A step towards solving the f*&%§d-up distances conundrum

[Lestradae]

The distances in Oolite are horrible. The planet is 50km across, the distance from planet to witchpoint is 300km, etc.

Aegidian once tried out an up-to-scale model with every distance in the game (except ships & stations, obviously) by enlarging everything by a factor of 100, including the ship speeds, and the result proved boring and unplayable.

But, what about a still believeable compromise, with (say) 5 times the scales and speed and the scanner oriented at 100km max instead of 20kms?

I'd assume something around the 3-20 times bigger/faster region might noticably more look like a beliveable scale, while still being playable and ships & stations more than dots.

Discussion, bad idea, seconded?



L

[LittleBear]

Think the trouble is you just can't see any ships or stations with even a semi-realistic distance. Ships and stations are really the size set in meters, so a Corollis really is 1,000 meters across. However the earth is about 25,000 miles in radius, so even a station would be a tiny object smaller than the current size of a cargo container against the planet and you'd just never see it. So although planets, moons and suns are absurdly small, the ships and stations are realisticly sized against each other.

[Lestradae]

Yes, I know, which is why I propose something that would still be a factor of 20 smaller than realistic, but would not be that off-scale as the scale we have now. Things like planetary landfall for example would look much better on a five times bigger scale.

[Captain Tylor]

Surely the only real answer would be to include hyperspace jumps within systems where you can jump to stations, suns and planets each having witchspace beacon of there own at current distance.
Sorry if this comes across as silly but I am no programmer

[LittleBear]

I'd have thought the scale up would have a big knock on gameplay effect though even up to 5. You can hit a Sidewinder at 25km distance with a military laser, but its a tough shot, think how small he looks at that distance and you often have to aim above the exhaust fumes just to get a bead. At a 5 times scale up, I'd guess he'd look that small at 5kms. You'd really have to within a few meters to see any detail or artwork on the ships.

[DaddyHoggy]

@LB - I think Lestradae suggested ships stayed same size - so I don't see why upscaling astronomical bodies and distances would change the size an ship appeared at 25km, since it would still be 25km.

Personnally, I don't care about the mis-scaling but I can see why it does bother others - perhaps a compromise would be to add a scale factor to the main code and make it selectable from the options page - those who wish to travel at silly speeds to cover silly distances (real but silly in terms of game play) could duly do so and then perhaps this argument would go away (or at least not raise its head for a while)

[Lestradae]

@LB - I think Lestradae suggested ships stayed same size - so I don't see why upscaling astronomical bodies and distances would change the size an ship appeared at 25km, since it would still be 25km.

Exactly!

perhaps a compromise would be to add a scale factor to the main code and make it selectable from the options page - those who wish to travel at silly speeds to cover silly distances (real but silly in terms of game play) could duly do so and then perhaps this argument would go away (or at least not raise its head for a while)

That would be a very good idea, methinks.

Merry X-mas to you guys

L

[DaddyHoggy]

perhaps a compromise would be to add a scale factor to the main code and make it selectable from the options page - those who wish to travel at silly speeds to cover silly distances (real but silly in terms of game play) could duly do so and then perhaps this argument would go away (or at least not raise its head for a while)

That would be a very good idea, methinks.

Merry X-mas to you guys

L

Whoa, two good ideas on the same day from me, it really must be Christmas!



Seasonal Greetings to all concerned and to quote from Bill and Ted: "Be excellent to one another"

[Cmdr James]

I dont understand the problem, the game, as is, plays well.

Where is the benefit of making things bigger and further apart, and then finding solutions to the fact that the game is now virtually unplayable?

Surely its better to just accept that some things in [e|oo]lite are not realistic, and enjoy it, or, if you cant do that, play one of the hundred or thousands of other space games that explore these questions differently?

If the game were actually broken, or there were a significant benefit in the change, then I could potentially get excited about it, but I cant help thinking this is another "oolite would be better if it were more realistic" argument, like the so called real physics question which comes up periodically.

OOlite is a great game, because it is essentially elite, with updated graphics, and a few minor gameplay changes (shipyard is the big one, I think) -- realistic systems just are not a part of that, and I dont see why anyone would want them added.

[pagroove]

I think the way it is it is good. It is what in essence makes Oolite a worthy successor of Elite and thats a game with gameplay with a capital G.

I don't bother with the distances and let my imagination do the work.

As I've read from the forums this distance problem becomes especially apparent with the Solar systems Oxp in production. I suggest to move the outer planets closer then and just let the realistic distances idea go. As an alternative a solar systems Oxp could just depend on the extra planets that System Redux creates or it could be a modified System Redux with more than one planet in each system and let it randomize between 1 and 10 bodies per sytem? Then the Solar systems OXP makes could concentrate on adding more space lanes, stations, planetfalls, bases etc.

[Yodeebe]

my 2 p worth:
I'm with Lestradae, i think there must be a middle ground. I do find it ... erm... noticeably 'toy town' orbiting a planet in 30s.

maybe it should be an OXP able option though, as most seem not too worried about it.

I'm sure the original elite (spectrum) took ages to get to the planet, even after i found the 'J'

Incidentally (and off topic) I always thought of the J drive as a way of slowing down ship time, so outside appears to go faster, as if going to sleep, until someone appears in range so the ship 'wakes up' the commander on duty. seems more realistic than some super-speed engine that only works when there's no-one within X km.
temporary semi-suspended animation for the boring bits, innit.

as for not meeting many ships, how about another pointer on the space compass pointing to the nearest ship?

Happy Xmas BTW.

[DaddyHoggy]

@Jody b - I think the "sleep inducing" of the J drive is implied but is never explicitly stated (although this is how it worked in the Newtonian based Frontier with its x10, x100, x1000, x10000 "time" factor), however, the streaking star effect has, to me, always implied super speed.

In reality though, like the Transporter in Star Trek, its a plot device, a method of getting from interesting place to interesting place without all the real-world tedium in between. Make of it what you will, just remember its one of the few remaining traits that keeps Oolite player-centric (the other is the E-bomb) as NPCs don't have either the j-drive or the e-bomb.

PS: Why is orbiting a planet in 30s "toy-town" if you're going at the speed of a Cobby3's alleged top speed that's 1/3rd speed of light, so you've covered 10light seconds of distance...

[Frame]

I have dealt quite a lot with the sizes in Oolite, there is only one factor that is unrealistic

Distances and by that the size of planets, and all the derivative factors that depend on these...

The small distances was set to counter the feel of an empty space, since the Oolite universe is dynamic. It would be empty because at the same time the author had to take into account at what CPU level he wanted the game to run on..

But along with larger sizes and distances comes the dreaded precision problem, that starts to show at around 7,000,000 Oolite km... A factor 20 planet is a planet of 60,000 standard Oolite km / multiplied by 20 = 1200000 Oolite km. Or 1,200,000 Oolite km or 1/14th of the entire precision stable range...


Precision means, the better the precision, the further from absolute coordinate 0,0,0 are ship rotations / movements /effects calculated and thus displayed, the further away the more you take note of these inaccuracies, at 7,000,000 the become notable... at 15,000,000 they become extremely notable... at 50,000,000 the game engine begins having trouble even propelling a ship in certain directions... Effects such as flashers etc etc... will become extremely inaccurate, in fact they will rotate into your forward view screen if your ship are carrying any such as the shady cobra.. exhaust plumes will look shake... lasers all jumpy... and much more...

I´d say instead of making this a one or the other way decision, that it should be an option.

Realistic distances on/off
Realistic sizes on/off
Standard Precision or Best Precision


Things to take into account in order to achieve this are

Alter Planet Mass-lock (easy)
Coordinate System handling Old system vs New system... (hard)
Non-fixed position for Witch Space Entry point (call it a floating witch point) (easy)

All below (hard)

Hard-code wise, what containers to use in order to obtain this better precision or the complete replacement of Oolites absolute coordinate system that is used the OpenGL drawing functions...

There are ways around these precision problems, but none of them comes without a performance hit...

My own personal best bet on order the solve the precision problem would be

1.

• Use Oolite´s current Coordinate system for the user to plot and retrieve coordinate information, this will keep it backward compatible with older OXPs

2.

• Design a new internal coordinate system,to be used by OpenGL only and only when the user has selected Best Precision as this will cause a performance hit.

3.

• Design a translator between the Internal coordinate system(OpenGL) and external Coordinate system, used by the user to plot where to spawn ships...

4.

• Recode Oolite´s handling of to the player distant objects.. objects you can´t see do not need to be drawn. The stations for example are visible from very far away.. keep only their position/heading/orientation/ and current actions. For distant objects collisions should be handled with simpler calculations... For docking figure something clever..

5

1. Design a method to move the internal (OpenGL) coordinate system around the player once he begins to leave the stable range.... while not moving the external coordinate system.
   (my solar OXP is using just such a method, where all ships are moved out and in of the stable range coordinates... it affects the non player occupied systems though...

My reason for writing all this... I´m trying to explain why it is just not so simple upping the sizes and distances.. everything above is my own personal opinion about what is needed in order to make planets & distances more realistic.. Oolite was never designed to show the real size of planets as its heritage is Classic Elite..

In order to get realistic sizes and distances, a near complete recode of Oolite would be needed...


just my 2 cent...

[CptnEcho]

I dont understand the problem, the game, as is, plays well.

Where is the benefit of making things bigger and further apart, and then finding solutions to the fact that the game is now virtually unplayable?

Surely its better to just accept that some things in [e|oo]lite are not realistic, and enjoy it, or, if you cant do that, play one of the hundred or thousands of other space games that explore these questions differently?

If the game were actually broken, or there were a significant benefit in the change, then I could potentially get excited about it, but I cant help thinking this is another "oolite would be better if it were more realistic" argument, like the so called real physics question which comes up periodically.

OOlite is a great game, because it is essentially elite, with updated graphics, and a few minor gameplay changes (shipyard is the big one, I think) -- realistic systems just are not a part of that, and I dont see why anyone would want them added.

+1

[Killer Wolf]

Oolite's still great, but i must admit i'd like a "realisitic sizes" version if such a thing were possible. i'd like the ability to really go to town w/ ships and structures - have titanic deep-space haulers that take you a good 30 secs to fly past etc. have big sprawling stations (a la freelancer etc) that don't end up looking 2x the size of the planet.