Re: No Sense Of Scale

PaxtonNewt

PaxtonNewt
o7 cmdrs

When I first watched a YouTube video of the various different ships in ED the size comparison was quite staggering from the sidewinder to the cutter but in the game I'm not really getting a sense of scale.. is it just me. I've come across a beluga liner which is supposed to be huge but getting close to it it doesn't look that big but on the YouTube video its massive.

Does anyone else have a sense of scale issue?
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
takes a sip

The actual scale of our ships are fine. Why the sense of scale can seem off for some players is that there really isn’t all that many size cues in the game to help judge the size of our ships. In addition, many people tend to assume the cockpits of our ships are “fighter sized,” when even the smallest cockpits (the Sidewinder’s) is the size of a small room.

If your really want to get a good sense of the scale of our ships, and have VR, I recommend using the camera suit to position yourself by a door on one of the catwalks in your hanger, and then look down. Next best thing to space legs.
 

PaxtonNewt

PaxtonNewt
Darkfyre99 said:
takes a sip

The actual scale of our ships are fine. Why the sense of scale can seem off for some players is that there really isn’t all that many size cues in the game to help judge the size of our ships. In addition, many people tend to assume the cockpits of our ships are “fighter sized,” when even the smallest cockpits (the Sidewinder’s) is the size of a small room.

If your really want to get a good sense of the scale of our ships, and have VR, I recommend using the camera suit to position yourself by a door on one of the catwalks in your hanger, and then look down. Next best thing to space legs.
Click to expand...
Sounds amazing. If only I could plug the game through my phone and use my Samsung vr headset. I can't afford these vr systems not yet anyway
 

Klarg

Klarg
Darkfyre99 said:
If your really want to get a good sense of the scale of our ships, and have VR, I recommend using the camera suit to position yourself by a door on one of the catwalks in your hanger, and then look down. Next best thing to space legs.
Click to expand...
Seconded. I mainly play on PS4 for laziness reasons now, but have a pimax and a vibe). It's the only way to get a sense of scale of the world around you.
 

DragonIV

DragonIV
I find it easier to see the scale of things, VR or no, flying a small ship. I usually am flying either a Cutter or Imperial Destroyer (ok, fine, FedVette) and everything else generally looks small. I hop into my Vulture or DBX, and in no time Anacondas go back to looking impressive. Might just be me tho.
 

Kushiel's Dart

Kushiel's Dart
The first look around the cockpit in VR is unbelievable and difficult to describe. The difference between the Eagle (feels like an X-wing with the side-windows less than an arm's-length away) and T-10 (with its cavernous and foreboding bridge) is immense.
 

DragonIV

DragonIV
Actually, I see the same kind of thing driving in real life. I've driven some downright tiny cars all the way up to delivery trucks over the years, and you really don't get an appreciation for the size and scope of a tractor trailer until you're next to one and you're in a tiny Chevy Spectrum (Isuzu I-Mark).

Of course they also pretty much blow you off the side of the road due to their wake, which also helps the perspective. :D
 

777Driver

777Driver
This pic was just taken in VR, in some cases you can get a very good sense of the scale when viewed on a standard screen, your mind fills in the blanks.

VR adds actual weight and depth to the environment, combined with correct scale, the overall effect is extremely immersive.

The planet on the horizon is called Kenash, roughly 14,000km away. It's size and mass is only slighter larger than Earth.

wjatd4.jpg
 

WR3ND

WR3ND
I'd add that how they handle doesn't quite scale with their comparative sizes all that well either. Seeing some larger ships occasionally bouncing around and tumbling now and then doesn't quite sell me on it.

I still tend to prefer the maneuverability of the "small" ships anyway, so in game-play terms over realism (keeping in mind I'd rather not contrast the two in the first place), it is what it is.

Edit: Added quotation marks for accuracy.
 
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Rock Hunter

Rock Hunter
Darkfyre99 said:
If your really want to get a good sense of the scale of our ships, and have VR, I recommend using the camera suit to position yourself by a door on one of the catwalks in your hanger, and then look down. Next best thing to space legs.
Click to expand...

Short of suggesting VR the above works pretty well in 2D. Before I got into VR I used to use the free camera suite and position my camera next to one of the barriers at the side of the hanger or landing pad. I assumed one was around waist height(ish) from looking at everything else and used that to judge scale.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Another clue to scale when you are outside your landed ship in the SRV or camera check around the landing legs especially the front many ships have a ladder or stair the height of each step is probably no more than 10-12 inches.
 

Daynen

D
Being hundreds of meters away from most ships at any given time should be considered. You're not commonly right next to these ships and when you are it's because you're out in an SRV or bumping into them in the mailslot. Even a medium sized ship looks big enough to require half a dozen crew; consider then even the ubiquitous Python can carry over 200 tons of stuff.

Look up how many vehicles on Earth right now have a haulage of 200 tons and then consider these ED ships are in space...
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
OP please don't let white knights tell you its okay you're having an issue / handwave magic its gone.

  • The field of view in vr isn't alien magical tech, its just a field of view setting and its prevented in non vr mode.
  • The demos years ago of someone putting elite assets in unreal, and using a realistic filed of view show what elite is like at true scale without vr. Everything makes sense, its just prevented in elite itself.
  • A possible reason they broke it is the minimum seems to be clamped at just about the size of the station ui. Its about perfectly on this value actually. Basically they never want to allow you to configure yourself so that the station hud is larger than the screen in non vr.
  • The other reason is for video gameplay. The large ships are actually large. Yet they turn like fighters and support hardcore pvp gameplay. The best example is the anaconda bridge. If you were realistically sitting right there, you'd have to turn your entire head to see to the sides.. which of course doesn't work for hardcore combat gameplay. So the field of view is more like a 3rd person behind the shoulder angle in first person mode to allow for this.
  • You absolutely have a field of reference.. look down via headlook to your holo me avatar, and the external vanity camera. There are many ways to prove the scale is so broken via the external camera, but im not going to say because you can't unsee this stuff once you know about it.
Yeah so it is flawed, but there are reasons behind it. Understanding is better than status quo excuses that are just false.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_kLXgo4FC8

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdeSPVq24Ac
 
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DMC831

DMC831
PaxtonNewt said:
Sounds amazing. If only I could plug the game through my phone and use my Samsung vr headset. I can't afford these vr systems not yet anyway
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Ya know, I think you CAN do that with a Gear VR. The VR won't be quite the same of course cuz ya don't get 6DOF, only 3DOF (in normal PC VR you can look around and under things, moving your head in space, and with the Gear VR you keep your head still, if that makes sense-- there's a term for it I'm forgetting but I'm sure ya get it). But even with that difference, you'll get the scale.

Search for "gear VR elite dangerous", there's various guides for how to stream it to your phone. I own a Gear VR but I've not done any of these since I also had a DK2, and now a CV1 Rift. DK2s are dirt cheap on Ebay if your computer can run it, and it worked really well for Elite since you're always sitting down!

The CV1 is better, but I was happy with the DK2 until it started dying after thousands of hours.
 

Florenus

Florenus
CMDR Karrde Sun said:
  • A possible reason they broke it is the minimum seems to be clamped at just about the size of the station ui. Its about perfectly on this value actually. Basically they never want to allow you to configure yourself so that the station hud is larger than the screen in non vr.
Click to expand...
On PC, you can modify FOV value to whatever you want by manually editing settings file.
But that seems to cause slight problems with outfitting screen - weirdly, the higher FOV gets, the more Outfitting screen is zoomed in. Above certain value you will not be able to see Jump ranges f.ex.


But, aside from FOV, or weirdly disproportionate cockpit elements, some of the ships have proportions that suggest they're smaller than they are.
ICourier looks like a small fighter, when in reality it's bigger than B-17 Flying Fortress. Seriously, B-17 has a length of 22m, when ICourier is 42m long and much more massive.
It's all because of the cockpit, that has the looks and proportions of something small, when in reality is actually pretty big.

Same thing with ICutter and IClipper. Proportions of cockpit windows are roughly the same, even if one ship is much bigger than the other.
The list can go on.

It's like building 4 story house and instead of putting 4 rows of normal sized windows, you make one row of huge windows 4 times the size or regular ones.
From a distance the house will look like one story building and it will seem closer than it really is.
 
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