The official "Seamless Planetary Flight" thread

[Ron Losey]

Time acceleration does sort-of shoot multiplayer in the foot, at least on large scale. (I suppose limited engagements could still be done multiplayer, as long as such were disabled.) Co-op multiplayer could still be possible, as long as the "leader" (host or other designated person) had the time and navigation controls, or required everyone to chime in to activate the autopilot.

The problem with using technology to reduce actual delay is the way it affects encounters. If you can travel at ludicrous speeds and still slow down in reasonable time, then almost anybody can run away from a fight and get to a base before their pursuer arrives. It ensures that random encounters, blockades, and multiplayer combat in general will generally result in a lack of action. All action will be in the short delay between the time they come out of "warp" (or whatever) and the base. This is not much of a tactical window.

That was the first thing I really noticed about VS - I could run far too easily. I could almost always make it to the base/planet before they could catch me.

Historically, the Star Trek series made up for that weakness by leaving capital ships in orbit during their "land" time. This allowed them to be attacked during down time - but it's not something this game engine would do well, nor does it make things particularly playable.

There's got to be some way to get both.
Ron

[CoffeeBot]

I just had a sudden revelation, and I'm not sure that it's been addressed in this thread (or elsewhere).

First, we need an agreement that space flight and atmospheric flight are virtually NOTHING like one another when true physics is applied. I don't think anyone will argue against that, so I'll make the assumption that its true.

Unless we make some sort of "computer system" to make ships handle the same way both in space and in an atmosphere, people are going to get pissed very quickly. In other words, there needs to be no fundamental differences in flying.

Now, before people assault me for saying this, let me explain.

For people like chuck and myself (and I think I can lump klauss and Wisq in with us) we don't mind the fact that our flight style has to make a dramatic change as soon as we enter the atmosphere. Suddenly, our ship's handling and response is dramatically reduced, and our speeds are next to nothing, compared to space-flight. But for other folks, like those who run around yelling about how VS should be like Elite and such (not that I'm against you guys), and those who just want to "blow sh*t up" (yeah, I'm actually against this style of play) having such a radical change in flight control is going to make them very, [p]very[/i] angry.

I don't know what kind of effect this will have on the game, but, usually, the point-click-kill folks are much more vocal than us "realism rules" people (*cough*MadDog*cough*) so, on messageboards from here to eternity, we'll see piss-poor reviews and random posts about how much VS is "teh sux". All because VS is different and harder to learn, not because it really does suck. Which it doesn't. Anyone with half a brain would realize the immensity and openness of VS, but even then, most won't want to spend a long time figuring the game out, and would abandon it in favor of another, simpler game.

This is just what crossed my mind whilst skimming back over this thread. I go out of town, and suffer from no net access for a few days, and here I am posting long rants as soon as I get back

So, color me wrong, flame me, whatever. Just tell me where my logic is, or is not, flawed, and we'll figure it out.

[Wisq]

Dunno. Complaining is a constant. People complain about how slow SPEC is, about how fast SPEC is, about taking forever to land on planets, about being able to land on planets at all.

I'm sure I've said it before, but personally, I'd like to see SPEC averaged out some. Make the slow parts less slow. Make the fast parts less fast. Even things out a little. Give the player flight and docking autopilots -- both optional, both real-time -- and things to do in flight.

And personally, I'm of the opinion that every ship should have SPEC interdiction, in the form of its own SPEC drive and/or its shields, since they're both gravity-based IIRC.

Perhaps shields or SPEC alone has a standard 'slow them down somewhat' effect... but if you turn both on at once, you pay the energy cost for both (or perhaps even more due to the interference), have a very high SPEC interdiction range -- and get neither shields nor speed, just the interdiction effect. So pirates might send in five ships, one interdicting, the other four with shields to cover the shieldless one. Blow that one up, and you may have an opportunity to escape before they realise.

Of course, this might require a little ship modification, and it might even be in the "gray area" of legality. But it's a simple hack -- just disable the SPEC-shields interlock.

Shields alone could have an interesting effect. For example, I notice that bases usually keep their shields off. But if attacked, those shields come up, and those are big shields. It'd lead to interesting tactics, like slowing down enemy hit-and-run bombers so they can be taken out.

[Silverain]

Perhaps shields or SPEC alone has a standard 'slow them down somewhat' effect... but if you turn both on at once, you pay the energy cost for both (or perhaps even more due to the interference), have a very high SPEC interdiction range -- and get neither shields nor speed, just the interdiction effect. So pirates might send in five ships, one interdicting, the other four with shields to cover the shieldless one. Blow that one up, and you may have an opportunity to escape before they realise.

Now, that's an interesting way to look at SPEC interdiction. Although I'd argue that having one or the other operates as current, but activating both, they both disable, but the resultant surge creates an interdiction effect. A player may not usually use this, but it gives an arguement for piracy and fleet battles.

Provides an objective (destroy interdicting ship - if you can find it) to escape... JackS should have a think about this when he gets back from vacation.

[Ron Losey]

Go one more step. Warp drive, and warp jammer. The warp drive zips you around, like the warp speed in the Star Trek mod. This lets you move very quickly, and so eliminates the slow play issue. A warp jammer is a add-on device that, when active, prevents warp fields in a certain area. Make it as inconvenient as necessary to balance game play - pull a lot of weapon power, or whatever. There could even be varying quality of these units, modifying the field of effect and the types of engine configurations they could block (i.e. a really cheap fighter-sized commercial unit can't pull a battleship with military drives out of warp, unless it were actually IN the flight path). This way, anyone wishing a battle can force targets to fly on conventional power, and so intercept them. This gives pirates, bounty hunters and military blockades a chance to do their job, and makes weapons systems like missiles and turrets more applicable, without slowing game play at all when you're just zipping around in empty space.

As for atmospheric flight, the Elite series - Frontier and FFE - just gave atmospheres a resistance factor to slow you down (or burn up if you don't). They basically assumed that spaceships had little or no aerodynamic properties such as lift, and would continue to use the same flight thrusters for atmosphere as for space. Although not entirely unreasonable, it did seem to leave out the market for primarily in-atmosphere craft which would have substantial flight surfaces, or hybrid craft with partial or retractable flight surfaces (like modern spacecraft, i.e. the shuttles). Part of this was due to the limitations of their game, which they covered very well considering the computer tech at the time it was released. (They do get credit for the first seamless space/atmosphere transition, complete with air friction, gravity, and even atmospheric rebound if you came in too hot.) Modern computing should be able to advance on this without bogging down the system too much.

Some ships should certainly have certain aerodynamic properties in atmosphere, more than just drag. Fighters intended for planetary defense would certainly have combat acrobatic capability for both space and atmosphere. Capital ships and freighters that look like huge boxes would probably not have much in the line of flight surfaces, since they really weren't intended for high-speed acrobatics in-atmosphere - and anyway, something the size of an oil tanker would need wings as big as Chicago before they would have much effect. However, depending on the ship, space and atmospheric flight might or might not be "totally" different. Good luck figuring how to model that, especially if your atmospheres are substantially different (i.e. flight surfaces would have more effect in thick atmospheres than thin). That's a lot of programming.

Game play can be somewhat fluid if most interplanetary business is done from orbiting stations, eliminating the need for lengthy landing procedures unless there is really something down there you need. Assuming a high tech curve on airframe engineering (i.e. that by then, atmospheric flight will be MUCH faster than today) will also help.

Generally speaking, the more believeable something feels, the more people will consider it mentally challenging. The less realistic elements (like maximum speeds of about mach 4 in deep space) generally wear on a lot of people, especially the fans of simulation and the students of sci-fi literature. If you can make people imagine a real world (even if a few elements don't perfectly fit), they will be less likely to pick at game bugs and more likely to suspend disbelief and get immersed in the game. Not all of the elements need to be realistic (I mean, really, is faster-than-light travel even theoretically possible?), but the more obviously unrealistic elements need to be covered by a logical explanation. I think that's what everybody was getting at, with the simulation vs. gameplay debate.

Ron

[Halleck]

Essentially, powerful shields would have the ability to function as a "warp jammer", since SPEC fields and sheild fields interfere, as was mentioned before.

[Shadowmane]

Anybody ever talk to the guys doing Orbiter? Their system goes seamlessly to space and back to the ground. However, they use DirectX instead of OpenGL. I'm sure you could design something like they have. Only problem is, every time you jump, you would have to have a whole new system or something. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know, but in that sim, you launch from the ground and achieve orbit using realistic physics. Perhaps a scaled down version of this, without all the realistic physics. Just a thought.

[spiritplumber]

www.x-plane.com try this

[Alterscape]

Orbiter's simulation engine really is close to what the realism-minded people want, I think, minus SPEC and combat. Its a shame its a closed-source project, because if the proper autopilot modes were implemented, along with SPEC and weapons/armor/shields, it could be awesome. I completely understand the author's motivations for keeping his baby closed-source, but it would be awesome to play in that framework..

X-Plane is the incredible for realistic simulation of aircraft. Not so useful for spacecraft, and also very closed-source. I get the feeling, though, that no matter how detailed/realism-minded we got with VS, atmospheric flight modeled to the accuracy of Xplane would be overkill (I'm talking in terms of xplane's physics engine), given that atmospheric flight is a relatively small part of the VS universe..

[chuck_starchaser]

Here's an open source project using Ogre that we could mine for useful code to implement seamless planetary flight:
http://lemkens.studentenweb.org/planetrender/
Look at the movies...

[CoffeeBot]

wow...definitely looks promising.

But it definitely needs some optimizations. If it's running below 15fps just to generate mountains that only appear detailed when they're leaving the camera's view, that's bad.

It is, however, an untapped mine, like you said, Chuck. With the minds around here, we could probably get something really nice out of it

Good find. Good find.

[chuck_starchaser]

Klauss and Hellcat would speed up the code X10 the first day...
I'm going to download the sources and take a look...

[GAlex]

I think I can add something in this discussion board.

there is nothing really wrong in the game engine and gameplay as for now. there should only be distance adjustment/redesign in planetary systems to match gravity force costraints (i've never seen a BIG planet orbiting at about 50000km from another, maybe a fist-sized rock could).

in VS0.43, the solar system is quite perfect.

the coordinate reference system, should be based, IMO, on gravity field forces, i.e. when you are away from any planet, the 0,0,0 should be the local sun, but when you approach a solid body (a planet, an asteroid, a space station) which generates (naturally or artificially) a gravity field, the new 0,0,0 should be situated in the origin of this object.

so, when in interplanetary flight, you move relative tu sun, and when you approach a planet, you are captured by his gravity field and begin moving relative to it, moreover, when you approach a space station, wich generates an artificial gaviy field, you move relative to the station, and could easily dock to it.

if Lagrangian points (where gravity forces equals) should be an inplementation problem, simply remove it (realism is effectively unreacheble nor desirable)

any object should orbit around the nearest most intensive gravity field.
I think this sould approximate reality maintaining playability.

this is the method used in FE2 and FFE, and makes the seamless planetary flight possible.

as for generating landscapes on planets, i see nothing wrong on dynamic generation of fractals from a fixed seed to reproduce the same landscape each time; weather (clouds) can be randomly generated having the costraints of the planet type (oceanic planets shoud have a permanent thick cloud cover, etc...).

and finally on ships and lifts:
only ships flagged with a "planetary flight allowed" property should have the needed areodinamicity, atmosferic shielding and secondary thrusters to enter a planet atmosphere and land.
big capship or little boxes (like the dodo) should only dock to space stations or orbiting facility. from there i see more realistic (and cheaper) implementation of shuttle service to reach the planet surface.
lifts have serious security problems in case of attack, and no government will approve such a week structure in times of war. shuttles are more reliable and better defensible then a box linked to a thin cable floating in the space!

[legine]

Hi,

Hey cool thread!

okey you seem to have some Ogre peeps here. But what is with crystal Space?

I read something about Space warping

http://www.crystalspace3d.org/docs/onli ... tml#SEC425

I could imagine this can be done in backround without letting the Player know that the space just Changed.

Crystal Space comes with some other Feature even sound system that would ease stuff. And for the multiplayer layer is also there since Planshift also uses crystal space. I am not sure if I flame here now but my 2 cent says that the decision for Ogre might end up in aaaa lot of work only because the greater scale are not thought about.

Of course the change to Vegastrike would be great!

I just read this thread after a long time of absence and do not know if there was a discussion about it somewhere. (I remeber one which I think ended with no option for ogre or Crystal space)

In general a Planet side landing would be great with small fsp or 3p parts the better. (For biiig Parts you would need a lot of discspace and a lot of maps with small Loading time. IMHO another ground to stick to mmorpg project because that is not easy technice you need. And you may need more then only one project to pulll seemingless maploading off.)

My thoughts are a bit too practical but I think I mention this before this realy goes off.

Cheers
Legine

[fizz]

For when seamless planetary flight will come into VS, it would be usefull to already include water management: after all, landing on water would be probably the more easy and convenient thing for bigger ships, and it would allow easy raw fuel refuelling, if H2 is used as combustible for fusion reactors...

Also, having some mechanism to manage deep densities and visibility would add other possible tactical opportunities for things like hiding under sea, diving in gas giants and so on...

In the old traveller rpg for example it was common tactic hiding there for both military and pirates (well, in the traveller universe it does exists the meson gun, that shots at a set of coordinates without interacting with anything in the way, and so it was very suited to these kind of tactics...)

[klauss]

Interesting idea... totally forgot about it.
Farscape, anyone?

Anyway, not quite safe to do that. Pressure differential underwater goes the opposite way than in space, besides being much stronger. That is... in space, the inner atmosphere pushes the hull outwards, tries to separate the panels. Underwater, the outer environment pushes the hull inwards, tries to crush it. Structures to handle one case are not always effective or efficient at handling the other. So it should pose quite some risk.

[fizz]

Obviously not all kind of ships would be suited to do this... there's to say that there exists a wide range of planetary amosphere pressures, so a ship rated to land on certain worlds (with a native pressure higher than the one used by the crew, obviously) could almost equally dive in liquids. Hulls could be rated to take notice of this, and obviously some cockpit indicator of dangerous pressures could exists... also usefull as i said for gas giant diving....

[chuck_starchaser]

I like the idea of landing on water for large ships. If any large, capital ships were atmospheric capable, probably the logical place for them to "land" (splash) would be on open ocean. But small ships would probably desintegrate as they hit any waves...

[fizz]

Well, even for smaller crafts depends on how the craft is designed: after all even today we've hydroplanes, even if they're not so important, and the aplollo capsules landed on sea.
Probably designing for a big variety of environments would be not as efficient as designing for a single environment, but for another point of view would allow a wider variety of options...
I see this expecially usefull for exploring ships of all sizes to take advantage of the refuelling opportunity and being able to deep dive in interesting places, big and intermediate military ships, that should be robust enough on their own to take advantage of the stealth option offered, and big civil ships, to take advantage of the chance to land without having half-a-continet wide starports landing pads

[Darkmage]

thinking terrain? think SDF-1 for landings....

[forlarren]

A gas giant refueler (H, D, He3, whatever fule you use) would have to be designed to withstand moderate preasures as well as HUGE amounts of heat, as well as be able to produce a significant delta-V. Gas giants are harsh. Large gravity wells, thick atmospheres, storms bigger than most rock planets, lightning that makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a good place to sun tan. All that being said, I bet the pay is great working on the extractor rigs

[fizz]

Different kind of gas giants would have different climates... for example, Saturn would require much less energy to exit from his gravity well than Jupiter, and have a quite less energetic radiation belt too... and Uranus is even more easy, and has also more He3 than Jupiter or Saturn...

I would like to point that, from a realistic point of view, if you want to meet some field of asteroids dense like the one we see ingame, in the solar system you've to go in a ringbelt... in the actual asteriod belt asteroid are much much more spaced between them...

[forlarren]

Ohh yeah asteroid belts. The asteroids are so far spaced apart in RL most corssing sattalites do not even bother to calculate their pressence. If you were standing on any one asteroid and wanted to see another you would need a telescope.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yep, and a pretty powerful telescope, at that; no hobby shop kind; more like Mount Palomar

[Bodo]

I really apreciate the way discussions are going here... I went over most of this stuff in my own mind, but it was more like dreaming, since I never thought there would be other people interested in such an insane game... so I really enjoy the wy things are going here.

so here comes my 2 cents:

first, as an Orbiter player I know that deorbiting into an atmosphere and hitting a certain point on a planets surface is a true pain in the ass. It is fun a couple of times, and it's something to be proud of when you manage it (well, I guess in the year 3000 we have engines with a longer burning time, so I wouldn't have to hit the target within 10 kilometers to still be able to get there without running out of fuel). However, I seriously think that it would be a gimmick... and one that gives a bloody lot of work!

In my theoretical concept I would have had larger ships for interstellar travel (more like star treck than like star wars) and they would be able to carry a Dingy capable of atmospheric flight, and, depending of the kind of dingy, capable of carrying payload or fighting (I even considered the diving... I was making up concepts of amphibiam aircrafts with additional boosters to bridge the last kilometers to orbit, but not for flying to the moon). As such I think it would be a complete insanity to bring a several thousand tonn capship to the surface. There simply is no reason at all to bring it down. Such giants would take serious damage at reentry and landing, and the energy for bringing the thing back up again is immense. For such critical repairs that would demand an atmosphere (seriously, I can think of no repair that would need the whole vessel being shut down) a Star treck-like Starport would be cheaper on the long run than getting the ships down and shooting them back up again (and when they're back up they're probably allready damaged again from the strain...)

For the encounter-problem: I-war had these nice interuptor-missiles. you fired them at a ship and it disabled its forcefield for a while, giving you the chance of catching up and taking it out. he concept worked very well... So well that I was the one suffering most under it, because them bloody bastards just wouldn't let me get away...