Units of Measurement

[Cholmondely]

Am I alone in finding the references to kilometers unusually unsettling?

I suspect that I am like many others in wanting to be able to immerse myself in an experience which seems realistic at some sort of level and that enhancing this is important to me.

I've recently starting downloading Stranger's oxp's (before entering them on the wiki) - so far just the ambience ones*. I now regularly visit immense superhubs dangling a mere 17km over the face of the planet. A planet on which I can see twinkling lights on the dark side (thanks to another_commander's hard work) but which has no big cities visible on the day side from where I am gazing at it 17km away.

While I am much happier with miles rather than these Napoleonic units, I've spent enough time on the European continent that a kilometer sadly means something to me.

It's very disconcerting and destroys the immersion when I see distances in km as they jolt violently against reality as I know it.



Oolite already changed the measurement of time/date to a string of numbers which can mean whatever you want it to.

Would it not make more sense to do something similar with the measurement of distance.

Would it not be far better to replace all mentions of kilometers with distances measured in stadia, Persian parasangs, leagues, Russian versta, Byzantine plethrons or Venetian cavezzi? Then at least the illusion would still be maintained.



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* I'm not yet a good enough player to dare tampering with the game mechanics in the way that Hard Way.oxp does - my combat skills are still too feeble

[Cody]

We have OU (Ostronomical Units) for long distances, but I'm not sure if they're suitable for short distances.

[stranger]

Well, you are US astronaut. As military pilot you have 6000 hours or so in your flight log, so measuring distances in nautical miles (1 NM = 1852 m), speed in knots (1 kt = 1 NM per hour or ≈ 0.52 m/s) and climb rates in feet per minute (1000 feet per minute is ≈ 5.08 m/s) is a part of your nature. As citizen you are driving your car using statute mile (1609 m) as distance unit and speed in miles per hour (1 mph ≈ 0.447 m/s). It is a part of your nature too. Working for NASA and planning to take part on expedition to ISS you have special education in engineering, so metric system is part of your nature too. You Russian colleagues, military pilots too, uses kilometers as distance unit, kilometers per hour as speed units and meters per second as climb rate. But they have one advantage – using the same distance and speed units driving they cars. That’s not all. You wife call you to by dozen eggs for lunch and to return home at seven at the latest. Damn! Just another Babylonian units, and it is part of your nature too!
No any versta or parasang, please! Metric system is not ideal. But it is lesser evil. We have ten digits and trained to calculate in decimal system.

[Cmdr James]

I think the answers here have missed the point. The thing is that 17km is a ludicrous value, so renaming km to something other than well known units makes suspension of disbelief easier.

[stranger]

I think the answers here have missed the point. The thing is that 17km is a ludicrous value, so renaming km to something other than well known units makes suspension of disbelief easier.

We have huge disproportion of game scale, planet scale 1:100 and sun scale 1:1000 in any case. Naming km as farlongs or megaparrots will not fix this issue. But having metric units for distance and velocity you can easy calculate approach time in mind. You are approaching station from top, call station from 25 km scanner range and granted to docking clearance. Well, having Cobby with 350 mps max speed you'll cover approx 1 km per 3 s in full thrust, so you have 75 s to close distance and 45 s to build approach vector and dock. Easy! Now repeat such calculation in mind using megaparrots.

[Cmdr James]

I feel we are talking at cross purposes. You are arguing for the logic and usability of metric, I agree entirely. The fact we measure people with feet horses with hands roads with miles and (most) other things with meters is an absolute farce. But the point OP made here was about suspension of disbelief not the challenges of doing orbital calculations in farthings and bushels.

[Cody]

Bring back pounds shillings and pence, that's what I say!

[Nite Owl]

The main OXZ using any sort of distance measurement is the Navigation M.F.D. with a secondary nod going to the station side system distance screen that gets activated with the installation of the Market Inquirer OXZ. In one of the first lines in the script.js for the Navigation M.F.D. the measured distance gets defined as one of the following: OU's, m, or, km.

OU = Ostronomical Units
Distance between Lave and its Star, not really practical for short distances as previously pointed out. Uses the Oolite "O" spelling standard.

m = meters
Something we all sort of know unless you are from a country that uses miles.

km = kiloometers
Note the spelling as it uses the Oolite "oo" spelling standard. This is how it appears in the previously mentioned script.js which differs from the traditional spelling hence the suspension of disbelief remains intact for me with this choice.

Ostronomical Units, Ooniverse, kiloometers, anything else we can come up with the "o" or double "oo" in it, puts it definitively in the realm of Oolite and suspends my belief making it valid enough to satisfy. Your mileage to this degree of disbelief may vary. If you really wanted to you could go into that script.js and give the kiloometers distance measurement any name or abbreviation you want. Either way the only measurement that really matters with longer distances is time. Regardless of how far you may be away from your destination, or what that distance may be called, the only real matter involved with long distances is "how long will it take me to get there".

[Cody]

The main OXZ using any sort of distance measurement is the Navigation MFD...

My favourite MFD - in fact it's my only MFD.

[stranger]

Either way the only measurement that really matters with longer distances is time. Regardless of how far you may be away from your destination, or what that distance may be called, the only real matter involved with long distances is "how long will it take me to get there".

Bingo!
In real reality kilometers are pretty useless beyond our Solar System so we are using light years (LY) to measure distance. Not ideal unit too, but it works.
Alas, we have no fundamental speed limit in Ooniversum, only voluntary LM (Light Mach) - exactly 1000 m/s. Maybe LS (light seconds) will be good compromise as basic unit for navigation in close proximity of scanner range. 1 LS = 1 km. Having ship with 0.3 LM max speed and distance 15 LS to target you need 50 s to close distance on full thrust (15/0.3). You can avoid confusing kilometers and remain clarity of calculations.
For in-system navigation we already have ETE (Estimated Time En-route) and OU (Oostronomical Unit) as practical units.
Dealing with ship specs, AFAIK in old good Elite wingspan of Cobra Mk III was 130 feet, not meters - comparable with two-seat B2 bomber with similar payload capacity.
Maybe measuring planet radii in relative units will be good idea too? In real astronomy we are using Earth radius (R⊕) as reference unit for planets of our Solar System and exoplanets. Mars has 0.53 R⊕. Jupiter 11.3 R⊕. Uranus 4.0 R⊕ and so on. So we can completely avoid annoying kilometers
Selection of reference body will be matter of discussion too. Can we use Earth radius (maybe rounded to exact 6400 km) or vanilla Lave radius (4116 km)? Personally I prefer to use Earth as reference body, not Lave - my PlanetEngine uses Earth radius, and I have possibility to redefine Lave radius without breaking scale. Me think it will be good for Galcop to use old good Earth as reference body, not Lave, for political reasons - it is not wise to give fuel for separatists propaganda. We, proud Biargeans, don't need this damn Lave to measure our beautiful planet!
Regarding real reality - the only way to construct systems of measurement, based on physics, not on human feet or horse ass - to use combination of fundamental constants. Having light speed and Planck constant you can define basic units of time, length and mass in Planck units. It is cool system for fundamental physics, but extremely inconvenient for practical science, engineering and common life.

[Cholmondely]

Thinking about it all, and having read the discussion above, I'd really rather change my kilometres to the ancient Cavezzi of La Serenissima (I'll forego biblical cubits!). Ideally with an option to convert to byzantine Plethrons when I'm bamboozling bureaucrats.

How could I do this? Is it an .oxp tweak? Or a rewrite of bits of the game code?

[another_commander]

The km labels for waypoints and reticle targets are unfortunately hardcoded. You cannot change then with an OXP.

[Cmdr James]

The km labels for waypoints and reticle targets are unfortunately hardcoded. You cannot change then with an OXP.

Ah, the km, pronounced koom (kuː ʊm) of course! An ancient unit the origins of which are long since lost. Legends tell of prehistoric origins, early scientists trying to express distance in terms of wavelengths of light and indeed some planets, most notably Teceinre, have a celebration to honour the legend which consists of pacing up and down in period costume, holding glass balls (representing ancient light sources) and using a so called "foot rule" and eyeglass to admire the wavelegths whilst reciting poetry. Claims that this was started by Teceinre marketeers as a way of selling more of their poetry have consistently been denied.
The ludicrous fractions and ratios needed to shoehorn this theory into accepted history or science are however simply not credible and most leading historians hold that it was once defined as a multiple of the average step length of ariotos in Old Paris. Sadly through various reformations, rationalisations and standardisation efforts it no longer bears any meaningful relation to its origins and now used mostly by spacers as an indicator of distance generally taken to be the distance a ship would travel in one second when travelling at 0.001 LM or, less formally, half the distance a typical spacer can throw an Ou fruit at standard Isqueder gravity after a few glasses of Tibediedian Arma brandy.

[Cody]

<chuckles>

[Cholmondely]

The km labels for waypoints and reticle targets are unfortunately hardcoded. You cannot change then with an OXP.

Ah, the km, pronounced koom (kuː ʊm) of course! An ancient unit the origins of which are long since lost. Legends tell of prehistoric origins, early scientists trying to express distance in terms of wavelengths of light and indeed some planets, most notably Teceinre, have a celebration to honour the legend which consists of pacing up and down in period costume, holding glass balls (representing ancient light sources) and using a so called "foot rule" and eyeglass to admire the wavelengths whilst reciting poetry. Claims that this was started by Teceinre marketeers as a way of selling more of their poetry have consistently been denied.
The ludicrous fractions and ratios needed to shoehorn this theory into accepted history or science are however simply not credible and most leading historians hold that it was once defined as a multiple of the average step length of aristos in Old Paris. Sadly through various reformations, rationalisations and standardisation efforts it no longer bears any meaningful relation to its origins and now used mostly by spacers as an indicator of distance generally taken to be the distance a ship would travel in one second when travelling at 0.001 LM or, less formally, half the distance a typical spacer can throw an Ou fruit at standard Isqueder gravity after a few glasses of Tibediedian Arma brandy.

Inspired, Sir!