[Nico]

the smartgun isn't enough to blast it?

[Thorn]

No, bullets just piss it off...

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You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

[IceFire]

Reason FS is slow is because of this:

The game works on game units.  A ship such as the Orion is X number of game units so therefore, to make the ship actually look like its 1.9km long means that the ships have to fly at Y number of game units to make it work.

It has nothing to do with realism or a long and involved thought process, its just the easiest, simplistic way to do it.

At least its not as unrealistic as WC's speeds where your fighter flies at 500kps and still takes 30 seconds to fly the length of a small cruiser thats less than a KM in length  

[phreak]

thank you sir I was about to bring that up.

[YodaSean]

If FS2 was fast, you wouldn't get to look at all of the cool spaceships.  You would see a little dot, go towards it and it would look like a spaceship for the split second you were close to it, then turn into a little dot again when got farther away

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[Slasher]

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that your viewscreen (cockpit view) is so large and it makes the ships you have centered there seem smaller than they really are because of the aforementioned reasons.  I never quite got the feeling of awe I was probably supposed to when I looked at a several kilometer long spaceship.  Then again, maybe my expectations were to high.  

[jonskowitz]

Maybe its because what is being measured in FS/FS2 is not ACTUAL velocity (which could be quite fast to an observer in the proper frame of reference) but instead maybe the speeds and accelerations are measureing how quickly they can move (change vectors) in relation to another unit sharing the same reference frame.

Example:  The US space shuttle 'Atlantis' uses its main engines to reach orbital velocity (around 25 times the speed of sound as I recall).  To an observer on the ground this is quite fast (this is one frame of reference).  To an observer about 300 meters away in space station 'alpha' the shuttle doesn't seem to be moving very quickly at all (in this frame of reference both the observer and the shuttle are travelling at roughly the same speed).  The shuttle turns around and fires its OMS thrusters, increasing its distance from the station by about 65m/second.  Although the shuttle is still screaming along at (about) mach 25 to an observer on the ground, the observer in the station sees it slowly glide away from her at this leisurely pace.  What we're measuring is not the actual velocity of the object, but its ability to change its position relative to the observer.

Roughly the same could be said of FS battles.  Only in this case we might be orbiting a star instead of a planet.  A ship still needs to maintain its orbital velocity.  If two groups of ships want to fight then FIRST they match thier ACTUAL vectors and then they maneuver REALATIVE to each other.

That's the best expaination I could come up with anyway...  I don't know, it kinda made sense to me.

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Slasher:
I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that your viewscreen (cockpit view) is so large and it makes the ships you have centered there seem smaller than they really are because of the aforementioned reasons.  I never quite got the feeling of awe I was probably supposed to when I looked at a several kilometer long spaceship.  Then again, maybe my expectations were to high.  

The FS engine doesn't have quite enough perspective.

[Thorn]

I dunno, flyin around in a Perseus fightin Maras can seem quite fast at times...

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You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.

[Setekh]

a

Originally posted by jonskowitz:
Maybe its because what is being measured in FS/FS2 is not ACTUAL velocity (which could be quite fast to an observer in the proper frame of reference) but instead maybe the speeds and accelerations are measureing how quickly they can move (change vectors) in relation to another unit sharing the same reference frame.

Example:  The US space shuttle 'Atlantis' uses its main engines to reach orbital velocity (around 25 times the speed of sound as I recall).  To an observer on the ground this is quite fast (this is one frame of reference).  To an observer about 300 meters away in space station 'alpha' the shuttle doesn't seem to be moving very quickly at all (in this frame of reference both the observer and the shuttle are travelling at roughly the same speed).  The shuttle turns around and fires its OMS thrusters, increasing its distance from the station by about 65m/second.  Although the shuttle is still screaming along at (about) mach 25 to an observer on the ground, the observer in the station sees it slowly glide away from her at this leisurely pace.  What we're measuring is not the actual velocity of the object, but its ability to change its position relative to the observer.

Roughly the same could be said of FS battles.  Only in this case we might be orbiting a star instead of a planet.  A ship still needs to maintain its orbital velocity.  If two groups of ships want to fight then FIRST they match thier ACTUAL vectors and then they maneuver REALATIVE to each other.

That's the best expaination I could come up with anyway...  I don't know, it kinda made sense to me.

Frame of reference. Yes, that is very important. I mean, when playing IW2, naturally you don't feel like you're going much faster than in FS2 at all - where in reality, you are travelling at least one magnitude faster.

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Eishtmo:
Over on the Spacebattles Vs. forums, the most vile pit of insanity I've ever found, Freespace has recently been a contestent in several battles.  Quickly, its been declared the loser because its too damn slow.

Yeah, but the firepower sure as hell helps.  

As for the vilest pit, it beats out OMM's?  I'm impressed.  

[Setekh]

 

Originally posted by Shrike:
Yeah, but the firepower sure as hell helps.    

Hey, here's a whole new topic again.

How does FS stack up to other universes in terms of weaponry? What could an ML-16 do to an F-16, a Tie?

[Shrike]

Well, the fighter weapons are passable, missiles are KT-level.  But beams are high MT/low-GT per second weapons.......

[Setekh]

That could probably cut holes in indutrial-grade butter, right?  

[Eishtmo]

 

Originally posted by Shrike:
As for the vilest pit, it beats out OMM's?  I'm impressed.    

They're not insane about sci-fi crap.  They're crazy on a whole different, sick as hell, level.  The PoE people are even sicker.

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I know there is a method, but all I see is madness.

[Ace]

The game works on game units. A ship such as the Orion is X number of game units so therefore, to make the ship actually look like its 1.9km long means that the ships have to fly at Y number of game units to make it work.

It has nothing to do with realism or a long and involved thought process, its just the easiest, simplistic way to do it.

Actually when Volition was developing FreeSpace they hated this about X-Wing and WC, and so to scale their vessels to appear large they decided to base ships on real units.

One game unit equals one meter, and every single FreeSpace ship is to scale.

No trickery or work arounds there.

In order to give FS ships the majestic feel when flying past them, speeds were given a limit under 100m/s or so for thrusters, under 200m/s for afterburners as a rule.

Also to the people thinking FS ships seem small, it's all due to the mission design. FS2 didn't take as much advantage of ship sizes as FS1 for making "beauty shots and camera angles."

In the first FS1 mission, Eve of Destruction, the GTC Orff seemed to dwarf anything I'd seen in the Wing Commander games.

All due to the initial angle...



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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
 http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/

[Setekh]

 

Originally posted by Ace:
In the first FS1 mission, Eve of Destruction, the GTC Orff seemed to dwarf anything I'd seen in the Wing Commander games.

All due to the initial angle...

It did? I didn't think it looked that big. What I thought was big was the Ma'at in the FS1 demo depot-raid mission, 'cos that thing shot back.