Relativistically Accurate Animation

Larash · May 18, 2014

Watching the visual effects during frameshift, I startet thinking about how travelling at superluminous speeds would be. During my little reasearch I stumbled upon a video (link below), which I found pretty interesting.
It's a NASA-made relativistically accurate animation of what travelling near the speed of light would look like.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111018.html

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Tonberry · May 18, 2014

Why is the narration synthesised?

That is a very interesting vid though.

Larash · May 18, 2014

I found the narrators voice a bit strange, too.

MiNi · May 18, 2014

I'm not sure most would want that kind of realism in game.
No one would be able to navigate if all they could see was a small bright
spit in the distance.
Interresting though. Knew most of it beforehand but always nice to see it
illustrated in different ways.
Learning a little more each time.

Kerrash · May 18, 2014

I agree that we should see more effects in super cruise and as the current system is place-holder, I am sure we will.

This game did a great pass at super-luminal effects

Dinosawer · May 18, 2014

Thing is, I don't think you see those when using a warp drive (which the fsd is, I assume) since you're technically not even moving.

Bewilderbeest · May 18, 2014

Kerrash said:
This game did a great pass at super-luminal effects

Yeah I played that through and it was pretty interesting, although part of me couldn't help that it was a great advertisement for why artistic license in games is important.

Accurate simulations don't necessarily make fun gameplay mechanics.

Darren Grey · May 18, 2014

I'd like to see nods towards this, but realistic effects would be too confusing. In particular it would be nuts if we considered the effects of superluminal travel (which is very possible). You wouldn't see things until after you'd passed through them!

Malicar · May 18, 2014

Here is another vid I quite like on the same topic...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SLffdgotHEA

au4049q · May 18, 2014

It is not consistent with relativity to have faster-than-light travel without time paradoxes. Since the ones which I know about would make the game unplayable, it is best to keep off that tricky topic in the computer game. As for pretty graphical effects, that's for the devs and the fans to decide, but I couldn't call it relativistic or accurate.

Anyone want to H 4.2ly and back and end up 8 years out of synch with the table which they are sat at? I might have built the pan-galctic bypass by then, so I wouldn't risk it.

Larash · May 18, 2014

Darren Grey said:
I'd like to see nods towards this, but realistic effects would be too confusing. In particular it would be nuts if we considered the effects of superluminal travel (which is very possible). You wouldn't see things until after you'd passed through them!

This is pretty much what I was thinking, too. I can imagine a little bit of distortion and a bit of colorshifting due to the doppler effect - more than this wouldn't probably be too fun. We would lose quite a bit of sight-seeing and that would be a shame.
By the way - isn't frameshifting about compressing space to achieve super luminal speeds without 'physically' going faster than light? In this case we might not be fast enough to really see any strong relativistic effects.
As far as I know these effects are quite weak ('weak' is a matter of perspective here) unless reaching about 0,3c.

cadmonkey33 · May 18, 2014

Here's another video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD08CuUi_Ek

CaptainSodom · Jun 19, 2014

Found this thread after wondering about supercruise visualizations, and was looking for the exact vid posted in OP.

I agree with others that the going to he extreme in the NASA video is not fun and doesn't help gameplay. But a prudent amount of redshift/blueshift when looking forward/backward would be a really cool effect, as would some visual distortion and compression of the space around you.

It would also help visualize your current speed, and changes in it - something which can be really difficult in largely empty space.

Darkfyre99 · Jun 19, 2014

Tonberry said:
Why is the narration synthesised?

That is a very interesting vid though.

Whoever made the video may not like the sound of their own voice, or have difficulty enunciating clearly.

I've done one video walkthrough where I tried to narrate the thing. It took me three days to do a fifteen minute video, with numerous takes. If I ever do something like that again, I'll probably use just use text, or try a speech synthesizer.

usernametaken · Jun 19, 2014

If I'm not mistaken (and chances are high are maybe, I have no physics degree), but both of those videos basically try to demonstrate what it's like to travel close to, or above the speed of light.

My understanding is you don't really do either in E: D. This is on the assumption that the game world uses Alcubierre drives, aka a warp drive. Your ship moves at some sub-luminal speed (just how fast or slow you need to be going before you can turn on the warp field, I've no idea), and then flip the switch. At that point the space around you starts to expand and contract. Your own speed in normal space wouldn't change, the passengers feel no acceleration/deceleration.

I'd wager that looks quite different but, as I say, I'm no physicist.

Dinosawer · Jun 19, 2014

usernametaken said:
If I'm not mistaken (and chances are high are maybe, I have no physics degree), but both of those videos basically try to demonstrate what it's like to travel close to, or above the speed of light.

My understanding is you don't really do either in E: D. This is on the assumption that the game world uses Alcubierre drives, aka a warp drive. Your ship moves at some sub-luminal speed (just how fast or slow you need to be going before you can turn on the warp field, I've no idea), and then flip the switch. At that point the space around you starts to expand and contract. Your own speed in normal space wouldn't change, the passengers feel no acceleration/deceleration.

I'd wager that looks quite different but, as I say, I'm no physicist.

I'm only 3/5 physicist but I'm pretty sure that's correct. I have no idea how it would look however.

CaptainSodom · Jun 19, 2014

usernametaken said:
If I'm not mistaken (and chances are high are maybe, I have no physics degree), but both of those videos basically try to demonstrate what it's like to travel close to, or above the speed of light.

My understanding is you don't really do either in E: D. This is on the assumption that the game world uses Alcubierre drives, aka a warp drive. Your ship moves at some sub-luminal speed (just how fast or slow you need to be going before you can turn on the warp field, I've no idea), and then flip the switch. At that point the space around you starts to expand and contract. Your own speed in normal space wouldn't change, the passengers feel no acceleration/deceleration.

I'd wager that looks quite different but, as I say, I'm no physicist.

Red/blue shift happens before reaching light speed, so it is a matter of how fast compared to c the Alcubierre drive goes. But rather than trying to emulate reality - which is not optimal as is clear from the extreme effects in the videos -, such shift along with other distortions could be used to visually convey a sense of speed at, near or above c.

StayFrosty · Jun 20, 2014

It would be nice if the position of celestial bodies matched their perceived position, meaning that you could see a planet in the distance at some position, and as you fly towards it, you see it moving from its old perceived position to its actual one.

Well I guess it would only make supercruise much harder to master than it already is if destinations keep moving around.