Object (Especially Planets!) Scaling

thetratz

One of my biggest pet peeves in this game is how objects (planets and celestial bodies in particular) are laughably tiny. There's some excuse for this in the tactical map...but not when you're zoned into a map.

Celestial bodies either need to be...

A) Blown up to a respectable scale vs. ships or

Treated as impossibly far away (by making them relatively fixed in position and generally non-approachable).

If is the solution, then the illusion of perpetually flying toward the planet which is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away should be implemented because hitting walls in space is just tacky.

As an aside, some sloppy aspects in the art direction need to be cleaned up. Low resolution layers and clearly unnatural blemishes like these need to go (as seen in "Afterlife" in the Boreth System).

Lastly, stop cutting corners on the KDF side. Tricorder devices when used still show up as Star Fleet issue tricorders. It's nice that you've changed the "scan" button animation and sound, but suddenly busting out Star Fleet equipment when you get down to business hurts the immersion. Some other abilities like targeting optics (ground Tactical ability) still show up in bright, Federation blue for their fx. Otherwise, the majority of this game looks and feels great.

blackmarch0

thetratz wrote: »

One of my biggest pet peeves in this game is how objects (planets and celestial bodies in particular) are laughably tiny. There's some excuse for this in the tactical map...but not when you're zoned into a map.

Celestial bodies either need to be...

A) Blown up to a respectable scale vs. ships or

Treated as impossibly far away (by making them relatively fixed in position and generally non-approachable).

If is the solution, then the illusion of perpetually flying toward the planet which is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away should be implemented because hitting walls in space is just tacky.

As an aside, some sloppy aspects in the art direction need to be cleaned up. Low resolution layers and clearly unnatural blemishes like these need to go (as seen in "Afterlife" in the Boreth System).

Lastly, stop cutting corners on the KDF side. Tricorder devices when used still show up as Star Fleet issue tricorders. It's nice that you've changed the "scan" button animation and sound, but suddenly busting out Star Fleet equipment when you get down to business hurts the immersion. Some other abilities like targeting optics (ground Tactical ability) still show up in bright, Federation blue for their fx. Otherwise, the majority of this game looks and feels great.

well as much as i would like to see an increase in the actual map area, at least for space (and that is one thing that is probably the most easily doable).. or an increase of size on the planet .... is that if we actually go to accurate planet/ship scalling then we can't really have any mission that involves going around a planet or even to the side of one (they'd be far bigger than the map area). As for increasing the map size in space there really isn't much of a reason too at the moment, and so it would just be mostly wasting memory and hard drive space at the moment.

Another problem we get when we start increasing planetsizes is that we either start getting tacky planets or we have to start increasing the polygon count the game has to draw. And this game is pretty much more an elaborate boardgame rather than attempting to be a simulation. So having accurate size relativity is not a goal.


Personally i would love it if they expanded the map areas and put in hidden things way out of the way of the beaten path to reward map explorers.. but until they start doing more of that i don't think we'll see an increase in map area.

marctraiderz

Its sad that sector space feels even smaller then normal systems like SOL etc.

salmonsashimi

Yes!

This is definitely one thing that's irritated me ever since open beta. Planets should be much, much bigger (like they are in EVE Online or X3, for example) and many of the environment objects need to be shrunk, such as 'satellites', which are f**king huge at the moment, as in almost the size of a starbase large.

Other improperly scaled objects that spring to mind:

• Deep Space Nine - WAY TOO BIG. If ESD can be the correct size, why not DS9?
• Freighters - again, far too large. They shouldn't be bigger than a Galaxy-class.
• Shuttles and fighters - I guess Cryptic are trying to make them more obviously visible, but I'd rather them be scaled correctly to fit in hangars.
• Interiors - I know they've been blown way up because of the camera system, but I seriously think the camera should be adjusted and the interiors correctly scaled. Again, DS9's Promenade has always been laughably big. Maybe add a 1st-person view as well? All the Star Trek games before this have had correct interior scaling and STO makes me feel like all the characters have been hit by shrink rays.

thetratz

blackmarch0 wrote: »

well as much as i would like to see an increase in the actual map area, at least for space (and that is one thing that is probably the most easily doable).. or an increase of size on the planet .... is that if we actually go to accurate planet/ship scalling then we can't really have any mission that involves going around a planet or even to the side of one (they'd be far bigger than the map area). As for increasing the map size in space there really isn't much of a reason too at the moment, and so it would just be mostly wasting memory and hard drive space at the moment.

If they simply made the planet a backdrop that's enormous and fixed, the problem would be solved with very little resources used. The biggest planet I've seen is the right size for a moon at best...and moons are close enough to planets to be drawn in for a cataclysmic event and are often 1/4 the size of the planet. I'm sure size/distance should very, but it's painfully obvious how screwed up the proportions are.

archer586969

I agree with salmonsashimi, the interiors are just huge to the point where it gets a bit ridiculous. I also think that planets are way too small and it's kinda odd how you can fly right up next to planet and be scraping right up against it where IRL you'd be entering the atmosphere or something, Its like the planets have shields around them that you can just fly into and bounce off of.

tacofangs

I agree with most of the above. Our planets ARE far too small. We are limited however, by math. We can't make objects much bigger than we do, without causing significant issues within our engine.

I have played with/tested the idea of putting planets into the skyfile such that they render in the background. I did this at Utopia Planitia, though no one actually got to fly around outside, so I guess that's fairly moot. Personally I feel that the backdrop planets DO feel much bigger, they feel appropriate, they feel right. You get that sense of objects moving in front of a stationary giant object, like you see in nasa films from the ISS, etc. I'd like to do this more, and likely will continue to try it in cases that don't require you to "approach the planet." It's problematic as it's incongruous with all of our existing maps, but I think a map or two at a time can change that in the long run (similar to my semi-famous sun/lens flare).

trek21

tacofangs wrote: »

I agree with most of the above. Our planets ARE far too small. We are limited however, by math. We can't make objects much bigger than we do, without causing significant issues within our engine.

I have played with/tested the idea of putting planets into the skyfile such that they render in the background. I did this at Utopia Planitia, though no one actually got to fly around outside, so I guess that's fairly moot. Personally I feel that the backdrop planets DO feel much bigger, they feel appropriate, they feel right. You get that sense of objects moving in front of a stationary giant object, like you see in nasa films from the ISS, etc. I'd like to do this more, and likely will continue to try it in cases that don't require you to "approach the planet." It's problematic as it's incongruous with all of our existing maps, but I think a map or two at a time can change that in the long run (similar to my semi-famous sun/lens flare).

I can understand that having bigger planets might cause issues... but that begs a question:

During the KDF mission Alpha, we have an absolutely HUGE gas giant planet in the mission map, at least by the game's standards. If having bigger planets causes issues, how did you squeeze that one in? Or is that because you didn't get to approach the planet?

I'm curious

tobar26th

Similarly Khitomer Accord Space is an awesome map with a huge planet.

stohanson

tacofangs wrote: »

I agree with most of the above. Our planets ARE far too small. We are limited however, by math. We can't make objects much bigger than we do, without causing significant issues within our engine.

I have played with/tested the idea of putting planets into the skyfile such that they render in the background. I did this at Utopia Planitia, though no one actually got to fly around outside, so I guess that's fairly moot. Personally I feel that the backdrop planets DO feel much bigger, they feel appropriate, they feel right. You get that sense of objects moving in front of a stationary giant object, like you see in nasa films from the ISS, etc. I'd like to do this more, and likely will continue to try it in cases that don't require you to "approach the planet." It's problematic as it's incongruous with all of our existing maps, but I think a map or two at a time can change that in the long run (similar to my semi-famous sun/lens flare).

It appears that the Cryptic engine is very limited as to what you can do with it. I've read a lot of DEV posts saying you can't do this or that because of the Engine, where other MMO's i've played are able to do all the things that Cryptic Dev's say they can't do. Maybe it's time to look at designing a new one?

trek21

stohanson wrote: »

It appears that the Cryptic engine is very limited as to what you can do with it. I've read a lot of DEV posts saying you can't do this or that because of the Engine, where other MMO's i've played are able to do all the things that Cryptic Dev's say they can't do. Maybe it's time to look at designing a new one?

That would require re-building the game from the ground up, at worst.

And at best, it would take years to make another engine that's compatible with this game.

So overall, it's not a cost-effective thing to do, much as people might like it.

tacofangs

trek21 wrote: »

I can understand that having bigger planets might cause issues... but that begs a question:

During the KDF mission Alpha, we have an absolutely HUGE gas giant planet in the mission map, at least by the game's standards. If having bigger planets causes issues, how did you squeeze that one in? Or is that because you didn't get to approach the planet?

I'm curious

Yes, Alpha was trickery, similar to putting it into the backdrop. In reality, that planet can appear bigger because only half of it is made (the half facing you) and there is no collision.


All Engines have limitations. Our engine is actually very good overall, and we hear that everytime we hire someone from another company. Yes, there are limitations, but we are always adding to it, and improving on things. We will not be tossing it out and using something else.

Many of the limitations we work with, are due to the types of games we make. MMOs have special limitations over most single player games. Turns out, having to render 100's of characters at once, and sync data between all of them is a bit of a hindrance.

meurik

Seeing as you regularly update the code base of the engine (Season updates), maybe some effort should be made to improve or lessen the restrictions currently in place, and put them into the next code base? It's rather odd that other games (game engines) manage to correctly use cameras, or correct usage of large objects like planets, and yet... The engine in use for STO (which is so great according to you), have these (imho) ridiculous limitations that no other engine has.

crypticarmsman

meurik wrote: »

Seeing as you regularly update the code base of the engine (Season updates), maybe some effort should be made to improve or lessen the restrictions currently in place, and put them into the next code base? It's rather odd that other games (game engines) manage to correctly use cameras, or correct usage of large objects like planets, and yet... The engine in use for STO (which is so great according to you), have these (imho) ridiculous limitations that no other engine has.

just curious - which MMO engines are used in MMOs that render planets properly because it's certainly neither SWToR or EVE Online?

meurik

No game is perfect, but EVE is certainly closer when it comes to planetary and station ship-scale than STO.

STO was launched in 2010 built on hardware designed for a game released in 2009 (CO). EVE was launched in 2003.

Better coders at CCP? Better hardware? I'm curious really.

chrisansler

Well instead of making planets bigger why not make ships and structures in space smaller and tighten the camera a bit. The problem isn't with overall planet scale its with relative planet scale. Making everything smaller and adjusting camera and distance units would have the same effect as making the planets bigger, just a thought.

tacofangs

The limitations I mention aren't some arbitrary limit imposed by software, it's things like the inaccuracies of floating point math as your numbers get bigger and bigger.
Other games may handle things differently, I don't know how they work under the hood. From my understanding, it is not trivial to 'fix' the scale issue.

Making everything else smaller in game is an even more insane task. There are more non-planets than planets in game, and shrinking all of that is a monumental undertaking, and would still suffer from the lack of precision.

I agree our planets are too small, but making actual, physical (in game) objects, of that scale, is not something we can do. Nor do I think it is terribly important. I agree that I would love to be able to do so, but I think that doing some trickery, and shoving them into the backdrop is a decent compromise.

meurik

I have no real issue with the scale of objects in "System space", but in Sector Space, it's certainly noticable.

Flying past Deep Space K-7 in my Intrepid, I felt as thou the station was of a pretty good scale. When entering the "Sherman System" however, the station felt huge :P

TL;DR: Scale IS important, and adds to the immersion factor. Something which clearly, the devs at Cryptic have forgotten. Sure, you write alot of good stories on the episodes. But you forgot the immersion of most players wanting to play Star Trek Online, to get the FEEL of Star Trek. The feel of flying through space at faster-than-light velocity etc. The revamping of the "astrometrics" in Sector Space certainly helped, but it could also be better. Tired of the age-old argument of "good enough", when things CAN be done better. For the betterment of both the players, and your potential profits.

Crappy game = less customers, less income
Good game = more customers, more income, word-of-mouth causes increased customer interest

lpthomasmarik

I don't really have a problem with the current scale. Planets are still huge. The only scale problem I have in the entire game is that the Moon is WAY too close to Earth.

atatassault

tacofangs wrote: »

The limitations I mention aren't some arbitrary limit imposed by software, it's things like the inaccuracies of floating point math as your numbers get bigger and bigger.

In what way does it get more accurate? Wouldn't using processors with higher bit ratings give you more room for precision?

twg042370

I use this crazy thing they used to call "imagination" and assume that my starship is still a good distance away from the surface when I get into transporter range. Sometimes the map design fails and you get a moon sitting in front of some space debris, but generally speaking, I find the system scales acceptable.

It's the maps that kill the frame rate and the nebulae that end in a straight line that bug me.

lancersolurus

Actually the floating point precision problem is a known issue for many games. Even at just a couple of million units your ship would began to visibly shake. Take Earth for example, it is 6,381 km in radius at the equator. This means they would have to create Earth in-game at 6,381,000 units in size to make it to scale (if 1 unit = 1 meter, Tacofangs would have to verify the size they use). At that size and if it's placed in the center of the system, you would shake constantly. Realistic sizing is great in theory but unusable in practice when talking about planetary and star scaling. Some of the stations could use some size tweaking but it is a non-issue for me. Oh, btw, floats are 32 bits on all machines, that's what causes the inaccuracy even though it is 80 bits in the processor.

trek21

meurik wrote: »

I have no real issue with the scale of objects in "System space", but in Sector Space, it's certainly noticable.

Flying past Deep Space K-7 in my Intrepid, I felt as thou the station was of a pretty good scale. When entering the "Sherman System" however, the station felt huge :P

TL;DR: Scale IS important, and adds to the immersion factor. Something which clearly, the devs at Cryptic have forgotten. Sure, you write alot of good stories on the episodes. But you forgot the immersion of most players wanting to play Star Trek Online, to get the FEEL of Star Trek. The feel of flying through space at faster-than-light velocity etc. The revamping of the "astrometrics" in Sector Space certainly helped, but it could also be better. Tired of the age-old argument of "good enough", when things CAN be done better. For the betterment of both the players, and your potential profits.

Crappy game = less customers, less income
Good game = more customers, more income, word-of-mouth causes increased customer interest

Geez... you're just claiming that they don't care about immersion without any real proof but your opinions...

That's just sad. The devs may have a thick skin for this because they need to, but it's still just sad.

/small rant

Anyway, just because it should be done better, doesn't mean it can be done. There's money involved in virtually every aspect the devs change. If it's not cost-effective, or worth the investment for THEM, the decision is heavily skewed in the opposite direction.

meurik

lancersolurus wrote: »

Actually the floating point precision problem is a known issue for many games. Even at just a couple of million units your ship would began to visibly shake. Take Earth for example, it is 6,381 km in radius at the equator. This means they would have to create Earth in-game at 6,381,000 units in size to make it to scale (if 1 unit = 1 meter, Tacofangs would have to verify the size they use). At that size and if it's placed in the center of the system, you would shake constantly. Realistic sizing is great in theory but unusable in practice when talking about planetary and star scaling. Some of the stations could use some size tweaking but it is a non-issue for me. Oh, btw, floats are 32 bits on all machines, that's what causes the inaccuracy even though it is 80 bits in the processor.

I don't think anyone was arguing that everything had to be 1:1 to scale in the game.

Take Earth for example, with your 6,381 km radius. Give it a scale of 1:100 ingame, and your big "6,381,000 units" becomes "63,810" units. If you apply the same logic to both planets and ships, you'd end up with an accurate scale between the two, even if it's not 100% true to real life size.

Now, even if we use such a thing as a Shuttle, which generally range in the 15-30 meter area, and give them 1:100 scale (and thus able to fit in your ships shuttlebay), that comes out to being 0.15 to 0.3 units. But being that they want shuttles to still be visible, they'd probably use a 1:10 scale, giving it 1.5 to 3 units instead. A Galaxy Class at 643 meters, would end up at 6.43 units. I don't think anyone wants a shuttle that is half the size of a Galaxy Class, do we?

trek21 wrote: »

Anyway, just because it should be done better, doesn't mean it can be done. There's money involved in virtually every aspect the devs change. If it's not cost-effective, or worth the investment for THEM, the decision is heavily skewed in the opposite direction.

There are many things in STO that could've been done better, and yes, to a certain agree, some things ARE GETTING better. It may not be cost-effective to redo the current game to make things more accurate, but that's what sequels /expansion packs are for.

If Cryptic had the financial backing from PW that DStahl claims they had, and if Cryptic had the will and dedication to make a "Star Trek Online 2", one would hope it would end up being made alot better than what STO was (and still is to a certain degree).

trek21

meurik wrote: »

There are many things in STO that could've been done better, and yes, to a certain agree, some things ARE GETTING better. It may not be cost-effective to redo the current game to make things more accurate, but that's what sequels /expansion packs are for.

If Cryptic had the financial backing from PW that DStahl claims they had, and if Cryptic had the will and dedication to make a "Star Trek Online 2", one would hope it would end up being made alot better than what STO was (and still is to a certain degree).

The problem being, what you think STO should be, or should have been, may or may not have been as successful as STO. Talking about it and actually going through with it are two entirely different things.

And since Cryptic/PWE have STO, most likely with no expansion pack or sequel (we'd have gotten word by now if they intended to), it's not really gonna happen.

And on a side-note, my opinion is that STO is a truly enjoyable game. Was since launch, and only got better since, including now with Season 6.

psiameese

meurik wrote: »

I have no real issue with the scale of objects in "System space", but in Sector Space, it's certainly noticeable.

Flying past Deep Space K-7 in my Intrepid, I felt as thou the station was of a pretty good scale. When entering the "Sherman System" however, the station felt huge

Space stations, like K-7 and DS9, shouldn't even be represented in sector space at all. Only the star systems in which they are located. With the Map function and pop-ups offering us information and buttons to visit the stations therein. And you're right about K7 being huge. It was never even as large as DS9. It's should be scaled against the TOS Constitution to get it right. Because that is the only true reference we have for it. Even if our newer, larger starships are, well, really big when next to K7, that is how it's supposed to be.

Some starbases may be an exception because they needn't be in a star system at all. So may well stand alone in sector space.

meurik

Also, as a pet-peeve of mine...

DS9 should not be it's own "system" since it's located in the Bajoran System.

From Sector Space, it should be:

- Approach Deep Space Nine
- Enter Bajoran System

And no visible DS9 model in Sector Space.

dalolorn

meurik wrote: »

Also, as a pet-peeve of mine...

DS9 should not be it's own "system" since it's located in the Bajoran System.

From Sector Space, it should be:

- Approach Deep Space Nine
- Enter Bajoran System

And no visible DS9 model in Sector Space.

No, really... Somebody needs to watch DS9 before making complaints. It's perfectly fine the way it is.

walshicus

dalolorn wrote: »

No, really... Somebody needs to watch DS9 before making complaints. It's perfectly fine the way it is.

I don't understand what you're saying here - Deep Space 9 *is* in the Bajoran system. They move it out of the planet Bajor's orbit to the Denorios Belt in the pilot episode, but it's still within the Bajor star system.

I don't think we really need to have both the Bajor star system and DS9 on the galaxy map. I'd be fine with one object named "Bajor / DS9".

apulse

Its not in many games that the scale is accurate, but I have no problem with the station or planets.
Though when it came to scaling, I would like a total re:amp of the Sector space. Even if they are near ok now, it still feels like the sector spaces are in a box.
Right now in Regelus sector and Sirius feels like its over flowed with Federation ships, one for ever meter.

Perhaps remove the borders and double the size of each Sector space with more neutral* planets (* Planets that don't need to serve a mission purpose, but can be used later for that).

Feels like every planet in every sector space serves a mission of some sort, something I don't see necessary.

direphoenix

psiameese wrote: »

Space stations, like K-7 and DS9, shouldn't even be represented in sector space at all. Only the star systems in which they are located. With the Map function and pop-ups offering us information and buttons to visit the stations therein. And you're right about K7 being huge. It was never even as large as DS9. It's should be scaled against the TOS Constitution to get it right. Because that is the only true reference we have for it. Even if our newer, larger starships are, well, really big when next to K7, that is how it's supposed to be.

Some starbases may be an exception because they needn't be in a star system at all. So may well stand alone in sector space.

Indeed, if we're going to get all technical about scale with only being able to see the stars in sector space with starbases being too small to see, we also shouldn't even see our own ships in sector space*. Not to mention that travel times between star systems, in order to get the "most accurate immersiveness" due to "correct scale" would also have to be expanded by a factor of days and weeks, which would not make for a very fun game at all.


*actually, this kind of brings me around to another point, that maybe we shouldn't even have a sector space, and instead travel between star systems within our ship interiors, because we wouldn't be seeing all these other ships traveling around as anything other than streaks of light or blips on some sort of sensor display.