G33X Nexus Entertainment > Precursors

Space Flight Controls, and Realism

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fehknt:
indeed -- Space flight is only one of the three aspects of the game.  People aren't going to expect everyone playing to be able to pilot well, or even at all.  that's what the space taxi's are for!

Brandano:
This is a discussion in wich I ended up several times when discussing space sims. You have however to remember one thing: you can't be 100% accurate. If you were to be accurate you could accelerate to mach 24 and over in planet orbit. That would make the closure speed between two fighting ships about mach 48, and would make the game pretty unplayable. Outside a planet gravitational field your speed would be limited only by how long you can keep your engines on, and possible impacts with interstellar dust. This would  mean that you could reach close to the speed of light, and also that is unplayable. So for the sake of playability the ships have to behave like if they were immersed in a viscous fluid.
Then there's the matter of realistic(hard) vs simplistic(easy) flight models. Mind you, they are both unrealistic, we already established that. Today's fighter lpanes rely heavily on electronics to enhance their stability. They are inherently unstable, because this gives them a better maneuverability, but without a computer they would be ungovernable. A spaceship doesn't suffer from stability issues, as the only forces applied to it come from its trusters. However, modern aircraft behave following the philosophy of "carefree handling", meaning that even if the pilot slams on the controls they won't depart from controlled flight. I think a spaceship could well be managed by an onboard computer in order to behave "plane-like" when flown normally. However the advanced pilot might want to tweak things so that he can, for example, move vertically up during a fight. The best thing for me would be to be able to edit the control laws of my plane as I get it. Normally I'd only use the default controls, but I could add a couple of thrusters sacrificing a laser and set them to brake the ship if I put the throttle in "reverse", this sort of things. A good flight model programmer would have an unfair advantage, but I suppose this could be limited by using controlling blocks, and a limited number of options. Another option could be to have different control methods for more or less "hard core" servers. But having a combat ship behaving like a soyuz is a no-no

Sorry for the longish rant... :)

Morgul:
Well, you obviously won't want to accellerate at the speed of light to your target. Also, the *time* (in real life) to accelerate to the speed of light would take a very long time. We'll be putting a cap in, at arounf half the speed of light, I think. Also, there's a 'soft cap' that the player puts on his ship when in 'combat mode'. If he increases this, he has to understand that he won't be able to hit is target, so he'd better be running. Also, controlling the ship at higherspeeds is... well... ill advised. (I hate slamming into things, personally.)

I dunno... I think that we can make it, oh, say 75% accurate, with no problem.

--Chris

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