So, I'm an American and had never heard about Elite until it was featured on an episode of Naked Scientists. Space science is both my hobby and my job and I was really interested after hearing about a 1:1 scale Milky Way Galaxy that you could actually travel end to end in a ship. For the most part I really like the game and have enjoyed exploring and ship combat, but there are a few things that take me out of the game and ruins the verisimilitude:
- Flying at 500 times the speed of light and not experiencing time dilation (I know this would be impossible to implement, but it still bothers me when I think about it) Edit: Totally got this wrong. Warp drives overcome the limitations of special relativity.
- Pirates repeating the same dialogue over and over again
- Pirate names that sound like forum handles
- The lack of dynamic neutron stars with circumstellar disks and polar jets (although I just found out about randomly generated planetary nebula which is cool)
- The drop off in white dwarf density outside of the "bubble". Makes no sense.
- How close together asteroids are in belts. In a belt like the one around Sol you'd be lucky to see two asteroids close enough together to see one from the other.
- I was going to say the HUD with all the different colored triangles, but my canopy partially blew out the other day and you could only see the ship targeting triangles on the parts that weren't blown out. Pretty cool.
So I'd really like to hear what ruins the "reality" of the game for you when you're playing it. I like hearing about how the sim doesn't match up with the science, but it doesn't have to be about science.
Edit: Just want to make it clear that I really like the game I'm not bashing the game or the developers. I understand that E
is a game and not the matrix and that it will never be 100% realistic (whatever that actually means). I just think it's fun finding the things that remind you it's a game and not reality, like invisible barrier and doors that can't be opened in other games.
- Flying at 500 times the speed of light and not experiencing time dilation (I know this would be impossible to implement, but it still bothers me when I think about it) Edit: Totally got this wrong. Warp drives overcome the limitations of special relativity.
- Pirates repeating the same dialogue over and over again
- Pirate names that sound like forum handles
- The lack of dynamic neutron stars with circumstellar disks and polar jets (although I just found out about randomly generated planetary nebula which is cool)
- The drop off in white dwarf density outside of the "bubble". Makes no sense.
- How close together asteroids are in belts. In a belt like the one around Sol you'd be lucky to see two asteroids close enough together to see one from the other.
- I was going to say the HUD with all the different colored triangles, but my canopy partially blew out the other day and you could only see the ship targeting triangles on the parts that weren't blown out. Pretty cool.
So I'd really like to hear what ruins the "reality" of the game for you when you're playing it. I like hearing about how the sim doesn't match up with the science, but it doesn't have to be about science.
Edit: Just want to make it clear that I really like the game I'm not bashing the game or the developers. I understand that E
is a game and not the matrix and that it will never be 100% realistic (whatever that actually means). I just think it's fun finding the things that remind you it's a game and not reality, like invisible barrier and doors that can't be opened in other games.
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