[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

[Fineus]

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.

[athropy]

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.

[Nico]

play the robotech mod

[DTP]

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".



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.

[DTP]

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.

[Nico]

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...

[LtNarol]

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.

[Nico]

you know what? I don't care about logic, I care about how it looks like. ingame, everything looks too small.

[LtNarol]

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.

[DTP]

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.

[LtNarol]

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.

[Nico]

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.