Question re:Units of Measurement (Distance) in Elite - Why?

[JesusRocks1988]

Call it idle curiosity, call it shower thoughts, call it whatever, but I just cannot get the question out of my head now...

Okay, we know that relatively small lengths and distances in this game are measured metres and kilometres, so far so good - we use those units for ship sizes, for ship to ship engagements in normal space, for docking, cargo scooping etc... and that makes perfect sense.

However my question arises when we go beyond the kilometre. For relatively short distances from 1000km up to about 30,000km we use the megametre (Mm). I don't know about you, but when I picked up this game, it was the very first time I had ever heard of the megametre, and it remains the only time I've ever seen it used as a normal unit of distance - most other places just continue to use kilometre, even if it racks up into entirely absurd strings of numbers. I'm not complaining here, I like the megametre - as it neatly does its job for the kilometre as the kilometre does for the metre, as the metre does for the centimetre and so on... But considering that most other places and games just ignore the megametre for common parlance (even Star Citizen looks like it just continues using the kilometre over the 1k mark and even into the territory occupied by light-seconds), I'd like to know why Frontier decided to use it?

Same goes for the higher units of distance, I like them, I think they're good choices, but again I would like to know the reasoning behind their choice, as when you go higher you've got a few acceptable variants to choose from, such as...

The light-second. Why? Anything over 30Mm is rendered as a fraction of a light-second, and again this game is the first time I've ever seen light-second used as a unit of distance. Again as well, it's brilliant, but when we get into the hundreds or thousands of light-seconds, what was the reasoning behind choosing to continue using this unit over, say, the light-minute, or the astronomical unit (AU), or the light-hour?

I can kind of understand not using AU for distances in Elite, as that's the most Earth-centric interplanetary unit of distance you can get, and so it wouldn't make sense for planets in Alioth or Achenar to use the distance between the Earth and Sol.

However, I do find it a little odd that we go from using light-seconds all the way from about 0.9ls to somewhere around 3,000,000ls before abruptly switching to fractions of a light-year. Why not use the light-minute or light-hour for those distances?

Going even higher, the whole thing starts to make sense again; we simply use the light-year for interstellar distances, and I can understand why not to use the parsec. Because pfffft no one uses the parsec, especially if you're not going to use the AU.

Anyway, enough of my idle ramblings. If one of the FD staff members who were around at the time these decisions were made would have mercy on me and be able to chip in with an answer, I would be most appreciative.

 

[Dommarraa]

3 sig figures is the preferred display

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Since your speed is displayed in 'c' at most supercruise speeds, matching the distance to those units makes sense. It does now flip to kLs on at least some displays once you get over 1000 - hopefully they'll roll that out to the rest over time.

Similarly with the supercruise drop speed and distance either being 1Mm/s and 1Mm or a small multiple of these, not having three extra zeros all over the display makes it quicker to read them at the crucial bit of approach.

 

[Braandlin]

Measurements like the megametre do exist and are used in various walks of life such as astronomy, physics etc.

You'll find that the most common method of displaying large or small numbers is Standard Form. That would be

1.2 x 10^9
3.67 x 10^5
2.5 x 10^-6

This is an excellent way of looking at and comparing numbers with large variation because all you need to do is compare the indices and you will quickly understand the scale of the number. I suspect that FDev chose not to use standard form because there would be a lot of players that simply didn't understand (Standard form is pretty universal in any technical walk of life but not in general public usage).

I therefore suspect that FDev then turned to a set of units that do exist but, allow relatively easy comprehension but also are a little different to add flavour.

MegaMetre (1.0 x 10^6 metres) neatly fills the gap between Km and first order decimals of c. It means that displays can neatly show large distances in around 3 significant figures and be more easily digestible than say continuing to use kilometres or even metres. One of the issues would be that at velocities that are multiple megametres per second, displaying the velocity in metres would mean a string of 9 digits of which only the first 1 or two are really relevant, yet the digits would be changing wildly and be distracting.

I'd bet that they also had a debate about whether they should use Astronomical Units (AU) for the measurement of large distances. The AU is a very common measure in astronomy, one AU represents the average orbital radius of the earth around the sun and is approximately 93 million miles (150 million kilometres, or 150 thousand Megametres). I think they were probably right to ignore it as again familiarity would be an issue and it doesn't really hep fill a gap between say km and light second.

When it comes to the use of light years and light seconds there is a different issue. Metres -> Kilometres -> Megametres is a simple geometric progression (multiples of 1000). Seconds -> Minutes -> Hours -> Days -> Weeks -> Months -> Years is far more irregular (60 -> 60 -> 24 -> 7 -> some number between 28 and 31 depending on unrelated factors -> 12). The purpose of units with increasing scale is to enable quick observation and comprehension. It would not be possible to easily comprehend if say 12,300 Light seconds is bigger or smaller than 1 light day. for example. Remember of course that this time measurement system has zero meaning when you are not on earth... to humans not born on earth and not exposed to the cultural norms of 7 day weeks and 12 month years would have near zero comprehension of the time measurements we take as ubiquitous.

Personally I think the use of light years had to be included as that is the commonly understood measure for large distances in space. It's accessible to most. Light seconds then work well as a way of dealing with fractions of light years without getting into the whole minute hour day confusion. I think it would help if light seconds were written in standard form rather than long form, that would help speedy comprehension.

Interestingly we have become accustomed to the Ls in the game - we all kind of know that 100Ls from arrival point to station is pretty close, but that 300,000 Ls is a hell of a trip in supercruise. Yet many don't have a comprehension about how far that is in units we use daily.

Ultimately I think the units system works well (other than the simplifications of Mass and Volume in ship design and cargo allocations discussed in another thread). FDev made some arbitrary decisions I should imagine were based on a mix of ease of comprehension and 'tone' to suit a space game.

I think we should at least be grateful they didn't consider imperial units....!

STATION : "Gutamaya Bravo Romeo Alpha this is Imperial flight control please decelerate to 194 knots and request docking within the 37.28 furlong limit. please keep your weapons retracted within the 5468 yard exclusion zone."

PLAYER : "w t f !"



EDIT : then again of course they could have used Parsecs to represent time. That has always worked well....

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I always liked it in I-War when your distance was simply in Km, and zooming towards it saw your km count down really fast. It looked cool IMHO and added to the sense of scale.

Seeing 2,941,696km rapidly counting down (or up) is far more interesting than 10ls...

Most of us can relate far better to 1km than Ls.

 

[WhoCares]

I like how for some SRV pro's (or bro's, who knows; one doesn't exclude the other either, I guess) the SRV distance travels is already listed in ls. Seen it first in a screenshot from Aliltnil (or close enough), where he has travelled >0.1ls total in an SRV; that's just ~30000km - not even once around the equator, lazy ba$tard...

 

[Han_Zen]

I would have preferred AU to ls.

Orbital distances are listed in AU in the system information. It's a bit odd to have a different unit in the GUI.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Be gratefull that things are not measured in the "natural" unit system* XD

More seriously, light seconds are great, tie nicely to the MKS system, unlike AU's and parsecs which have always felt dirty and suspicious to me. Those darn astronomers

*h_bar = c = kb = 1 => everything is in (GeV)^x

 

[Shiro Akai]

The light-second. Why?

Because Ls requires less space in HUD to display millions and billions of km. Especially when some smart designer "forget" to add separator. It's easier to count 278 Ls than 8340000 km. Or is it 83400000? See - on the first glance it's almost the same and you must manually count the zeros to determine actual distance.

Overall it goes about magnitude. Km till it reaches 0.1 Ls. Then til it reaches 0.1 LY. Adding Lh in between would add another computation.

Why not use the light-minute or light-hour for those distances?

Fast question - which is closer:
a). 4,63 Lh
b). 278 Ls

For the sake of comparison and ease of computation, the less magnitudes to play with, the better.

Spoiler

answer is: both are equal.

And adding Lh doesn't bring any change - it's still 3 digit value as 278 Ls but then it would be translated into Ls when overall value would drop under certain threshold. In the end you'll have several different countdowns:
- Lh going down till it reaches Lm
- Lm going down till it reaches Ls
- Ls going down till it reaches km.

Plus, not to mention we generally don't travel distances that require measures in Lm and Lh...
Except Hutton but it's a league on its own.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Plus, not to mention we generally don't travel distances that require measures in Lm and Lh...
Except Hutton but it's a league on its own.

Well, anything over 480ls could conceivably be measured in light minutes. Many of us do regularly travel over 100,000ls to locations - even 100,000ls is 1666lm, which could be rendered as 27lh.

 

[Braandlin]

I think we might have to consider that in a galaxy in which we have spread so far from Sol we might question whether the measurement of time would have changed...

From a practical point of view, all of our current measures of time are either based on the periodicity of earth in our current solar system (year, day) our cultural influences (week, month) or a combination of both (hour, minute, second). These measurements of time are pretty meaningless anywhere that isn't Earth.

From a cultural point of view we can imagine the human race clinging to tradition and maintaining the existing units even though they have little or no meaning in the current system they are in. You might have dual measures of a 'local day' and an 'Earth day'. But over time (pun intended) and as we spread that hold on defining time by an arbitrary system few can relate too would become tenuous at best.

From a political point of view we can imagine the Empire wanting to divorce itself from the "Units of the Evil Federation" and creating it's own unit which would obviously be shinier and there would be more of them allowing longer for you to bask. I'd recommend some multiple of Planck time but I suspect they'd pick something like the time it takes for Aisling to accept a marriage proposal.


Mind you of course all of this is irrelevant as across the great vastnesses of the galaxy and its gravitational effects we have a very variable concept of time. 1s here is not 1s there (for simplicities sake). It might be noon on Robigo but its actually a week next Tuesday on LHS20 and accelerating.

So perhaps we should just consider time to be a variable and stop worrying about it. I therefore propose the intergalactic standards of velocity as "Dead still", "barely moving", "Puttering about", "Wandering", "Getting a Hurry on", "Not hanging about", "Shifting" and "Making like you saw a Thargoid with it's probe deployed".

This would immediately negate the need for any pesky numbers and life would be so much easier.

...

PLAYER "So when do you need this boom data delivered by?"

STATION "it needs to be there by a quarter past April."

PLAYER "Blimey but that's almost thirteen turnips away."

STATION" Yes, so you'd better stop puttering about and make like you saw a thargoid with its probe out."


Simple.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

I think we might have to consider that in a galaxy in which we have spread so far from Sol we might question whether the measurement of time would have changed...

From a practical point of view, all of our current measures of time are either based on the periodicity of earth in our current solar system (year, day) our cultural influences (week, month) or a combination of both (hour, minute, second). These measurements of time are pretty meaningless anywhere that isn't Earth.

From a cultural point of view we can imagine the human race clinging to tradition and maintaining the existing units even though they have little or no meaning in the current system they are in. You might have dual measures of a 'local day' and an 'Earth day'. But over time (pun intended) and as we spread that hold on defining time by an arbitrary system few can relate too would become tenuous at best.

From a political point of view we can imagine the Empire wanting to divorce itself from the "Units of the Evil Federation" and creating it's own unit which would obviously be shinier and there would be more of them allowing longer for you to bask. I'd recommend some multiple of Planck time but I suspect they'd pick something like the time it takes for Aisling to accept a marriage proposal.


Mind you of course all of this is irrelevant as across the great vastnesses of the galaxy and its gravitational effects we have a very variable concept of time. 1s here is not 1s there (for simplicities sake). It might be noon on Robigo but its actually a week next Tuesday on LHS20 and accelerating.

So perhaps we should just consider time to be a variable and stop worrying about it. I therefore propose the intergalactic standards of velocity as "Dead still", "barely moving", "Puttering about", "Wandering", "Getting a Hurry on", "Not hanging about", "Shifting" and "Making like you saw a Thargoid with it's probe deployed".

This would immediately negate the need for any pesky numbers and life would be so much easier.

...

PLAYER "So when do you need this boom data delivered by?"

STATION "it needs to be there by a quarter past April."

PLAYER "Blimey but that's almost thirteen turnips away."

STATION" Yes, so you'd better stop puttering about and make like you saw a thargoid with its probe out."


Simple.

The thing is, thankfully a Second does have a non Earth-centric definition which we can then scale up to minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. The higher units of time may have started as Earth-centric units (year as a full rotation around Sol, and then months as fractions of a year; and days as rotations of the Earth around its own axis, with a week being 7 rotations etc...) however the actual definition of the Second is... wait, let me look it up again...

a sixtieth of a minute of time, which as the SI unit of time is defined in terms of the natural periodicity of the radiation of a caesium-133 atom

So a second can be scaled up to a minute, to an hour, to a day and so on. These were presumably done to give us a more accurate measure than continuing to rely on something that changes over time like the rotation and orbit of the Earth (and similarly for the Kilogram where it was a physical metal weight, but is now described by the mass of x-amount of whatever-atom).

So I could well see our current time measurements being used across the galaxy in the future.

 

[Braandlin]

The thing is, thankfully a Second does have a non Earth-centric definition which we can then scale up to minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. The higher units of time may have started as Earth-centric units (year as a full rotation around Sol, and then months as fractions of a year; and days as rotations of the Earth around its own axis, with a week being 7 rotations etc...) however the actual definition of the Second is... wait, let me look it up again...



So a second can be scaled up to a minute, to an hour, to a day and so on. These were presumably done to give us a more accurate measure than continuing to rely on something that changes over time like the rotation and orbit of the Earth (and similarly for the Kilogram where it was a physical metal weight, but is now described by the mass of x-amount of whatever-atom).

So I could well see our current time measurements being used across the galaxy in the future.

True: And a great come back.

That definition of second has only been with us since 1967. Its defined as {more looking up} ... "9,192,631,770 times the period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom"

So that 9,192,631,770 number is a constant that has been derived to give an exact mapping of the frequency of radiation to a second. It remains the case that we have the second because it is the length of solar day divided by 24 then 60 then 60 again ... If we had defined an hour as 1/10th of a day and a inute as 1/100th of an hour and a second as 1/100th of a minute (or any other arbitrary list of constants) then we would have a very different constant to apply to the cessium atom to get what we called "one second"

I'd like to think that in the fullness of time human development would devise a system suitable that allowed the measurement and communication of time effectively across the galaxy (including taking into account the effects of relativity).

However I suspect any attempt to change such a fundamental measurement system will be seen by many as an attempt of the state to steal time from them and shorten their lives! (I'm looking at you flat-earthers, astrologers and homeopaths.}

 

[constvoid]

EDIT : then again of course they could have used Parsecs to represent time. That has always worked well....

[big grin] But only if your name happens to be Solo

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The higher units of time may have started as Earth-centric units (year as a full rotation around Sol, and then months as fractions of a year; and days as rotations of the Earth around its own axis, with a week being 7 rotations etc...) however the actual definition of the Second is... wait, let me look it up again...

The month is based on the orbital period of the moon. (And the week probably started as a quarter-month)

There have been various solutions in different culture's calendars to the problem of the year not being a whole number of months - with the Julian/Gregorian giving the year primacy but many others giving the month primacy.

On New Africa in Epsilon Indi, of course, they therefore have to deal with the local month being considerably shorter than the local day, and their calendars are incomprehensible to visitors.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

True: And a great come back.

That definition of second has only been with us since 1967. Its defined as {more looking up} ... "9,192,631,770 times the period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom"

So that 9,192,631,770 number is a constant that has been derived to give an exact mapping of the frequency of radiation to a second. It remains the case that we have the second because it is the length of solar day divided by 24 then 60 then 60 again ... If we had defined an hour as 1/10th of a day and a inute as 1/100th of an hour and a second as 1/100th of a minute (or any other arbitrary list of constants) then we would have a very different constant to apply to the cessium atom to get what we called "one second"

I'd like to think that in the fullness of time human development would devise a system suitable that allowed the measurement and communication of time effectively across the galaxy (including taking into account the effects of relativity).

However I suspect any attempt to change such a fundamental measurement system will be seen by many as an attempt of the state to steal time from them and shorten their lives! (I'm looking at you flat-earthers, astrologers and homeopaths.}

Still, we could always use Local Galactic Year [ugh]

"How old are you?"
"I'm 0.000011999999999999999 Galactic Years"
"Uhhhhhhh?"

The month is based on the orbital period of the moon. (And the week probably started as a quarter-month)

There have been various solutions in different culture's calendars to the problem of the year not being a whole number of months - with the Julian/Gregorian giving the year primacy but many others giving the month primacy.

On New Africa in Epsilon Indi, of course, they therefore have to deal with the local month being considerably shorter than the local day, and their calendars are incomprehensible to visitors.

I bless the tides on New Africaaaaaaaaa

 

[RamirezKurita]

While the changing between light seconds and metres has never bothered me, I can see why other people might be bothered by it as there's little reason beside the coolness factor to shift between them. It would also require further calculations and complexity for our ship's displays, as our ships' sensors and computers will either work entirely in metres or light-units.

Maybe something like this would be best implemented as a customisable option for our ships' interfaces, giving us the choice between the current hybrid system, an entirely metre based system (including gigametres, terametres and petametres), astronomical units or an entirely light-based one using light years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. This could be expanded further for the truly enterprising, offering different customisation for realspace, supercruise and hyperjump ranges all in a variety of units of our choice. I guess the truly masochistic might even want realspace distances measured in yards, rods, chains, furlongs, miles and leagues.

 

[Braandlin]

The month is based on the orbital period of the moon. (And the week probably started as a quarter-month)

There have been various solutions in different culture's calendars to the problem of the year not being a whole number of months - with the Julian/Gregorian giving the year primacy but many others giving the month primacy.

On New Africa in Epsilon Indi, of course, they therefore have to deal with the local month being considerably shorter than the local day, and their calendars are incomprehensible to visitors.

True the lunar month is not a divisor of the earth year. And many calendars have tried to cram them together resulting in weird extra days, variable length months and other anomalies.

But hey at least we all agree that dates are written in ascending order of significance right... Day Month Year... only a complete fool would think Month Day Year would make sense. right?


o7

 

[JesusRocks1988]

While the changing between light seconds and metres has never bothered me, I can see why other people might be bothered by it as there's little reason beside the coolness factor to shift between them. It would also require further calculations and complexity for our ship's displays, as our ships' sensors and computers will either work entirely in metres or light-units.

Maybe something like this would be best implemented as a customisable option for our ships' interfaces, giving us the choice between the current hybrid system, an entirely metre based system (including gigametres, terametres and petametres), astronomical units or an entirely light-based one using light years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. This could be expanded further for the truly enterprising, offering different customisation for realspace, supercruise and hyperjump ranges all in a variety of units of our choice. I guess the truly masochistic might even want realspace distances measured in yards, rods, chains, furlongs, miles and leagues.

Can't wait to engage another ship in combat at 17.39 furlongs [wacky]

 

[Braandlin]

Maybe something like this would be best implemented as a customisable option for our ships' interfaces,

YES THIS!

I want everything in SMOOTS and JIFFYS