Horizons Why do I constantly have to nose down while circling a planet

[unite]

Now I'm no astrophysicist but surely once you enter a planets orbit / atmosphere you could circle the planet at 0% while maintaining the same distance from the ground?

It just bugs my having to constantly nose down as in my mind that not correct. Planes don't nose down flying around earth.

 

[Para Handy]

1 You are in supercruise and if I remember correctly gravity just affects the performance of the FSD you are not actually subjected to gravitational attraction.

2 In real space do you get drawn towards the planet if you go FA Off? I seem to remember that you don't - might be wrong.

So from 2 above, if it is the case that you are not actually being attracted by the planet's gravity therefore there would be nothing to overcome Newton's First Law.


... plus of course:

3 It is a game

 

[Misty_Dark]

if you drop into normal space around a planet, there appears not to be any gravity that pulls your ships towards the planet, but I have noticed how cargo etc in those location can "fall" towards the planet very fast, making scooping them up almost impossible, can be tricky when the cargo goes faster than you can boost... This is also what I believe happens to the bugged conflict zones that "run away" from the player, they might be geostationary, and follow the rotation of the planet, leaving the player behind...as our ships is not affected by this, we are simply left behind...


If you have dropped into the planet and done a "glide", FA OFF will pull you down towards the planet.



So I do believe that for easy of mind, better gameplay etc, in normal space, we are not affected by gravity, and that creates some interesting effects, when part of the game engine do take things like gravity into account.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Because planets are round.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Because planets are round.

Humnn,,, I have thought more about this and come to the conclusion this is actually because the Flight Assist wants to keep you going in a straight line while the planets are round. So,, the only way to go "around" a body is to keep pushing the nose down. (OR up when doing a glide search.)

Now the question is,, with FA OFF would you be able to set up a macro that applies UP THRUST so it wouldn't be necessary to keep pushing the nose down? Probably have to be a combination.
OR
Since I was able to write macros to do the "GLIDE SEARCH" and hold the ship at -5 to -7 deg pretty consistently to get maximum distance from the GLIDE, I think I could write one that would hold the nose at +5 to +7 deg to go around a body while getting maximum distance for the least altitude gain..

In any case, my experience with the GLIDE CORRECTION MACRO was that the PITCH DOWN command time delay to hold a constant negative angle got shorter as the altitude went down. (The smaller the radius is, the shorter the arc becomes for the same angle. If speed is constant, then time to travel the arc distance gets shorter.)

Current thought is that a macro to automatically do the nose down corrections would be much harder to work out (or there would have to be several of them based on the distance desired.) because every time I went to a new body with a new radius I had the recalculate the theoretical maximum glide distance from the TICK where the scanner started to register to the minimum glide altitude (usually about 5 KM) and then change the time delay between the pitch down commands.

For the NOSE UP macro there would be two variables.
The arc distance for each degree of change
AND
More difficult to program for, the speed of the ship and therefore the time to travel the arc distance.

Easier I think to be able to do what I currently do. Switch between digital and analog controls and simply tap the pitch down key as needed to hold the +5 to +7 deg path.

 

[Kopachris]

Just to clarify: in normal space you absolutely ARE affected by gravity. With FA on, you can see your thrusters actively holding you up from the external view. With FA off, you start falling toward the planet at the proper rate of acceleration. This can even be done from orbital cruise altitudes, say if you drop into normal space while in orbital cruise before the glide.

Dunno about the rest though.

 

[D.D.Hariman]

Just to clarify: in normal space you absolutely ARE affected by gravity. With FA on, you can see your thrusters actively holding you up from the external view. With FA off, you start falling toward the planet at the proper rate of acceleration. This can even be done from orbital cruise altitudes, say if you drop into normal space while in orbital cruise before the glide.

Dunno about the rest though.

Gravity also works in SUPERCRUISE since long long ago, maybe about 3 years, one way of finding large planets was to set off in a direction and watch how your course changed over time. The direction your travel was bent toward was the direction there could be a large body.