Air molecules are required to propagate sound waves, it doesn't work in a vacuum.
Is Elite Dangerous a simulator to you?
- Thread starter rootsrat
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Air molecules are required to propagate sound waves, it doesn't work in a vacuum.
The sound in space is explained pretty well in the game lore.
The sounds that you hear in the cockpit are generated by the ship. Sensors around the ship observe the environment and recreate artifical sound inside the ship. If the game creators took the effort to explain this it means that they wanted a simulation oriented game.
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_Canopy
Imho the game is a sci-fi simulator. Something follows the phyisics rules and something doesn't.
The normal flight mode is simulation. You can always see the ship thrusters to operate to coordinate the ship movement and if you switch off the flight assist you have to do it manually to correct the ship inertia, so the code is simulating the real pysics. The power of thrusters on planets is fictional. They lift you up on a 10g planet at similar speed and the same fuel consumption as on a 0.01g planet.
All about combat, supercruise and hyperjump is fiction of course.
ANY molecules propagate sounds.
The sounds that we heard are transmitted to us via various mediums plus the ingame effects mentioned above
A star is doing fusion. giving the heat and the light.
As to the rocket. i agree it is burning. in a very controlled way. It is bringing its own fuel and oxydizer, then mixing it to provide thrust. (lets call it "fire")
As to the sound. was explained by "SenseiMatty" why the game has sound. as there can be no sound in a vacuum.
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That is literally what fire is.
As a dedicated FA-off pilot I like the sim aspects of the game a lot.
I dislike some of the obvious 'space magic' that is applied to some of those mechanics like the blue zone for added agility etc and some of the limitations they place that give enhanced focus on roll over yaw for example but again these are kind of accepted as they are trying for the dogfighter in space feel but I'd like some more actual sim of 0-g movement mechanics....
The BGS is IMO totally underutilised. If they would only expand upon it's functionality and implementation it would give the npc's of the galaxy more life and also give players more of an ability to do stuff and change stuff in game etc outside of just fighting over stations....
I dislike some of the obvious 'space magic' that is applied to some of those mechanics like the blue zone for added agility etc and some of the limitations they place that give enhanced focus on roll over yaw for example but again these are kind of accepted as they are trying for the dogfighter in space feel but I'd like some more actual sim of 0-g movement mechanics....
The BGS is IMO totally underutilised. If they would only expand upon it's functionality and implementation it would give the npc's of the galaxy more life and also give players more of an ability to do stuff and change stuff in game etc outside of just fighting over stations....
I'm also coming from original Elite, Elite 2: Frontier and First Encounters. ED being a sequel, it has always been a space sim to me.To me ED was always a sim type of game in the first place. It's also a sandbox, RPG, adventure... and a few other genres, but ultimately this was always a simulator for me. FE2, FFE and ED.
Someone seemed surprised in another thread today when I said Elite is a simulator, so I started wondering is it really a sim? It seemed to be heading in that direction at first, with BGS, Powerplay and delayed ship transfer... But then we got nonsensical Telepresence, which is contradicting itself within its own rules (SLF TP range is circa 25 km and yet I can also use TP to my friend's ship who's at Beagle Point... right.). Quite a few other things that I would consider to be also truly simulated - like persistent mission related NPC's etc. - are not.
So I went onto the Elite Dangerous official website today to check if Frontier advertises Elite as a sim and guess what - nowhere on the whole website (I checked all of the pages and searched for the word) FDEV mentions "sim". I also checked PC manual. Nope. Nowhere to be found.
I must say this came as a surprise. I always assumed that Elite was advertised as a simulation type of game, but the only places it refers to it as such are:
1) In relation to planetary landings on Horizons Season description page:
2) In the PC manual:
The main advert blurb on the main page says (and note it still mentions "Seasons"):
I wonder how many other people treat Elite Dangerous as a simulation type of game in the first place... Let me know!
I have to admit that it irritated me a bit that they didn't add more and more space sim content over time, but more and more "gamey" stuff.
I still want more science, more sim, more "real" space faring in this game!
FA-off is actually one of the things that keep me playing! There is simply nothing that compares to that object-in-space feeling it provides!
Are Ace Combat, XWing, Tie Fighter, I-War sims? Only to a limited extent. Action sims, I'd say with varying amount of sim.
A simulator? Nah, it's a newer iteration of the original sandbox game.
I like the newtonian physics, etc, but it's clearly not meant to be a simulator. I mean you can see laser beams in the game, and hear shots and explosions in space (I mean, sure both of those things could be projected inside the cockpit for the pilot's sake, but still.)
But yeah, it's an action game. Whether that action is combat, exploration, trading or whatever it is that miners do, not a simulator.
I like the newtonian physics, etc, but it's clearly not meant to be a simulator. I mean you can see laser beams in the game, and hear shots and explosions in space (I mean, sure both of those things could be projected inside the cockpit for the pilot's sake, but still.)
But yeah, it's an action game. Whether that action is combat, exploration, trading or whatever it is that miners do, not a simulator.
This is not a Sim.
Period.
Unless you want to expand the category to include things like "goat simulator"
There is only one thing that's simulated in this game and that's the stellar forge and the Galaxy.
The moment they took that data and put a graphical models in place it stopped being a simulation since every decision since have been made in favor of game play and fun.
A simulator doesn't do that. ever,
Kerbal space program is more of space Sim than Elite ever has been but that is also a game, and a far more complex one that in elite.
A simulations is to recreate something as closely to a real thing than any consideration of gameplay.
Elite itself is wholly unrealistic in nearly every way conceivable.
Non Newtonian physics, seriously I come back to this: we have drag, in space.
Hyperdrives that not only breaks every known law of physics but also causality.
WW2 style dogfighting, albeit extremely simplified.
It's all there because of fun.
Quite frankly elite is one of the easier and simplest games I play.
Period.
Unless you want to expand the category to include things like "goat simulator"
There is only one thing that's simulated in this game and that's the stellar forge and the Galaxy.
The moment they took that data and put a graphical models in place it stopped being a simulation since every decision since have been made in favor of game play and fun.
A simulator doesn't do that. ever,
Kerbal space program is more of space Sim than Elite ever has been but that is also a game, and a far more complex one that in elite.
A simulations is to recreate something as closely to a real thing than any consideration of gameplay.
Elite itself is wholly unrealistic in nearly every way conceivable.
Non Newtonian physics, seriously I come back to this: we have drag, in space.
Hyperdrives that not only breaks every known law of physics but also causality.
WW2 style dogfighting, albeit extremely simplified.
It's all there because of fun.
Quite frankly elite is one of the easier and simplest games I play.
It's not really a space flight simulator in my opinion. KSP and SE do a much better job of dealing with momentum / inertia, center-of-gravity, realistic vs magical thrusters, damage models, etc. Even taking off on my first space flight in my new Krait Mk III in SE feels like a major big deal. I have an entire checklist I need to go through! On the other hand, ED has a way more advanced flight model than a simple arcade game like Everspace or sandbox like NMS. As somebody else as said, ED is a good science fiction (Star Wars, Babylon 5, etc) "simulator".
Now I do think ED is a good, though unfinished, GALAXY simulator. The Stellar Forge is way ahead of any other space game I play, and it's one of the things that keeps ED installed on my hard drive. How I wish my other space games would at the very least use proper orbit mechanics and planet sizes. Think of all the kids growing up believing that the sun revolves around the earth because they played too much NMS or SE!
ps - I have no problem with people who do think of ED as a simulator. I totally understand.
Now I do think ED is a good, though unfinished, GALAXY simulator. The Stellar Forge is way ahead of any other space game I play, and it's one of the things that keeps ED installed on my hard drive. How I wish my other space games would at the very least use proper orbit mechanics and planet sizes. Think of all the kids growing up believing that the sun revolves around the earth because they played too much NMS or SE!
ps - I have no problem with people who do think of ED as a simulator. I totally understand.
Another term that keeps coming up in this and other threads is "sandbox". I just do not think of ED as a sandbox, though I guess definitions vary on this. Space Engineers is the perfect example of a sandbox, as is Minecraft which inspired it, as my entire game revolves around what I've built (using literal sand / dirt / rock). ED is an open-world game with no plot, sure, but I fail to see it as a sandbox. If it is, then just about every game is a sandbox these days. Take Skyrim, for example, where I can ignore the plot and "build" my character through perks like I "build" my ships in ED and do my own thing. Is Skyrim a sandbox? I've never heard it called as such, and it's one game in a long list of OPEN-WORLD games that let you do what you want, just like ED. 
Another term that keeps coming up in this and other threads is "sandbox". I just do not think of ED as a sandbox, though I guess definitions vary on this. Space Engineers is the perfect example of a sandbox, as is Minecraft which inspired it, as my entire game revolves around what I've built (using literal sand / dirt / rock). ED is an open-world game with no plot, sure, but I fail to see it as a sandbox. If it is, then just about every game is a sandbox these days. Take Skyrim, for example, where I can ignore the plot and "build" my character through perks like I "build" my ships in ED and do my own thing. Is Skyrim a sandbox? I've never heard it called as such, and it's one game in a long list of OPEN-WORLD games that let you do what you want, just like ED.
Yeah, I wouldn't call it a sandbox either. The BGS kinda is but it's pretty abstract. I prefer sandboxes where Í can actually build. FO4 and Skyrim are no sandboxes in my definition either. Open Worlds, yes, but a sandbox is more about having tools that shape the gameworld. Sometimes with unexpected outcomes.
Another term that keeps coming up in this and other threads is "sandbox". I just do not think of ED as a sandbox, though I guess definitions vary on this. Space Engineers is the perfect example of a sandbox, as is Minecraft which inspired it, as my entire game revolves around what I've built (using literal sand / dirt / rock). ED is an open-world game with no plot, sure, but I fail to see it as a sandbox. If it is, then just about every game is a sandbox these days. Take Skyrim, for example, where I can ignore the plot and "build" my character through perks like I "build" my ships in ED and do my own thing. Is Skyrim a sandbox? I've never heard it called as such, and it's one game in a long list of OPEN-WORLD games that let you do what you want, just like ED.
I second that. EVE is a sandbox - player driven economy, resources to fight over and ways to shape the galaxy. ED has taken a first step with mobile stat... carriers.
Is ED a Simulation
&
Is ED a Space Sim
Ae two very different questions
It is a space sim but it isn't a Simulation.
The flight model isn't a simulation of space flight but WWI in space by game design choice.
The rule of cool trumps the rule of simulated realism
The BGS in not a political or economic simulation but a game of buckets that remind me more of tables from the 1st edition AD&D DMG, there is no real supply and demand or production chains, just tables that flex but return to the status quo, and exist only to interact with Players and reaction to their actions rather than exisit and action on their own.
The Stellar Forge as fanatic as it is it is of a static galaxy no more a simulation than the Map of EUIV of the Earth Is a simulation of the Earth.
I don't think it is trying to be a simulation either, rather be a game world to play in.
