Sense Of Scale
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
I think the Anaconda bridge (only one of the three I have) would look amazing in VR. The closest I can get to trying this is using cinema mode in PSVR, which is like playing ED at a movie theater. Looking left and right, the bridge feels to proper scale, reminding of Navy vessels I have spent time on. Then I look down at my hands and keyboard and feel like a giant from Skyrim
So I can kinda get a sense of scale if I fly the Anaconda nice and slow on a cinema size screen, but even then the "nose" feels too small. I should feel like I'm on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking out (the bridge is not that high up), but I don't get this, even on a big screen.
Oh, and I tried an SLF on the "big screen", and the proportions felt totally off, showing that there is definitely a disconnect between the 2D representation and 3D VR.
Regarding scale on monitor(s) you have to consider fov as well. Look at this vid for an easy explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ss-evuAXcA
The problem is that with many older space flight games, only the HUD was presented which can give a misleading sense of scale.
What we get with ED is a true sense of scale (even in 2D), where the Anaconda and Corvette are concerned they are quite unique in that their cockpits are towards the rear of a long triangle shaped craft. Once you accept the elongated triangle nature of those craft, the scale does feel right. You will never get the Aircraft carrier feel in any true sense because of the overall shape of it - and that is unlikely to change.
What is totally off is not the proportions and there is no real disconnect between 2D and 3D... that is a ridiculous assertion (and untrue).
What may be off is the usage of a big screen and it's physical position relative to you. For a 60degree horizontal field of view, the ideal viewing distance would be 0.866 times the horizontal size of the screen. For a 45degree horizontal field of view this increases to 1.207 times the horizontal size of the screen. With flat screens, the higher the FoV the more likely you will notice distortion of perspective - i.e. Fish Eye effect.
The ideal viewing distance can be calculated as follows: Width*0.5/tan(HFoV/2)
For a 16:9 screen the width can be calculated as: Width=Size*0.871576
If you have a curved large screen, the rules are slightly different and the viewing frustum of the 3D environment may need to be altered to accommodate this since the nominal expectation with 2D screens is that they are going to be flat - and normally 16:9 aspect ratio.
Last edited:
Your reasons don't make much sense. Let met see to them.
"Or they could have done as they did. Either works"
Either works, but thats pointless. Why use 20 squaremeters of glass 5 meters away from the pilot instead of 2 squaremeters of it but close as possible to the pilots face to increase integrity of the vessel in question without loosing field of view? You want combat, you want max fov with less glass because glass = fragile.
"And remember that the cockpit of a modern fighter, despite being a LOT less inhibited by the engine of the plane in the nose, still has a problem with visibilty outside the 10-degree down and 20 degree back limit of such a cockpit. Moreover you don't get out of the seat in a fighter jet. And when you do, gravity keeps you constrained to "the floor", meaning you can traverse a cramped area better because you can pus against your own weight and use gravity to recover downward. Not so much in zero g.
And in your design, you are stuck in the bubble until landing."
If your vessel is focused on combat, there is zero reason to allow pilot to get off it's seat. You get in at the station or your squadron ship, get scrambled, do your thing and come back to get out thus the fighter aircraft is designed, or crampled cockpit of F1 racing cars, or you can add examples. Now If you want to allow the pilot to get off your seat for some reason, you can do it without growing the said cockpit into the size of a mess hall. Keeping the room as tight as possible you gain lots of benefits (mass, integrity, etc.). In example, here:
Couldn't they expand that cockpit and allow some more space for the pilots to move themselves? Ofcourse they could but why they should?
About moving in zero gravity, well, when your way of travel involves grabbing something and pulling yourself in zero g, size of your corridor doesnt matter. You could even slide yourself through a tube which you can't go through in g through your constant vector. It's possibly even easier to find something to grab and stabilise yourself when you're in a tight place instead of floating around in a big hall.
"with a massive blind spot for a full hemisphere below you. At least with the glass shed on the front idea you can see everywhere your weapons can point plus more, and the visibility is where your head points naturally. "
You imply that I wish to use a tight windowed cockpit like the airlines above. I did not. My point is, there is a lot of useless space in cockpits for no reason. If the design we had kept as little empty space as possible, the same cockpit and same fov would stay but with the benefit of smaller frames of glass. Which actually looks like that from 1st person view but on the outside camera view, things get awkward on most ships. TLDR; No need for space next and front of the seat that can allow you to dance, you can pull the glass that much closer to the chair to have the same field of view but can reduce the size of the required glass to achieve the same fov.
Last edited:
For those that still believe the stars are too small consider this...
At typical scooping distance we could be orbiting a star at 0.33c and can take 45s to complete 1 orbit that equates to a circumfrance of about 15Ls which equates to an orbital diameter of 4.77Ls or a radius of ~2.38Ls or ~715Mm.
Sol's radius according to Wikipedia is ~695700km or ~696Mm meaning that the actual in-game scale for stars is probably about right if not dead on the money.
The Earth's radius by comparison is only ~6.37Mm or ~100th of the radius of Sol. That makes our sun Sol about 100 times the size of Earth.
At typical scooping distance we could be orbiting a star at 0.33c and can take 45s to complete 1 orbit that equates to a circumfrance of about 15Ls which equates to an orbital diameter of 4.77Ls or a radius of ~2.38Ls or ~715Mm.
Sol's radius according to Wikipedia is ~695700km or ~696Mm meaning that the actual in-game scale for stars is probably about right if not dead on the money.
The Earth's radius by comparison is only ~6.37Mm or ~100th of the radius of Sol. That makes our sun Sol about 100 times the size of Earth.
Last edited:
I agree they've been correctly built; that's pretty unquestionable. Our jumping and dropout mechanics keeping us at relative distances however, creates an illusion that most of them are the same size as each other. Add the speeds that we travel around them and they can feel teeny. It's a disconnect between the accurate numbers and what you feel you're seeing, certainly, but the feeling overrides the numbers. It's why you shouldn't fly by your feeling alone IRL, because it can be easily fooled.
Plus there's no bananas out there to get a good reading on them. I've heard that they appear appropriately humongous in VR though.
Edit: The stars. Not bananas. >____>
Last edited:
I've said the same thing, which I also think is why we'll not get walking around in ships. It feels very small when you think of the size of the cargos, engines, etc. then look around the cockpit... I won't go into the crew and where they all are.
Simple things could help improve the lack of scale.
Sitting in the station, when you look out at the station's name, some guy in a remlok suit pops out and starts repainting the sign.
Put something on the canopy struts that I can identify with at a glance, a hand hold grip, or a fire extinguisher, for example.
Simple visual clues as you look around the cockpit.
Sitting in the station, when you look out at the station's name, some guy in a remlok suit pops out and starts repainting the sign.
Put something on the canopy struts that I can identify with at a glance, a hand hold grip, or a fire extinguisher, for example.
Simple visual clues as you look around the cockpit.
All the ships have been built with internal compartments in mind.
The visual cues are there if you look for them - inside Orbis/Coriolis stations there are those car type things that move around the internal circumference for example, in space though there is naturally going to be a lack of recognisable reference points that give you a clear indication of both size and distance. The instrumentation readouts do supplement that though as can the Orbital path plots.
Just for fun: An engineer was quite busy in Open, so I got a large pad assigned.
In response to the OP- I have to agree that scale is a bit off- at least on a normal monitor as opposed to VR. (which not everyone can afford nor was it listed as a minimum requirement to play ED)
Not sure if it's due to perception b/c of lack of "reference" objects by way of comparison, or if it's indeed the actual size differences.
IMO more of it has to due with the lack of reference objects- and by that I mean things that we would normally visually cue for reference for comparison.
For example, if you didn't know how large an object was supposed to be, and viewed it for the first time- would you see it as "small" or "large"?
Perception is wonderful, isn't it?
In a docking bay- we hints of things that remind us of cues... containers, a few vehicles driving around, other ships. In space - you're up close to an object and there's nothing else around most of the time. Just you, and the object. Difficult to tell how "large or small" it should be, no?
Now you do bring up some good points with things like sizing of Stars and such- b/c in all reality some objects really should take more length of time to traverse, and I think perhaps they've a bit of handwavium to prevent people from complaining as to just how long travel takes (not that it stopped them with regard to SC or anything else, conversely) so it doesn't feel like literally a half hour in respect to the object, even if IRL that's how long it would truly take.
Not sure if it's due to perception b/c of lack of "reference" objects by way of comparison, or if it's indeed the actual size differences.
IMO more of it has to due with the lack of reference objects- and by that I mean things that we would normally visually cue for reference for comparison.
For example, if you didn't know how large an object was supposed to be, and viewed it for the first time- would you see it as "small" or "large"?
Perception is wonderful, isn't it?
In a docking bay- we hints of things that remind us of cues... containers, a few vehicles driving around, other ships. In space - you're up close to an object and there's nothing else around most of the time. Just you, and the object. Difficult to tell how "large or small" it should be, no?
Now you do bring up some good points with things like sizing of Stars and such- b/c in all reality some objects really should take more length of time to traverse, and I think perhaps they've a bit of handwavium to prevent people from complaining as to just how long travel takes (not that it stopped them with regard to SC or anything else, conversely) so it doesn't feel like literally a half hour in respect to the object, even if IRL that's how long it would truly take.
Do you feel the corvette looks large in the hangar? Do you feel the Viper looks tiny in the above screenshots? Imagine if there were always people walking around the pads after being docked, do you think it would help with the corvette looking bigger?
IMHO, its all about frame of reference.
Unsure given the examples... they "appear" to look normal.
I'd indeed have to agree "reference" really is the key. The problem is in perception when you're "out there" because it's really difficult to see much reference in "emptiness".
So, did you actually measure this in game? And also measure the projected viewpoint - what were your results? BTW no anger here Sleu boy. If there's any emotion to this forum it's with humor! But nice try to take the discussion into something personal. That's a standard white knight technique right there where one avoids the topic and simply starts to attack the poster. Not saying you meant this on purpose but it certainly fits a pattern.
And did you also measure things and confirm the scale being "correct"? What were your results?
Wait, didn't you already reply to my posts? Anyway, the stars look way too small. The OP is correct that the sense of scale is wrong. FDev messed up if players feel this way. That's a fact.
Last edited:
Space is mostly empty though, it is a fundamental feature of it. Where ED is concerned, we have instrumentation that helps provide us with a frame of reference.
The orbit lines may look messy, but they also can give you a reference point for sense of scale.
Ahhhh the post I was looking for. Thanks Sleutelbos.
Lack of scale clues provided by for example walking around the ship or station. When you think about it, VR simply gives you that by placing your head in the game world, plus giving you added depth. But the real scale comes from being placed at foot level in the hangar next to an eagle or sidewinder. We then is it is HUUUGE. But our brain needs clues for that, and in 2d monitor gameplay we rarely have these camera angles to be able to compare for.
I've done a couple of things to help "feel" the scale of things. First, I'm back to flying smaller ships for the most part. I actually prefer the smaller ships, because ED seems to be built with smaller ships in mind*. My Adder "feels" like a shuttle, for example.
The second thing I'm doing is diverting all pips away from engines when landing and taking off, and gracefully easing throttle and thrusters. I used to be a flight simulator junky back in the day, so I'm trying to fly my ships in a way that feels right for their size and mass.
Granted, I'm okay with ignoring physics and immersion when it comes to busting out credits as fast as possible (like when trying to hit top 10% in a CG), but I actually find it fun and challenging to earn credits in my humble Adder while flying in a way not to make my passengers vomit.
* piloting an Anaconda should feel considerably different than flying a Sidewinder IMO, perhaps like Star Trek: Bridge Crew
The second thing I'm doing is diverting all pips away from engines when landing and taking off, and gracefully easing throttle and thrusters. I used to be a flight simulator junky back in the day, so I'm trying to fly my ships in a way that feels right for their size and mass.
Granted, I'm okay with ignoring physics and immersion when it comes to busting out credits as fast as possible (like when trying to hit top 10% in a CG), but I actually find it fun and challenging to earn credits in my humble Adder while flying in a way not to make my passengers vomit.
* piloting an Anaconda should feel considerably different than flying a Sidewinder IMO, perhaps like Star Trek: Bridge Crew
Last edited: