There is no G in Frame Shift Drive. It is based on Alcubierre's theoretical warp bubble model, and the ship is stationary in supercruise and in hypercruise. However, that completely misses the mark on insane boost in normal flight, while there was some lore somewhere that we don't have "inertial dampeners" which are popular in sci-fi everywhere else.
Sense Of Scale
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
There is no G in Frame Shift Drive. It is based on Alcubierre's theoretical warp bubble model, and the ship is stationary in supercruise and in hypercruise. However, that completely misses the mark on insane boost in normal flight, while there was some lore somewhere that we don't have "inertial dampeners" which are popular in sci-fi everywhere else.
I'm assuming that its a mixture of human evolution, genetic engineering and cybernetics enhancements that allow our commanders to survive the unbeleiveable Gs that are experienced.
My ships do.
I put a randomly occurring line about 6 banks of them into my EDDI Undock sequence item.
Assumptions do not come from the environment they come from the player perceiving the environment.
The HUD is not reachable, that much is clear - it is obviously intended to be indicative of a desktop/dashboard projected 3D hologram and is just a readout rather than intended to be directly interactive. If you look to the left of the pilot seat there is usually some form of keyboard type panel that does seem to be within reach (for the rare occasions where the controls on the stick and throttle - Seemingly based on the X52 controller design - are not enough.
As for the canopy of the Asp X, it could well be close on the height of (at least) a "short" two-story building.
But we do seem to have G-suits...
And guess what? I as a player never perceived the environment ED really is until I read the numbers. Once again, the game doesn't produce good assumptions on its player base to match the actual dimensions of ships or stations.
Even so, I as a pilot would like to be able to grab on to something in case of a crash or agitations, again, doesn't make much sense.
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ED scale is done very very poorly in 2D. When you are in VR and you can see 3D you will still see size of few things that are not as big. Station entrance is big as hell. Ships are huge. But stars feels like 10m inflatable ball because of animation speed, texture scale and all. Surface of stars don't shimmer so much. Coronas are timelapsed as hell.
Like many here said, if you would be able to actually get out of your seat (thus get additional reference points) and step on the landing pad or just go through your ship and get cues from there, it would change the perception dramatically.
The Anaconda has always been an oddity. As for the Cobra and T7, I guess the Cobra has a harder hull and less space. It would be interesting to compare a Tank and a Truck. It would be even more interesting to compare a space shuttle and a submarine for your first example.
The cockpit scale is just plain wrong...which may be fine in VR but totally off in 2D.
DBX pilot perspective...looks reasonable in this view
but in this view, the pilot would plainly have to get up and walk around to reach his keyboard... The further from the pilot you take the viewpoint, the worse the perspective is.
The DBX especially being a relatively small ship should be more like this...
DBX pilot perspective...looks reasonable in this view
but in this view, the pilot would plainly have to get up and walk around to reach his keyboard... The further from the pilot you take the viewpoint, the worse the perspective is.
The DBX especially being a relatively small ship should be more like this...
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Seriously dude, you can easily fit that entire aircraft on the bridge of a dbx (minus wings obviously) and once again, scale is fine. Devs should build a mock-up of one of the bridges for non vr users to view, would put an end to these topics.
The cockpit in that small fighter is more cramped than the GU97 or F63 SLF
The keyboard on ships are attached to an arm, which in reality would swing into position. The Anaconda and cobras keyboard is at arms reach from the chair.
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I'm talking about perspective here...from the pilots eyes in the DBX...and other ships, that keyboard on the left of the cockpit is clearly within arms reach. When you move the viewpoint outside of the head cam, the perspective is skewed and oversized and the entire scaling is off. Look again at the pictures.
It makes it worse when you view the ship externally with the minute pilot figure lost in a ship artificially scaled up to give a sense or appearance of size. The Messerschmitt cockpit was simply to demonstrate a similar perspective in 2D...that's what the camera sees as it does from the pilot head cam in the cockpits of E-D. Once the view is removed from the pilots head cam, it shows the skewed perspective between pilot figure and cockpit quite clearly in 2D.
I'm not debating the size of the cockpits here, merely showing that the scale is way off between 2D eye cam and external cam views to create a sense of size (perhaps for VR purposes) rather than correct scale.
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If you watch one of the TV spots for the new "Ant Man and the Wasp" trailers, there's a scene where Scot Lang is having trouble with his suit, and he's stuck at the size of a small child. Marvel does a great job with effects to make him feel this size, but even with the proper sense of scale, we can tell that "something ain't right here." In other words, he is obviously not scaled to a logical size.
Ships like the DBX and the iCourier are like this - even when I adjust my mind to "see" that huge DBX cockpit (or the ship in general), it still feels like a smaller ship that got enlarged by Pym Particles. Not all ships are like this. I love my Orca, because it feels "properly" big. I also prefer the cockpits / bridges of ships like the Sidewinder, Adder, Cobra, even the Anaconda, because they feel appropriately-sized.
I admit, it's subjective, but this thread keeps going strong, so you can't just dismiss the multitude of voices that agree that scale feels off, at least in certain ships and in certain stations.
I think a part of that is when Frontier designed the cockpits of ships, they seem to have designed them with a number of goals in mind:
a) looks good in 2D
b) functional in VR
c) sufficient room to accomodate Space Legs
I've got a Vive, and one of my favorite ship cockpits is the DBX, because exploring in it, while in VR, is IMO an incredible experience. I have a spot marked out in my VR space just so that I can move my HOTAS, and have one of the walls be physically where the ship's canopy is. On the longer Supercruise journeys, I like to get up out of my chair and lean against the ship's canopy, and just take in the sights. The command seat, both physical and virtual, is close enough that I reach over and use the joystick to roll the ship to see more of the virtual sky.
Is the DBX cockpit needlessly big? In my opinion, not if you want to meet all three categories. A cramped cockpit might work in 2D with Space Legs, because if you don't have to worry about VR, you can use avatar animations to explain how your Commander gets into position. A cramped cockpit might also work in 2D and VR, as long as your Commander never gets out of her chair.
But all three? If you want a truly immersive environment that also takes advantage of room scale VR, you might want to have enough room for the player to be able to get out of their own chair, and not have their head clip through objects in the cockpit. For that, you need a more spacious cockpit.
So I think Frontier designed the cockpits in such a way that it uses forced perspective to make the cockpits look "natural" in 2D. But like all optical illusions, not everyone is as susceptible to the effect as others.
Interesting.. So what about the Sidewinder, do you feel like you are clipping through walls / canopies when using that in VR?
Also, what about a game like Star Citizen? I only watch videos (I'm a console gamer), but many of those ships seem to have cramped cockpits, yet that game actually does have fully-implemented "space legs". Having played Skyrim in VR, my experience has been that often cramped spaces feel more realistic to me due to the proximity of objects - I've literally reached out to 'touch' walls in cramped caves or food on the table I'm sitting at, for example.
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Having tried to lean against a table in Steam's Lab, I think it really depends upon a number of things. For example, I sometimes play Minecraft in VR, and what looks to be a comfortably sized mining passage or my typical "hidey hole" in 2D, I find to be claustrophobic in VR. Especially when I start a new world, and I have to listen to the skitter of spiders above me, the moaning of zombies and the rattle of skeletons outside my door, and then see a green face trying to peek in.
As for the Sidewinder cockpit, it is IMO the most cramped one outside of the SLFs. While there's room enough on either side that it doesn't look you need to use an animated style chair like you see in Star Citizen videos, the canopy is low enough that if I don't reset my head position when I stand up, my head will clip through it, thanks to the command chair being elevated above the floor. If you're going to explore your cockpit in roomscale VR, I highly recommend doing that.
Since the command chair is elevated above the deck, simply getting up out of your chair leaves you hovering over the deck. I have an old Logitech wireless controller that has all its controls disabled, except for one that emulates my keyboard's "reset HMD" key. Comes in handy when I want to get up and explore.
Overengineering at its finest. In all seriousness, why the hell you'd desing a ship to do that?
I disagree for reasons already stated - how individuals perceive an environment is an issue with the individual not the environment itself. It seems clear to me that a lot of people complaining about perceived scale are making incorrect assumptions about the design of the cockpits themselves. It seems to be a common misconception that the cockpits of the smaller vessels are more like a jet fighter than the space shuttle.
Errmm… the cockpit chair is actually in a rather relaxed position with our upper legs at roughly 90 degrees to our avatar torso, lower legs angled down by between 5 and 15 degrees at a guess with the feet resting on a bottom plate. Assuming we are not strapped in, which would be surprising if it were not the case given the apparently nominal zero G environment of the ship, the natural and probably correct action in the case of a crash would be to lean forward and grab our legs. Further more, given the nominal zero-G operating conditions it makes perfect sense for there to be minimal obstructions around the crew chairs - less things to get trapped by, trapped under, or to get snagged on.
If you can assume the cockpit of your ship looks like a jet fighter or the space shuttle without realizing you are wrong then something is wrong in the game or you can blame the player which you already did plenty of times which hasn't helped me or anybody, after spending more than 1000 hours in my Asp cockpit and knowing how big it is in number terms, I haven't felt any difference or do you pretend you can teach others how to see the game properly?
I never talked about ergonomics nor seating posture, not sure why you say this.
Incredibly hard to believe, seat belts are an important piece of security for cars, jets, fighters, the space shuttle, etc. If you crash your ship, you don't want to fly away and crash in front of the canopy (doesn't matter if it breaks or not).
And no places to grab onto to move around.
I'd agree the cockpit of the icourier, well the design in general is one of the singular mishaps in ED's design. When I first started in ED, I was expecting a new modernized version of my favorite ship, the imperial courier from FE2 & FFE. Then I couldn't believe this weird jet-fighter like ship was supposed to be the icourier. The clipper's size was more in mind of what I thought the new icourier would be, but then again, the clipper is the ugly duckling of the imperial ships, disproportionate and ungainly, so I had to settle eventually for the cutter as my favorite ship. Other than that, it was set from the start that FDev in anticipation of spacelegs someday had designed most of the bridges of the ships to be large enough to walk around in, and they did a fairly decent job as groundwork for someday in the future in most all their designs. That it's been slow coming is just reality of game development hitting the limitations despite Frontier's bar setting in the scope of ED. As seen in the recent stream, "ED is here to stay" and I truly believe development has turned the corner (previously Horizons delayed by the ps4 port, and since then to now, the JWE rush) and the company has since grown big enough (from 200+ to about 400 employees , continued hiring & cobra udpating, & new office building) to devote more resources to realize the future dreams of ED.
I've no doubt, Duck, when Frontier gets to implementing the initial stages of spacelegs, the proportions will be nicely adjusted as needed for a good visual immersive experience. Frontier is considered a leader in the VR experience with PC VR ED. (unfortunate it wasn't done for PS4). I don't know if you've heard, but the Star Citizen boondoggle can hardly be taken seriously anymore. Yes it was built initially to have spacelegs, but all they've done is build cryengine-mostly techdemo levels with no real interstellar space sim. And they're still stuck in one star system with a planet and a few moons, and have been stuck there for years with endless "refactoring", while their marketing has gone infamously off the rails in many dubious types of fundraising endeavor. In fact, COD:Infinite Warfare had already shown a far better mix of spaclegs-fps + spaceship combat gameplay and stability years ago.
I've no doubt, Duck, when Frontier gets to implementing the initial stages of spacelegs, the proportions will be nicely adjusted as needed for a good visual immersive experience. Frontier is considered a leader in the VR experience with PC VR ED. (unfortunate it wasn't done for PS4). I don't know if you've heard, but the Star Citizen boondoggle can hardly be taken seriously anymore. Yes it was built initially to have spacelegs, but all they've done is build cryengine-mostly techdemo levels with no real interstellar space sim. And they're still stuck in one star system with a planet and a few moons, and have been stuck there for years with endless "refactoring", while their marketing has gone infamously off the rails in many dubious types of fundraising endeavor. In fact, COD:Infinite Warfare had already shown a far better mix of spaclegs-fps + spaceship combat gameplay and stability years ago.
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