newtonian physics? sure hope this is a bug

[-splosives-]

Well, regardless, in reality Gravity makes you fall faster and faster, a force, which makes you accelerate, like any constant force would.

If you've ever sat in the blaze of a star's corona to collect fuel, you'll know that you can do the impossible, HOVER with engines OFF, in place! In the evoverse, gravity works by applying a VELOCITY to the ship, which means if you get 'up to' an equal and opposite speed, you can shut off your engines and hover. You can do this in inertial or in IDS.

That's what the whole thread is about. Gravity doesn't work like it does in real life, regardless of the size or scale, you only ever accelerate because the applied speed gets faster as you get closer. It seems Vice expected gravity to make a difference when flying with IDS, where it will happily think its sitting still as you plummet toward the sun.

If gravity worked by force, you could actually do stuff like orbit, or slingshot with a blackhole or sun, cool stuff like that. As it is now, it does fine in the game, but isn't accurate at all.

Since it will change gameplay, and likely screw with the AI, I suggest if Vice tries this at all, he do a bbeta implementation or something, incase it doesn't work right.

Yes, yes, I know.
I completely agree.

Vice has his dedicated beta team at his disposal (uncluding myself )

[PlasmaJedi]

Apologies, then, it seemed like it just dawned on you

I will say tho, its pretty cool 'parking' next to a sun in a warzone and watching red after red burn and die in the firey blaze! Cap ship even fall prey to it, seems they can't get moving fast enough to escape!

I wonder if, you were carefule, you could collect all the cargo pods from that mess without falling in yourself? Have to use inertial mode for that.

[-splosives-]

I placed this suggestion in the beta forum so vice can consider it.

[PlasmaJedi]

He said something about emailing him with the starwraith3dgames address. I was considering it. He really shouldn't try to pull an 'Orbiter', just change the gravity formula and maybe a few tweaks. To do REAL gravity, such that a single planets' well spans the whole sector or system, would be silly.

My guess is he wants to see who REALLY cares, and thats why he suggested the email.

[Triton83]

No, Gravity is a force. Doesn't matter what we call it though, it's just semantics.

I know what you mean when you say that it's an acceleration, and you're right.
The gravitational constant G (9.81 on earth) is an acceleration.

You're right about semantic, we should speak of gravitational acceleration and gravitational forces.
To clarify, when I said acceleration I was referring to this :

Gravity is not a force of acceleration, but velocity.

and when I said weight I was referring to this :

Gravity itself is a force.
and as we all know F=m*a where a is acceleration and m is mass

Your formula in "gravity terms" is W=m*g
Saying "weight is gravity" seemed odd to me, but I maybe misunderstood your point

But whatever, we all agree on the fact that a gravitational field applies a force on masses and makes them accelerate to its center

[Edited on 12/2/2013 by Triton83]

[Maarschalk]

The reason you can hover in a Star gravity field and on a planet is because of your ships built in automated gravity compensators. As mentioned before Gravity in Evochron does not seem to work the way you expect it to because your ships thrusters and engine systems automatically adjust when you make a planets descent on inertia. In the far future it is quite possible that Space ships will have automated gravity compensators and do things in gravity you would not normally expect!.....Remember Evochron time line is in the future
and we can not compare todays technology to handle gravity with that of the far future!.....

[-splosives-]

The reason you can hover in a Star gravity field and on a planet is because of your ships built in automated gravity compensators. As mentioned before Gravity in Evochron does not seem to work the way you expect it to because your ships thrusters and engine systems automatically adjust when you make a planets descent on inertia. In the far future it is quite possible that Space ships will have automated gravity compensators and do things in gravity you would not normally expect!.....Remember Evochron time line is in the future
and we can not compare todays technology to handle gravity with that of the far future!.....

No, that's what you (or somebody else) made up to explain the lacking physics in evochron.

[jeremyhak2]

The reason you can hover in a Star gravity field and on a planet is because of your ships built in automated gravity compensators. As mentioned before Gravity in Evochron does not seem to work the way you expect it to because your ships thrusters and engine systems automatically adjust when you make a planets descent on inertia. In the far future it is quite possible that Space ships will have automated gravity compensators and do things in gravity you would not normally expect!.....Remember Evochron time line is in the future
and we can not compare todays technology to handle gravity with that of the far future!.....

LOL ok I guess that explains the falling as light as a feather part xD

But even then the accelerating force of gravity is still not there, and is something that a few others and I wish to have included in the game (as it is newtonian physics after all ).

If you set IDS speed to 0, you fall.
If you set IDS to just high enough to prevent free fall (somewhere around 110-130 m/s in game) you would just end up flying into or out of the planet at some point.

When the game's gravity becomes based on acceleration, you then have a speed to work with that is in between the falling onto the planet and escaping it where you just keep falling..
and falling...
and falling...

An orbit!

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by jeremyhak2]

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by jeremyhak2]

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by jeremyhak2]

[-splosives-]

I do fear that our maximum speed will limit our orbit capabilities in Evochron.
Like all of us physics nerds already know, a stable orbit requires very high velocities to make sure you fall over the planet, not on it.

[jeremyhak2]

Well back when I was playing Orbiter, 7800 m/s was the magic number to achieve a Low Earth Orbit.. Any lower than that and you'd fall back into the atmosphere.

However we already know the scale of the current Evochron planets are relatively small compared to the size of planets in real life/orbiter. Perhaps we can maybe get the minimum orbiting velocity to be much lower than that. Since this is a game after all, I'd assume that the velocity required to maintain orbit be under 2000 m/s (give or take), and any greater velocity would mean escaping the planet's gravity field. This is all up to Vice as to what number this will be.

[PlasmaJedi]

Indeed, EM is not all that realistic, it is just simply a dash more realistic than most space sims.

I think whatever speed is needed to orbit should be somewhat faster than the ~1470 speed limit in atmosphere. That way, one could really NEED to slow down to re-enter, and it would add a small little gameplay dynamic to orbiting; accidentally brushing the atmosphere might burn you up! But is shouldn't be anything ridiculous, like 4000+, I'm thinking more like 2000, that way pretty much all craft should have no trouble getting there.

I think atmosphere flight shouldn't change too much near the ground, but near space, the ship should get heavier, as it is no longer getting lift.

EDIT: Well, Heavier in that it has no lift, but lighter than at the ground with no speed.

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by PlasmaJedi]

[Triton83]

However we already know the scale of the current Evochron planets are relatively small compared to the size of planets in real life/orbiter. Perhaps we can maybe get the minimum orbiting velocity to be much lower than that.

Indeed, considering planets size, the ships are relatively fast. If we want to keep a realistic planetary orbit altitude, relative to game's scale, it should be easy to give an arbitrary "mass" to planets to obtain an acceptable escape velocity.

I did a little research and some calculations about escape velocity. It depends on planet's mass and ship's altitude only. Game's planets have all the same size (radius ~375,000). If we use metter as length unit and if we consider they are spherical and have Earth density, we can estimate a mass around 1.22 e21 kg. Using the escape velocity formula with this mass and with "relatively realistic" orbital altitudes gives low velocities (less than 700 m/s). So with a "realistic" calculation, orbit insertions would need speeds around 400-600 m/s.

With arbitrary higher planet mass, the needed speed could be raised to reach more realistic speeds (more than 1450 but perhaps not 7800 m/s ) and the gravity would have more influence on ships trajectories. Planet mass could be used as gravity tweaker (it makes sense...). Moreover, different densities could be applied to each planet type and impact on orbital velocities

The more I think about it, the more I think it's doable and i'd be awesome...

[Edited on 13/2/2013 by Triton83]

[PlasmaJedi]

With arbitrary higher planet mass, the needed speed could be raised to reach more realistic speeds (more than 1450 but perhaps not 7800 m/s ) and the gravity would have more influence on ships trajectories. Planet mass could be used as gravity tweaker (it makes sense...). Moreover, different densities could be applied to each planet type and impact on orbital velocities

The more I think about it, the more I think it's doable and i'd be awesome...

You're darn right! Regardless of the physics, it should be tweaked for the gameplay feel, not to be too realistic. So I'd worry less about actual formulas, and more about how it 'should' feel as one plays it.

It's my understanding that a beta tester is conversing with Vice about this on the beta forums (which are hid to non-beta players)

[Maarschalk]

The reason you can hover in a Star gravity field and on a planet is because of your ships built in automated gravity compensators. As mentioned before Gravity in Evochron does not seem to work the way you expect it to because your ships thrusters and engine systems automatically adjust when you make a planets descent on inertia. In the far future it is quite possible that Space ships will have automated gravity compensators and do things in gravity you would not normally expect!.....Remember Evochron time line is in the future
and we can not compare todays technology to handle gravity with that of the far future!.....

No, that's what you (or somebody else) made up to explain the lacking physics in evochron.

I could be wrong as i have been before but I thought iirc I read it some where, where Vice himself explains this!.....

Here is the direct quote from the Strategy guide!:

"While in planet atmospheres, your inertial dampening system will attempt to keep you at a safe altitude, but won't be able to prevent high speed descents. Once your altitude drops to below about 5500, you will receive a vocal warning and alarm if your speed is high enough to risk damage upon crashing. Your inertial thrusters will engage at an altitude of about 2000-3000 to try and keep you from slamming into the ground. If your speed is low enough and you aren't flying too fast toward the ground, your inertial system will be able to safely hold you in place. You can also drop your throttle to 0 and hover in level flight, but this will burn fuel at a moderate rate."

[Edited on 2-13-2013 by Maarschalk]