ANY molecules propagate sounds.
The sounds that we heard are transmitted to us via various mediums plus the ingame effects mentioned above
Is Elite Dangerous a simulator to you?
- Thread starter rootsrat
- Start date
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.
The very first generation of sims began around the same time as Elite - so you had Aviator, the first 8-bit flight sim i was aware of, from Geoff Crammond, and then for example Revs, the very first racing sim in the modern vein, also from Geoff Crammond..
These were true 'sims' in that the 'game' element was in learning to control the vehicle against the natural physical forces being applied to it as you move through the world - so keeping your airspeed up, your landing speed down etc., or sensing the rubber-squealing limits of lateral traction as you cling to the edges of the 80's Silverstone GP layout..
So when i wasn't playing Elite, i was playing these games, or else if i wanted an arcade blast then i'd load a shoot-em up or scroller, or maybe a puzzle game or text adventure etc..
So the 'sim' category of gaming became well established in the same years we were playing Elite..
..and within that context, classic Elite was a space adventure game with space-sim aspirations, in that it was a fully 3D environment that gave the player 6DoF, and thus 3D spatial awareness of your heading and direction relative to other bodies, of what nearby ships were doing, and in the heat of battle especially this spatial awareness was incredibly immersive, and felt compellingly 'simmy'.
You were also very much aware however that it was taxing every last transistor in your micro, and the framerate could drop to 1 FPS as enemy hulls popped off around you in a tight furball..
And much was plainly 'missing' insofar as its belonging was implied by the core defining game concept (seamless 6DoF with no walls or limits), even though it was clearly not practical to include; so for example if you fly too close to a planet, you just explode without any planetary-specific effects.
And there were just two types of planet - death stars and basket balls. Both did admiral jobs in conveying shape and spin, but they were obviously too small and too coarsely detailed for the game concept that was implied, as opposed to what it was actually feasible to include.
Elite's 2 & 3 blew the lid off those constraints, because Braben arguably only needed a few more kb's to add them, whereas the Amiga had 64x the available memory..
Thus the Frontier: Elite engine simply pulled out all the stops - there were no more limits for all practical intents and purposes, so planets had terrain, craters, land bases, cities, rivers and bridges and sprawling suburbs whether open-air or domed, atmospheres had 'density' and 'viscosity' in terms of drag and hull heating relative to speed, thermodynamics modelling in terms of damage relative to heating - basic implementations, but they were there. All basic 'consistency' checkboxes, covered..
So yes, absolutely: Elite now became the proper sim it was born to be, what it had always wanted, and promised, to fulfill. That realism was no longer 'implied' or 'alluded to' - it was jut all there. No limits, go where you want, do what you want, how you want, when you want.
And it totally worked, in a magical and exhilerating way that no game before or since has been able to touch. Frontier: Elite belongs in the Science Museum. It should have borne a virtual space race that would've lead to a modern Elite that pwned half the internet..
The result was that 'the game' was the simulation. Frontier: Elite basically opened up a portal to another universe, a near-infinite playground of naturalistic, emergent thrills limited only by the imagination..
Note here for example, i've clocked incoming attackers at range, and lead them down to the surface of a nearby planet, choosing a battleground to my advantage:
clickme
Note the yellow "hull temp" bar on the console as the ship first tucks into the tenuous atmosphere, the complete freedom to thrust and rotate in any plane or axis, skimming the surface while panning around.. likewise, the enemy ships getting it wrong and exploding as they enter atmosphere too fast, smoking debris falling back down under gravity..
This, surely, is what Braben meant when describing the game's 'sense of immediacy' - it's fluid, intuitively responsive, a quality that comes into its own in Elite's classic furballs:
clickme
And OMG - gravity! Just that one, beautiful simple element - a constant, uniform acceleration towards bodies as a function of their mass and distance! So simple to implement as to be virtually free, yet a whole transformative world of gaming in its own right!
The art of falling.. falling, with style. Wild elipticals, or expertly-low altitudes with near-zero corrections:
clickme
Aerobraking against a brown dwarf, or slinghotting around a neutron star. How about a figure-8 slingshot between two neutron stars, or between a neutron star and a blue giant? Go find 'em and try it!
It's the promise of that first, classic Elite, finally realised. No fakesies:
clickme
That's sim-gaming, no question, right? It's messing about on the water.. stretching your wings, a Sunday drive, or sitting on a bench in San Andreas watching the world go by - the game is the sim. You can do anything, but don't have to. VR.
For a taste of what a modern Elite might offer, look no further than Pioneer:
clcikme
It's a pity Pioneer lacks Elite's intense fixed-beams CQB - imagine a good furball in those environments!
But in conclusion, ED is, by design, the modern 'anti-elite' - the literal antithesis of everything Elite stands for: you're not allowed full ship control, you're not really managing conservation of momentum or kinetic energy or gravity in a naturalistic way, it's all canned FX and arcade set-pieces for a MMP skinnerbox cash-cow, only faithful to the first-gen game in alluding to and implying the possibilities it can't actually deliver, all of Frontier: Elite's breakthoughs abandonded but for the dissociated backdrop of astronomical realism..
The result, for this old commander, is that when i point an ED ship at a planet and open the throttles, it lurches forwards, groaning, then the thrusters shut down and cease responding to inputs; the planet should immediately start growing to fill the screen, yet nothing happens and i'm just stuck there unable to move..
So you gotta enable the no-clipping mo- i mean, "warp drive", with a transition, with a countdown, with a loading frenzy and a change in environment and then more of these interrupting transitions removing more and more freedom of movement - orbital cruise, glide mode, critical attack angle - all of which belong in scare quotes of course - the gameplay limitations are slave to its inner gears, springs and pulleys and they're simply incapable of rendering the 'Elite' gaming environment, so can only paint allusions and homages to it.
I see ED fans as naive, not realising they could actually be doing all this stuff for real, instead of the pretense and artifice of realism that is all ED can fulfill.
I'll be generous, and say that ED is faithful to classic Elite only if ED2 is basically Frontier: Elite 4, finally making good on the promise of its foreunner. It remains a complete affront to the Frontier: Elite ethos though - which found the game in the simulation, rather than just tacking disparate game elements onto a spacey backdrop, selling out the brand & concept for a revenue stream..
TL;DR - too damn right Elite's a sim. The mother all.
But ED ain't Elite..
Pioneer is, plainly, more Elite-ish than ED, yet it too falls short of that marque, with no fixed-beam CQB. But it's still a sim, in the Elite tradition.
ED is a game about that sim, referencing it in many ways, yet whilst replicating almost nothing of its actual gameplay; the allure is there, but possibilites never realised have only so much enduring appeal.. and going through the motions of pretense in ED when i could be playing the real deal with slightly older graphics is no compromise..
Edited as this ghastly forum s/w breaks all your yt links
These were true 'sims' in that the 'game' element was in learning to control the vehicle against the natural physical forces being applied to it as you move through the world - so keeping your airspeed up, your landing speed down etc., or sensing the rubber-squealing limits of lateral traction as you cling to the edges of the 80's Silverstone GP layout..
So when i wasn't playing Elite, i was playing these games, or else if i wanted an arcade blast then i'd load a shoot-em up or scroller, or maybe a puzzle game or text adventure etc..
So the 'sim' category of gaming became well established in the same years we were playing Elite..
..and within that context, classic Elite was a space adventure game with space-sim aspirations, in that it was a fully 3D environment that gave the player 6DoF, and thus 3D spatial awareness of your heading and direction relative to other bodies, of what nearby ships were doing, and in the heat of battle especially this spatial awareness was incredibly immersive, and felt compellingly 'simmy'.
You were also very much aware however that it was taxing every last transistor in your micro, and the framerate could drop to 1 FPS as enemy hulls popped off around you in a tight furball..
And much was plainly 'missing' insofar as its belonging was implied by the core defining game concept (seamless 6DoF with no walls or limits), even though it was clearly not practical to include; so for example if you fly too close to a planet, you just explode without any planetary-specific effects.
And there were just two types of planet - death stars and basket balls. Both did admiral jobs in conveying shape and spin, but they were obviously too small and too coarsely detailed for the game concept that was implied, as opposed to what it was actually feasible to include.
Elite's 2 & 3 blew the lid off those constraints, because Braben arguably only needed a few more kb's to add them, whereas the Amiga had 64x the available memory..
Thus the Frontier: Elite engine simply pulled out all the stops - there were no more limits for all practical intents and purposes, so planets had terrain, craters, land bases, cities, rivers and bridges and sprawling suburbs whether open-air or domed, atmospheres had 'density' and 'viscosity' in terms of drag and hull heating relative to speed, thermodynamics modelling in terms of damage relative to heating - basic implementations, but they were there. All basic 'consistency' checkboxes, covered..
So yes, absolutely: Elite now became the proper sim it was born to be, what it had always wanted, and promised, to fulfill. That realism was no longer 'implied' or 'alluded to' - it was jut all there. No limits, go where you want, do what you want, how you want, when you want.
And it totally worked, in a magical and exhilerating way that no game before or since has been able to touch. Frontier: Elite belongs in the Science Museum. It should have borne a virtual space race that would've lead to a modern Elite that pwned half the internet..
The result was that 'the game' was the simulation. Frontier: Elite basically opened up a portal to another universe, a near-infinite playground of naturalistic, emergent thrills limited only by the imagination..
Note here for example, i've clocked incoming attackers at range, and lead them down to the surface of a nearby planet, choosing a battleground to my advantage:
clickme
Note the yellow "hull temp" bar on the console as the ship first tucks into the tenuous atmosphere, the complete freedom to thrust and rotate in any plane or axis, skimming the surface while panning around.. likewise, the enemy ships getting it wrong and exploding as they enter atmosphere too fast, smoking debris falling back down under gravity..
This, surely, is what Braben meant when describing the game's 'sense of immediacy' - it's fluid, intuitively responsive, a quality that comes into its own in Elite's classic furballs:
clickme
And OMG - gravity! Just that one, beautiful simple element - a constant, uniform acceleration towards bodies as a function of their mass and distance! So simple to implement as to be virtually free, yet a whole transformative world of gaming in its own right!
The art of falling.. falling, with style. Wild elipticals, or expertly-low altitudes with near-zero corrections:
clickme
Aerobraking against a brown dwarf, or slinghotting around a neutron star. How about a figure-8 slingshot between two neutron stars, or between a neutron star and a blue giant? Go find 'em and try it!
It's the promise of that first, classic Elite, finally realised. No fakesies:
clickme
That's sim-gaming, no question, right? It's messing about on the water.. stretching your wings, a Sunday drive, or sitting on a bench in San Andreas watching the world go by - the game is the sim. You can do anything, but don't have to. VR.
For a taste of what a modern Elite might offer, look no further than Pioneer:
clcikme
It's a pity Pioneer lacks Elite's intense fixed-beams CQB - imagine a good furball in those environments!
But in conclusion, ED is, by design, the modern 'anti-elite' - the literal antithesis of everything Elite stands for: you're not allowed full ship control, you're not really managing conservation of momentum or kinetic energy or gravity in a naturalistic way, it's all canned FX and arcade set-pieces for a MMP skinnerbox cash-cow, only faithful to the first-gen game in alluding to and implying the possibilities it can't actually deliver, all of Frontier: Elite's breakthoughs abandonded but for the dissociated backdrop of astronomical realism..
The result, for this old commander, is that when i point an ED ship at a planet and open the throttles, it lurches forwards, groaning, then the thrusters shut down and cease responding to inputs; the planet should immediately start growing to fill the screen, yet nothing happens and i'm just stuck there unable to move..
So you gotta enable the no-clipping mo- i mean, "warp drive", with a transition, with a countdown, with a loading frenzy and a change in environment and then more of these interrupting transitions removing more and more freedom of movement - orbital cruise, glide mode, critical attack angle - all of which belong in scare quotes of course - the gameplay limitations are slave to its inner gears, springs and pulleys and they're simply incapable of rendering the 'Elite' gaming environment, so can only paint allusions and homages to it.
I see ED fans as naive, not realising they could actually be doing all this stuff for real, instead of the pretense and artifice of realism that is all ED can fulfill.
I'll be generous, and say that ED is faithful to classic Elite only if ED2 is basically Frontier: Elite 4, finally making good on the promise of its foreunner. It remains a complete affront to the Frontier: Elite ethos though - which found the game in the simulation, rather than just tacking disparate game elements onto a spacey backdrop, selling out the brand & concept for a revenue stream..
TL;DR - too damn right Elite's a sim. The mother all.
But ED ain't Elite..
Pioneer is, plainly, more Elite-ish than ED, yet it too falls short of that marque, with no fixed-beam CQB. But it's still a sim, in the Elite tradition.
ED is a game about that sim, referencing it in many ways, yet whilst replicating almost nothing of its actual gameplay; the allure is there, but possibilites never realised have only so much enduring appeal.. and going through the motions of pretense in ED when i could be playing the real deal with slightly older graphics is no compromise..
Edited as this ghastly forum s/w breaks all your yt links
Last edited:
Every game “simulates” something, but that doesn’t make it a sim. A game that has realistically simulated gravity on players and objects isn’t a gravity simulator. It really depends on the focus of the game.
Let’s take MS flight simulator. It is literally focused on flying an airplane and allows incredibly detailed replication of the workings of an airplane. Elite dangerous may have accurately simulated elements, but flying spaceships has never felt like an actual “simulation”of the true experience.
Not only does flying a spaceship feel like playing a game, it isn’t the only aspect of the game that doesn’t feel like a simulator. Mining asteroids, hauling passengers, combat, the economy, none of this feels like a computer generated approximation of what experiencing the real thing would be like.
In every possible way, I think ED is a game that has a nicely simulated playing environment.
Let’s take MS flight simulator. It is literally focused on flying an airplane and allows incredibly detailed replication of the workings of an airplane. Elite dangerous may have accurately simulated elements, but flying spaceships has never felt like an actual “simulation”of the true experience.
Not only does flying a spaceship feel like playing a game, it isn’t the only aspect of the game that doesn’t feel like a simulator. Mining asteroids, hauling passengers, combat, the economy, none of this feels like a computer generated approximation of what experiencing the real thing would be like.
In every possible way, I think ED is a game that has a nicely simulated playing environment.