Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: nubbles526 on November 05, 2007, 01:49:14 pm
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Newton's second law of motion says:
"A body that is already moving would continue moving, unless a force is acting on it."
Coming to think, I think that a lot of the FreeSpace ships do not include this law. One example is when you hit your afterburners, and then you decalerate. I want to know how ships can do that, since space in a vacuum, and in theory the ship be still moving.
I want to discuss why this is happening, like is there a propulsion in front or something, or was it just they ignored it?
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A.) It's a video game
B.) It does not have a Newtonian physics system
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Maybe because FS "physics" suck? In most sci-fi games I played fighters continue to move when I turn my afterburners off.
It seems to happen only ingame...if you look at the intros(of FS1 and FS2)fighters seem faster(they have different physics overall), just look at the Manticore.
A.) It's a video game
B.) It does not have a Newtonian physics system
1) So? Many other games have better physics!
2) Correct :yes:
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You've been playing long enough to know that this is just a game... off the top of my head I can point to five logical inconsistencies in FS (Your inspection of the lucifer in Antares... We've got a Shivan cruiser jumping in... the HoL helped us eliminate the Hammer of Light presence in Beta Aquilae/" " in Vega...). Wait, actually, you may have not been playing that long because you've unwittingly stolen your name from nubbles. :wtf: :p
There is no problem with the third law of motion. The training missions say that retro-rockets fire to slow you down, but I've never seen them fire. The problem is with your mind. Afterburner recharge would make no sense otherwise.
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1) So? Many other games have better physics!
2) Correct :yes:
Would that be at the expanse of gameplay?
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Wait, actually, you may have not been playing that long because you've unwittingly stolen your name from nubbles. :wtf: :p
Oh, I didn't expect you to say that. Actually that account somehow couldn't send a activation e-mail to my yahoo :wtf:, so I created nubbles526, and 526 means May 26th. So in theory I AM nubbles, with or without the 526.
1) So? Many other games have better physics!
2) Correct :yes:
Would that be at the expanse of gameplay?
In my mind, there should be like propulsion system like the poseidon (can be seen inside the commandbrief of the first mission with the vasudans, where you have to escort the shield prototypes).
A.) It's a video game
B.) It does not have a Newtonian physics system
Err...what kind of physics does it use then? (I know I'm being stupid but...)
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You've been playing long enough to know that this is just a game... off the top of my head I can point to five logical inconsistencies in FS (Your inspection of the lucifer in Antares... We've got a Shivan cruiser jumping in... the HoL helped us eliminate the Hammer of Light presence in Beta Aquilae/" " in Vega...). Wait, actually, you may have not been playing that long because you've unwittingly stolen your name from nubbles. :wtf: :p
There is no problem with the third law of motion. The training missions say that retro-rockets fire to slow you down, but I've never seen them fire. The problem is with your mind. Afterburner recharge would make no sense otherwise.
That's FreeSpace 1.
In the intro of FS2 there are better physics(possibly because of cinematographic reasons). The same physics aren't used in-game(because :v: wanted to keep the old FS1 system?). I played two games about Star Wars that had physics close to FreeSpace specifications!
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In my mind, there should be like propulsion system like the poseidon (can be seen inside the commandbrief of the first mission with the vasudans, where you have to escort the shield prototypes).
I see no reason why such "reverse propulsion" should slow a fighter down from its top speed when it's trying to get somewhere fast. Whoever came up with that idea should be trialled for treason and hanged.
That's FreeSpace 1.
Which is still canon. :rolleyes:
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Wow, Snail, I think it makes more sense with the reverse propulsion, since it is (I think) the only way to slow fighter down. Otherwise you would get something like the spacecraft like the Columbia, orbiting at a speed of 22,500 km/h for infinte.
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1) So? Many other games have better physics!
2) Correct :yes:
Would that be at the expanse of gameplay?
In my mind, there should be like propulsion system like the poseidon (can be seen inside the commandbrief of the first mission with the vasudans, where you have to escort the shield prototypes).
A.) It's a video game
B.) It does not have a Newtonian physics system
Err...what kind of physics does it use then? (I know I'm being stupid but...)
I reckon the smaller ships use the same means to maneuver around i.e. they use maneuvering thrusters. The thing is, they aren't modelled on the ships (except perhaps on the Poseidon, but even then you don't see them flare in-game).
FS uses semi-atmospheric arcade physics.... or something like that. :blah:
One thing that I noticed about FS was the speeds the fighters can reach compared to, say, a ship in LucasArt's X-Wing or TIE Fighter games. They're so much slower in FS. It seems weird when you get rammed by an Orion going at it's top speed and you don't get squashed flat against it's hull like a tin can - you just get knocked about. Contrast this with X-Wing - you could be going at 300m/s and get rammed head on by a Calamari cruiser and you'd explode.
FS and Star Wars space sims do have many similarities despite this though, and not only in terms of flight models. And I have to agree, auto-reverse thrust after accelerating using the afterburner does seem to be counterproductive when you need to outrun the enemy. But then again if the enemy ships suffer from it then it's less of a problem.
The deceleration key in FS is actually called 'reverse thrust' but it doesn't make you go backwards after you've bled off your forward momentum.
Anywho, FS physics are still fun. :D
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The deceleration key in FS is actually called 'reverse thrust' but it doesn't make you go backwards after you've bled off your forward momentum.
It does if you've got reverse thrust enabled.
Anyway, if you want to try Newtonian physics in FS, use this (http://www.fsoinstaller.com/files/btrl/fs2_open_3_6_9.exe) build (from BtRL patch), then open up ships.tbl, and change/add these lines to your favorite ship:
$Gilde: YES
+Max Glide Speed: -1
Then hit Alt-G (or whatever you bound Glide to) and try hitting anything.
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If you want to try Newtonian physics, you're probably going to want to up velocity on weapons.
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The deceleration key in FS is actually called 'reverse thrust' but it doesn't make you go backwards after you've bled off your forward momentum.
It does if you've got reverse thrust enabled.
Anyway, if you want to try Newtonian physics in FS, use this (http://www.fsoinstaller.com/files/btrl/fs2_open_3_6_9.exe) build (from BtRL patch), then open up ships.tbl, and change/add these lines to your favorite ship:
$Gilde: YES
+Max Glide Speed: -1
Then hit Alt-G (or whatever you bound Glide to) and try hitting anything.
Really? Thanks, I didn't know about that.
The only thing that sounds similar to what you're suggesting there is Joshua's RealFlight mod. Wasn't Topgun (or was it TopAce?) working on some Newtonian mod? Yeah, balancing weapon and ship speed is an issue.
I've always generally thought that a Newtonian flight model is more advantageous in that you could shut down forward thrust, pivot the ship on it's axis, and end up moving in a different direction to what you're facing (and then of course shoot back at pursuers tailing you, B5 style-ee :D). But I might be wrong - most FS ships (the light fighters anyway) seem able to turn quite rapidly to face in the opposite direction. The GTF Enceladus (sp?) in Inferno: Alliance is a bit like that as it's so maneuverable.
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Wow, Snail, I think it makes more sense with the reverse propulsion, since it is (I think) the only way to slow fighter down. Otherwise you would get something like the spacecraft like the Columbia, orbiting at a speed of 22,500 km/h for infinte.
Wow, Nubbles, if you're trying to intercept incoming bomber wings at 9,000 meters away, you don't want to be slowed down by your reverse thrusters costing the lives of thousands when those bombs explode everyone on that medical frigate you were trying to escort.
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It's. A. ****ing. Game.
None of the existing space games are realistic. A truly realistic space game would have you planning the desired flight for months, taking note of every goddamn physics law and condition so that you could even get off the damn planet. And even if you got to go as far as space, you'd be limited to circling around the Earth orbit. Either that, or hurling to the stars with no destination, so that your character would eventually die of lack of nourishment.
FreeSpace is an arcade space action shooter. And as for the reverse thrusters, or whatever the hell they are, those are just a more or less clever way of explaining why the ships behave like they do, which is slowing down after the afterburner is killed. Which happens in many games besides FreeSpace..
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I'm going to take a different tack on this one.
Newton's third law of motion says:
"A body that is already moving would continue moving, unless a force is acting on it."
It so doesn't say that. You're thinking of the second law. :p
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lol i was just about to say that ;)
"Any object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an equal but opposite force." part of the second law :p
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This again? Freespace is an arcade game, it was not ever supposed to be realistic at all. If you want realism, modify the code or go play IWar2.
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IWar2 BTW is one of the most boring games ever developed (as far as I'm concerned anyway) I can't think of any other game that boring.
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Well, technically, you should be able to accelerate to ridiculous speed, because your exhaust would be travelling at what? About 60,000 mph?
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The closest I've ever been able to come to an explanation is that the subspace drive onboard the ship creates some sort of 'drag' by coupling with subspace itself.
This is pure fanwankery, of course. The existence of a ship without any kind of jump drive that still obeyed Freespace physics would disprove it easily enough.
Frankly, the arcade physics are more fun. BtRL is close to Newtonian, but it's not Newtonian, and even the nBSG show doesn't play it straight with Newtonian physics.
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Well, technically, you should be able to accelerate to ridiculous speed, because your exhaust would be travelling at what? About 60,000 mph?
Why stop there? Why not accelerate to LUDICROUS SPEED?
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If you want realism go play orbiter http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/)
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Well, technically, you should be able to accelerate to ridiculous speed, because your exhaust would be travelling at what? About 60,000 mph?
Why stop there? Why not accelerate to LUDICROUS SPEED?
Because the universal speed limit is 42 thousand miles per second.
Any higher and you get pulled over by Vogons.
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This again? Freespace is an arcade game, it was not ever supposed to be realistic at all. If you want realism, modify the code or go play IWar2.
Huh? I'm not the first one to mention this? Weird, can please give me the link to that post? Couldn't find it inside the forums somwhow...
Because the universal speed limit is 42 thousand miles per second.
Any higher and you get pulled over by Vogons.
"This is a list of races, fauna and flora featured in various incarnations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon#Vogons
That movie didn't really make much sense to me...
It so doesn't say that. You're thinking of the second law. :p
Fixed, I also noticed it so changed it. PHEW!
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Easy explanation for it all. Newton's laws apply to physics in this universe. You are playing a video game set in the Freespace universe. There is no law that states physics in other universes will be the same as physics in our own.
Wow and I haven't even had a beer yet....
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That movie didn't really make much sense to me...
Have you read the book?
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Have you read the a book? Ever?
Fixed.
I'm also going to jump onto the it's-a-game-stupid bandwagon. I've played a couple of Newtonian-enabled space combat sims, and they're a bore. Dogfights tend to become little more than a series of headlong passes, and whoever leads his/her shots better comes out ahead. Admittedly, FreeSpace has a couple of flaws (speeds balanced on the slow side, field of view/sense of scale issues, etc.) but I would contend that choosing arcade-style physics over Newtonian physics was not one of them.
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Huh? I'm not the first one to mention this? Weird, can please give me the link to that post? Couldn't find it inside the forums somwhow...
These forums have been running since 2001.. Its quite hard to be first at anything FS2 related anymore :)
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I tend to agree with BlueFlames. Although "realistic," constant jousting can become repetitive. Anyone tried Babylon 5: I've Found Her? Anyway that has Newtonian physics, it even has blackout and redout effects. I've got to finish it some time.
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I wonder if part of the Newtonian piloting system problem is that it's hard to get a handle on your current trajectory, relative to your orientation... perhaps a knock off of the 3D radar could be made that depicts your fighter, in 3D, with its current orientation, and an arrow pointing from it to your current heading... do you understand what I'm trying to get at? Then you'd know exactly what thrust to output to achieve your desired affect... well, after a little practice... And, you'd need good keyboard / joystick / gamepad setup so that you could fire all your thrusters using logical controls. WASD is extremely good when used as forward/reverse & horizontal thrust in FPS games with a mouse for pitch and roll, but you also need controls for yaw... Q and E are good. But that leaves the most troublesome: the vertical thrust controls. Does anyone have a good setup for that? If I could get that problem fixed, then it'd be alot easier to pwnz0r in Descent. ;7
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I think I used 'C' and the left 'Shift' for vertical sliding in my all-keyboard Descent II configuration. (FYI, you'll need to dislocate a couple fingers to properly triplechord while fighting in Descent with that config.)
I'm not sure a direction-of-flight indicator be much help under a Newtonian flight model, though. The problem isn't discerning which direction I'm travelling in relation to which direction I'm facing; it's how to quickly get moving in the other direction without either coming to a complete stop first or having to make the widest damn turn man has ever seen. The short answer is that you either have to really reign in your speed (which may only serve to shorten the jousting field) or settle with a non-Newtonian flight model.
That said, I do rather like what Beyond the Red Line and Freelancer did, allowing the player to switch between arcade and Newtonian physics models on the fly. It's not always easy to get a handle on when to push the button, but that solution really does allow players to taste the best of both worlds.
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I'm going to take a different tack on this one.
Newton's third law of motion says:
"A body that is already moving would continue moving, unless a force is acting on it."
It so doesn't say that. You're thinking of the second law. :p
You're both wrong. It's his first law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_laws_of_motion). ;)
Like BlueFlames said, Newtonian-based games tend to turn into nothing more than jousting fests. I once played a demo of a Russian-made Newtonian space sim, and after about ten minutes straight of overshooting my targets by a good few thousand kilometers, I decided I'd had enough. When I play a space combat game, I want the emphasis to be on combat, not struggling to ensure that my fighter is in the same sector of space as my target.
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WHEN WOULD WE GET THIS STRAIGHT!?!? :hopping:
Anyways, the newtonian law should be the same throughout the galaxy, since newton IS forces, meaning it does apply to everything we do in the galaxy and on.
I think a [V] guy should come in to solve this...
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Yes they should be the same throughout this universe. Since we now have theories that point to multiple dimensions with other universes it may not hold true in those universes. A close universe to ours where the norm is space having a slight atmosphere would solve a lot of the weirdness with FS gameplay. Ships would slow down. Sound would have a medium to transfer through and be heard. Beams would have gases to pass through and be seen.
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Yes they should be the same throughout this universe. Since we now have theories that point to multiple dimensions with other universes it may not hold true in those universes. A close universe to ours where the norm is space having a slight atmosphere would solve a lot of the weirdness with FS gameplay. Ships would slow down. Sound would have a medium to transfer through and be heard. Beams would have gases to pass through and be seen.
That's actually a really good point. Are you drunk? :P
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No just got out of bed when I posted that. Although there was still probably a good deal of residual buzz left in the system from last night. Spent $26 on dollar drafts at the bar.
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Yes they should be the same throughout this universe. Since we now have theories that point to multiple dimensions with other universes it may not hold true in those universes. A close universe to ours where the norm is space having a slight atmosphere would solve a lot of the weirdness with FS gameplay. Ships would slow down. Sound would have a medium to transfer through and be heard. Beams would have gases to pass through and be seen.
In my opinion, that theory can be applied in nebular areas you know? Probably THAT is the other dimension.
And now I am betraying my own theories...theres this thing called dark matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
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The whole point of dark matter is that it only interacts with other matter through gravitation.
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I would assume that fs ships have correctional thrusters on them that would make flying in space similar to flying in atmosphere. It'd be sort of like how star trek ships fly in space with impulse (you never get to see the affects of newtonian physics in star trek much unless it's floating debris or a derelict ship drifting). How many times in star trek have you seen a ship make a u-turn with ease and then go to warp?
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As has been stated repeatedly, the correctional thrusters don't make sense.
If you're trying to intercept a flight of bombers attacking a medical frigate (as cited earlier), you'd disable the correctional thrusters so you could get more speed.
But you can't do that.
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IWar2 BTW is one of the most boring games ever developed (as far as I'm concerned anyway) I can't think of any other game that boring.
BLASPHEMY! (http://donotblaspheme.ytmnd.com)
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I vote for inertial nullifiers