[Nuke]

ive been hooked on oolite lately. the coolest feature in the game is the perfectly spherical 3d fractal based planets. they also have atmoshere with translucent clouds. in addetion to that they also spin and gives you a level of spatial orientation which would be cool in big area missions. i was wondering if anyone thought of implementing theese into freespace? possibly to give us mission areas at solar system scale with some use of intra system drive. i think it would be a cool addition.

[gevatter Lars]

That would also be interesting for the WC Mod. We allready got the nav system that could be used for system travle. With planets that can be aproched but don't necessarly have to be modeled could be interesting.

[Nuke]

i have a feeling the coders are scared to even aknoledge this one

[jr2]

That would indeed be a very cool addition, I've been thinking about that for awhile now.  Except I was dreaming of the possibility to even enter the planet's atmosphere, and go dogfighting a Mara in that particular planet's version of the Grand Canyon.  That would be cool.  It would also probably take ten years of coding to create.  Heh, heh.  Oh well.  I can dream on, I guess...

[Nuke]

acually oolite can simulate that to a degree, if you fly into a planet and get down to a real low altitude you will see the atmosphere, however as per proper elite rules, you blow up when you get too low. id like to see a planetary capable flight model, with a basic aerodynamics engine, and a proper implementation of gravity. but then again im not sure if freespace can handle missions of that scale. definately ship tweaks are needed. it would be grossley unrealistic to be able to fly out of a planet's atmosphere at 80 meters a second.

[Honest989]

That would indeed be a very cool addition, I've been thinking about that for awhile now.  Except I was dreaming of the possibility to even enter the planet's atmosphere, and go dogfighting a Mara in that particular planet's version of the Grand Canyon.  That would be cool.  It would also probably take ten years of coding to create.  Heh, heh.  Oh well.  I can dream on, I guess...

One other thing. I don't think many of the fighters/bombers could fly well, if at all in a proper gravity environment.

[Mars]

Considering that none of the fighters/bombers move fast enough to reach the planet in a playable amount of time (IE days at 16X speed), I'd say aerodynamics is the least of your worries.

[vyper]

Considering that none of the fighters/bombers move fast enough to reach the planet in a playable amount of time (IE days at 16X speed), I'd say aerodynamics is the least of your worries.

QFT

Edit:

It should however be noted that FS2 does have some sort of gravity well code in it - I recall screwing around with large planet models before, and when I flew too close in a test mission there was a damaging effect on my fighter: almost like had some sort of plans for atmospheric entry/barriers...

[Nuke]

supposidly any object named planet would do damage if you got too close to it. ive never actually seen it work though.

[Gregster2k]

I must say, the concept of being able to fly up to a planet and literally fly down to its surface would still be really cool.

And to address the Impossibility Factor (TM) of that, well, we got canonical jump drives and SEXP playership coordinate changers.....

It could be possible to use fractal planets for a mission where you start close to, say, a small moon, and blast your way towards a base located on the surface of it. As you move forward you might periodically engage some kind of jump drive, or fly your ship through hollow warp rings (either carried by allied ships or placed there already), on reaching a certain distance from the ring a SEXP causes a special effect and teleports your ship ahead, closer to the planet.

If you're familiar with Ecco the Dolphin 2 for Sega Genesis, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about -- swim through a ring, you're suddenly, in a brilliant flash of light, many kilometers ahead of where you were.

So it's not like you can't solve the "no landing" problem. Just needs a bit of creative thinking to explain away why you're able to close the distance faster than normal. Teleports, warp rings, orbital elevators, particle accelerator tubes (a la Descent 3), having your fighter be launched out of a larger craft's mass driver, et cetera...

In all seriousness, I'm thinking a more practical use for fractal-based planetary bodies would be for really, really big asteroids.

[Pilot Of The US]

now, now theres always Battlecruiser/Universal Combat series...

[Herra Tohtori]

id like to see a planetary capable flight model, with a basic aerodynamics engine, and a proper implementation of gravity. but then again im not sure if freespace can handle missions of that scale. definately ship tweaks are needed. it would be grossley unrealistic to be able to fly out of a planet's atmosphere at 80 meters a second.

Implementation of gravity:

Put an acceleration vector on every ship that makes them acceleration into one direction (DOWN). Easiest if the gravity field can be seen as homogenous, more difficult if the gravity field is spherical. On FreeSpace scale, we can just construct a skybox and then make the ships fall.

I doubt that would be very difficult.

Implementation of aerodynamics:

This is the more tricky.

We need situation-variable acceleration vectors that are defined by air speed (v), angle of attack (AOA), air density (constant, mission specific? derives from pressure and temperature) and series of ship-specific constants (namely drag coefficient and lift coefficient.

Also, we need proper angular momentum.

Now we have the means of generating the results of four forces that affect an airplane:

Weight - shown to us as gravitational constant
Lift - counters the weight; is a result of air speed, angle of attack and lift coefficient
Thrust - already ready; seen as forward acceleration
drag - seen as backwards acceleration. Always on 180 degree angle from the air speed vector. Is a result of air speed, angle of attack and drag coefficient.


This is the most easily implementable aero flight model. If you want to get anal with it, you can of course implement additional force vectors that affect certain parts of the ship (ie. control surfaces) and thus give the ship angular acceleration and stuff like that. 

Actually, as long as we aren't craving for ultimate realism, it would probably be rather easy to implement these modest things into the engine. We don't even need to start counting the lift and drag coefficients or anything, just meddle with them and assign appropriate values for each ship. Though I'm not a coder, so I can't really estimate the amount of work needed to do with this. It would sure add multiple flight parametres and variables and constants, and probably add awful lot of conditions to prevent div by zeros and whatnot.

For a very, very simple model, that is needed. Any coder want to try this? After all, it's quite basic vector physics in itself.

[Nuke]

well i think the physics are being done. just write a little piece of code to force glide mode when you enter the atmosphere.

do air density as inversly perportional to altitude. planet defs would indicate atmospheric range and base density (which would attenuate to 0 at max altitude).

for aerodynamic data ship entries. wing area, drag, aspect ratio, cg (center of gravity), and cl (center of lift) ect.

probibly would need vtol data if you wanted to be able to have a descent engine under your ship, but this isnt critical.

as for the planets show the fractal model untill your altitude drops to a certain point, then have a model of the landing area apear on its surface. this is sorta how frontier did it.

a fade in nebula effect could simulate atmosphere and mask the boundries of the surface model. fog density would need to be low.

probibly for cool factor youd probibly want to script a few atmoshperic flight gauges.

its of work, yes. but all of these elements have other potential uses as well. so theres no need to rush to make it all happen all at once. i know its possible cause frontier pulled it off in a time before 3d acceleration.

[jr2]

Considering that none of the fighters/bombers move fast enough to reach the planet in a playable amount of time (IE days at 16X speed), I'd say aerodynamics is the least of your worries.

Hmmph.  You could jump to the closest point possible (I'm pretty sure the FS jump drives are affected adversly by gravity) and then the gravitational force of the planet (assuming the closest point of jump was close enough for your ship to be caught) would do the rest, and you could re-enter Space Shuttle style.  It couldn't be any worse than flying through engine wash.  EDIT: Unless of course your shields reacted somehow with the atmosphere   

As for not implementing complex physics characteristics, you'd probably just want to add them on one at a time later.  That's how all the SCP stuff got added, right?

[Nuke]

thats my point. aerodynamics and gravity are seprate entities even though the former is dependand on the latter, theres no need to implement both at the same time. of course the ultimate goal i think is to make freespace like frontier not necisarily the same physics and flight model, but the ability to have planets that not only sit in the background and look good but also can be approched and landed upon with atmosphere and gravity and all those bells and whistles that help improve the experience.

[jr2]

thats my point. aerodynamics and gravity are seprate entities even though the former is dependand on the latter, theres no need to implement both at the same time. of course the ultimate goal i think is to make freespace like frontier not necisarily the same physics and flight model, but the ability to have planets that not only sit in the background and look good but also can be approched and landed upon with atmosphere and gravity and all those bells and whistles that help improve the experience. [/i][/u]

My Precious!!  Gollum!

[NGTM-1R]

That would indeed be a very cool addition, I've been thinking about that for awhile now.  Except I was dreaming of the possibility to even enter the planet's atmosphere, and go dogfighting a Mara in that particular planet's version of the Grand Canyon.  That would be cool.  It would also probably take ten years of coding to create.  Heh, heh.  Oh well.  I can dream on, I guess...

I have a mission idea in my head that won't go away about getting something that will convert the heightmap of Mars to a 3D model.

Then pick out a deep section of the Noctis canyon network, texture, and build an assault mission against an installation on the canyon floor.

[Nuke]

that is exactly what i want to accomplish with this engine.

[Cyker]

This would be cool, but not necessarily for a Freespace/X-Wing style space shooter. It'd be much better for a space exploration-type sim.

I really wish Freelancer had had this (Then again there's a lot of things I wish Freelancer had )

There have only been two games I've EVER played that had such wide-ranging scale, where you could fly from one end of a galaxy to another then die landing because you drank too much beer and crashed into a tree, and those two games were Frontier: Elite 2 and First Encounters: Frontier 2: Elite 3

[Colonol Dekker]

I-War was cool but if you try and land, you learn the Dreadnaughts not atmos capable the hard way.........I miss the CNV-301