When I start to think Star Citizen's atmospheric flight model isn't realistic...
Posted Jan 13, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC
3.7K491
Aircraft/spacecraft can do some weird stuff when they have a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1.
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[deleted]
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Bricks especially.
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He flew pretty good for a brick
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Indeed
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And we had to share the rock
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thats a space brick https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/unflyable.html
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Highfleet says hello.
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I LOVE MY BRICK
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Ah I see you also know about the F4. Mankind's proof that with enough thrust anything can be an aircraft.
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and pizza boxes
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And thrust vectoring helps too
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That's honestly the bigger factor. Thrust vectoring means that you can apply thrust that doesn't go through your center of mass. That means you can potentially manuver without using air deflection, which means you can do wild shit.
A prop plane with a pivoting engine could pull insane manuvers as well. Heck, the osprey could too if they uncaged the engines, of course, it can also fly straight up.
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Acrobatic prop planes can still do weird shit with their oversized control surfaces and having them in the airstream of the prop to generate some vectoring.
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True.
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Yeah, always been interested in the SU-27 specifically because of the Pugachev's cobra maneuver and thrust vectoring.
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Sukhoi makes beautiful planes.
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The cobra is a very specific tool for very specific situations, but the main problem is that it bleeds off all of their energy, meaning that while they can snap the nose around really fast, they lose all of their airspeed in the process which is a very vulnerable spot to be. Also I'm not sure but I think if they do that at too high an airspeed they can rip their wings off, which is very counterproductive.
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Not necessarily, they just have to be unstable enough. A little nose heavy and your plane will fly like a Cub, a little tail heavy and you can do spins on a dime, but many, especially modern aircraft, are practically uncontrollable without a fly-by-wire control system and either strong electric motors or heavy duty hydraulic systems. All of those planes would be unflyable without it. The SU-37 and the SU-27 was unflyable WITH those systems and many underwent mid-air catastrophic disassembly on more than one occasion.... they are comparable to wooden crates held together with brad tacks and Elmer's glue.
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Imagine getting into a dog fight with the enemy and his plane back flips, cartwheels and then breakdances.
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Then he transforms into a mech, wouldn't that be cool?
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MACROSS !
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Well, he asked for breakdance so Macross it is, but Macross Delta
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Ahhh, the 'recent' Macrosses, such love/hate relationship...
Such cool mechs & planes, but such... unrelenting J-pop. It's like drinking tequila, but rubbing the salt in your wounds and and squeezing lemon juice in your eye.
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ooof, forgot how brutal that was...first zentraedi had a bad day.
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Delta's enemies aren't Zentraedis though
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Fighters are gangsta until capital ships start to breakdance https://youtu.be/X0toVvhUZcg?t=273
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I just tried blowing away your profile picture from my phone screen... well played
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That's just a regular Tuesday in Project Wingman/Ace Combat
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yeah
i recently saw a video of someone reacting to Max0r's AC7 vid, he was breaking down the logistics, reasoning, government structures, proceidures, etc etc, and he was constantly pointing out how ridiculous and weird things were
all the while i was just "yup, that's ace combat for ya"
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The Army vet guy?
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Yep
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Imo, once you see that video, you have accidentally entered a cult
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Most of this is tactically useless air show maneuvers. All they're doing is making it easier for AIM 120 to hit them.
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Yeah modern dogfights are lame
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It's kinda funny to think that an AIM-54 Phoenix from the late 70s has ~19 times the range of the average SC missiles.
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that’s one reason why i am so triggered by SC missile gameplay. it’s the year 2952 and missile/countermeasure tech is from the 1970s…
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Can’t complain tbh, using guns is more fun
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I wouldn't really call them dogfights if they're BVR.
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Yup
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"my missile has more range than your missile"
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Parking brake would be handy
Edit: Can't find the clip. Hot Shots... Dam
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Cheers!
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He's named a russian spy, but posts a clip in german.
You have been rused
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Hey first clip that popped up.
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And side mirrors... https://youtu.be/tX-NdX7DPtc. 0:41
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Honestly I'm hitting the bottom deck and going full after burners. I want no part of that sorcery lol
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Bring it on!!
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Ace Combat has entered the chat
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[deleted]
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It would be interesting to see what a backflip looks like right before the Sidewinder hits him.
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<< Spare 8! No dog fighting! >>
<< No way! I ain't letting this slide! WOOOOOHOOOO!!! >>
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Poor dude had the bug where you can't close your canopy!
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Dunno if sarcastic or not, I answer nevertheless: What you see is the open intake for a huge fan inside the F-35 that allows it to start with a nearly non existent runway.
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oh I thought it was an air brake
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The "lift fan". Part of how it can hover and do VTOL stuff.
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pro tip: don't use this when you're engaging the hulk
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Thanks. I was curious about that. I was sure it wasn't the canopy and am sure the other guy was joking, but it sure looked like it.
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Lol that’s not the canopy though
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As an Avenger Titan owner, I leave my canopy open all the time. Hate wasting AC
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Think of it. This video show cases technology considered primitive compared to the tech of Star Citizen.
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I'd love a joke bounty mission to take down a bandit group who have fabricated ancient 21st/22nd century jet technology to harass a security depot.
Oh, they don't have shields and crash if they go too slow? Should be no problem in my Aurora.
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actually TBH that wouldn't be awful as a setting/world building piece
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Wouldn’t be fun if they had some AIM-120s though.
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I mean, so are perfectly tracking guns that lead automatically, and missiles that can target and destroy enemies many many kilometres away.
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Makes SC all the more plausible.
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If this was put in SC we would all be passing out at the start of a dog fight.
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I had a family member that flew for the US Air Force's red squadron. Basically flew using opposing countries tactics for wargames with other air force units and foreign allies.
He said what the f-22 was capable of was absolutely insane and that it was the height of stupidity for us to cancel it in favor of the f-35.
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Both planes were planned in tandem, an air superiority fighter and a multi-role fighter to replace a number of aging aircraft. The F35 was supposed to be inexpensive but when it had to absorb the role of the A-10 and Harrier jump jet, it's cost absolutely exploded. The reality is, no single airframe can fill multiple rolls well and be affordable and it's cheaper to develop role specific aircraft with an open fulfilment part box instead of closed development. Of course now the F35 can't fullfill the role of the F-16, F-15, F-18 because of it.
The F-22 order was cut short mostly because of the cost overrun of the F-35 and reality that no one is fielding an aircraft that can currently compete with the F-22. They don't want airframes getting stress by the time the aircraft is actually needed and those frames need replacing like the F-15.
But it is about money at the end of the day. DOD brass and even non-coms land extremely lucrative jobs post military with companies they work with (read: help inflate project costs).
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The f-35 only still exists to fuel the military industrial complex. To cancel the project would have thousands of blue collar factory workers out of jobs, so no politician wants to be the one responsible.
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More over the reason its so damn expensive, one of many is because parts are being made by so many companies that by all rights, shouldn't have been chosen to do the work. They got those contracts because they're in the right Senators' district.
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It's not just the US either. The F-35 has development of components for partner nations built in those countries, so in addition to the domestic issues with losing factory jobs, there are international political ramifications for ending the program.
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Couldn't we employ them as nurses, doctors, house builders, teachers, or anything our country actually needs right now?
Is this not just the glaziers fallacy on a huge scale.
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Ah yes, while we're at it, let's get all the guys at CIG doing space ship art to work on the physics engine.
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Oh no we've trained vwryone to be glaziers, better keep smashing those windows.
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But, air capabilities are no longer as important as stealth.
F35 has better stealth profile, and will detect the F22 and launch missiles first - and that’s what counts these days, not extreme air manoeuvrability. The fact it can have VTOL also means it can be based anywhere, and doesn’t need a 2KM long landing strip.
Yeah, the F22 is the better fighter, it’s just less versatile. F35 was a bonkers amount of money though.
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I've always heard that F22 has the superior stealth vs F35 - radar signature of a steel marble vs a golf ball, or something like that. Is this no longer the case?
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Nobody has posted actual radar returns for either aircraft, so nobody here will know for sure.
On the other hand, the F-35 is being marketed for export while the F-22 is still closely guarded, which implies the F-22 is superior
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That’s also because the F-22’s production line was shut down.
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You've got that backwards, the F-22 was designed and employs better stealth materials and construction. The F-22 also has a far greater engagement range than the F-35. The F-22 is the superior fighter, by a massive margin.
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No this is wrong - missiles aren't nearly as effective as all that (that's the mistake they made in the 50s-60s when they took the guns off aircraft - it turned out that countermeasures work pretty well, and that was before stealth).
Current stealth technology only exacerbates that, as it's good at a specific frequency (usually the accurate, short wave radar that most aircraft and missiles use). An F35 vs F22 dogfight would have them detect each others secondary signatures anyway, rather than relying on the primary signature, but assuming they turned all that off it still comes down to aircraft performance (like we saw in the wargames where the Indian version PAKFA managed to give a good account of itself against the F22).
Stealth is useful, and for sure an advantage, but probably more for plausible deniability than combat (you can claim the signals that show on long-wave radar are something else, as it's not accurate enough to get a clear picture of something, only show something is there).
If stealth were more important than we'd see stealth aircraft all starting to look like the F117 (as we see with the B2 and B21 for whom stealth is more important). Current (fighter/multirole) designs are very much performance first, stealth second at best.
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Please tell me how many gun kills there were in the Gulf war
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That's a different type of combat - if you have the option of 'have more, more advanced aircraft than the opponent in every engagement' then by all means, take that approach.
How many missile misses were there in the Gulf War? Against low-tech, outnumbered, unstealthed fighters? Even 30 years after the time period I mentioned, in about the best case scenario I can think of, my point of 'missiles aren't nearly as effective as all that' seems to stand pretty well.
Are we just discounting wargames? Is that what you're getting at?
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Two, both A-10 cannon kills of Iraqi helicopters. Also one helicopter kill by an F-15E using a laser-guided bomb on a helicopter mid-takeoff.
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Have you seen the concepts for gen 6 fighters?
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Some of them yes, and they demonstrate that pretty clearly this doctrine hasn't changed to me- is there one in particular you'd like to point to? I could certainly have missed something?
The priority definitely seems to be to make them less sensitive to shortwave radar (as we see with the F22/F35 style planes) than longwave/general radar (like the B21/B2 style planes), presumably for improved countermeasures.
They seem clearly designed to be good against fire control radar, not radar (better than nothing, but not good).
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most of them have no more in common with reality than the F-19
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Cool maneuverability isn’t that important anymore. Maneuverability isn’t going to help when 5 missiles are coming in at mach 3 and each can pull 50+ G’s. Beyond visual range combat is modern air combat.
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TIL: I fly just like highly trained Russian fighter pilots.
*EDIT* Thought of a better joke. He is just looking for an Orbital marker.
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Ah, I see I've given out my free award too early today. Here, have this poor man's gold instead: 🏅
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I'll take it. 😎
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I got you covered
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He does not lie. He in fact did have you covered. Thanks mate
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Yay team!
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That OM joke hits home lol
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“Why is it when I NEED an OM I can never FIND an OM?”
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god that F-22 gave me an erection so fast I put a button through my monitor
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This is insane! The G’s must be crazy!!!
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The video is sped up by a lot. The G acceleration in a post stall isn't very high and rarely exceeds 3 G's. Nonetheless, even at normal speeds it's impressive engineering. Not much use in combat though.
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Yeah if this wasn’t sped up the jets would probably have torn their wings off if they could manoeuvre that fast.
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Imagine if the pilot weren't designed to be required for operations ...
the very near future of semi autonomous UVA's will be showing some fantastical and very futuristic aircraft maneuvering.
I'm not sure if these current 5th Gen fighters have much semi-autonomous systems to manage flight in the even to pilot blackout, or if the plane limits g-forces to prevent such black out ...
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https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/autogcas.html Lockheed Martin aircraft (notably the F-16 and F-35) do have these systems.
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lol, thanks. I see not re-reading my comment I wrote 'not sure if' ... when I wrote that knowing damn well they do provide such anti-blackout / blackout recovery / workload balancing functions.
I suspect my mind was "I'm sure" but my fingers decided I don't need to sound so sure. :)>
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The way ships fly in atmosphere isn't that far off from reality of how fighters and other jets function in the real world.
However, some ships have the ability to hover in high gravity planets using only maneuvering thrusters and that shit doesn't make any sense. It kind of makes the ships with actual VTOL pointless, at least the VTOL portion of those ships.
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IIRC VTOL ships will be able to hover longer without heat issues on the lift thrusters
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I hate to be that guy, but I agree with Happpie, and I hope you're right. Keeping these things stationary over a planet like Microtech shouldn't be nearly as easy as it is right now. When I'm pitched nose down 45 degrees or more and my ship is just sitting there completely still, it feels wrong.
When I'm strafe circling one of those damn bunker turrets (yes, those are typically on lower-g planets but whatevs), it feels silly. It occurred to me that it would be "more fun" (for me at least) and certainly less dangerous to make strafing runs on those emplacements, rather than to sit there and strafe back and forth trying to get shots in. More fun because it's more active and dynamic, and less dangerous because I'm trying to do it alone in my MSR and it just never works out well.
I know it'll never work out this way but damn if I wouldn't like to see some ships require airspeed and a runway to take off and land, put those landing gear tires to good use. And for some others to have to maintain forward velocity to prevent falling out of the sky.
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Turning off coupled mode allows the ship to fall normally again. The issue with this is shops move so incredibly fast that oftentimes air resistance doesn’t matter at all, so you’ll have to manually brake.
It’s also worth noting you’ll feel the atmosphere much differently in some ships. For example, turning in atmo with a mustang you can feel the air bounce the ship, like it would at those speeds irl. When entering atmospheres without your hand on the throttle, your ship is going to slowly bounce upwards off the high atmosphere (which is something that happens irl).
The issue is that all RCS thrusters have a greater thrust to weight ratio. Not the flight model. My guess is that once things like control surfaces are released that’ll be fixed. But right now devs would need to tune the RCS for every ship to specifically allow gravity to effect the ship, and that’s both a pain to do and requires quite a large amount of code to be added to the system, as coupled mode is built to attempt to halt all velocity as soon as you take your hands off the throttle.
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I don't necessarily disagree.
I just larp in my terrapin right now in vtol 😆
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No SC ship is a plane. Even the ones that look like planes have way too small wings for their size and mass. Also mav truster power is dictated by the maneuverability requirements, hovering is just a side effect.
Which is why you shouldn't make spaceships that look like planes - then people start asking why they don't act like planes. The reality is - all SC ships are bricks with engines and they behave like bricks with engines
So the real question here is - do you want systemic gameplay where there is one set of rules for everything and your ship behavior is predictable. Or you want different special modes for different occasions. HM attempt have shown they the systemic behavior is vastly preferred by the community and is less technologically taxing
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[deleted]
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I've flown the beast. I love it, but it being painfully slow and handling like a whale makes sense in a high gravity atmosphere when you consider its 9m kg
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It depends what ship you are talking about, but typically they should all be able to hover. VTOL just gives you better agility and performance doing so.
I kind of want to curse Hollywood for giving the collective unconscious such a bad and unrealistic idea of what these sort of vehicles should be capable of.
That being said, the VFX and visual language for this stuff should be much better than it is today. Tiny mavs feel wrong, etc.
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It doesn't depend on the ship. Science is science. If you need a massive thruster to propel the ship forward, then by default you would need an equally strong thruster to keep its weight hovering in place in a high gravity environment. Maneuvering thrusters are meant for space, where the ship is weightless, they would not be powerful enough in atmosphere to support the weight of a 20 ton ship
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Decoupling seems like it would turn flight into something much closer to what you want. I agree that even coupled the ships should probably struggle to maintain a hover perfectly without VTOL, but coupling in atmo is kind of the answer for players that want flight to require less continuous actions or be less challenging.
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You do understand that mass exists regardless of gravity, right?
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Mass and weight aren't the same thing.
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Maneuvering thrusters are meant for space, where the ship is weightless, they would not be powerful enough in atmosphere to support the weight of a 20 ton ship
Mass is mass, if you can pull a given amount of G's in space, well, that's your baseline capability. And if you want spaceflight to be fun at all, you need that capability to arrest momentum on translational axises. I don't object to physics or visuals conveying and selling the motion better but you need to remain consistent and systemic.
Even with diminished thrust efficiency in atmosphere, some ships can hover and this is physically correct, even accounting for a degree of handwavium with the aperture of each thruster's nozzle.
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Dude there's no way you're trying to suggest a ship would handle and experience the same physics in space as it would in gravity. Gravity is a constant that doesn't exist in the middle of fuck space.
Either way, a jank ass little maneuvering thruster isn't generating the same Gs as the main thruster. The amount of force you need to generate to rotate a ship in space would not be remotely close to the same force you would need to generate to keep it floating in gravity
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At least CIG fixed the canopy bug. That F35B still hasn't fixed it and it was released 15 years ago.
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Wait, they released the F-35? I heard it was only still available to devs and beta testers.
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aint even loading for me. MY COMPUTER IS EFFED
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This is so much funnier than I anticipated.
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[deleted]
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None of these are hovering in mid air all crooked and stuff, though.
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Yup, these are all stupid airshow maneuvers that amount to the aerial version of a parlor trick and have no real world applications, especially not in combat. They also can't float unrealistically in midair like you mention.
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Well... The F35 gets pretty close.
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If someone ever uses the VTOL function for something other than take off or landing, that guy will lose his wings lol
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Harrier jump jet constantly changed its nozzles mid flight. Hell, it had a manuver called full breaking stop where it would switch from vertical nozzles to horizontal mid flight and come to a stop
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Close with no combat load and decreased fuel load.
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That Russian jet's maneuver is called a cobra. Supposingly they will use it to get behind someone who is on their tail
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No they won't because it's never been used in combat and the day of the dogfight is long since passed.
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That's seriously my biggest gripe with the flight model. People will use all sorts of future magic to explain it away but a ship with hundreds of tons just completely nailed to the sky with zero sway will never look good. Nothing about how they move gives any impression of mass or inertia.
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Nothing is wrong with the flight model. The issue is overpowering RCS. Remember that in-atmosphere your ship moves at many, many meters PER SECOND. It takes a heck of a lot of atmospheric friction to slow a multi-hundred ton spacecraft moving at a quarter of a kilometer a second. The issue here is that RCS thrusters often overpower air resistance while doing things like rotating or keeping yourself off the ground. Using a ship like the mustang you can feel a greater amount of air resistance than other craft. An example of proof that air resistance does actually make a difference is facing your ship towards the horizon of a planet in high atmo, and activating cruise control. Your ship will slowly pitch up in a bounce, just as Neil Armstrong experienced in his flight training in high-atmosphere vehicles.
Because of how coupled mode is built (to zero out all non-user inputted velocity) you’d have to rebuild most of how ships move to fix the issue. My guess is this type of thing will come with the introduction of control surfaces and aerodynamics.
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Someone is gonna have that audio bug after all those g forces
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Yup.
People just have expectations in their brains for what realistic looks like.... No matter if it matches real reality
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and what is real reality you think?:) non of these maneuvers contradicts physics, unlike SC fm
-3†
Would you describe a non realistic maneuver in SC? I have read a few which people thought were such while completely ignoring thruster strengths and position.
Only one so far sounded borderline unclear and that was more a discussion about future materials and whal level of strain they can take. :D
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You do realize that in the current state thrusters animation(is just animation) is a result of vectors not the opposite, don't you? so all this talks about thrusters strength and positions are just wishful thinking
-3†
You did not describe an example at all. Was my requirement too difficult for you to fulfill?
Also in past patches we already had more accurate thruster performance including placement considerations, torque, damage handling effects, etc.
So based on your reply I surmise that you are not equipped well enough in terms of knowledge for this discussion, do I understand that correctly?
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Please provide an actual example. I’ll believe you even more if you actually provide physics equations to support your argument.
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When you have greater than 1 thrust to weight ratio, you're basically only limited by structural integrity and the G-forces the pilot can withstand.
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I read this several times now. What exactly means "thrust to weight ratio is greater than 1"? Could it still fly if its under 1? Play's gravity a role? I'm curious.
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I don't know why people keep writing this, there's only one maneuver in this video that is only allowed by having thrust-to-weight equal or higher than 1, and actually has other limitations so it's not that stat alone that allows it to be performed (the first one showed by th F22). I guess technically also the F35 vertical take off is a "maneuver", and that obviously requiers thrust-to-weight higher than 1
"thrust to weight ratio is greater than 1" means that the force exerted by the engines is higher than the weight of the airplane, that's it. Planes (even military ones) have been flying with lower values than 1 for the bigger part of aviation history, and commercial aviation works at values way below 1
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Most planes throughout history have had less than 1 thrust to weight ratio. In other words, the forward power is less than the weight of the aircraft, and so it uses wings to generate most of the lift. This is the reason most airplanes will stall if they pitch too far up.
Modern fighter jets can literally fly straight up without using wing lift since the engines are powerful enough.
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All this arguing over what is believable in a space sim with wormholes and alien races 😂😂😂😂
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Its funny until you find out a certain % of this game's alpha's population wants more realistic bullshit that we dont need in what is/was to be a game, like manually reloading weapons or medpens (its a bit late for that one isn't it, chief?) or idk...
Space toilets.
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The only difference between reality and fiction, is that fiction must be credible
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Okay but 2 things.
- Those maneuver videos are sped up. We don't have anything that could pull those that fast without ripping itself apart.
- These are military jets, and while I can believe the fighters and smaller aircraft in SC are/should be capable of these stunts (even sped up), the larger ones should not be. And that's exactly what we have right now with a fair amount of SC's larger ships.
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“But Christ Roberts promised us WW2 style dogfighting”
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When your ship has "maneuvering thrusters" that put out over 1 thrust to weight ratio, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want atmosphere be damned.
More or less this. People get mad about "balloon ships" and say "That's not realistic looking"...
People...these space-ships aren't real. You don't know what a "real" space ship hovering would look like.
If you saw a space ship in a movie hovering with all this wobble and struggle and weight...that's because it was a movie...it's not real. They made it look like that becuase it looked cool because they want that dramatic helicopter landing vibe.
That same space ship in another scene is a chunky pancake BRICK that is swooping through asteroid fields and canyons with perfect grace and can just VTOL leave the ground like nothing. If you want performance like that in space, then performance in atmosphere is going to behave like you have that performance.
[deleted]
Hitchhiker's?
Poor whale :(
Probably my favorite quote from the books.
Yeah the main thing that big chunky ships will suffer in atmosphere is much reduced maneuverability at speed and much lower top speed due to drag, but when we are talking about just hovering or maneuvering at low speed then as long as it has got the thrust then it can do what it wants.
I will say that I wish vertical thrusters looked like they were firing a bit more intensely when hovering in atmo, it hurts the suspension if disbelief when they are just sitting there with barely a wisp of exhaust coming out of the thrusters, additionally thrusters should have reduced performance when in atmo.
I agree, I feel ships hovering should burn fuel much faster. Also, ships like prospector or mole should be able only mine in space or very low gravity moons. When I see Mole mining on planet while hovering it feels really weird. Unless they make those ships with grav-lev tech. Then it would be more plausible.
It's not the hovering it's the atmosphere, atmosphere should greatly affect the performance of thrusters, fuel consumption and max thrust output. This should be true for all ships. But those ships that are "aerodynamic" (gladius, hornet, 300 series etc.) should not only produce lift while flying fast enough but also simulate aerodynamic control surfaces. That way they don't need to fire thrusters to maintain altitude or maneuver, only a small amount of thrust to maintain speed, reducing fuel usage and increasing atmospheric flight time. That way the ships most affected by the decreased thruster performance are the big chonky boys that have to be constantly firing thrusters to maintain altitude. And of course dedicated atmospheric vtol engines (terrapin, Valkyrie, lift fans on the Connie etc.) should maintain most of their performance in atmo but should fly more like helicopters.
i think that they should be planet capable, easily if empty but when loaded up with ore then it should be possible to be in higher gravity without vtol (iirc they do have vtol thrusters that can be rotated into position), but a lot safer with vtol enabled
I mean I’d even be satisfied if you just had to have the prospector in vtol mode when in atmosphere. If the reclaimer has to then most other ships too.
They should take some inspiration from flying planetary miners in space engineers. The ones I built had big thrusters pointing down and forward, so you could aim down. They were super maneuverable when empty, but a brick when full.
Haven't tried the prospector in micro tech, but the mole really suffers of fuel depletion in large planetary bodies. On moons the mole still struggles with fuel a bit. The most fuel efficient for the mole is asteroid mining.
Ps both the mole and prospector use less fuel while hovering in gravity when you turn on vtol mode
isn't this mainly due to perception from our 21st Century perspective, where rockets, thrusters are VERY inefficient? instead of the thrusters acting like they are "working" hard, maybe allowing the thrusters to displace more dust/snow/particles and perhaps kill/severely injure those who cross them.
You can't wave away suspension of disbelief with a "but you don't even know how it would work irl" though.
And we, in fact, do know how it would work, since hover jet planes are already a thing
We also have a physics engine within the game and clever bods who know about physics running it. So in many ways we do know.
It's whether it's fun or not that is important IMHO. I'm less interested in it being entirely realistic.
This would be fine if they didn't constantly make a point about it being a simulation, complete with all the realistic boring shit.
Cutlass Black does look goofy in VTOL though. Especially with one engine shot off. It needs some kind of small main thrusters on the front winglets.
Well, I don't really have an opinion on the matter, I was just commenting on the flawed argumentation
This is apples to oranges, ships in sc have multiple thrusters, each one capable of generating enough power to lift a ship. If you took each of this jets and added 10 more engines in every possible direction that would be equivalent. A monstrosity like that would be capable of hovering perfectly in place at any orientation.
With enough thrust even a lead brick can fly.
And I do know what a real spaceship hovering looks like (curiosity Skycrane)
In Thrust We Trust.
It reminded me of a phrase.
"You can only apply so much thrust to the pig, before you begin to wonder why you are even trying to make it fly at all."
I work on Skyvans, so I think about that phrase a lot. They're nicknamed Skypigs.
[deleted]
That is my favorite saying!
And now one to add to my collection of favorites!
When I saw the first two Space X booster land successfully, I was amazed that we were really making progress towards spaceships. It was like science fiction is becoming reality. I saved the picture of the duo boosters landing as my desktop background.
I just find it hard to believe the little thrusters we have could produce the in atmosphere maneuvers. And because I can't believe it, I find it immersion breaking.
And that's why I'm for making atmospheric flight more realistic, in a bid to make it more immersive.
I almost never argue for realism for SC, like you said, we aren't playing real life. But I will always argue for believability and immersion. How you achieve that depends. In this case, it just so happens to be added realism, IMO.
If a ship can achieve greater than 1g acceleration in vaccuum with it's thrusters, then it's *realistic* for it's thrusters to also allow them to perform they way they do in atmosphere.
If they can't do 1g acceleration in vacuum, then they can't maneuver in space at all like players want them do.
If I'm understanding correctly, it isn't that the ships are or aren't pulling those G's, it's that the physical exhausts / ports for those maneuvering thrusters don't look like they could vent enough gas to produce the thrust they do. I kind of agree.
Some of the ships in game in a real life comparison would look like a rocket the size of a toilet paper roll lifting a small car with 1+G's of accel.
Homey can't believe the thrusters are capable of the output they do, but FTL without a fuel tank the size of jupiter is A-OK.
I don't really care about the actual numbers or the apparent logic behind it. I just think ships should fly more like planes and helicopters (with some exceptions) than what they do now in atmosphere.
I loved hover mode for instance, I found it very immersive, i'm a firm believer that if it was tuned and iterated on, it would of been perfect.
You'd be surprised at just how much thrust you can get from rockets. depending on the pressure ratio that little thruster could produce a hefty amount of thrust. The SpaceX SuperDraco is tiny and can still produce 71kN of thrust and is about the size of a man's torso. It also only has a measly chamber pressure of 6.9 MPa (1000 psi) which is actually less than the pressures found in industrial hydraulics. Most rocket engines run in the range of 10 MPa, the RS-25 from the Space Shuttle ran at 20MPa and the SpaceX Raptor being tested up to 30MPa.
Given that the thrusters in SC ships are probably not direct chemical thrusters (but instead magnetohydrodynamic thrusters) you could probably get them to achieve fairly high thrust. The technical term for this thruster is Rocket-Induced Magnetohydrodynamic Ejector. It's basically just a railgun strapped to the back of a rocket engine to make the engine faster more powerful.
For reference, the mav thrusters on the RAFT which are about half the size of your torso each do 7.7 MN, the VTOL engines do 10.84 total. In general our mav thrusters are OP AF
People would have said the same thing about modern computers in the 1970s. It's far-future tech, the engineers in the 'verse have figured out how to get massive power from small thrusters.
See that just doesn't do it for me. I couldn't care less about the how or the lore behind anything.
What makes something believable or immersive for me at least is what I can see, hear and feel.
Iron Man would like a word.
Iron Man isn't doing 360 spins around himself whilst also moving in a single continuous direction through the air for the duration of the spin.
If atmospheric flight was like Iron Man, I might not be complaining!
As I recall.
They did a "physics based" flight model with "more realistic" thrust numbers way back when and found it was basically impossible to hit targets because the nose authority/response time was so slow. So they fudged it and this is what we have today.
Id just really like to see ships not be able to hover in any orientation. That the design of the ship actually matters. Have some directionally focused ships like the hornet behave like they look, wirh a big main engine. And make it so frigates and corvettes that land terrestrially need to follow a more reasonable flight profile and keep their underside pointed down in order to hover.
Everything flying around like you're in Minecraft god mode is really stupid, and it honestly makes gameplay really kind of disappointing and bland. There is no pilot skill involved...
Then you shatter the immersion of people who would find the concept of a craft designed for spaceflight not being given 6DOF thrust - It would be like riding a bike that can't turn sideways.
I think most of the issue comes from the game not having modeled the extreme environmental reactions that would come with that much thrust being output. Like its there partly, but the amount of dust that would get kicked up from a massive ship like that landing or taking off at 100% downward thrust would be absolutely bonkers, and without it there it just feels like the ship is floating. I'm sure in the future it will be improved but for right now i think that it does look a bit off when at low altitude
Need a basement excavated? Don't have neighbors or would prefer to be rid of the ones you have?
Lmao yeah exactly
Yea anyone with familiar with game dev knows the more dramatic reactions (dust, exhaust etc) aren't here yet. Some players need this to suspend disbelief even though they are playing an unfinished product. If they saw a cod in development where recoil was being calculated correctly but there's no visual feedback (no screen shake, no gun movement) they would instantly claim it broken and want extra recoil added.
Pretty much each maneuvering thruster on a small ship would be equivalent to a full vtol system on current fighters. This stuff is ridiculously efficient and advanced futuristic computer calculations would only make them better at balancing.
Yeah exactly
Ya - massive craters and habs knocked over and flying away. Tornado times 5
Actually we DID see a real spaceship hovering.
SpaceX's Starship hovered in the air and it looked like fake CGI :D
I mean elite dangerous pulls that off in-game on high gravity planets and with certain ships that just have poor maneuvering thrusters. You can feel it as a player and it's great.
If you wanted that in SC then you best get good at planning hohman transfers to your bounty targets and learning what delta v means
I know they aren't real, and aren't supposed to look real, but I'd like some nicer effects when they're near the ground. They've gotten better but could still use some work, maybe heat shimmering?
There is no weight in space. So you could fly fucking everything if it stays out of atmosphere. Just add thrusters to it. House? Bus? Tesla? You just have to be fast enough.
A lot of Star Citizen starship barely look more futuristic than current tech. For example show a Sabre to someone that is military/aviation illiterate and you easily could pass it as a new, modern stealth fighter jet. All ships have a definite front, rear, top and bottom. Ships have wings. Reactors. Cockpits.
Yet underneath the recognizable exterior they are ultra advanced tech with capabilities similar with what people associate with alien flying saucers.
A very alien ship like the Khartu Al can fly however it wants and nobody bats a eye, the uninitiated barely knows were the front is, it has wierd engines that can logically point in many directions and it just looks different. I don't think anyone would complain about flight performance if ships looked more alien-ish, or at least less familiar. It would help if VTOL thrusters were much more impressive and powerful looking&sounding. Those little tinyyy thrusters sometimes have the power of Apollo 11 engines or more, its absurd you can lift off a Carrack or 890 from a hangar and have random bystanders walking around a few feet from it as if nothing is happening.
You've seen a Falcon 9 booster landing? Or the F-35 or the Harrier? We know how hovering works and looks like.
A guy with a couple of fire extinguishers can have that performance in space.
Look at the Harrier for what it looks like in real life.
I play SC to have fun, not to have a realistic 1:1 physics simulator. Seeing a ship hovering with wobble and struggle and weight is fun because it plays into the fantasy. A lot of the current ingame physics are not fun because they feel floaty and weightless, regardless of how possible or impossible they would be in real life
At that point, the limitations aren't preformance-related, they're structural and biological. As long as the hardware and pilot are going to hold up to the stress, you're good, but when it comes down to it, the pilot is pretty much always going to be your weak point. Machinery will simply hold up through maneuvers which would destroy the fragile squishy bits.
Kerbal has taught me this.
Why even have wings and other control surfaces then. If it looks like a plane, it's odd if users when it doesn't control like a plane I guess.