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Booker_Dewitt

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i would like to have Aerodynamics in the game i mean there should be difference between flying in space and a atmosphere of a planet.

for taking of there can be some sort of lifting trusters or an anti-g system probably a conbination of both.

So those wings would make sense and for bigger ships you could do that anti-g system but they should be build in space only whit shuttles to land on the surfice.

probably an gravitation model for the planets would be nice so you cant just position a spacestation at 0 velocity above a planet. they would require an orbit.

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Orbits are hard. Very hard. The consequences are vast and not what you wanna face in an mmo. Try ksp and rethink your statement. Even atmosphere is hard. You have to build a plane that really could fly. You need jet engines for suborbital trajectory and rockets for orbits. That goes too far in a mmo. The load on the servers would kill the game

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Orbits are hard. Very hard. The consequences are vast and not what you wanna face in an mmo. Try ksp and rethink your statement. Even atmosphere is hard. You have to build a plane that really could fly. You need jet engines for suborbital trajectory and rockets for orbits. That goes too far in a mmo. The load on the servers would kill the game

they could simulate aerodynamics not as realistic.

and planets will be spheres so there will be gravity or otherwise you would fall off the planet at the south pole.

and there will be super-modern sci-fi engines.

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And where's the point in having "a little bit of aerodynamics"? It just increases the load. If they implement too "hard" aerodynamics (windspeeds, layers of density, drag,...) it's too complicated for most players even to take off. If they just implement an atmosphere for flying without engines then it only increases load and adds nothing to the game.

 

Gravity for running around planets yes but orbits bound to that gravity will go too far (as I mentioned)

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under simplicity i mean that when your ship changes the game does the maths before launch.

i mean it saves how your ship will react to aerodynamics to keep the servers from exploding.

and the aerodynamics should be only used to prevent players from powergaming.

 

Like invincible flying boxes covered in weapons

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Aerodynamics would have to be pretty limited if implemented. It wouldn't be an actual simulation just a difference in flight mechanics between the space / atmosphere divide. 

 

This is  an area where I'd be comfortable with the devs simply sacrificing realism for a more playable game.

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Usually when most people talk about aerodynamics that speak of three specific things: Reentry heat, drag, and lift.  Drag and reentry heat are based on the same principles. From a gameplay perspective re-entry heat just means you are going in too fast -- that can be solved when the construct hits the ground.

 

One thing that is a problem with planets, at least with other games, is that if the craft/camera goes fast enough the terrain gets a popping problem due to LOD switching. One way to solve it is code a speed limit for atmospheric flight based on the performance of the minimum system requirements. A soft limit can also be done via mechanics where, despite how well design the ship is, heat from drag will destroy the ship around the same threshold as the graphics limitations. Computationally this doesn't have to be that complex, a little pre-computed cross sectional area vs atmospheric density.

 

LIft... honestly I think it depends. It could be quite simple like robocraft. The issue be if the cost savings were worthwhile to the player. I'd rather see blimps/zeppelins for planetary goings, then spaceships for more suborbital hops.

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I would love to see aerodynamics because I really love KSP yet I understand that devs need to balance performance vs. features and drag/lift combo with atmosphere computing and rotation wouĺd stress their servers too much if we multiply this by MMO magnitude of ships. It would be glorious to use gravitational turn, slingshot mechanics etc. too but I can't imagine how much computational power would it require. :unsure:

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i have developed a technique that can reduce the cost of aerodynamics by a lot: take the ship, put an orthographic camera in front of the ship, to point in the inverse direction of the move vector, then draw the ships normals like in deferred rendering. using opencl-opengl cross compatibility, calculate the drag of each pixel and apply that force to a virtual ship construct in opencl memory, and then bring it back to cpu and apply it to the ral object. please note you have to have the center of mass of the ship in that specific camera space to be able to calculate the rotations.

 

that said, maybe PhysX has better to offer, but i never looked it up and it wouldn't be cross-platform. this is the most efficient way to do it by far, and is done in one draw call. Opencl supports async rendering so you may take advantage of multi threading while waiting on that step. for server calculations, it is a little inconvenient since you need a gpu, but it is worth it, i have worked with GPGPU quite a bit and would be happy to give you everything you can compute on maybe a tesla rack or else. ideally the server would use cuda, it has opengl interop too, and is way simpler and more powerfull to use, and the dev environment is cpp, and nvcc optimises like crazy. anyway, if interested i will be happy to help you.

 

one other thing: if you do so: do the accurate mathematical formulas(integrations), it's a little more expensive but the difference is massive on multiple iterations... i learned it the hard way is my physics sim sandbox.

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i have developed a technique that can reduce the cost of aerodynamics by a lot: take the ship, put an orthographic camera in front of the ship, to point in the inverse direction of the move vector, then draw the ships normals like in deferred rendering. using opencl-opengl cross compatibility, calculate the drag of each pixel and apply that force to a virtual ship construct in opencl memory, and then bring it back to cpu and apply it to the ral object. please note you have to have the center of mass of the ship in that specific camera space to be able to calculate the rotations.

 

that said, maybe PhysX has better to offer, but i never looked it up and it wouldn't be cross-platform. this is the most efficient way to do it by far, and is done in one draw call. Opencl supports async rendering so you may take advantage of multi threading while waiting on that step. for server calculations, it is a little inconvenient since you need a gpu, but it is worth it, i have worked with GPGPU quite a bit and would be happy to give you everything you can compute on maybe a tesla rack or else. ideally the server would use cuda, it has opengl interop too, and is way simpler and more powerfull to use, and the dev environment is cpp, and nvcc optimises like crazy. anyway, if interested i will be happy to help you.

 

one other thing: if you do so: do the accurate mathematical formulas(integrations), it's a little more expensive but the difference is massive on multiple iterations... i learned it the hard way is my physics sim sandbox.

 

The only issue would be this would have to be calculated server side, which who knows what constraints the cloud hardware has.

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  • 2 years later...

And now we have cross-section.  Which means that efficient atmospheric ships will be flying pencils.  I wish that wings gave lift, ailerons roll and pitch, rudders yaw, tails and canards stability, and flaps acted as brakes in atmosphere.  And adjusters only work at low altitude and low speed (for hovers) or in space.  But that's probably just me.  I also post on necro threads.

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