baronjohn said:
Lemme know if this shit ever gets a proper newtonian flight model. I refuse to play space games with cartoon physics.
Improved.
Grim Monk said:
baronjohn said:
I want a proper newtonian flight model space game.
Here you go:
ORBITER 2010
Fed up with space games that insult your intelligence and violate every law of physics? Orbiter is a simulator that gives you an idea what space flight really feels like - today and in the not so distant future. And best of all: you can download it for free!
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/
Its
freeware...
Orbiter is a glorious sim, but barely a proper game and it has needlessly bloated interface. Never got into it due to sheer amount of keys to memorize. With a bit more mouse driven interface I'm sure it would be glorious, though.
Still, I'd fucking
kill genocide for Frontier-like on Orbiter engine, with Orbiter's physics, detail and possibly even extensive and modular ship customization that could be done using physics this detailed.
I'd cum so hard I'd knock the moon out of orbit with stream of relativistic ejaculate.
Turjan said:
I had been playing X3:TC for months. It's a bit like a single player MMO. It was pretty fun while it lasted. I don't think any expansion will get me to play it again, though. In order to make the game endless, the developers made a few inane design decisions that get very obvious after a while and show how pointless playing on actually is.
I'm not talking about the physics. I'm fine with X3 basically being a submarine game. Space, if you have to endure it on a human scale, is lastly boring, as exciting as its elements may be.
That's what time compression is for.
PROBLEM, X?
Alt said:
J_C is quite right. A "proper newtonian flight model" wouldn't be a lot of fun for a lot of folks. Elite FE and I-War is Newton for dummies.
This is more like it:
http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=17573
http://smithplanet.com/stuff/orbiter/or ... ations.htm
So, what you're probably looking for is really a pseudo-newtonian flight model, not the real deal. And leaving those other pesky gravitational bodies like...uhm...planets out of the picture.
Nope. Frontier has proper Newtonian physics, albeit not very accurate. It's somewhat excusable, as it's a ridiculously ambitious game for the hardware it was coded for (AtariST, 286, Amiga), which didn't even have FPU so all floating point calculations had to be emulated using integers only.
The inaccuracies are pretty much limited to non-Newtonian rotation, gravity calculation limited to single source at a time (orbits for celestial bodies and stations are pre-calculated and thus unaffected by this limitation) and some rounding errors/frame of reference bugs.
As far as translation goes the game is fully Newtonian, and gravity works properly as long as the influence of other bodies can be neglected.
Simulation is actually detailed enough that Coriolis' force can be detected when flying near planetary surfaces.
I-War 2 also has proper Newtonian physics, albeit limited to empty space conditions - the simulation doesn't account for gravity and orbits of celestial bodies - they just sort of hang there. The AI is also retarded because it doesn't understand Newtonian flight and if you switch off the automatics and accelerate to very high velocity, you can cruise without thrust (obviously) and the AI can't catch up with you despite you're an inert body at that time.
Overall Frontier and FFE (with JJFFE to fix some glaring error, like relative velocity not updating with changing FoR) are much better. They have, gravity, orbits and AI capable of intercepting not just inert targets, but also craft in powered flight.
The question of Newtonian model being or not being fun isn't question of Newtonian model itself but of available automatics and propulsion systems. If your ship can use thrusters to stabilize itself and not spin out of control, then turning around is no problem. Moving around at short ranges requires some training, but can be fun as well when you learn to cope with inertia.
Long range movement is generally the question of acceleration (in Frontier even sluggish superfreighters are capable of about 5-6G using prime mover, fighters can do over 20G) and delta v budget (also time compression) - if they're high enough, long distance travel isn't a chore either as you travel along brachistochrone trajectories - even better if you have autopilot.