[Martinus]

Looking around HLP you see a fair few threads on physics related matters, if it isn't someone contemplating the nature of beam turrets or fusion drives it's a whole bunch of you guys wondering how far the technology is away. Now that I've stated the obvious I guess it's time to make a point. In a science fiction based universe is there room for "magic"?

I know, I know, some of you have already bolted and are muttering stuff like "he's mental" or "Magic in freespace? No way!". Well before you do I'd like to point out that any level of technology beyond our comprehension is more than often called magic and anyway do all ideas need to have sound factual basis? I'd even stretch and ask "why not consider something that looks like it couldn't exist?" fighters made of pure flame or energy might not be possible but they'd certainly look cool  

I've noticed a few times that people will put a lot of effort into trying to find a plauseable scientific reason for a new type of ship or weapon. Perhaps if sound physics weren't so religiously adhered to there would be a lot more scope for imagination.
If less attention was given to "is it possible?" and a little more attention was given to "is it fun?" or "is it asthetically pleasing?" then we would enjoy playing FS even more than we do now.

So is there room for magic? I hope so because you may notice that physics can be interesting but magic is enthralling  

[This message has been edited by Maeglamor (edited 06-05-2001).]

[heretic]

the thing is that there is a fine line between BENDING the laws and BREAKING them.

Sci-fi bends the laws of physics to a great extent. fantasy breaks them without looking back.

That's why they can't be mixed.

[Shrike]

*cough* ST:V'ger */cough*

[wEvil]

pah....

If you take a close look at physics (the more recent advanced in particular) you will see it actually allows some very strage things

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[wEvil]

So onto the next thing -

Fighter drives.
What pushes a fighter along?

Fusion plume?

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[Jabu]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Can't remember where I heard that. The more the difference between the tech and the tech level of the observer, the more it seems like magic.

Hands up those who understood that  

[aldo_14]

(puts hands up)

If you took a Tv to Gallelieo or Isaac Newton, then they'd think it was magic      

But then again, how many people here can actually understand and explain exactly how a TV works?

Also, we have no way of understanding or predicting what will be possible in the future.... after all, who in the 1950s predicted the Internet?

So, let anything be possible, so long as it's fun for the game.

and...
 

Can't remember where I heard that. The more the difference between the tech and the tech level of the observer, the more it seems like magic.

[/b]

Sphere  (Michael Chrichton)?

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[This message has been edited by aldo_14 (edited 06-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by aldo_14 (edited 06-06-2001).]

[wEvil]

Desmond...can't remmber his surname.

Read the allegation of patent infringment by BT against the world on hyperlinks.

They claim this guy invented the idea in 195something


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[QXMX]

 

Originally posted by Maeglamor:


Perhaps if sound physics weren't so religiously adhered to there would be a lot more scope for imagination.

Most of the advances in physics in the last century has come about because of what everyone definitely knew about Physics wasn't religiously adhered to by a few people.  I'm not saying that we know everything now(hardly   ), but I am saying that scientists for the most part have a great deal of imagination in order to understand things.  Someone had to imagine the Airplane before it was built  

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Co-Creator, GroundZero

[heretic]

 

Originally posted by aldo_14:
(puts hands up)

But then again, how many people here can actually understand and explain exactly how a TV works?

*raises hand*

[Martinus]

It's worth remembering that this is a game we're editing, it's just that the original design was sci fi. Why not use stuff that can't exist? Do you think that flying a space fighter is anything like what it's portrayed as in the game?

[morris13]

 

Originally posted by Jabu:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

 

I'm pretty certain that that's an OLD quote from Arthur C Clarke.

[aldo_14]

 

Originally posted by morris13:
I'm pretty certain that that's an OLD quote from Arthur C Clarke.

There is definately a similar quote in Sphere, though - I was reading it a coupla days ago.

[QXMX]

If Freespace, can you redo it so that ships don't stop when the engines cut out.  This might be good for a drifting ship.

Maeglamor, you've got a good point.  If you can imagine it, it may exist some day.  A ship made of pure energy would be damn cool, absorbing lasers like nothing.  

Flying a space fighter is probably a very difficult thing, like flying a jet fighter.  You'd have to worry about stopping, g-forces, missile recoils, spinning out of control, crashing into things, and whatnot.


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Co-Creator, GroundZero

[Styxx]

Indeed, black holes suck. Real hard.

[Nico]

Sci-fie and magic?... mmh... warhammer 40000  . I love this, and even if there's a lot pf "magic" in it, it always sounds realistic. And it's funny how subspace looks like the Warp... exepted that in subspace there's no creatures that comes and eat your ship or at least your pilot  

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Member of the Robotech mod for FS2

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and My own page

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by aldo_14:

There is definately a similar quote in Sphere, though - I was reading it a coupla days ago.

There is nothing to prevent Michael Crichton from quoting Arthur C. Clarke, which is what he did.


And as for the black holes sucking... it's actually the gravity pulling.... but let's not be picky, now.  


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[phreak]

last time i checked, hoovers sucked..

oh yea and us FS fans like to have at least some realism in the storyline.. unlike IW2 where you can go 9e10 KM/s

[This message has been edited by PhReAk (edited 06-06-2001).]

[Starwing]

IW2 has Linear Displacement drives, sounding like ST warp drives to me. And I don't remember Einstein saying something about a maximum of space-time warping.

[Setekh]

Here's something I can add after watching the trailer to Anarchy Online. Magic, like those we typically see in RPGs - spells, potions, that kind of junk - what Anarchy Online proposed was that the high-tech civilisation players lived in (35,000 years in the future, IIRC) had reached the stage where they could create 'magical' effects using nanotechnology. To injure others, for example, a player would throw together nanomachines that constructed particles of chlorine at a person, which then exploded in their face. Or something like that - similarly, a person could drink a mixture of healing nanomachines that would enter the bloodstream and fix tissue or cleanse the blood, or whatever. You get the idea.