Option for switching to Imperial units

Grinnygog

Grinnygog
My suggestion is to have a toggle in the game options to allow players to switch units to Imperial instead of Metric.
I personally would prefer to see the shorter distances displayed in Miles, Yards and/or Feet instead of Km and Metres. Obviously this wouldn't apply to interstellar/interplanetary distances where the Light Year and Light Second are more appropriate, but certainly on final approach where the distance is displayed as something more meaningful, as is already the case with Metres and Km.
Don't know if displaying weight/mass in Imperial Units would be possible or even necessary, but definitely distances.
Surely it wouldn't take too much development to include such an option, as it's just a simple conversion where 1.6 Km = 1 Mile etc. for visually displayed distances. However, I don't know how many extra audio files would have to be recorded for the instances where space traffic control announces things like "100 metres from touchdown" and have Yards or Feet announced instead, but it must be doable and obviously for this it wouldn't be just a straight conversion, but rather the option would switch off announcements in metric and switch on Imperial instead, so that they are heard in hundreds of yards or feet, because 100 metres, for example, is 109.361 yards or 328.084 feet.
Some would say that such a suggestion is completely unnecessary and I agree, but for old Imperial die-hards like me it would mean such a lot and make the game more user-friendly, as I was born in an era before the UK switched to metric as standard and before decimal currency was introduced. There are still a lot of us about!
 
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CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
If it took almost no development time at all, I'd have no issues with there being an option to change it. I personally use metric though.

But then, is there a Imperial unit bigger than a mile? (I have no idea!), if not, displaying the equivalent of a Mm might be messy.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
 

varonica

varonica
CMDR_Cosmicspacehead said:
If it took almost no development time at all, I'd have no issues with there being an option to change it. I personally use metric though.

But then, is there a Imperial unit bigger than a mile? (I have no idea!), if not, displaying the equivalent of a Mm might be messy.

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
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No no, megayard, seems simple enough for me........no really, I'm having a laugh. :D

The point with using metric is the 10 base unit, a megayard actually doesn't translate into anything useful, one million yards, what does that equal? A megametre = 1 million metres, or 1,000 kilometres. a megayard = 1 million yards, or 568.181818 miles, the imperial units don't work well in a 10 base system which is the easiest for people to visualise because we have, like, ten fingers.

Of course there is an imperial unit longer than a mile, it's the league, three miles, so a megayard would be 189.393939333 Leagues. You see none of them actually convert into anything sensible without a calculator, which you would need every time you wanted to convert megayards to miles, leagues to feet etc. Which I guess is why most countries don't use the imperial system anymore.

I'm not opposed if it's desired enough and easy enough to do, I just don't see any point.
 

Rustnsawdust

R
Since we're piloting ships, many of us for various navies, nautical miles should be a thing. And don't forget fathoms. We should definitely have fathoms.
 

Grinnygog

Grinnygog
Let's not forget, though, that the definition of a metre is meaningless unless you're on Earth or on a planet exactly the same size as Earth. The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole (according to Wikipedia). So perhaps one could argue that neither metric or imperial should be used as they only relate to Earth and mankind? Perhaps we should ditch the light-year also if we're being picky, because it is based on a measurement of time based on Earth's rotation around the Sun and the light-second on Earth's rotation about its axis? Why are there 360 degrees in a full circle and why are there 12 months in a year and not ten if we're so bothered about using base 10? The week is base 7! So really we're already using arbitrary measurements, so why not have an option to switch to Imperial? We can still use tenths of a mile, like we do on the odometer in your car (if it's set to miles). Ask me what my height is in metres and I wouldn't have a clue, but it's 5ft 8in in Imperial. So I think my original suggestion is still valid. It wouldn't be forcing anyone to use Imperial, just giving them the choice. What's so bad about choice?
I like the suggestion of nautical miles and fathoms.
 

z993126

z993126
I'd like to see the ability to display distances as AUs as in the earlier games, as when you read articles about Space Things distances are usually given as such and it would provide a comparison-base without having to Google the conversion.
 

AJW

AJW
Should probably include an option for Thargoid units too. Quite simple: egg-length, egg-mass and egg-gestation-period.
 

Rustnsawdust

R
VerticalBlank said:
Yeah sure, great idea. Oh wait, that's how NASA crashed their probe into Mars.

Real science is done in SI units. Deal with it.
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Well, the Mars probe didn't crash because of imperial units, but because of the failure to convert. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon in metric units.

But we should give Biblical units a try... how big is an Anaconda in cubits?
 

varonica

varonica
Grinnygog said:
Let's not forget, though, that the definition of a metre is meaningless unless you're on Earth or on a planet exactly the same size as Earth. The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole (according to Wikipedia). So perhaps one could argue that neither metric or imperial should be used as they only relate to Earth and mankind? Perhaps we should ditch the light-year also if we're being picky, because it is based on a measurement of time based on Earth's rotation around the Sun and the light-second on Earth's rotation about its axis? Why are there 360 degrees in a full circle and why are there 12 months in a year and not ten if we're so bothered about using base 10? The week is base 7! So really we're already using arbitrary measurements, so why not have an option to switch to Imperial? We can still use tenths of a mile, like we do on the odometer in your car (if it's set to miles). Ask me what my height is in metres and I wouldn't have a clue, but it's 5ft 8in in Imperial. So I think my original suggestion is still valid. It wouldn't be forcing anyone to use Imperial, just giving them the choice. What's so bad about choice?
I like the suggestion of nautical miles and fathoms.
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It has since been redefined;

the International Prototype Metre remained the standard until 1960, when the eleventh CGPM defined the metre in the new International System of Units (SI) as equal to 1 650 763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.[21]
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And then later again;

To further reduce uncertainty, the 17th CGPM in 1983 replaced the definition of the metre with its current definition, thus fixing the length of the metre in terms of the second and the speed of light:[2]

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second.
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So we have set the groundwork for the metre to be usable anywhere in the universe, whereas foot is actually defined in various forms as a fraction of the length of a meter;

The United States survey foot is defined as exactly  [SIZE=2]1200[/SIZE]⁄[SUB]3937[/SUB] meters, approximately 6999304800609601000♠0.304800609601 m
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The value of the United Kingdom primary standard of the yard was determined in terms of the meter by the National Physical Laboratory in 1964 as 0.9143969 m,[19] implying a pre-1959 foot in the UK of approximately 0.304798966667 m
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The international yard and pound agreement of July 1959 defined the length of the international yard in the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations as exactly 0.9144 meters. Consequently, the international foot is defined to be equal to exactly 0.3048 meters. This was 2 ppm shorter than the previous U.S. definition and 1.7 ppm longer than the previous British definition
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The Indian survey foot is defined as exactly 0.3047996 m,[23] presumably derived from a measurement of the previous Indian standard of the yard. The current National Topographic Database of the Survey of India is based on the metric WGS-84 datum,[24] which is also used by the Global Positioning System.
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So all over the world imperial measures are actually defined by their relationship to the length of the metre, change the length of the metre and everything goes to hell, change the length of the foot and who really cares?:D

As I said I'm not fussed, but since we already use metric universally (even countries that use imperial are actually based on metric measures to maintain consistency) it would make sense that when we go into space they would just use metric directly instead of converting.
 
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coca_fr

coca_fr
Grinnygog you must be american right ?

What an odd country, first power with outdated technology (110Volt...), non metric system (miles was created 2,000 years ago at the age of the Roman Empire...) and it's citizens still doesn't want to change...

Defenetly a no no.

USA is one of the three only countries that didn't adopt metric system yet !
For example France is using metric system for almost about 200 years... i hope in 1,000 years USA will have time to switch a metric system...
 
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Riverside

Riverside
Grinnygog said:
My suggestion is to have a toggle in the game options to allow players to switch units to Imperial instead of Metric.
I personally would prefer to see the shorter distances displayed in Miles, Yards and/or Feet instead of Km and Metres. Obviously this wouldn't apply to interstellar/interplanetary distances where the Light Year and Light Second are more appropriate, but certainly on final approach where the distance is displayed as something more meaningful, as is already the case with Metres and Km.
Don't know if displaying weight/mass in Imperial Units would be possible or even necessary, but definitely distances.
Surely it wouldn't take too much development to include such an option, as it's just a simple conversion where 1.6 Km = 1 Mile etc. for visually displayed distances. However, I don't know how many extra audio files would have to be recorded for the instances where space traffic control announces things like "100 metres from touchdown" and have Yards or Feet announced instead, but it must be doable and obviously for this it wouldn't be just a straight conversion, but rather the option would switch off announcements in metric and switch on Imperial instead, so that they are heard in hundreds of yards or feet, because 100 metres, for example, is 109.361 yards or 328.084 feet.
Some would say that such a suggestion is completely unnecessary and I agree, but for old Imperial die-hards like me it would mean such a lot and make the game more user-friendly, as I was born in an era before the UK switched to metric as standard and before decimal currency was introduced. There are still a lot of us about!
Click to expand...

It is something you get used to. It's a quirk of the game that I quite like, and sometimes wish I had a m/s reading on my car's speedo ;)

IIRC 10m/s = 26mph or thereabouts.
 

Konnivar

Konnivar
coca_fr said:
Grinnygog you must be american right ?

What an odd country, first power with outdated technology (110Volt...), non metric system (miles was created 2,000 years ago at the age of the Roman Empire...) and it's citizens still doesn't want to change...

Defenetly a no no.

USA is one of the three only countries that didn't adopt metric system yet !
For example France is using metric system for almost about 200 years... i hope in 1,000 years USA will have time to switch a metric system...
Click to expand...


It isn't so much that we don't want to change as it is that we can't at least not anymore. Everything made in the USA now is based on the imperial system and to switch to metric now would be more trouble than simply doing the conversions to metric. That being said I would hope that 1000 years in the future the Imperial system wouldn't still be around along with all those other weird measurements like knots and nautical miles.
 

ByteMe

B
Konnivar said:
It isn't so much that we don't want to change as it is that we can't at least not anymore. Everything made in the USA now is based on the imperial system and to switch to metric now would be more trouble than simply doing the conversions to metric. That being said I would hope that 1000 years in the future the Imperial system wouldn't still be around along with all those other weird measurements like knots and nautical miles.
Click to expand...

That's what a lot of country's thought before they changed over.
 

C4R1TON

C4R1TON
Byte Me said:
That's what a lot of country's thought before they changed over.
Click to expand...
Well we tried to switch once and it didn't go well. So, yea, it's too late to worry about it anymore. Anyway, we've got enough on our plate with our government to worry about right now :O lol
 
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