Oolite Bulletins

Since I'm busy ressurecting old threads...

I'd really, really, really like yaw control. A roll/pitch model makes very little sense in space. In order to aim to the left, one must first roll, then pitch (i.e., do the actual aiming); with yaw control one could make a precise movement in the right direction. This is especially true with analogue controllers, including mice.

Having played space sims with all three axes, I found I started off using roll a lot (by analogy to flight sims), but quickly moved to using yaw and pitch, with roll only to align myself with docking ports and similar.

Ahruman wrote:

Having played space sims with all three axes, I found I started off using roll a lot (by analogy to flight sims), but quickly moved to using yaw and pitch, with roll only to align myself with docking ports and similar.

All... three?

In three-space, there's six degrees of freedom. If you want to know what that's like, try Descent. Initially, I found I started off wondering where I was, and then how did I get in that position. Later on, I moved on to using all six mostly as appropriately.

There are six degrees of freedom, but only three are axes, i.e. rotational DOFs. The others are linear DOFs; while strafing left/right and up/down would be cool, it would be a much smaller advantage than being able to yaw. And yeah, Descent was horribly hard to learn; I'm not suggesting a full undampened inertial flight model. Although the side/side and up/down motions would be less important in OOlite since there aren't corners to duck behind.

Ahruman wrote:

I'd really, really, really like yaw control. A roll/pitch model makes very little sense in space. In order to aim to the left, one must first roll, then pitch (i.e., do the actual aiming); with yaw control one could make a precise movement in the right direction. This is especially true with analogue controllers, including mice.

First of all, I would *love* to be able to use my analogue gamepad with OOlite. It is my nr.1 feature wish at this moment.

But I have an issue with space being like 'point to where you want to go'. Once you get even remotely near a planet or star, you have to contend with gravity, orbits and the like.

AFAIK, when astronauts want to catch up with something in space, they slow down their craft. This makes them descend into a tighter orbit, which in turn causes them to revolve faster around the earth. Then they accelerate and move up again.

I doubt that players will want to contend with such flight models for docking, so I suggest seperating this discussion into the physics model (which may or may not need to become more real-world) and the control model, either roll&pitch or yawn&pitch (roll would be less used, reserved for cargo/fuel scooping, landing and such).

my 2 cts.

In my meandering ramblings about ELite and control systems, I posited some time ago that the ships in original Elite have a sophisticated computer control system (kinda like fly-by-wire) that takes all the dogwork out of the real-physics flight. The computer handles the acceleration and deceleration stuff, and all the pilot has to worry about is the relative speeds compared to other objects.

In this way, objects that are travelling at roughly the same overall speed will show up on displays and interfere with the jump drive and stuff, but objects travelling at wildly different speeds compared to the player ship will not even show up.

When you take into consideration that the witchspace exit point in Elite would be relatively close to the planet (like maybe a third of the distance between Earth and the moon) then the relatavistic speeds will not actually be that great.

I've written a treatise that expands this a bit, and it is destined for my site eventually, after a bit of a cleanup and some proper figures...

It's certainly one way of being able to keep a simple flight model and still satisfy the background need for the existance of relatavistic physics.

Ok, I realize the last post made to this topic was over a half-year ago, I have my own two cents (or pence or pesos or whatever) to add:

First, the "non-Newtonian" flight model that [E|Oo]lite uses does not bug me. It's a game, not reality. As others have mentioned, games with "pure" Newtonian flight models (there was one that was on the market a few years ago for the PC - something-something-2 - but I don't remember the title) tend to become little more than "jousting matches". Boring.

On the other hand, I played another game quite some time ago (I think it was named "Mantis") which was on the "Wing Commander" scripted-mission-style space combat modus, that employed Newtonian flight physics effectively by one simple expedient: The fuel (reaction mass) available to you was very limited - about the same as what you'd have if you were to fuel-injectorize your entire WS supply. This forced pilots to be much more circumspect about their fuel consumption. If you ran out of fuel, you didn't come back. Combat in this game was not so "Joust-like".

I would not mind having "yaw boosters" or a yaw-axis available as a purchasable upgrade, although I can personally fight effectively without it. My main flight-control wish-list item is a (keyboard) method to perform fine roll/pitch control. Even the briefest tap of a key results in a roll or pitch change of several degrees - waay too much if trying to target something distant. Joystick control would also be nice, but I recognize what a PITA this is to implement, given the buggy state of the Apple HID (joystick) Manager API. I realize that mouse control is available, but I for one have simply not been able to get "the hang" of using it as a flight controller, even after trying to fly around using it exclusively for about a half hour or so. Perhaps my difficulty with it is due to the fact that I use a trackball rather than a "traditional" mouse...

Please note that I recognize that I have discussed some of the above in different topic(s); I am in no means trying to "badger" aegidian or any of the other developers; I'm simply adding my views and opinions to those already expressed.

I think it's a common old adage that a Newtonian flight model must result in jousting style combat. It is also wrong. The only reason FE:2 and FFE had these kinds of battle were a combination of three things:

1. very rudimentary ship control model (no computer assistance at all, and you couldn't even use all the thrusters - the FE2/FFE spaceship was a bit like one of those cheap Tandy radio controlled cars which only has forwards or reverse turn rather than real steering).
2. very rudimentary AI which couldn't do owt else
3. crap piloting

You could with some practise have all the chasing and close quarters combat in FFE that you get with Oolite. With a fast ship I could easily fly formation with my enemies and the only 'jousting' there was was the initial run-in to meet your enemy (which happens in Oolite by the way - you can't really avoid the first straight run). Most people got hung up on their relative speed towards $MASSIVE_PLANETARY_BODY and thought they were unable to turn or change direction when they could do so fine.

If FFE had a ship control model that assisted the player and better AI, it would have helped with this tremendously of course.

Thrust, Pitch, Roll...... YAW?!

Ho! HaHa! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!

Anyone play IWar, it has to me by far the best implimentation of space based physics I've ever played. Plenty of skill needed but def not a point and shoot, it was pure sim but very fun.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread here...

Might be off base here, but I always considered Elite to be newtonian, but that the engine technology employed automatically limited top speed.

To give an example, normal domestic aircraft are fully newtonian, but are limited in speed by drag caused by air friction. Full thrust gives a finite (and non-increasing) top speed.

Obviously in space there is no air, but I imagined that Elite ships were experiencing some kind of 'drag' which effectively limited their top speed to the relatively low speeds experienced, which provides exciting combat possibilities.

In the original manuals speeds are listed as, for example, .3 and .4 LM (Light Mach). There is no way 'light mach' can be understood to be a fraction of light speed. The radius of your scanner is only about 25 kilometres. If .3 LM was say a third of lightspeed. You'd tranverse this distance in miliseconds.

Light mach must be a different measurement. I'd estimate that a standard Cobra Mk3 (.3 LM) takes about 1 minute to cover 25km at full power. This is only about 400 metres/second at full speed (. Hardly anything at all.

The standard engines on these ships can't be traditional rocket types (ie. reaction thrust).

So Elite, can be newtonian, but there is some other factor preventing the engines from continuially accelerating the ship.

I could explore this a little in my story if people think it's a good idea.

Quirium drag?

Cheers,

Drew.

The Oolite universe (and indeed Elite universe from which it derives) is not at the same scale as the universe we live in.

drew wrote:

So Elite, can be newtonian, but there is some other factor preventing the engines from continuially accelerating the ship.

Yes there is. It takes light eight minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth (or the other way round). It takes an Oolite ship about that time (within an order of magnitude) to travel the same distance. Therefore your ship's max velocity in normal space is approaching 'c'. As you approach 'c', further thrust has an ever decreasing impact on your speed. Thus it is quite reasonable for engines to be on full, and you not get any faster.

On the other hand, it isn't reasonable that the moment you switch off your engines you come to a complete stop. But that's a different matter. It's been suggested that your ship's computer automatically applies reverse thrust to make flying easier. Since there are no big forward mounting engines, I can only assume that the rear engines are fitted with reverse thrust deflectors.

Incidentally, the maximum feasible speed for a spacecraft in “normal space” is considered to be 0.2c to 0.4c, due to drag in the interstellar medium. Near a star it would be slower. :-)

Not just that but speed will blueshift incoming radiation to the hard end of the EM spectrum, and space dust will happily leave little holes in your hull and the crew

Count me among those who love and cherish the non-Newtonian flight model of Elite and Oolite, but who would like to have a "killswitch" of sorts that would switch off the inertial dampeners and shut off the engines, causing my ship to drift in the direction of travel at my current rate of speed. Reapplying any thrust would immediately reactivate the dampeners, a sort of safety mechanism.

What this would allow is, to use an old Wing Commander term, the ability to perform a Shelton Slide. Slam the injectors, go for high burn at a steep angle of attack, hit the killswitch, and turn to strafe the enemy as my ship tumbles past them. As soon as I pass, go for burn again and climb up their tail.

If it's true that unpowered ships and objects obey Newtonian physics in the game, would it be prohibitively difficult to map a killswitch that would power down the ship's engines and let inertia carry it forward at the last heading and speed, and reengage non-Newtownian flight as soon as you apply thrust again?