Just google "Unity" and some related keywords regarding accurate physics or flight mechanics and you'll quickly see the problem. There's only so much that can be done with Unity or any other "vanilla" commercial game engines, and Empyrion is a complex game. Strictly speaking, anyone can buy the "source" license for Unity and make any change desired, but we're out of the scope of what a small indie team can reasonably expect to achieve in a reasonable time frame. I would have skipped the whole "atmospheric drag" thing altogether, and just tweak default physics to get a feel that is closer to "reality" while still being manageable by players and not too demanding for the engine. A recent test showed me that "ballistics" for weapons is not ballistics at all, it has absolutely nothing to do with "gravity" - it rather shows that "gravity" is just a vector with a force applied in its direction on a per-object basis, probably because they had to somehow "disable" the default gravity in Unity to be able to give us the gravity generator and variable gravity forces depending on playfields (and "none" in space). That's probably also the reason why we have not one object (barrel, box) that we can push around to see react to forces like what is easily doable in Unity's default physics system. Ships stop instantly when hitting a pebble like they are massless, objects don't fall to the ground (structural integrity "break" is an animation), etc.
I don't think Eleon has a leg to stand on for the horrible flight model/physics. Doesn't Kerbal Space Program use Unity as well?
That may also be because they don't use the usual "IsPhysicsObject" functions from Unity, because these can't apply in space (no gravity). They must have some kind of hybrid system, but you can clearly see that there is no true "inertia" for all game objects : they are all "fixed" on a "grid" somewhere : TerrainPlaceable (on the ground) or on a ship's grid. The game is just too far from the conventional "baked" environment used in most games, and can't allow default physics to come in and mess everything in the voxel system. It would be much, much simpler with "regular models" but... this would be an entirely different game. Kerbal may be using Unity, but that's just like saying that Windows and Solitaire both use .net framework, so they should do the same...
Assuming you mean no gravity in space because Empyrion space playfields have no gravity. I still cannot agree with your statement. The flight mechanics are still poor on planet play fields. In space there are still some flight mechanics and I cannot justify why they could not just adjust their equation so to speak. It doesn't even have to be real and accurate newtonian, it just needs to be a rough approximation. Thrust and mass need to affect acceleration, no max speed. Something governs acceleration and I see no reason they cannot fix the problem. Last thought, having gravity or not should not matter at all, the thrust/mass/acceleration equations are still be valid. My guess and hope is Elyion has the current model as a placeholder and they are not at the point in their schedule to update it.
Hey, you seem to know lots of things regarding this topic. Let's see what "formula" you would use please.
I know a fair amount about the physics. I am an engineer, not a programmer. My programming knowledge is very limited, so there is a lot I may be missing here. I would use a=f/m. (Definitions: acceleration = force / mass, to clarify just in case) That being said, I do not know how the engine or their coding deals with this, my gut feeling is that could at least approximate this and that would be fine. I do not think it needs to be 100% accurate, it's a game, they're not sending an actual space ship to Mars. I also don't have an issue with a top speed either, in my opinion it should be notably higher. I honestly think it would greatly improve the game to update these mechanics.
@Leftcoast : if they don't use Unity's default physics system, they have to make it themselves. I don't think this falls into the "mundane" category regarding programming, and from what I saw "flight dynamics" is a whole disciplin by itself requiring more than a simple "physics" knowledge. As for top speed, this is directly related to the game's demand on computers, as stated by the developers a few times. While it has no consequences on solo play, it wrecks havock on servers. I also noted that when a ship has a bit more than decent thrust-to-mass ratio, it has no problem reaching top speed. That been said (or written...) I often ask myself : each time someone says "my ship can't reach top speed" was this accounting for the additional booster input in the attempt ?
@Kassonnade Yeah, there is a whole lot I don't know about the engine and how it affects their mechanics for flight. I do understand there would be some limitations on speed, I do also feel that it's too low at the moment. As for the acceleration, the ships are able to accelerate somehow so I cannot see why that would be too hard to tweak. On paper it shouldn't by much harder than doing some basic algebra and maybe also applying some factors and incorporating that into their code. All that said, I still think they'll update at a later date. Since it's still in development it may just be low on their priority. It does technically work at the moment so development can continue without it.
I love kerbal, but Kerbal style physics should never be used for EGS. With that said... the basic issue that is being complained about (max speed being dependent on the thrust/mass ratio) is I'm fairly certain a design choice on their end. Capping the speed at 130 in space may well be an engine limit, but there's no good physics engine limitation that will say a ship under a certain thrust/mass ratio can't reach it. That's coming from the person who knows unity and colliders and 3d game physics. It also not necessarily a bad choice. It's simple and provides added incentive to make sure your ships have some extra thrust. Is it realistic? No. Sometimes realism doesn't belong in a game.
Still, from a simple "travelling" perspective, 130 m/s may seem slow, but dogfighting at that speed, with the ability to strafe, is just nonsensical. I tried dogfighting with my kid in Just Cause multiplayer mod, where the fastest planes have lower speed than in empyrion, and we just kept losing sight of each other. The "voxel grids" are one of the reasons why it's so heavy on computers, and some time ago there was a proposal to "merge blocks" that had the potential to ease things a bit, and surely allow for some improvements regarding flight. But many players simply refused any compromise, they wanted ships to retain their individual block's system all the time, so nothing changed. Consequence is that the developers had to try something else to solve the rubberbanding and bad collision problems in multiplayer. Even in singleplayer, when playing at the limit of one's system capacity, collision glitches do occur.
@Darinth I am not advocating for KSP type space flight at all, just pointing out that if KSP can do it there really isn't anything to stop Elyon. I do think it's currently there choice as well I think it's just a place holder for now. It really does need some adjustment, mostly that acceleration needs to be a function of thrust and mass. @Kassonnade Agreed that dog fighting and even hit and run will be extremely hard at those speeds. I think that should be up to the pilot to control. Bottom line is that it needs to be improved eventually and I am still hopeful that it is just a place holder because it technically works and allows them to continue development. If they do not fix it, it will have one of the worst flight models for any flight heavy game.
I guess I'm a bit confused. I'm pretty certain acceleration is a function of the thrust/mass ratio (or something similar). Larger ships have a lower top speed, but they also accelerate to that top speed more slowly.
I may be confused as well. You are correct tho, acceleration = force/mass in the real world. I am not sure how it works in Empyrion but CVs seem to have some pretty magical acceleration. CVs should accelerate really slow in general, unless really small with big engines. As well there is no reason out of atmosphere that they should have different top speeds.
There's no physics reason out of atmosphere that they should have top speeds at all. But the vast majority of space games all have max speeds on their crafts and most of them have that top speed based on craft thrust. It's not realistic, but it works.
@Darinth Agreed, accept of course getting close to the speed of light but that's off topic here. I am ok with a top speed, I get that and not limiting it would probably cause nasty problems. I ultimately just want to see them improve the model prior to launch.
Thumbs way way way down for the alpha 12 release of CPU and Flight model. Easily the biggest mistake they made in the game. Trying to pretend they made some kind of endgame by piggy backing on pvp which was already there, and instead of actually making pvp better they made it harder to get to, rare, "endgame" and dead. Pvp should have been left as a player choice of playstyles; easy to get to and easy to get out of. Instead they artificially micromanaged it to be harder when we were already struggling to get people to pvp before. They put the final nail in the coffin. Some server owners played their part too, unfortunately. What actually needed an endgame was pve not pvp, pvp just needed some improvements. Pve on the other hand had a lack of endgame. They should have put a way to install a bounty hunter quest giver on a space station and the ability to buy land, the ability to recruit soldiers to patrol and protect it, and the ability to buy or rent or both single rooms in a space station. This is just a few among many other ideas they could have implemented but didn't.
Other way for me. Still very happy with cpu and wouldn't ever play without it. One of the best things they've added to the game, adds so much more to it.
