Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Grey Wolf on June 17, 2002, 03:25:44 pm
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Almost everyone knows that the FS2 models are far too large. The cockpits are huge, and since I doubt every pilot in the GTVA is a giant, this needs to be fixed. Someone brought this up in one of the other threads, but had a very convoluted process. What if we could set it up so the ship-type tags (fighter, bomber, cruiser, corvette, etc.) resized the models? The fighter and bomber tags would decrease the size by 1/2, and all the missile and bomb POFs would also be scaled to 1/2. Is this feasible to do?
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I don't agree, I think they're much too small in fact. come on, imagine a F16 pilots rams a F15. he won't see much of the sky in front of him... Ram a mara, the thing takes less than half your screen. too big? Nah, too small, and distance units screwed up as well.
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nono venom, i was just thinking about this... compare a fighter and how big the pilot would be, to a destroyer, which houses thousands of crew...id say if you squashed everyone in the shell of ah orion (no internal systems, just a big box in space), you could get maybe 2000 people tops.
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The navy can fit around 6000 on an aircraft carrier and that is less than 400m long
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But naval ships don't go prepared for massive interstellar voyages with the possibility of unknown and being stuck parsecs from anywhere for some time. I think the ships are to small for the most part... the Orion should be about twice as large as it is to give you a sense of scale when you come across one - my point is that this could be achieved by doubling everything in size except the fighters, bombers and their support craft.
Interesting idea for a mod really...
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in interesting code thinguy would be to shrink the cockpit view, first, so you really feel like you're fighting big fighters, not remote controlled toys. ABout the cockpit, it's usually what i use to scale my own ships, but don't forget that if some fghters like, say, the F4 phantom, have a fairly small glass cockpit, things like the F14 one easily span 3 or 4 meters log of glass only... You'll reply it's a two seated fighter. well, how do we know there's no two-seated ships in FS2? Anyway, the F22 cockpit is huge too, you could put more than one pilot under the glass area, believe me.
Anyway, yeah, capships are too small, a good exemple are the cuisers. A cain never looked much bigger than a bomber to me...
Still, shrinking fighters would make them.... ridiculous.
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Originally posted by venom2506
well, how do we know there's no two-seated ships in FS2? .
Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?
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Originally posted by Pera
Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?
originaly, yes. but it's clear the final one is single seated ( FS1 intro )
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Originally posted by venom2506
originaly, yes. but it's clear the final one is single seated ( FS1 intro )
fs1 intro it was two-seated (his co-pilot was dead), but that looked more like a bomber, expecially with its poor manuverability. Besides, you never know if its a two-seated craft or not, some of the bombers could have a co-pilot, you just never hear from them (someone to manage the turret, and pherhaps help the aiming system with bombs).
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It would be quite pointless to have a co-pilot on a small, one-man fighter. There would be no job for them.
For a comparison, we'll use the real-world F-16, the Incom T-65 X-Wing from Star Wars, and the GTF Perseus. The F-16, according to the official Air Force site, is 14.8 m, with a cockpit of a comparable size to the ship as the Perseus'. The X-Wing is 12.5 m, with a cockpit a bit larger than the other two's. The Perseus is 21 m, approximately 33% longer than it should be.
The reason most people are confused is the very strange HUD camera, which makes everything appear off of what they should be. That should also be fixed...
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Originally posted by Pera
Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?
Actually, they call it the "bomber version" of the Apollo.
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Your all forgetting that the AI gets seriously FUBARED when the fighters/bombers are too big. You have to be VERY careful with the sizes or its collisions galore and AI's crashing into each other all of the time.
The "meters" in there is as realistic as the "meters a second" thing. It should be technically called 'game units' and 'game units a second'.
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Could the AI and collision detection system also be changed with the source code? I am of course a total n00b to that but it's a thought...
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I still think reducing the viewport is the simplest way.
And GreyWOlf, your exemples are biased. The F16, probably the smallest current US fighter. The Xwing? Man, the reactors on that thing are not bigger than a man, talk about realism... The Perseus has to deal with much more onboard stuff than the F16 ( shield generator, some kind of gravity well, much heavier plating ) and so needs much bigger engines. The Perseus is close to the F22, which is realistic.
And it would obviously be useless to put a copilot in a one-man fighter :p (sorry, couldn't resist ;7 )
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Originally posted by venom2506
I still think reducing the viewport is the simplest way.
And GreyWOlf, your exemples are biased. The F16, probably the smallest current US fighter. The Xwing? Man, the reactors on that thing are not bigger than a man, talk about realism... The Perseus has to deal with much more onboard stuff than the F16 ( shield generator, some kind of gravity well, much heavier plating ) and so needs much bigger engines. The Perseus is close to the F22, which is realistic.
And it would obviously be useless to put a copilot in a one-man fighter :p (sorry, couldn't resist ;7 )
Bleh....
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The problem with the camera is that the viewing angle is bigger than what a human sees, like a wide angle camera lens. Changing it wouldn't help though, since a fighter pilot can turn his head (without thinking too much about it) to get about 180 degrees of view while a FS pilot is pretty much restricted to looking at what is in front of him. Narrowing the field of vision of the viewpoint would create a tunnel vision effect that would make playing much harder and less fun.
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that is not really true, the FOV is much lower than that of a real man ( you see only what's directly in front of you in FS2 ). I could explain what would need to be changed taking the Max cameras as exemple, but i doubt that would help.
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I don;t think changine ship sizes would really improve the game in any way...I can't say i've ever though 'gee, this is all wrong' chasing a Mara across the surface of an Orion, to be honest.
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Human Eye: Gets a 180 (hor) by 160 (vert) degree view which gets worse as it gets further from the center of vision.
FS Camera: About a 55 degree field of view vert and hor.
I'm not sure how to refer to FOV changes (bigger and smaller and wider and ****) so I'll reserve my opinion until I can apply terms correctly.
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So not many people agree with me? Oh well, seemed like a good idea....
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Originally posted by Thunder
I think the ships are to small for the most part... the Orion should be about twice as large as it is to give you a sense of scale when you come across one
Yeah, the orion looks big from a distance, untill you start flying around it and realise there isnt really anywhere to go.
The fighters, although about the size of a house, i think would be about the right size. They don't look out of proportion, and they carry a lot of weapons and equipment.
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Since i was the lunatic that brought this up in the requests thread, i'll restate my original plan.
Half all the measurements for fighters and bombers, 24 meters in length being on the short side is rediculous, 12 meters on the other hand is more reasonable. After reducing the size of the fighters, double the length of a meter so that in the end, fighters dont appear any smaller but everything else appears larger. This may also require some working with the number of meters that are shown on the screen.
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Leave the fighters alone. I use ships from different mods and they seem coparable in size so that alone is not an issue. (screenshots available on request)
If you make fighters smaller will that REALLY make the cap ships look bigger? No in fact it will still take the same amount of time to fly over and past them, they still need to be bigger (example the Galactica needs to be 2 or 3 times bigger).
I just installed the atlantis station and say FINALLY! something that gives a sense of enormity in space! (Great job!)...
My 10 Cents... (My 2 cents are free)... :)
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Fighters are rediculously big, some bombers are ok though, but there is no way an orion can carry 10 squadrons even if they jam packed them into the hull. If you make the fighters smaller and change up the game units a bit, fighters wont appear smaller but larger ships will look larger.
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fighters are not ridiculously big, go see a F22 or a F14 ( or should I mention the SR71 which is just huge, and is just a recon plane ) then come back :p
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Well, its a plane, not a fighter; the Boeing 747 is also a plane, why arent fighters that size? The AC130 is a a transport plane, are fighters that big? Some fighters can be big, but not all of them seeing as wings are no longer needed as this takes place in space, so all you really need is a sealed hull, a pair of bigass engines, and guns and a power generator. Shield generator too. Also keep in mind, the cockpit sizes, unless these pilots are uber beings at 12 feet tall, they really dont need cockpits that large. I dunno, i just find most of the fighters in fs2 rediculously large, take the uly, 12 meters long, for something that compact with that big of a cockpit....
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Why don't we just change the tech descriptions?
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... check the damn F22. telling me crap like that won't help much you know :rolleyes:.
Note for you, btw, there was an interceptor version of the SR71 in evaluation at some time ( don't remember the name, and I don't care ).
And anyway it's in space, and you have no idea what it requires to have a fighter in space, and that doesn't exist anyway, so don't talk about realism :rolleyes:
plus UT has a point there.
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Think about why fighters in atmosphere are so large: lift requires wings, more payload means more weight which in turn means bigger engines, which means bigger fuel tanks, which usually means bigger wings. In space you dont have the problem of lift, so you can dump the wings which means you can rearrange the rest of the parts so that you take up less space by using some of the space formerly taken up by the wings (seeing as you dont want something too big in any direction). The Apollo program was some 20 or 30 years ago, look at the command module, and that had room for 3. Instrumentation takes up even less room now, how much room do you think they'll take in 300 years? All you really need in a fighter for FS2 (this is a bit basic but it'll work) are a pair of large engines, supportship docking port and missile transfer system, missile banks, primary mounts, and a cockpit with the instrumentation jammed in there somewhere or nearby. No reason for fighters 24 meters in length; bombers perhaps.
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think about that: a huge secondary payload, guns probably way bigger than your average avenger. engines that require enough gaz to fly through space for hours and recharge afterburners in one minute ( cool, hey? ), a subspace engine ( probably not a small thing ). Hull thick enough to stop lasers and missiles ( think the apollo, it had to do all that w/o shields). add a big ass radar with seemingly unlimited range within a given system. Add all the support system that is needed in space ( those stupid terrans don't even have integral helmets, so the cockpit has to be pressurized. various things to stop the countless radiations you have in space. Clearly, a gravity well ( coz newtonian physics won't apply, if you want to follow the techno babbling, and you want, since you're nitpicking the size ). with all that, your fighter is already very heavy, so you need some powerful engines to move the thing. I don't see anything wrong with a 24 meters long fighter.
Plus you're assuming the tech in FS2 implies extreme miniaturisation. I've seen no proof of that, actually, when I see the size of a bomb ( let's not even talk about the meson bomb ), when I see the computer Bosh uses, when I see, well, the size of the fighters ( and I don't think :v: wrote the sizes w/o even thinking about it ), well, I wonder if there hasn't been a sort of futuristic middle age before the terran/vasudan war, honestly.
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If you're building a fighter for space combat 300 years into the future, do you want something big, bulky, and easy to hit? NO. The Apollo went down rather easily without sheilds, hull plating on fighters (with the exception of heavy assault) doesnt appear thick, missiles are death if they hit an unshielded area; lasers dont do that much damage overall because they only do damage to a smaller area. A gravity well? You're crazy. Bigass radar? Don't kid yourself, instrumentation like that doesnt take much room. Weight in space? What are you drinking and give me some because in space weight doesnt exist; engines dont need to be 12 meters in length, and if they are that big, a fuel tank is probably included in the assembly. Keep in mind that ships in space keep moving even without thrust; think of your standard speed maintaining flying in fs2 as a sort of overdrive like what they have on cars. Also, if you paid attention to the cb about subspace, the drive looks relatively simplistic, were it big they would have had one hell of a time installing them into already built hulls not designed for them in FS1. Bosch's laptop isnt meant to fit in the tiniest space possible seeing as its size doesnt mean the difference between whether or not he lives to fight another day, and whats the point of a smaller one, he'd still need a keyboard to type on and a screen to show what he's doing; the computer parts that go into modern fighters are far smaller than those that go into your laptop. Finally, if you look at the pilot anis you'll notice that they are wearing quite a space suit even though their helmets aren't sealed, this suggests no cockpit heating and relatively little creature comforts within the cockpit.
EDIT: I would also point out that I see no indication of fighters being meant to or capable of flying around for hours. I'm not saying :V: is wrong, just that I don't think fighter sizes were their top concern but that more likely they were going for playability.
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ok, I give up. Weight, I meant mass, if you couldn't translate by yourself, you're helpless and that resumes well this discussion. You don't build what you WANT, you build what you CAN, if you can understand that difference.
FS2 engines DO need to be ignited if you want to move which leads to the second point: FS2 ships DO have something that negate newtonian physics otherwise you'd fly ala Iwar2. The fact that the helmet isn't closed is WAY ENOUGH to prove that the cockpised is pressurized and all that crap ( the eyes are quite fragile, if you've never noticed ). Try ingame, you can fly for hours ( w/o any aditional info, ingame stuff is the only way to find about stuff, as far as I know). BTW, bigger fighters do have an advantage on small ones, they turn around teir axis of rotation faster on the first move ( after, it's the one which has the best engine power/mass that will have the edge ), but I admit I have no idea if this is true in space.
Anyway, i don't want to argue with you coz it's easy, I give you an exemple, and you say "no it's not", and that argument of :V: paying more attention to maneuvrability than size... yeah, well, I can say the same for any stuff you'll tell me. So think what you want, for I don't give a **** of it.
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If im not mistaken...FreeSpace fighters use fusion engines to get around. Doesn't that mean that they have a energy supply that could long could fly at maximum acceleration for years?
And it doesn't have to be very big.
In any case, the game engine has a set of units that Volition has called "meters" but that doesn't really mean anything. They didn't spec their engine out to perfectly match the correct sizing of a space fighter. They made it so it was fun...that you weren't too big...or too small.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
If you're building a fighter for space combat 300 years into the future, do you want something big, bulky, and easy to hit? NO. The Apollo went down rather easily without sheilds, hull plating on fighters (with the exception of heavy assault) doesnt appear thick, missiles are death if they hit an unshielded area; lasers dont do that much damage overall because they only do damage to a smaller area. A gravity well? You're crazy. Bigass radar? Don't kid yourself, instrumentation like that doesnt take much room. Weight in space? What are you drinking and give me some because in space weight doesnt exist; engines dont need to be 12 meters in length, and if they are that big, a fuel tank is probably included in the assembly. Keep in mind that ships in space keep moving even without thrust; think of your standard speed maintaining flying in fs2 as a sort of overdrive like what they have on cars. Also, if you paid attention to the cb about subspace, the drive looks relatively simplistic, were it big they would have had one hell of a time installing them into already built hulls not designed for them in FS1. Bosch's laptop isnt meant to fit in the tiniest space possible seeing as its size doesnt mean the difference between whether or not he lives to fight another day, and whats the point of a smaller one, he'd still need a keyboard to type on and a screen to show what he's doing; the computer parts that go into modern fighters are far smaller than those that go into your laptop. Finally, if you look at the pilot anis you'll notice that they are wearing quite a space suit even though their helmets aren't sealed, this suggests no cockpit heating and relatively little creature comforts within the cockpit.
EDIT: I would also point out that I see no indication of fighters being meant to or capable of flying around for hours. I'm not saying :V: is wrong, just that I don't think fighter sizes were their top concern but that more likely they were going for playability.
now this is funny
the f-15, which our version of the perseus and the ulysses combined is 19.4m long. the f22 is 18.9m . The sr-71 is 32.6m.
Now lets break this down piece by piece
-If you're building a fighter for space combat 300 years into the future, do you want something big, bulky, and easy to hit? NO.-
I agree, but wants don't translate to ability. Also, is there a need for it? If a fighter has shields, and decent maneuvering ability, it doesnt need an extremly small profile.
-The Apollo went down rather easily without sheilds, hull plating on fighters (with the exception of heavy assault) doesnt appear thick-
1. opinion, 2. define thick. there are limits to how much you can armour plate something. Keep in mind that the apollo is the FIRST terran fighter.
- A gravity well? You're crazy.-
a better explaination would be a computer controlled system of thrusters, but either way, theres thing take up space and have mass. And while objects have no weight is space, they have mass, and it takes energy to move a mass- its a small thing called inertia, you'll learn about it in physics.
-Bigass radar? Don't kid yourself, instrumentation like that doesnt take much room- and how do you know? have you ever opened up the nose cone of a fighter and looked at the avionics? Exibit A - slightly modified 15-B (http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/F-15ACTIVE/Small/EC98-44511-3.jpg) If you look closely there's a seam in the nose come that allows the cone to swing away. That entire section houses the radar. You and about 5 of your frinds could fit in there. Now I believe the radar on an F-15 has a range of around a few hundred miles. Have you ever seen a full sized radar station? They don't even cover the whole planet but are magnitudes of size larger(think radio telescope). Now scale that up to enable a radar range large enought to cover an entire system. Then scale that down for 300 years of advancement and take a HUGE leap of faith and you have something that can fit in the nose cone of perseus.
-engines dont need to be 12 meters in length, and if they are that big, a fuel tank is probably included in the assembly.-
Why dont they need to be 12 meters in length? What do you know about the fusion process that qualifies you to say that? The engines on a f15 are about 4 meters long and all they are is an intake, a compressor, a fuel injector, combustion zone, and exhaust. For a fusion powered craft, you'd need the actual fusion reactor, plus the engines. And strictly speaking, putting the fuel supply near the engine is not the safest engineering practice. Especially if is hydrogen, one of the most natuarally explosive elements and incidentally, also used to power fusion reactions.
-Also, if you paid attention to the cb about subspace, the drive looks relatively simplistic, were it big they would have had one hell of a time installing them into already built hulls not designed for them in FS1.-
looks simple doesnt mean is simple. and you dont know how massive it is either
-the computer parts that go into modern fighters are far smaller than those that go into your laptop-
are they really? you sure about that? cause I've seen them.
-Finally, if you look at the pilot anis you'll notice that they are wearing quite a space suit even though their helmets aren't sealed, this suggests no cockpit heating and relatively little creature comforts within the cockpit.-
like venom said- that cockpit is pressurized. That alone says its heated, if you understood what it means to pressurize a cockpit. An unheated, unshielded cockpit in earths orbit would be 400 degrees F on the side facing the sun, and -200 in the shade. The atmosphere in the cockput would condense, and the pilot would die. All the spacesuit tells us is that command wants their pilots to live if they have to eject.
-I would also point out that I see no indication of fighters being meant to or capable of flying around for hours.-
Pilots run patrols. And patrols last for HOURS
that being said, it is a game, and not even a simulation.
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First off: fusion drives (if that is indeed what these fs2 fighters use) can be big -OR- small. Capital ships can use larger engines, but fighters wouldnt need that much power. Fusion drives operate on the atomic level fusing atoms together to use the heat generated for power, this is the opposite of fission which splits atoms apart (this is what we use for nuclear bombs and current nuclear reactors in case you didnt know that newbie); fusion takes place at a temperature somewhere around that of the surface of the sun, thats a lot of power generated, you wouldnt need that much of a reactor to push along a decent sized fighter, so therefore most of the space would be given over to shielding of the engines and actual containment. One way or another, a 5*5*5 meter drive is reasonable, while a 12*6*4 is not (which is about what those on a herc2 look to be).
Second: your assesment of the lack of need for a small profile is severely flawed. It takes 2 harpoons to take down any shielded fighter short of a herc, if they are unshielded, all it will take is one missile hit to take one down. why? because they are not heavily armored. Why let them hit you and then go home for repairs when you can just make it next to impossible for the enemy to him you in the first place? think for a moment, logic prevails.
third: we agree that a computer controling thrusters is the most likely explanation considering using a gravity well on a fighter creates a number of problems. However, have you seen some of the supercomputers they have these days? huge? think again. This isnt 1980, and the game is set another 300 years into the future, i'll be damned in 300 years from now we still use computers as big as the ones today in combat craft.
Radar: keep in mind that in space radio waves are unobstructed, if you want to compare to modern techology, take a look at what happens in a nebula. AWACS have radars too, only their's are huge, those on destroyers are pretty big too, guess what? fighters aren't equipped with the best radar available because you cant fit that into a fighter.
Subspace: I may not know how big it is or how massive but if they could stuff them into already made fighters that fast without redesigning half the hull, its got to be compact enough to fit in easily; dump this argument unless you can back it up reasonably.
Computers: individual parts maybe not, but overall they are far more compact.
Cockpit: not the case, it may be shielded and preasurized but not necessarily heated specifically. If a pilot were to eject he'd die anyway because his flight suit ISNT sealed. The suit probably has his heating and cooling build in.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
fusion takes place at a temperature somewhere around that of the surface of the sun,
Fusion does not take place at 6,000 Kelvin
A lightning bolt is around 10,000 Kelvin
HYDROGEN FUSION - the fusion with the LOWEST TEMPERATURE AND PRESSURE takes place in a PLASMA at around 15,000,000 Kelvin
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Originally posted by LtNarol
Subspace: I may not know how big it is or how massive but if they could stuff them into already made fighters that fast without redesigning half the hull, its got to be compact enough to fit in easily; dump this argument unless you can back it up reasonably.
since when weren't the fighters designed to carries the drives
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well, original fs1 ships werent designed to carry intersystem drives, those had to be installed after. As for fusion, the sun goes through constant fusion in order to produce heat and light.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
well, original fs1 ships werent designed to carry intersystem drives, those had to be installed after. As for fusion, the sun goes through constant fusion in order to produce heat and light.
play FS1 again. You have jump drives for years already, don't mix up with shields.
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Originally posted by venom2506
play FS1 again. You have jump drives for years already, don't mix up with shields.
do i have too keep pointing out your mistakes hehehe.
he said intersystem drives, not jumpdrives.
there where no such thing as intersystem drives on fighters when we entered the FS1 campaign.
They where IN-system drives. meaning they could not jump via a jump node(to another star system, aka inter-system jump), but only make jumps inside the planet system.
I think they where installed in the mission just before the final mission.
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no there were tintersystem jump drives, they were just way way way too expencive to put on every friking fighter out there,
we got to use them on those missions were we went to resque thouse vasudan scientists who had found the anchents relics, and with the Eva ect... it was more of an excuse not to have a destroyer than anything else.
I once thought about how big the ships are, then I thought about the size of modern fighters, and I realised they are not much bigger, thoughs little fighter plains are a lot bigger than you'd think
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So it boils down to the fact that despite realistic sizes - we just want the raw feeling of zipping past massive great starships, it might not be true to size but the capship sizes should be upped a bit to make the fighters feel small... at least that's what I'd like to see.
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The conversation here is so interesting (although unproductive), I couldnt resist a reply.
¤ The hydrogen fusion isnt the only possible (imaginable) solution for fusion, there are also speculation of a cold fusion, that produces fusion reaction in room temperature. Of cource it cant be done today, but neither can hydrogen fusion economically. It uses more energy in heating than it gains in product. Eventhough millions (or billions) of dollars have been spent, nothing concrete has been established. Fortunately, the future is only what we imagine it to be.
¤ Ship sizes and shapes are in my opinion are an even more non-productive discussion. Even fighter planes of today are really boring to fly. The computer does your multiple missile locks and fires them long before the targets are even visible. If we would like to see futuristic space fight I'd suggest some animestyle multiple missile and countermissile action, that'd be fun.
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play the robotech mod :)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
no there were tintersystem jump drives, they were just way way way too expencive to put on every friking fighter out there,
we got to use them on those missions were we went to resque thouse vasudan scientists who had found the anchents relics, and with the Eva ect... it was more of an excuse not to have a destroyer than anything else.
I once thought about how big the ships are, then I thought about the size of modern fighters, and I realised they are not much bigger, thoughs little fighter plains are a lot bigger than you'd think
mmm, well, got to go look in my notes, the big problem is "where are they".
:confused:
I' m still pretty sure we got a "yadda yadda" cmd brief. Or brief about a recent break trough regarding intersystem drives on fighters. So their where no drive that had a production model capable to be put on fighters. So the fighters where not designed for a jump drive capable of intersystem jumps. The drives where designed to fit the fighters.
But, yeah a spitfire is still pretty big when you stand beside it, but a messerschmidt 109 still seems small when compared. You should try the cockpit of a messerschmidt talk about claustrophobic.
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Originally posted by Thunder
So it boils down to the fact that despite realistic sizes - we just want the raw feeling of zipping past massive great starships, it might not be true to size but the capship sizes should be upped a bit to make the fighters feel small... at least that's what I'd like to see.
Hmm, yeah, well.
Would it not simply be simpler to scale the ships in size in a model editor, than actually hard-coding sizes = restricting artist freedom. I' m pretty sure KAZAN can write a scalingprog, if this not asking to much, or would make his head hurt :) .But the big Q is. Is it worth it, when ppl can do this already in a model editor?
Furthermore, all of the current missions including the main FS2 campaign. Would have to be rewritten so that some ships don’t start inside the scaled ships.
Issues would arise when you would have to re-position sob objects + paths, turret fire points, etc.
All this hard-coded scaling would add time to reading the models, ei. Loading the mission + all of the advances regarding glow points and what ever may be added to the ships.
I say, let things be as they are. If you want bigger, then by all means go make it big.
Most of the current restrictions where put there because of the limitations of the average system when the FS2 where released.
We can just raise some of those limits so that you can have more polygons pr sub object or main hull.
But man I know I’ m going to hate to fly along a ship that takes 3 minutes to go past in order to reach a certain subsystem, and I know I could just increase the time scaling, but then I would have no change of seeing danger in time.
Remember the code would have to reposistion all of the average 500 points pr ship. yeah a PC is fast, but all the cycles add up.
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rescaling ships... well, if someone wants to do that, let him try... that means rescaling the ship in TS, redoing all the hierarchy ( which is not kept during conversion ), and that's quite a job. then you have to do all the pof data ( gun points, paths, docking points, engine glows, subsystems, subobject properties ). then for fighters, you have to edit the tbls to move the nebula trails. all that for ONE ship...
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Capital ships dont need to be bigger, fighters need to be smaller, i mean, an Orion is 2023 meters in length which is very very big; Fighters are just far too big to fit into them. Also keep in mind a lot of the fighters arent as flat as modern fighters, therefore they have a lot more volume in the end expecially since they're already longer in the first place. They're about the size they'd be if we tried to build them with modern technology including rocket engines and without jumpdrives or shields. Instead, these are set more than 300 years into the future, take into acount some of the likely developments in computers and sensors and some of the sizes of these fighters is rediculous, even more so when you compare the overall size to the size of the cockpits.
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you know what? I don't care about logic, I care about how it looks like. ingame, everything looks too small.
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Well thats the other part of it, it'll require some working with the game units and thus the reason why its in this forum in the first place.
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Originally posted by venom2506
rescaling ships... well, if someone wants to do that, let him try... that means rescaling the ship in TS, redoing all the hierarchy ( which is not kept during conversion ), and that's quite a job. then you have to do all the pof data ( gun points, paths, docking points, engine glows, subsystems, subobject properties ). then for fighters, you have to edit the tbls to move the nebula trails. all that for ONE ship...
Let my turn this question around. If someone will rewrite the code so that things are bigger. then someone would have to rewrite all campaign mission written for FS2, including the main FS2 campaign.
i.e. waypoints, Knossos device, sathana arrival point, iceni departure point awacs range and so on.
Several models would have to opposite effect of being to big, like sentry guns, asteroids.
There is simply to many issues to be considered for this to be implemented at this time.
This is something that should be reviewed when somebody takes up the huge task of updating the engine to DirectX 8+.
Something that is 2 kilometers long
Flying at 70-90 meters pr second. just do the math.
The units and speed fits
What you lack is detail (hence more tiles of textures, more polygons), but that requires faster GFX cards and Faster PCs. And we are trying to keep FS2 going on at least an 300 mhz(note this is nothing official or unofficial), which most ppl today have.
The plating should be rushing past you as you fly along the ship. But because of the limitations to detail, they are not. They are slowly creeping under you, and there is no blur that there is in real life, when you are rushing at 70-90 meters per second just above something..
This is not only a units question, making things bigger will not make things seem bigger in the way it should. Actually making things bigger will perhaps make some textures seem too small. And then who will do the textures.
You will never get that cinematic feeling, like when for instance an Xwing Screams past an ISD, Unless you start applying blur and more polygons and tiles of textures to the thing.
:V: set the units to be what they are, for a reason.
I bet they tried other units and FOV and sizes before they settled to what the units should be.
So I still claim, a change of units, or FOV.
The reward is not equiled by the potential problems that would have to be solved. and note, i' m not only talking about coding here.
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changing the model sizes of fighters and doing some rescaling with the game units would not require retexturing or rebuilding of campaigns. All you're really doing is making the fighters smaller while making them -appear- to be the same size and capitalships -appear- bigger. Just because they appear bigger doesnt mean they are bigger, and thus the problems you're claiming with texturing and missions will not exist. The worst possibility is that texture tiles used on capital ships will be viewed in more detail which could make them look not as good, but this is easily solved through a registry hack and switching the current tiles out for high res tiles. As for blur, I'm not talking about getting a cinematic feel, just a more realistic difference in size between ships.
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I've said it once, twice, and even many more times I guess, but one more time won't hurt, hey:
why not changing the camera itself? decrease its "range" (max terminology, sorry), and everything will appear bigger. increase a bit the focus, and things will look even bigger w/o sacrifying to the FOV.