FTL optic distortion guideline

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Err... yeah, well I suppose you can talk about other stuff as well, maybe?

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warpnoob
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FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by warpnoob »

I heard someone really ambitious wanted to implement the optical effects of relativistic spacetime dilation into the game to make it more realistic.
Whelp, the guys at MIT wrote a game that shows just that, and I decided to link it here to give you an idea of what's ahead of you.
http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/
Would be pretty cool to make the game actually do that, but are you sure that's possible?
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by klauss »

Question you want to ask yourself... is it playable?

We do similar-enough things (actually inspired in that): FOV changes depending on which direction you're looking at, relative to travel direction, and I've had some improvements in mind we just never have enough time to implement (this could be much cooler with the aid of global vertex shaders, to apply the lensing effect, and some fragment shader magic to do the red-blue shift, but doing that is a Chore with C).
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TBeholder
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by TBeholder »

Yeah, was discussed.
Given that it's SPEC, playability won't be affected too much either way. So it's down to shaders.
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by klauss »

TBeholder wrote:Yeah, was discussed.
Given that it's SPEC, playability won't be affected too much either way. So it's down to shaders.
Don't be so sure. At SPEC speeds, you'd be past lightspeed. You'd probably see just gamma rays (ie all black). Not very playable.
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warpnoob
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by warpnoob »

It doesn't have to be absolute accurate to all degrees. If they'd try that, it would be a bright light in front of you and pitch blackness behind you. It's not meant to reflect reality, it's just to add depth to the gameplay.
In other words, it doesn't matter if it's close to reality if it feels like reality.
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by klauss »

Exactly. And, some mild effects will also add to playability, because it would undoubtably and unconfoundably tell you you're in SPEC (something I sometimes fail to notice).
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warpnoob
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by warpnoob »

klauss wrote:(something I sometimes fail to notice).
How is that possible?
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by TBeholder »

On low warp multipliers, only SPEC indicator tells you the ship is not all-Newtonian. I myself forgot to turn off manual SPEC on approach and was surprised that docking doesn't work a few times, too.
klauss wrote:
TBeholder wrote:Given that it's SPEC, playability won't be affected too much either way. So it's down to shaders.
Don't be so sure. At SPEC speeds, you'd be past lightspeed. You'd probably see just gamma rays (ie all black). Not very playable.
Not that this mattered much, but the opposite - MW/radio blueshifted all the way into VL. Of course, it's not like a ship should be blind beyond VL anyway...
But my point was: in cruising warp rates (rather than approach), when the ship goes ~0.1 c to FTL... how much do you need to see of what isn't on HUD itself either way - i.e. equipment, nav markers (adding gravimetry / interdiction markers is a good idea, but that's also fairly large-scale), other navigation data? And if at the moment you neither can nor need to react on much of anything else (and most things too far to interdict are single pixels anyway), not seeing it doesn't impact playability at all.
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Re: FTL optic distortion guideline

Post by klauss »

TBeholder wrote:
klauss wrote:
TBeholder wrote:Given that it's SPEC, playability won't be affected too much either way. So it's down to shaders.
Don't be so sure. At SPEC speeds, you'd be past lightspeed. You'd probably see just gamma rays (ie all black). Not very playable.
Not that this mattered much, but the opposite - MW/radio blueshifted all the way into VL. Of course, it's not like a ship should be blind beyond VL anyway...
But my point was: in cruising warp rates (rather than approach), when the ship goes ~0.1 c to FTL... how much do you need to see of what isn't on HUD itself either way - i.e. equipment, nav markers (adding gravimetry / interdiction markers is a good idea, but that's also fairly large-scale), other navigation data? And if at the moment you neither can nor need to react on much of anything else (and most things too far to interdict are single pixels anyway), not seeing it doesn't impact playability at all.
Oh... but space is pretty!

Edit: ok, ok... it's not absolutely necessary to see. If we had all that instrumentation. Currently, you do have to see.
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