[Fineus]

Hi all, I suddenly realised something regarding the scale of FS2 ships lately and I thought I should mention it - not sure if it's been said before but here goes.

We all know that the current scale on FS2 ships is kinda screwy - and we've looked at lenses and such. That said:

Screw the realism, screw what it should look like. I think I'm right when I say everyone here wants to see sodding huge capital ships with highly detailed fighters skipping between them like nats. These ships are supposed to be huge - especially the larger ones - and the view point just doesn't reflect that.

So, and this is where we get back to the old topics... what needs to be done to make the fighters seem small but detailed (up close) and the capital ships huge? I'm thinking it should take at least 4 or 5 seconds to fly past a cruiser. up to 10 to fly past a destroyer. Yes I realise that these little fighters are supposed to be fast - but when you flash past a captial ship in less than 5 seconds it doesnt feel like it's that massive. This needs to be addressed by what, FOV changes? remodelling the ships? Lenses?

[Black Wolf]

Apparently, the best way to address issues of scale is to go direct to the source, and change the scale of the game. Everything is 20 times too small, but the simplest solution, to resize them all up, would need code changes to tell FS that a meter is now 20 times bigger - not easy, nor particularly fun to code I'd imagine.

[Taristin]

What if we made every ship larger than a poseidon 20x larger...

wee! I can't read!

[Fineus]

I guess changing it at the source would be easiest - since then we wouldn't have to remodel everything. Also, if the way the game handles distance is change universally then all original missions etc. will automatically be at the right size - but much the scale will have changed (I mean to say, if you remodel the Colossus to be its "true" size, there's a good chance it'll smack into other ships in missions that haven't taken the new sizes into account. By changing the size at the source, everything is changed).

[CP5670]

I think the capital ship problem is largely due to the crappy default FOV, which not only makes the bigger ships look too small but also creates several other strange effects for things appearing near the edges of the screen, like making background planets look elliptic and stretching out ships very close to you to the point that they actually seem to move relative to the background when you turn. It seems that setting the FOV to 0.3 or 0.4 fixes all these things and really makes a big difference, but it has the side effect of making the backgrounds look way too big and blurry. Is it possible to have the background sphere/skybox adjust its distance based on the FOV, or would that just put the elliptic planet issue back in?

As for the actual model sizes and scales, it already takes about 10 seconds to go past most destroyers in an average speed fighter and cruisers are much smaller (maybe 1/5 of the size), so it makes sense that you should fly past those fairly quickly. There is the whole issue of many of the fighters and bombers being too big (their models, that is, not the visible size ingame), but I'm not sure how those could be changed without significantly altering the gameplay.

Apparently, the best way to address issues of scale is to go direct to the source, and change the scale of the game. Everything is 20 times too small, but the simplest solution, to resize them all up, would need code changes to tell FS that a meter is now 20 times bigger - not easy, nor particularly fun to code I'd imagine.

Well that wouldn't really accomplish much, since the relative scales between everything would remain exactly the same. You would have to change some things and not others to see a difference, but that would screw up the gameplay in existing missions.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
I guess changing it at the source would be easiest - since then we wouldn't have to remodel everything. Also, if the way the game handles distance is change universally then all original missions etc. will automatically be at the right size - but much the scale will have changed (I mean to say, if you remodel the Colossus to be its "true" size, there's a good chance it'll smack into other ships in missions that haven't taken the new sizes into account. By changing the size at the source, everything is changed).

But, then also, how would speed be changed?  Would 90m/s still be 90m/s or will it become 1800m/s?

[Lightspeed]

the TIME you need to get past a cruiser is perfectly correct. The fighter flies 50 m/s and will pass a 300 m cruiser in 6 seconds. Works really fine.

The size issue still is a problem. However, to have it look more realistic we'd need something like a "zoomx5" function. However, that would tremendously screw up AI fight as well as dogfighting as you'd never be able to aim again. So let's leave it like it is. You can adjust it a bit with the FOV...

[Fineus]

This is where it all becomes an issue I guess - there's a lot involved in this.. every speed would need to be reworked, missiles, laser fire, ships...

So perhaps perspective would be easier - I really don't know...

[Lightspeed]

i like the speeds.

What could possibly work is to resize capships. And ONLY capships. And i mean resize i.e. change the descriptions, too.

changing the units wouldnt change anything.

[Taristin]

But then suddenly a "300" m cruiser wouldn't be 300m anymore. And it wouldn't take 6 seconds to fly-bye.

[Lightspeed]

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
But then suddenly a "300" m cruiser wouldn't be 300m anymore. And it wouldn't take 6 seconds to fly-bye.

precisely what I said.

It would be a ~1500 m cruiser, that would take ~30 seconds to fly-by.

[CP5670]

That is the problem; if you just multiply everything by 20 or whatever, as Lightspeed said it wouldn't do anything, but if you only change some things like the capital ship sizes, it would mess up the gameplay and all existing missions would become useless. I say just leave all that stuff as it is and instead play around with the FOV and things like that. If something can be done about that background issue I mentioned earlier, a lower FOV would fix a lot of these problems.

One thing I just thought of that might help with the speeds is to make the little debris particles move past your ship faster. This might give a better appearance of moving at something like what the speed is supposed to be.

[deep_eyes]

for the record, a f-18 fighter will fly past a carrier (american which is about 1.1KM on average in length) in less than 4 seconds at normal fly by speed, not too slow nor afterburner.

refrenced from a coworker of mine who was in the NAVY. so think, 6-8 seconds of flyby of a 2.4 kilometer ship.

keep in mind, in space, velocities are diffrent than on planets, so a F18 in space may just overshoot a 2.4 ship in less than that stated above.

lets remember, Freespace Physics not Nuetonian.

[Lightspeed]

it's the way engines work on FS2's space ships.

Any 'realistic realistic' scale & speed optimized space sim will be rubbish to play.

[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by deep_eyes
.... a carrier (american which is about 1.1KM on average in length)

yeah...sure. A Nimitz class carrier is about 330 m IIRC

more on topic: If you want a correct FOV you had to base it on how big your monitor is relative to your own FOV. I mean  the angle the monitor takes up in your sight, when you sit in front of it, which I guess is between 30° and 45°. But that would be like flying in a fighter, which has only a small window facing forward, the size of your monitor, which wouldn't be much fun...wouldn't it ?

So, you always have to take compromises.

[vyper]

I just think the Colossus should look Colossal.

[Fineus]

Exactly, case in point is X-Wing Alliance. More importantly the Executor class SSD. It's big. It feels big. It's the size of the Colossus. The Colossus looks large - but not anywhere near as vast and imposing as it should, neither does the Sathanas.

Why is this?

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Col. Fishguts


yeah...sure. A Nimitz class carrier is about 330 m IIRC

You are correct, sir. A Nimitz is 330m, and an Enterprise is 335m.

[Taristin]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
Exactly, case in point is X-Wing Alliance. More importantly the Executor class SSD. It's big. It feels big. It's the size of the Colossus. The Colossus looks large - but not anywhere near as vast and imposing as it should, neither does the Sathanas.

Why is this?

Too bad we can't copy the coding from that game.

[Sticks]

This is such a rehash discussion. Utilize the -fov param, it's there for precisely this particular issue.

As I stated in the previous thread, I'm not about to go and add a "* 20" after every time a distance or speed calculation is made. I doubt if I could even find them all.

What I would be willing to do, if it would be useful, would be to add a command line that would divide the displayed speed by 20 so that modelers could scale everything appropriately. Though, I'm not going to muck about with this if no one's going to take advantage of it.