu.be/JObODeJVBJ0[/video]

 

[WR3ND]

Yes to gravity wells for the retro thing, plus encouraging slingshotting/braking.

Yes to topography - on the scanner as now is fine.

No to requiring disc scanners.

Understandable. Perhaps the topography overlay could be tied to the planetary landing suits or optional upgrades to them instead as they don't use up extra module room.

For showing the location of the gravity wells, I think using the discovery scanners makes sense, because, at least as per how the game mechanic currently works, you wouldn't want it inadvertently revealing bodies you don't otherwise know are there. Of course if the bodies' positions are already known, then it's a moot point, so having the feature available to nav beacon scans, buying the system data, or similar, makes sense to me.

 

[Garand1987]

My only issue with gravity Wells in game is that they’re inconsistent and don’t work as they should. Gravity wells in game slow you down as they slingshot you past the body, you should speed up. And they drag you to a crawl if you’re passing a body on the way to a station (which you are 99% of the time).
And they’re inconsistent. If I’m passing a body that isn’t targeted, I go by without being slingshotted, but if I target the body, suddenly I’m being dragged down and slung.
Other than that the planetary approach in SC needs to be fixed. With assist on being in the blue speed and throttle wise is supposed to bring you to a safe approach speed. But if you’re in the blue when approaching a planet, you’ll be going too fast and your glide will fail and you’ll also take hull damage.

 

[WR3ND]

...

Just speculating here, but I think part of it might have to do with the "physics" of how the FSDs work, like being mass locked, and also a ship's guiding flight assistance. But yeah, I hear what you're saying.

 

[WR3ND]

Just posting the following video as a bit of an homage for somewhat inspiring these ideas. Well, for me at least.

Loved watching this as a kid. I think I still remember how to graph this on my TI-89. Hasn't aged all that well, but still a classic space adventure movie in my book.

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;q6wiHA8-CKQ]https://youtu.be/q6wiHA8-CKQ[/video]

Cheers.

 

[Non Grata]

For showing the location of the gravity wells, I think using the discovery scanners makes sense, because, at least as per how the game mechanic currently works, you wouldn't want it inadvertently revealing bodies you don't otherwise know are there. Of course if the bodies' positions are already known, then it's a moot point, so having the feature available to nav beacon scans, buying the system data, or similar, makes sense to me.

Yes that makes a lot of sense.

 

[WR3ND]

Apart from long supercruise travels (about >15 min if it's just for standard gameplay) my main gripe with supercruise are the inexplicable slow-downs in the middle of nowhere. They say it's unrendered bodies, I don't know. An overlay of gravity influences might help there.

Yeah, showing their effects would be nice, given whatever requirements were met, though not the bodies themselves until they're implemented, of course. Keeping them hidden in the overlay wouldn't serve much of a purpose since they still affect the ships anyway, and we still can't "discover" them.