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Ok so we like to get into things. So today while heading up to a rudimentary space station I made... [Deployed an M space core and added some voxels just a surface - do try to set it up away from the warp point, fairly off the planet, as people launch from all over the place, you don't want them to fly through an "asteroid field" to fly away from the planet (or don't worry about that and call it CCP/EvE-style "emerging behavior"? No thank you), and try to put some lights on it, so people see it from a decent distance - avoid accidents - just my advice] So having mostly flown third person up to now (it suits), seeing the ship from behind and above, today I thought, hold on, this is not how its in reality. Astronauts don't have a camera following them form behind and above, to understand where the ship is going. So I challenged my self to make it realistic. And the fun began Issue no 1 : there is no marker to where the ship is going. That's fine, but it does help when you design the ship, to put some structure in front of the cockpit, or command seat, not too much to block all the view, so that you can relate to this fixture around you regarding the direction you would travel if you just pump the volume erhmm gib gas, erhmm hit the gas petal, erhmm whatever. I got it!! When you use the force! (lower case f to avoid misunderstandings) [Obviously you can use the thrust/direction markers that the cycle-my-thrust/direction-viewing-options-thing gives you and it just shows you an arrow of where you are going and the thrusts of engines airfoils, adjustors etc, so don't worry about it too much, I was just playing around.] Now what I wanted to do was dock with another ship in space, that was ECU-parked just above me space station. Never-mind that I think its not possible if the ship is unoccupied, even if you own it, to dock with it, but still how would you see where you are going when you dock. The early game/small ships just have cockpit, so most of the view of what you see is above you, its not easy to gauge what's underneath. So I rolled the ship over and tried to dock upside down. Which is kinda how and why and the whole science and engineering of where they place windows on spaceships etc. It was fun. I was glad I was able to use autopilot to get back. Do try the 'Albatross' "Add-on" to start with, it has no auto pilot, but you get a feel of what these add/help with, then get 'ArchHud', needs a bit of reading but there are videos in Youtube too about it, Its not perfect, but to me its nothing short of brilliant and hats off and kudos to the people that gave this to us and maintain it. This is nopt worth a buy-me-a-coffee folks. If you can and I will when i can I'll give 50 to these guys that did ArchHud. [its also reassuring that "The Man on the High Castle" in DU is a professional automator and AI aficionado [aficionado to say the least, but imo its still early days for AI]. Good chance it will take a lot of the fear out about what should be allowed to be automated and what not] So overall it was a great experience today, I no longer feel so dismissive of how real spaceships are quite automated these days, you can still fly it, if designed properly around the idea of control but also how pilots would want it made (yeah the airline industry had a bit of trouble/teething problems with planes and if you hear what percentage of automation planes had before and how much was added in the new ones, you will freak out, its very small compared to what you think and it was already a big enough number, above 50% I believe - not sure whose fault it all was really but I am glad its better now) So in closing, if you ask me if it bothers me that come game launch time, the DU solar system is going to be modeled as the Sun revolving around the planets, vothered really. Even in real space flight, they sometimes use this "old" model anyway, not in all situations ofc, but for some things, you can, so I hear. And anyway it was very reassuring to hear that space companies have a meme or whatever you call it, that just because it works in Kerbal Space Program, it doesn't mean it really works, i.e. in that respect too, we are getting back to reality in real space. That is also good news . Still, imo, KSP was a milestone in gaming, and it will forever remain such. I can assure Dual Universe has won me over fairly fast over Kerbal Space program 2 that is coming up. But I would recommend the experience of KSP 1 and hopefully 2 to anyone that does have the time for it. With KSP I got certain things fairly fast. Why docking is the most difficult thing to do manually in space, landing on a planet at a specific place probably also, but other simple beautiful things like in space, the natural, given, direction, is not the line, there are no lines really (oh you can and we will make them) but as far as au naturel is concerned, everything moves in circles, arcs, curves. Even by a tiny fraction infinitesimal amount (of movement), you can always orbit something in space. Even a galaxy. Even if Lagrange is your uncle, its just two orbits canceling out. 25 years I waited for this. Oh I played the early space games Like Privateer etc, but there was one game, to me, that at that time was the best of them all, that never made it past beta (the word beta didn't exist back then). I believe it was called Planetary Raiders, but I might be mixing it up coz the company who eventually bought it kinda messed it up (called it something similar). It did have a funny thing called a cockpit shot. Only time I ever lived as David and survived to tell the tale of killing Goliath. Rare. Lucky. Just aimed for where I thought the cockpit was and fired everything I had. So yeah I am rather anxious. Will DU make it? Tune in in a couple of weeks! Steam is a good choice in my opinion. Are we encouraged to switch to subscribing through Steam? We probably should. Start strong with our big player number? "Invade" Steam and knock Counterstrike off the top of the list of how many play what at any given time? Yeah right. I am not aiming that high. There is hope, expectation and then there is hubris. Anyway good choice, Steam is. Personally it suits me. You upgrade to a new PC and you have to go to a gazillion game sites to download all your games again? Steam for the win!

How far do you think humans will travel from Earth to the universe? I think humans may settle Mars within the next century or so. If the great distances between stars can be bypassed (i.e. a "warp drive" mechanism or something else) they will reach other star systems probably within a millennium or two.