There have been a lot of questions about how the game’s physics system will work. Is it going to be ‘physics light’ like Wing Commander, an entirely serious model of Newtonian physics like more recent games, or something in-between? Chris Roberts recently addressed this in a forum post and we thought it’d be good to share this background with everyone:
As someone that was taking Physics at Manchester University before I dropped out to make games full time I can assure everyone that the physics model is COMPLETELY accurate and it’s a full rigid body simulation. I know because I wrote the code.
Maybe I should have done a better job in the demo, but if you are flying at speed and you set your desired velocity to zero you WILL see the top front thrusters articulating and firing to slow your velocity. If you watch my demo you will notice there is some momentum with the Hornet when I slow down close to the bridge. It may not have been apparent on the screen, but I can assure the Hornet does not stop on a dime. if you load it up with more mass (like extra weapons) you feel the effect of this.
There is no drag modeled – everything is done as it would be in space.
Additionally there is actually counter thrust being applied inside the physics and if you had your hands on the controller you would feel it. If you look closely you will see the inertia of this – the ship doesn’t stop rolling or pitching on a dime. There is however a very good reason why you don’t actually see the thrusters fire entirely accurately.
The problem with visually depicting the proper thrust is that it would actually look pretty horrible (trust me this is how I first did it, and is still pretty easy to switch back to as I’m actually doing some extra work to make the visuals looks nicer).
The reason is because there is no drag in space, so even a micro amount of thrust starts the Hornet (or any spaceship) rotating until you apply counter thrust. So what is really happening is that the flight control system is always applying micro thrust and counter thrust to achieve the pilot’s inputs. This results in the thrusters flickering off and on in micro amounts and you actually not getting a good feel of the general application of thrust. I think you know I like things to look cool (come on, we all know you probably wouldn’t be engaging in space dogfights at WW2 speeds, but it’s so much more fun than what the reality would probably be), so what happens is that the system is still modeled accurately, but I use the angular /linear velocity delta to drive the visual representation of thrust. Here’s my code comment
//Note the thrustGoal is actually the linear velocity delta (desired vel – current vel of
//the vehicle & rotational vel rather than the actual linear & angular acceleration / thrust.
//This is because, while inaccurate its cooler to see more constant thrust that gives
//you a visual clue as to what correctional movement / velocity vectors the vehicle is using.
//If we just used the acceleration as opposed to the desired velocity correction, the thruster flames
//would flicker on and off – especially in the Wing Commander use case of Space, where
//there is no atmosphere to provide drag.
//
//Of course if you pass the actual accelerations to SetThrustGoal, then you’ll get an accurate //visual representation of what a thruster would really do
I hope that clears up any confusion!
I will admit that the ship doesn’t need to have wings or fans on the front, but the idea behind that is for possible atmospheric flight (this is not a promise of planetary action for the early build but allows for expansions in this direction), and as a RAM scoop. Plus it just looks / feels cool!
Chris Roberts
An update that speaks to the programmer in all of us. Thanks Chris!
Will there be a top speed?
logically there isn’t a max speed, until the relativistic effects are going to take part of the physics. So 30% of light speed should be possible
This has come up a few times so I’ll repost this again:
Even in space, there are physical limits to the speed of the ship (not just light speed). Principal among these is exhaust velocity (Specific Impulse x mass flow rate x gravitational constant) and specific thrust.
Math aside, essentially it means your not gonna go faster than you can push stuff out the back (conservation of momentum). Chemical rockets have isp’s around 350 seconds. Our best ion thrusters right now have isp’s on the order of 2 to 3000 seconds (but very low thrust). Nuclear rockets could have isp’s around 10000s. So some theoretical new type of propulsion could see isp’s as high as order 7 or 8 (10^7 ~ 10^8) s.
If your familiar with this you may be thinking, but Isp is a measure of efficiency! True…this may be a simplistic way of looking at it, but because of conservation of momentum, we can say that energy we get from pushing something out the back must equal the energy we put into the pushing.
As far as top speed then of a craft..that would depend on a mass flow rate. Since these ship aren’t 90% fuel, we can assume mass flow rate is low (or better yet, not dependent on mass flow rate but some other principle of reaction mass – see: quantum vacuum fluctuations or dark energy/matter), maybe 10^-3 kg/m^3/s to 10^1 kg/m^3/s so (and with an insanely high 10^8 s isp), we could see velocites from 1% to above 10% the speed of light (at which point we need to start looking at relativity for mass effects….
furthermore…acceleration has to do with thrust.. i won’t speculate any more for that… but suffice it to say it would take a LOT of thrust to get up to 0.01c let alone 0.1c… so my best estimate is that we’d see nominal cruising speeds of around 0.001c, or about 1 million km/h (which is bloody fast!) in the deep of space…probably less for inner solar system travels…less yet near large bodies
Even “only” 1Mkm/h would pose major issues with detecting collisions between moving entities. For that reason alone, we’re likely to see much lower maximum velocities in a computer game. Not to mention game design issues (it’s pretty hard to track such fast moving entities, how do you make a “fun” game out of that?)
The exhaust velocity would increase with the same amount of thrust merely by shrinking the exhaust diameter. Therefore, it should be possible to close the exhaust aperature down to a pinhole and have a large amount of exhaust exiting the nozzle at a very high speed. Due to the relative volume remaining constant, the acceleration would decrease the faster you were going, but it would still be enough to go a LOT faster than some of you were thinking.
-Irish
“your not gonna go faster than you can push stuff out the back”
I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong. If you pushed something out of the back and didn’t accelerate in the opposite direction, you’d be breaking newtons 3rd law of motion.If something is thrown out the back it is travelling in the opposite direction to the one you’re travelling in (or at least slower in the current direction, if your going faster than the exhaust). The ship has to move forward a little faster to keep the net momentum of the system constant. Relativistic speeds start adding mass instead of velocity to keep the momentum constant when you start running out of possible velocity.
Anyway, the original post says “…you probably wouldn’t be engaging in space dogfights at WW2 speeds, but it’s so much more fun than what the reality would probably be” which implies aircraft speeds.
@Waslop You’re right…I realized this a bit ago and have been trying to edit or remove these posts…I’m frankly embarrassed at the moment…not sure what I was thinking.. Sometimes I get an idea stuck in my head and run blind…
Please disregard previous statement
My 2c: top speed in space would probably be intentionally limited due to the risk of a piece of space debris punching through your hull. Travelling at a gazillion km/hr and hitting a ball bearing sized piece of rock would ruin your day.
@O\’Donovan (Irish):
Hm, if that was true, then an extremely small hole in an aquarium would create a water beam which can cut a human into two halves. Well, from my experience (until now), that is not the case.
What you described is more or less a nozzle. A nozzle converts energy already stored in a gas or liquid from one form of energy into another but it does not create any energy. That means that the maximum exhaust velocity (i.e. kinetic energy) you can create is limited by the energy already stored in the gas/liquid (e.g. high temperature and pressure). After consuming the other forms of energy, you can’t accelerate the gas/liquid any longer, so that the maximum exhaust velocity of combustion rocket engines is defined by the fuel combination since the fuel combination defines the energy created in the combustion process.
Btw, sorry for playing the wiseacre. Couldn’t stop it…
@AthorMorpheus
I believe O’Donovan was using this poster’s flawed example of physics (which that poster has since corrected) to construct his example. Once you understand his premise (higher exit velocity of exhaust = higher max velocity) you’ll understand what he was getting at, take a Google at “venturi” to understand why a nozzle speeds up particles flowing through it.
Your example of conservation of energy is indeed the correct one, I just love venturis is all.
@Grysage
This is just plain wrong. Of course the exhaust speed is finite. But that does not mean that the speed of the spacecraft is limited to that speed. Otherwise no rocket could ever attain a low earth orbit (exhaust speed liquid rocket ~4.5km/s, low earth orbital speed, ~7.9km/s).
The exhaust speed is relative to the spacecraft, not relative to a stationary observer (btw, there is no absolute reference frame for speed). So when the spacecraft is going at 10km/s with respect to the earth and it pushes out exhaust gasses with 4km/s the spacecraft still accelerates. However, from the point of view of the earth the exhaust gasses are going in the same direction as the spacecraft, only slower at 6km/s.
@drunkenmonkey:
Venturi nozzles are a nice example but they have a fundamental flaw: They only work for sub-sonic flow. As soon as you have super-sonic flow, you need a nozzle which increases its diameter since super-sonic flow actually expands when you accelerate it further. For real world rocket engines you then end up with nozzles which first narrow and then expand (de Laval nozzle).
As some one who studied physics This whole train of comments was really fun to read…
some things i would like to note.
1. a rocket provide a constant force. and since we know that F=M*A that there would also be a constant acceleration independent of current velocity. The reason there is a speed limit on earth is because the faster you are going the more air resistance there is so you reach a terminal velocity.
2. Space is not a perfect vacuum (solar winds, interstellar particals ect.) so there would be a terminal velocity.
3. Having the spaceships go at speeds that real spaceships would go at would make a bad dog-fighting game.
4. smaller nozzle on a rocket means means the gas traveling out would go faster but there would be less gas coming out so too small would be bad. You need to have the right size for the situation. (earths space shuttle are a medium sized nozzle to allow for both atmospheric and space fight.)
This small physics discussion is delightful to read! So glad to see that there are gamers who can use their brains for more than calculating the best buff to add to their new PvP broadsword.
Some ramblings about shrinking the hole, massflow and exit velocity: For a rocket engine the design pretty much always is super-sonic. This is a whole different ballgame and makes venturi largely useless. In a supersonic nozzle the air must first be accelerated to mach 1, which happens venturi-esque. Due to shockwave interactions that would otherwise form this mach 1 point will ALways be in the tightest part of the nozzle, the throat. Because the speed of sound (mach 1) is in practice limited only by temperature (technically also the gas type, which varies very little between fuel types, and a physical constant) the limiting factor to flow velocity in the throat is the temperature your nozzle can withstand, but the combustion chamber is actually more limiting. Massflow is then constrained by the diameter of the throat, so making it smaller will cause less massflow! (making it too small will probably explode or melt your engine if your fuel inflow is higher than your gass outflow). The diameter is further constrained by the diameter of the combustion chamber, because a large decrease in diameter is needed for the venturi-esque process to get to mach 1. Opposite to sub-sonig flow, a supersonic flow accelerates when it is expanded. So After the throat the nozzle diameter increases again (the part of the engine you actually see) to accelerate the flow further. Final exit velocity is determined by the size of the bell, the larger it is the faster the flow, but making it very large risks shock-wave problems. In vacuum you would like a large bell, but in atmosphere that would cause shockwaves that slow you down. In modern day practice nozzles are usually designed for the ‘average’ atmospheric pressure they are operated in. How large you could make a space-only nozzle such that it adds as much acceleration by thrust as it reduces by added weight is a very interesting question.
The modern fighting jets already set the top speed for a human piloted fighter, simply because human body has a limit of G forces it can take, no matter where fighter operates, will it be space or planet atmosphere there is a limit before your eyes would pop out from you skull sockets lol and other issues. So unless you want to have remote controlled drones fight or turn yourself into some Android or Terminator the speeds of fighters in game should be no faster than jets like “F-22 Raptor” from USA which already maneuvers on the edge of the limit what human body can take.
isn’t the G forces only applicable for atmospheric flight? just curious.
No this applys in space too but the solution has been found already and that would be to immerse yourself in liquid the gforce is less and this is proven with a water balloon at nasa
Great point! Actually this limit is more important than only the pilot. The spacecraft must also be capable of handling the high g-forces. Making it capable of handling higher loads means making it stronger and heavier, which means larger engines to create the g-loads, which need more fuel, which require a larger spacecraft, etc etc etc. It would not necessarily pay to make a craft more g-capable, especially because spacecraft, unlike aircraft, require their own engines to produce the g-loads.
This however only describes combat, for travel I would personally say the sky is the limit. Well actually the fuel-tank, but okay.
excerpt from Roberts’ post suggests that the answer would be yes:
“I think you know I like things to look cool (come on, we all know you probably wouldn’t be engaging in space dogfights at WW2 speeds, but it’s so much more fun than what the reality would probably be),”
If you didn’t have a top speed, the above would not be true in lots of situations. If there were not a top speed, two forces accelerating at each other head-to-head from a distance would blow past each other at such high relative velocity, that they would each wind up way past each other, perhaps well out of weapons range. They’d each have to turn around, set engines to full power just to come to a stop, and then start accelerating in the other direction. Especially with less experienced (entry-level) pilots, that would mean almost every engagement that started at range would have a strong chance of devolving into repeated ‘jousting’ type passes against one another and not producing anything that looked like a WW2 or Korean/Vietnam war dogfight or furball.
There are other outcomes besides jousting if you don’t have a top speed, but they still wouldn’t often result in tail chase combat or maneuvers. Other than jousts, I think a frequent alternative outcome would be retrograde defense, i.e. one ship is drifting backwards and firing its axial weapons at a pursuer, with change in posture coming when the pursuer decides to disengage or close slowly, or when the defender punches the engine and reverts to jousting.
the nature of the simulation dictates the tactics available, and if there were not a top speed, combat would differ very considerably from any previous incarnation of Wing Commander.
The irony is that the “jousting” style of combat was actually extensively used in WW2, largely in the Pacific theatre where it was an effective tactic for fast, powerful, heavy and durable American fighters (especially Corsair and P-38) against nimble, lightweight and distinctly inflammable Japanese types.
There is some evidence that the Japanese realised they needed to make American-style fighters to win against these tactics consistently, but they found themselves unable to make powerful enough engines in quantity or effective self-sealing fuel tanks that wouldn’t catch fire so easily. By this time, their industrial capacity was being eroded significantly by bombing raids, and they were also running out of experienced pilots.
The main problem with jousting is that it’s hard to avoid head-on collisions while still doing decent damage to your target.
True that! But it wasn’t limited to that – that outcome was due to the relative strengths of the two airframes, not an inherent truism of WW2 air combat. As you point out, that happened a lot in the Pacific theater – airframe matchups in the European theater often had a different character. Bf-109 vs Spitfire, FW-190 vs Mustang, etc. didn’t turn out the way that Hellcat vs. Zero did – and the Zero’s jousting disadvantage absolutely did apply because you don’t play chicken with a Jalthi. Er, I mean… uh… you know what I mean, yeah?
German pilots *did* joust B-17s until forward fire coverage improved. It’s not that jousting doesn’t occur in air combat – I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that, gameplay-wise, we have a certain romanticized notion of what fighter combat is like, but the expectations source from popular media and experience with atmospheric combat where energy tactics, time of day and attitude w.r.t. the sun, altitude, stall speeds all led to certain tactics and truisms. We’d like our games to look as exciting, but space is of course a very different place, and the more accurate we get, the further we get away from that certain romantic ideal.
that said, we don’t have to hew to a romantic ideal or complete realism at the total expense of having fun. Maybe what we’d like to aim for (and the flight physics being discussed so far seems to support or enable) is B5 and BSG-style dogfights, where most of the time the fighters are dogfighting WW2 style, but you can mix in Newtonian inertial drift maneuvers that you just can’t do in an atmospheric, high-gravity environment.
But this is all getting slightly away from the narrow issue of top speed/no top speed, I think
As a War Thunder player, I can attest to the truth of that last paragraph. One of the surest ways to get rammed is by flying straight at another air/spacecraft, because even at “WW2 speeds,” you only get 2-3 seconds to aim and fire at optimal target distance before you have to dodge the oncoming enemy fighter.
In a sci-fi space fighter, you might get a little more time to respond, due to improved targeting/weapons (and thus a larger optimal target distance), but it’ll still be very risky to stick to your heading for too long.
I strongly hope there will not be a top speed, as IW2:EoC proved this is a viable concept in a space fighting game. To me, it makes only marginal real-world physics sense to have a top speed (as some previous conversation has indicated) and in a video game you can often make up the rules as long as they have a base in reality (new types of propulsion, materials, and new sciences such as shield technologies can often BS their way through real-world physics as Star-Trek so laudably demonstrated).
Have any of you ever played Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos (IW2:EoC)? If not I suggest picking it up on the cheap at GOG, it’s only $6. It’s over 10 years old but one of the major features was the realistic Newtonian physics that allowed you to do some very interesting sideways flyby shootings whilst dogfighting. i.e. Turn off your flight computer, get going fairly fast in a direction slightly off from your target (5x the normal cruising speed will do it), turn off all thruster control which results in you coasting along with no change in speed due to no drag in space, yaw your nose over and wait for the target to enter your crosshairs, then pop off a couple of rounds as you zoom by. It was most effective against targets much slower than you, especially stationary ones, but a hugely valid tactic in a universe supporting true Newtonian physics. Especially since you were able to point that big thruster in any direction while coasting along and fire it at the right moment to juke out a missile. In this game it is also possible to fly the vast distances of space using nothing but your main thruster, though it takes a very long time to do so and has a high probability of overshooting your target if you aren’t careful, hence the use of the cruise engine was essential. This is the sort of freedom a space game should offer.
After playing IW2:EoC I tried another space combat game and was completely unable to wrap my head around the airplane-like physics it employed, e.g. you always travel the direction your nose is pointed and have no ability to coast. I believe the X Universe games use this odd model of space physics.
Side question: What does everyone think of using only Newtonian physics instead of Einstenian physics? I feel that in the interest of code simplicity and plain old fun the designers should be allowed to either ignore relativity or simply avoid the speeds at which relativity becomes relevant.
^-THIS. Well said – i agree on all points. Particularly on leaving out Einsteinian physics. Besides – what kind of game mechanics would have to be implemented to get the time effects of speeds approaching speed of light? Especially in a multi-player game.
Thanks for the tip on IW2:EoC – just purchased.
Do you know if the original IW has the same mechanics?
time dilation/reference frames, are impossible to simulate, as the sense of time of the player is not adaptable….
I’ll have a look at IW2:EoC
if you can have strafe thrust as well you would be able to do some amazing maneuvers….
but there will always be a speed limit be it the limits of a float or double (at some point your speed in one axis would go from max positive value to the max negative value) or the minute amount of friction left.
Cheers for the update Chris!
I don’t fear it – I’m married to a physician
And my daughter – Bachelor of Science – had a professor named Metin Tolan who uses Star Trek and James Bond for his lessons 
Nice to bring forum post about physics here on visible spot.
Hey everyone I would love to see left part of // code comment
Copy the body of text and paste into notepad or something. The whole text is there, just obscured by the border.
Thanks for sharing this. Sounds like you made the right tradeoff between accuracy and fun. People should be used to this given what Hollywood does.
So essentially the thruster visuals for a stable flight vector aren’t depicted (just as well they’d probably be going continuously!) and what we see is the thruster visuals for attitude and direction changes.
I’d go for cool over total accuracy any day! thanks for the update.
This sounds like something that could be configurable.
Though I’d probably stick with “visually appealing”.
And seeing that comment made me want to clone a Git repository…
Please don’t make us beg for Atmospheric Flight, cause… I think a lot of us totally would.
It’d be embarrassing.
And utterly degrading for all parties.
But that wouldn’t stop us from begging. Cause we will. If we have to.
My fingers are begging on their own
PLEASE CHRIS DO ATMOSPHERIC FLIGHT
it doesn’t even have to be right away, I just want to know its coming eventually
I really hope this gets added at some point. I love the idea of being able to land on planets like in Frontier Elite II!!
Will ships have a top speed?
Even after this was posted on the forum I still see a fair few posts (here and other places) of people thinking the visuals should still be accurate and they want them accurate and it wouldn’t be that bad etc etc etc.
So maybe if there’s ever time to do it (since you said its pretty easy to switch back), a short video showing just how bad the visuals look when they are done accurately would help with peoples “but it’s not accurate, it should needs to be accurate!!!”?
This level of physical modeling with such a graphics …
That tells me that the system requirements will be ruthless to my hardware
But this is not a reason to be sad – it is a reason to upgrade!
with gpu physics processing the cpu demand for some of these models isnt that taxing. dedicated physx processor will probably be required though..
Is there any chance we could see the realistic thruster visualization compared to the cool looking one?
Maybe you guys at RSI could script some basic flight maneuvers, record them once with each thruster setting and then cut them into a split-screen video. This way we could see how horrible/cool they look and comment.
Less worried about the thruster visuals then the physics of how the player controls it.
Automatic sliding and having the pilot have to manually stop every turn or rotation with counter thrust I think would ruin the game. I hope this will not be the case, and it sounds like it won’t with Chris’s f35 reference a while back.
I like how wing commander worked and don’t mind if you make the physics more realistic as long as the computer is taking care of thrusters and getting the ship pointed where I want it, and I’m just concentrating on enemy and the fight. I think the way the ship was moved by the pilot in wing commander was great and made the game better than all the others out there. I could care less about perfect physics, I care about fun.
My understanding is that the opposing force is applied automatically by the flight computer when you stop turning
wow, you are my hero already (because you studied physics) :B
I like your developer commentary and I like to see this game grow, now… about that interplanetary action, that would just be AMAZING, infinite possibilities, mercenaries can hide in moons, good guys can go and save colonies on some planets and mercenaries can go and steal some resources from some others colonies.
there can be a planet with host events like races, pvp coliseums, and so on
amazing!
Seruously, the physics demo looked awesome and fun, what is wrong with people? It’s not a freaking NASA simulator, it’s supposed to be fun! Go get your astrophysics PhD if you want to do the real thing. I saw some people criticize the wings and rams and how the whole thing isn’t real space flight…boy that’d be HORRIBLE for a game! Imagine traveling through a void for DAYS or weeks to get to the nearest jump point in real time, fighting other ships going thousands of miles per hour, taking minutes to hours to turn so your inertia doesn’t Force you through the wall of your ship…not to mention NO SOUND CARRIES IN A VACUUM so maybe hear your own ship vibrating and sounds in your cabin if it has atmosphere, but that’s it. C’mon get real people don’t complain just because you can!
This’s gonna be cool!
Just a thought a little far from the subject: I wonder if the planets will be rendered as 3d sphere and to scale (similar to Freelancer) or will they just blend in the background and not reachable?
I’m going to guess unreachable at first and change later if implementing atmospheric flight. Just a guess.
That sounds reasonable but if near-future graphic cards could easily handle cryengine3 at high settings, i’d love to see 3d planets to scale and the part where the scenes seamlessly transit when we start diving our ships through the atmosphere and land. Of course just wishful thinking.
Chris,
In the forum we were discussing about the G-forces, and how or what we should expect since it’s in space an all, but we then realized if any of it were real, then the Pilot will just be a splat of red goo at the back of the cockpit when you go into a jump point.
So, with that in mind like every good Sci-Fi novel the problem is “solved” with the “Inertia Dampener Sub System” and then we proceeded to speculate what if we can damage/destroy the Inertia Dampener, then what will the effect be in during the dog fight combat.
Will the Pilot black out, get Red Vision until the ship slows down to a safe speed, or what.
What’s your view on this Chris?
We’ve had Acceleration Absorbers since WC1, so I’m guessing that’s what they’ll be called
Losing them didn’t actually affect gameplay, though, so you ask an interesting question. Strike Commander had greyout and redout, though – I’m certain the thought has crossed mind.
G-Forces will definitely be a factor. It wasn’t done in time for the demo, but the idea is the forces caused by raid changes in direction (not really G force as we’re in space!) are more a limiting factor on how tightly you can turn than perhaps your ship is.
You will definitely feel the affect of acceleration, deceleration and vector changes in the cockpit. Turn too tightly and you could black out. You’ll feel your view position shift as your virtual body is thrown around during tight turning.
I really like this idea of how the physics work. I can see it really helping to aid in the immersion of the game.
Thanks for the clarification.
seems like the game will be much more interesting with the Oculus Rift, now that we know how it’ll behave
Sounds good but how much “g force” our body can handle varies depending on the direction, red out happens much faster black out.
Will you also simulate that because that would have a mayor impact on how we’ll fly?
Yes. You’ll be flying as a human so you should have the same G tolerances that we have from evolving on Earth!
So you can pull more Gs pitching up than down, so maybe you’ll want to roll and pull back if you need to go after someone below you.
Cool, sounds like more fun for me that way.
That brings also up some nice possibilities for, maybe later playable, alien races with different G tolerances.
yikes. I hope they have better G-suits in the 30th century. Or acceleration absorber upgrades that we can add as part of our ship’s aerospace combat maneuverability package.
I played Strike Commander with the G effects turned off because I didn’t like not being able to see (realism down, I was playing a game…) and when I turned them back on after about a month of playing, to see what I was missing, I was shocked. I mean, I’ve read enough about air combat to know it’s a major factor, but I obviously would never have been able to fly the way I was flying those F-16′s – pilot would have suffered an average of two dozen cerebral hemorrhages per hop. ><
Oh, Chris – if you have time for a little WC1/2 trivia question, did getting your acceleration absorbers blown off your fighter in WC1/2 actually affect any aspect of gameplay? I never noticed any, so I assume they weren’t actually incorporated into the flight model, but I’ve always just kind of wondered. Scimitar gets hit, I go, “oh no, there go my pods – what was in them, again?”
Fighter pilots have special suits to help them withstand higher G forces. This could be a factor in the game as well – and I would assume there has been some progress in the suits….so perhaps you can buy better suits to help with withstanding higher G forces…at a price of course. I don’t envy your task of integrating and balancing all of these things
As some peoples seem very keen about having realism vs more flashy, and the fact that its just a code adjustment, you could probably have a setting where the player can tune it to their desired setting. Then everyone is happy, and it doesn’t take much time to set up.
Since this is a physics post I wanted to plug metamaterials as a great technology to use as an explanation for futuristic tech. It could not only serve as a cloaking device, but also shield against, potentially, anything in the electromagnetic spectrum (read: lasers).
Thank you for the update
I think the issue some people have with the physics talks, is that they fear the game will become more complex and lost what I would described the “immediate fun” aspects Wing Commander, Privateer and Freelancer had.
I mean when I think of Wing Commander, the first thing I think of is easy it was to get into and have fun. You’d just go, fly, shoot thing down. The series got more options over the episodes, but always focused on that sense of fun, which is what made it different from other more complexe space sim series.
The whole physhics and complex aspect is a reason I couldn’t get into some later space sims, because it became an annoyance. I can see the appeal it has to people, but that’s not what I want in a Wing Commander-ish game.
So basically if the physhics are just about making things looks cool but it basically controls like Wing Commander always did, that’s cool. If it starts to plays like I-War… not so cool.
That’s the whole point of fly by wire. The ship’s computers are doing all the hard real time calculations to achieve the simplistic inputs from the pilot (roll, pitch, hit this speed etc.)
The advantage of modeling the physics more accurately than in the past is more about the nuances that can come in from damage, upgrades and if people want to get crazy, arts of the system being shut off.
But we don’t expect a player to be able to (or want to ) control all eight maneuvering jest in real time. handling one, as in Asteroids, in 2D was difficult enough.
BTW – This is true of modern day fighter jets – a human pilot could never fly the newer jets ad they’re dynamically unstable for greater maneuverability. The fly by wire system is constantly adjusting control surfaces and the vectored thrust to achieve the input the pilot is giving him.
Spiffy, that’s pretty much exactly what I was hoping. Thanks for keeping us posted!
For me that brings up another question: How (with what peripheral) do we control that the best.
I think most here will agree that this game should be played with a joystick but at the same time should also work with a mouse or gamepad.
A joystick (or full HOTAS setup) is the most immerse and you shouldn’t be at a disadvantage with one at least.
But it is probably too limited depending on how much freedom you give is with this system.
We know that we can turn around and fly backwards to shot at the enemy that is following us. Sounds good but only if I can still change directions, otherwise I’m an easy target.
So I would need 2 input devices, one for direction and one for aligning my nose/guns. The same goes for strafing or “your nose is not pointing in the direction you fly” situations in general.
I could use a coolie hat on my joystick or the keyboard for that but that would still be less than optimal.
Probably the best solution would be a second joystick and pedals for main engine thrust, unfortunately such a peripheral setup doesn’t really exist (a gamepad has 2 sticks but kind of lacks the buttons).
I don’t want to make the controls overly complicated, I really like that it’s first based on the simple WC art of flying but this physics based system theoretically makes some crazy stuff possible (probably not for me), unfortunately we lack the best peripheral setup for that.
Rudders for strafing. Turns while maintaining forward status in space, don’t really need real rudders in space. Then if add atmospheric flight later you already have the rudders! Dual purpose-they can still be thrust based on the tail of the ship to serve those dual purposes, and since in the rear they serve to pivot the ship from the back, as rudders do, the counter thrust from the other side would stop the rotation movement. with a continuous thrust in atmospheric flight it would function enough close to real rudders then in a wind resistance based design/atmosphere. So break out some rudder pedals to control it (or a keyboard button like old wing commander’s yaw)
But afaik with rudders you would only be able to strafe left/right and not up/down, better than nothing but still limited.
Hell, if you’re interested in strafing, I’d say have some kind of lateral thruster control. A joystick hat switch could do the trick.
…that’s something I’d like to see with this game. Someone says “fire the portside lateral thrusters while yawing left”, or maybe “fire the ventral thrusters while pitching down”. You’d wind up doing a type of powered slide of the same kind you see in WC. Will we be able to do that sort of thing, I wonder?
I like that this topic has come up; I’ve been trying to work out how much power a reactor would have to produce in order to propel a corvette (in this case at non-relativistic speeds). I pretty much hate Konstantin Tsiolkovsky at this point…
Yes, as I have mentioned a hat switch would work but is certainly not an optimal solution.
When I think about how the control setup in a real “space fighter” would look like I simply don’t see the same setup a jet fighter has.
One option is to control a different set of axes by pressing a button on the flight stick. For example, under normal circumstances your flight stick’s axes control roll/pitch/yaw, but when you press the button under your little finger, the flight stick’s axes control linear accelerations along the 3 ship axes.
I know but that is pretty much the problem I (poorly) described, you would be limited to use only one of them and not both simultaneously.
Well that’s certainly good to hear! Thanks for clearing things up a bit !
Sounds like the flight is going to feel like Vendetta Online except with details and graphics
Well, some serious space sim emerging, very nice.
One of the things that makes Diaspora (and Beyond the Red Line before it) fun to fly is that you have the option to drop your ship’s forward thrust to zero and continue moving on your existing momentum. This allows you to do interesting maneuvers like match an escort’s velocity and swivel like a turret or turn around and face an attacker in a dogfight without playing the circles game.
Any comment on whether this type of mechanic will be featured in Star Citizen?
Yes this /\– right there do this
All I’m really looking for physics wise is the ability to cut my main engine and use my thrusters to pivot in space while continuing along my original velocity vector (freelancer style). Will this be included in the game?
This is what I want to be able to do too!
I have one thing to say. I participated in the discussion where eventually Chris dropped in with his explanation you see above. I thought about it and I think you have to compromise between gameplay and reality. I bet Chris could apply full Newtonian physics into SC but then the space engagements would be almost impossible. Try to play old Elite II Frontieer (or the recent remake Pioneer: Space Sim), there the physics are a bit simplified (compared to say Orbiter) but are pretty accurate. Fights with AI in space are something different there. And I think that player vs player fights would end before they started – not because someone would win but because the speeds involved the adversaries would just blast past eachother and would never be able to merge and start traditional one/two cirlce fight.
I find a good balance of realism and playabilty in Diaspora: Shattered Armistice recently released stand alone mod built on Freespace Open engine. If you want you have full control over six degrees if freedom but with limited speed which helps to confine the battles within small space.
This is what happened in Ace of Angels. It ruined the game.
How cool is it that our favorite game developer is actually sharing the dev process with us and answering our questions / considering our input. Way to go Chris Robers!
Wow, thanks for the technical details. It’s really nice that you still actually write code!
Speaking of newtonian physics, will it be possible 1) to tell the fly-by-wire system to assume a specific frame of reference to which it would adjust, and 2) will it be possible to orbit around planets – or will SC be “aeroplanes in space” without gravitation…
thanks
Will there be a switch in the menu to swap between the ‘pretty’ thrusters and the ‘accurate’ ones? I know some hardcore players would want to see the thrusters articulate correctly, and some who would want the ship to look ‘cool’.
As this is the future, would it be possible to have a “maintain range” button, and then have controls toggle to strafing on a radial tangental while the computer maintained range. Relative range could be controlled by the throttle. To me this seems to be the best augment for a human pilot without worrying about keeping in weapon range, while still giving significant freedom to manuver/dogfight. There could be loads of issues with this, however, like winding up significantly out of position/vector and having to re-engage, or being manuvered into obstacles by a far more skilled opponent. I realize this is an unneccesarily complicated answer to a real physics flight problem, but it might be the simplest way to have a human pilot adapt to a real situation. Having said this, I loved flying in Privateer and wouldn’t complain about seeing that physics model. So can’t wait for Star Citizen!
Technically possible shouldn’t be the issue, such systems are at least in test phase for cars, but I don’t like that idea. Imho that would make it too easy for the guy in pursuit. I mean if you realize too late that the guy, on who’s tail you are, is hitting his “brakes” hard you made a mistake and have to deal with the consequences (not being able to stay at his tail).
Contrails versus Space dust
I couldn’t help noticing the contrails from the fighter ‘wing tips’. You’d need moisture in an atmosphere to produce this. I know it’s there to give the perspective of motion. But why not try a stardust or space dust visual effect?
6-degrees of freedom.
While it’s true the ships have the ability to pitch, roll and yaw, their only direction for movement is forward. In space you can freely change your relative “altitude” and strafing motion. Also you can go in reverse.
Zero-gravity surface-tromp AND float
The astronaut scrambling through the hangar accurately shows how you must fully land a foot on the surface to allow the next foot to rise (just like in Dead Space). You should also be able to jump away from the contact surface and float.
Space dogfight versus Orbital strafing-runs
The game presents space battles as dogfights that try to emulate jet fighters pursuing or stalking one another (ala Star Wars or Macross). That makes for thrilling edge-of-your-seat gameplay. But if you were to go the realistic route, fighter-pods would plot a strafing or orbital run of their targets and make incidental evasive movements.
Shattered Horizon
Is a rare gem of a game that simulates outer space forces in the context of an FPS. I’d like to see Star Citizen’s person mode to be as visceral as that. Imagine your ship boarded by invasive marines and you rushing to the weapons locker or downed guard for a small arms piece.
Mecha
Incredulous as it sounds, rocketed robots with legs or arms and contact-feet are useful in attaching themselves and treading on the surfaces or ships, space stations, asteroids, etc. They don’t all have to look humanoid (like Mobile Suits). They can be any kind of vicious looking monster or tame as a unicycle with a tentacle.
“Up” – “Down” Ship design
For simplicity the ships have an up side and a down side which will help you orient yourself for a landing. How about a tubular type design (like the ISV Venture Star in Avatar) that challenges you to dock onto or into the ship?
I, too, want this game to be the best it can ever be of its genre.
Well, if everything was accurate in this kind of games, we will be playing joust battles in spinning cylinder-shaped ships (which would be kind of hilarious, but not cool and not fun at all).
I personally like the StarWars/Freelancer kind of gameplay much more than “Microsoft-space-simulator-with-guns”.
Realistic does not always mean better. Remember that this is a Science-Fiction game.
Which introduces another idea: Calibrating Gameplay Realism. This shouldn’t be merely presented as an early on system option, but as a fun and intuitive way of helping the computer understand how you would like your physics model to work. And it’s not merely sliders that will make you guess what the outcome will be but a full in game demonstration of what it would feel like – visually and physically.
If this were applied to multiplayer the rules you set would be for yourself only.
In multiplayer everybody should play by the same rules. Everything else would give somebody an unfair advantage.
I trust in Roberts!
Hey, Chris, don’t forget to put in a ‘coast’ button, so I can be flying one direction, and facing another, firing on targets!
Brings up a question…what exactly will the throttle do? Is that for the main thruster in the back or will it also control the RCS thrusters?
I do believe that the main engine will be tied to the throttle just like any space combat sim. I don’t think you will be able to manually control the power output for the RCS thrusters. Remember it’s drive-by-wire. I do think you can take power away from the thrusters or shields and put it into the main engines for a bigger boost.
Here’s one…how do you determine the mass of individual ships? The only way I know to do it easily is to measure their tonnage, but that’s more of a measure of volume rather than actual mass.
Chris could it be that you played Jumpgate before? I did and i think you too.
I can imagene laning with my cargo ship was a long and difficult think i loved it.
I hope you will made the game from he ship and life value high (so no dieing and spawning all the time), mmorpg multiplayer and the physics “realistic”. Thin i will pledge a lot. ^^
cu
Why don’t the space ships have gyroscopes? The can apply a small amount of force and keep a ship flying steady.
Great conversation, keep it going!
The flight model in space games is one of my pet hates, most of them feel like your in some sort of dev/no-clip mode and you’re controlling a camera view rather than flying a spaceship.
What I end up doing (because I’m really geeky) is rolling my ship (usually by twisting the joystick) to fill in the missing code the developers didn’t include to simulate banking turns and to always be aligned with the capital ships, just how it is in the movies and all those cgi cutscenes.
I know a lot of people think that “aeroplanes in space” sounds dumb and somewhat simplified, so the best solution would be to offer players a selection of flight models or control schemes.
I also like the idea of main thrusters that take a while to achieve a desired speed, most space games tend to bind the thrust directly to the joystick throttle slider. As an example, I would image that the 27m fighter shown in the demonstration would take around 20 seconds to reach its maximum speed and probably longer to come to a halt again. This could also end those tedious “turret mode” circle fights as pilots would now have to think more about intercept trajectories and gaining the advantage over their opponent.
Oh, one more thing, I’d love it if the ships could have a slight wobble! Sounds crazy, but what I’m trying to put into words is almost like the ships behave ever so slightly like they’re ships floating in water, so, for example if during the takeoff sequence you have to release the magnetic clamps that stick the ship to the carrier’s deck then the ship wobbles a bit before coming to rest. Similarly, when you begin to move forward from a standstill, the nose dips a bit sort of like a helicopter, but not so pronounced.
I think that you devs should take a great long look at Ian M. Banks books, especially the culture series (quite many there, but Surface Detail explains it quite well) for space combat/movement. I also hope that you’ll program it so that the bigger ships are faster, but have a lower inertia, as is expected when you have no drag or gravity affecting them…
Will celestial objects (i.e. asteroids, comets, very large ships, etc.) have their own gravitational field affecting flight paths?
I don’t know man game devs out there, but Chriss has turned out to be my favorite. Looking forward to the long haul.
Don’t forget guys that Chris is making a multiplayer game. Imagine how many kids would get frustrated if they can’t repeat the flight maneuvers that others mastered and constantly loose fights as a result (then they won’t advise their friends to buy game for starters and it’s not like they have to master a shooter – all FPSs have almost the same mechanics). I’d also like to see those constant speed maneuvers (when you can turn your ship in any direction without changing your speed module and vector. I guess for the most part all this problems wouldn’t matter if most dogfights will take place in asteroid fields, near space stations, in planet atmosphere – it makes sense, because these are the valuable places that worth fighting for. So if you constantly have to be aware of your surroundings to not to hit anything then it won’t matter much if some players can perform these advanced maneuvers – everyone would be able to make a kill and fell good about it.
I thought about pledging for this game, but it still lack some features i really want to see:
1. I want it to have seamless space/planetary transition. With ability to land on a planet get out of the ship and do something – catch a rare animal (or just get a sample of it DNA for cloning), or build a factory that will harvest resource (fuel, plants, minerals – whatever) or make a carpet bombing run with my team to destroy other teams infrastructure. – This is what wasn’t possible with the technology we had before and is possible with top PC gaming rigs now and much more PCs a year or two later.
2. I still don’t understand flight model – i prefer advanced one
3. I can only speculate about how’s multiplayer going to be
So for now i’m opting to wait for more info on these topics (if i get my number one – i’m in). And if not then i’ll consider buying the game when it will come out and i’ll see some LPs on youtube which i’ll like.
I thought of a cool way to handle high speeds and merges. When two real aircraft are at two velocities (speed/direction) and positions (location) that prevent them from interacting, they accelerate to bring about a merge. This acceleration can be in the form of a change in speed, or a change in direction of flight, or a change in both. Since aircraft have both a maximum and minimum forward airspeed in real life, this leads to the big, looping, sweeping curves that we’re so fond of in dogfights.
So how about something like this? A capital ship and it’s escorts (including fighters) are at some extreme velocity and position that prevent you from engaging them; to merge in an astronautical environment, you select one of the ships in the party as your target and instruct your flight computer to merge with the target. (Here the computer could employ the main engines or if you’re really far away, even a sort of ‘tactical jump’ to bring about the merge.) Once you’ve merged, you’re very close to the same speed as your target and it’s flotilla, at least from the perspective of the extreme speeds that everyone’s talking about on this thread. From the perspective of your ship and the target flotilla, you’re all basically sitting still. Because it’s relative velocity we’re all interested in here, right? From there, you engage as if it were a typical firefight. If you engage with a fighter, you both may end up drifting towards or away from the flotilla, but that’s the case with any dogfight. Plus, here, you would have to be careful not to impact a capital ship or planet, as it would serve as the ‘ground’ that we avoid in terrestrial dogfights. A cool mission could be a capital ship that’s taken too much damage and set itself on a collision course with the enemy flotilla. The pilot would have to know their stuff to keep from colliding with all of those ships while carrying out the mission at hand.
“capi3101a says:
October 20, 2012 at 9:11 pm
Hell, if you’re interested in strafing, I’d say have some kind of lateral thruster control. A joystick hat switch could do the trick.”
This is exactly what I do in Allegiance. I have yaw and pitch controls on the joystick, roll on the stick twist, and up-down-sideways lateral thrusters mapped to the thumb hat. Reverse thrust is on the buttons at the base of the stick, along with boosters and a lot of targeting keys.
But don’t worry, Only about 30% of us Allegiance players fly with a joystick. People who map the sidethrusters WASD style on the keyboard and fly with a mouse do just fine as well. I just prefer the feel of flying with a stick, even though a mouse is probably better for fine aim.
This all sounds pretty neat but I have one more question. It still sounds like even though you have the ability to provide thrust in any direction the ship will basically behave as in wing commander or more atmospherically.
If we WANT 6DOF flight as in Evochron or Descent can we have it?
I’m still waiting to pledge as I haven’t seen that cleared up yet and that’s the only way I want to fly.
BTW about the top speed issue if you are flying in a 6DOF mode than a skilled player can out maneuver most unskilled players by using multiple vectors. If the top speed is 10000k/s for example you can do that speed going forward, sideways and vertically making your net speed much faster.
I’d like it if we could have a slider in the preferences to set the thruster visuals to show the realistic burst flicker and slide over to the version showed in the demo videos. I would want the full realistic version myself, yet do not want it imposed on anyone else that would be annoyed by it.
The controls will be alot more simple than ye are thinking.Its a fun space sim science fiction game not NASA simulator 2014.Im sure the devs will try to keep the physics realistic to a point where it is not interfering with the fun factor and gameplay.
+1 to Renco. Devs should realise that game is a GAME after all
Unless you want to have remote controlled drones fight or turn yourself into some Android or Terminator the speeds of fighters in game should be no faster than jets like “F-22 Raptor” from USA which already maneuvers on the edge of the limit what human body can take.
Just imo, in the future of Star Citizen, ships use artificial gravity. This kind of technology could be used to dampen the effect of G-force on a human body, like we see in Star Trek where a ship can go to lightspeed³+ in a matter of second, imagine the G-force then applied… lol…
So i can imagine star citizen ships getting to higher velocity and sudden change of course then any actual fighter do.
Just a point of view, of course fun>realism and its always have been fun to play Robert’s space sim so far… 8)
There are no forces applied when a ship goes to FTL speed in Star Trek. The fictional warp “engine” just bends the space-time around the ship, while the ship itself is standing still. Applying a force impulse to the ship wouldn’t let you go faster than light, regardless of how much energy you put in it.
The inertia dampening systems are only needed for sub-light travel when impulse engines are in effect.
Atmospheric flight and landing on planets would make my day for sure…