Just found this rather nice proceedurally generated world.

[ClymAngus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZawpRsknnHY

[Griff]

That looks great! Looks like he's managed to swap in the high res planet surface without having lots of nasty popping effects, just needs to add a coriolis station now

[JazHaz]

Wow, beautiful!

Guess that won't work on most computers though!

[DaddyHoggy]

Excellent - good find!

[Selezen]

Bootiful. So when does he get recruited to Oolite then?

[Killer Wolf]

wouldn't want stuff like that in Oolite, it would emphasise the scale stuff even worse than it is now, for me.

[Cmdr. Maegil]

It could work reasonably well if the ship's scale was connected to the altimeter: as it approached the surface, the ship would become smaller and slower... That would at least give the illusion of a nicely scaled Ooniverse.

EDIT: thinking about it, it could work well even in the present Ooniverse. I hereby propose this change for after the MNSR.

[Selezen]

Seconded, obviously...

[ClymAngus]

A mathematical solution to the scaling issue.

Due to the nature of the fluidic space found around large bodies in the oolite universe; the space away from gravity wells becomes stretched. This has a interesting effect on the absolute scale of ships travelling through it rendering any conventional principle of "scale" utterly irrelevant. Relative scale, IE ship to ship within the confines of normal space however still applies. Golden bullet or what?

[Killer Wolf]

well the "obvious" solution would be that planets are guarded by GalCop shield yadda-yadda, so the only way to get into low orbit to land would be to "hyperspace" in. so on the local charts you could select a planet as normal or an icon meaning the actual planet itself, rather than its WS beacon. then when you come out of WS, you're actually over a sensibly scaled procedural planet. no other aspect of the game needs to be genned up until you jump off-planet back into the normal game scenario.
simple, lol

course if we do manage this stuff, we need the ability to create spaceports and buildings!

[Cmdr. Maegil]

create spaceports and buildings!

If I'm not mistaken, we can already do them - the problem is that they'd always be off-scale in relation to the planet, and even visible from space... If the altitude shrunk them, they'd probably disappear into the distance and only be drawn if the player were inside the atmosphere.

[drew]

wouldn't want stuff like that in Oolite, it would emphasise the scale stuff even worse than it is now, for me.

Ooo no. 4 Little words.

Willing suspension of disbelief!

I would *love* that!

Cheers,

Drew.

[Selezen]

well the "obvious" solution would be that planets are guarded by GalCop shield yadda-yadda, so the only way to get into low orbit to land would be to "hyperspace" in. so on the local charts you could select a planet as normal or an icon meaning the actual planet itself, rather than its WS beacon. then when you come out of WS, you're actually over a sensibly scaled procedural planet. no other aspect of the game needs to be genned up until you jump off-planet back into the normal game scenario.
simple, lol

Even more simple solution: not all ships are atmosphere capable so every pilot has to dock at a station and "rent" a surface-capable vehicle, like an Adder, Shuttle or Transporter. Then when you launch you have the procedurally generated planet (PGP) there in front of you.

[Killer Wolf]

might tangle w/ the "can only have one ship at a time" lark though.

[Disembodied]

A mathematical solution to the scaling issue.

Due to the nature of the fluidic space found around large bodies in the oolite universe; the space away from gravity wells becomes stretched. This has a interesting effect on the absolute scale of ships travelling through it rendering any conventional principle of "scale" utterly irrelevant. Relative scale, IE ship to ship within the confines of normal space however still applies. Golden bullet or what?

I like this. Even without the technobabble, it would be interesting to see how it feels if the game was able to stretch distances on the fly – whether the player would notice, even.

I've been thinking about scale a bit of late ... generally the universe is too inconveniently large for a first-person pilot game to be set in a realistic-scale solar system. From Earth to Venus it's somewhere between 2 to 15 light-minutes; to Saturn, around 60 light minutes; to Neptune, around 240 light-minutes. With these sorts of distances it makes it very difficult to find a ship speed that isn't either too bewilderingly fast close in, and too tediously slow further out. However, if a star's gravity well had a similar slowing-down effect on a ship's drive – i.e. if in-game the top speed out around Neptune's orbit was far, far higher than the top speed close in (but still slowing the player down as they neared the planet) – then it might be possible to give the feel of a full-scale solar system without the impracticalities.

The important thing is after all not dull realism (or "realism with spaceships", at any rate), but fun. Space is big, but most of it contains nothing of any interest whatsoever: the trick would be to give the impression of awesome scale without rubbing it in ...