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Scale of the Universe
ltdansot
Member Posts: 56 Arc User
I have noticed the planets in STO are all either very small or very far away or that my ship is the size of a small moon.
I discount the distance because I can fly right into the side of a planet which I would presume puts me at distance 0 and crushing millions of life forms.
So, what is it? Tiny planets or giant ships?
I discount the distance because I can fly right into the side of a planet which I would presume puts me at distance 0 and crushing millions of life forms.
So, what is it? Tiny planets or giant ships?
Post edited by ltdansot on
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https://picasaweb.google.com/107690288451082557730/StarTrekOnline#5783881871612017394
https://picasaweb.google.com/107690288451082557730/StarTrekOnline#5783881861494898210
they can do HUGE ....if they want to
You'll find many areas where they've refined the art. Keep in mind that the vast majority of missions played while leveling date back to the launch of the game.
Then lo and behold we got things like the Constitution interior (that you have to pay for, meanwhile they refuse to update existing interiors to make them not suck).
I've never seen any space game do realistically sized planets, and to scale shuttlecraft would be next to invisible. But the out of scale space stations are a little harder to explain. Probably it's just to take into account of the number of ships around them, in the TV shows DS9 never had 20+ starships docked around it at once.
that is not correct,
they insisted that it was not an engine limitation, but that it was because of
a) camera tech, as in being zoomed out too far would make the camera clip (by now an obsolete statement, since we have 3rd and 1st person views)
and
b) if they want to have combat in Ship interiours they need hallways where 5 vs 5 NPC's can fight each other, without it being too crowded.
the Defiant and TOS Bridges probably will never see NPC Combat, they are just visual fluff for *player housing* most of the other / older / existing maps are made for actual gameplay.
PS: in that 3 hour interview with Geko he said that the Defiant interrior was correct to scale and Players complained that it was too cramped (DO NOT AGREE! I LOVE IT!)
...and that on the next interiors they might do something in the middle, smaller than the football fields they did before, but bigger than the TOS and Defiant interiors...
As an update to putting planets in the skyfiles. I've tried this a bunch more, and while I think it makes the system maps look a ton better, and the planets feel enormous, as they should, there are a few people on the dev team that don't like it. The problem is that when you fly around in space, if the planet is in the skyfile, then it is fixed in place. There is no sense of movement without other stuff in the actual map to judge it against.
Think of it like the moon at night. No matter where you walk, the moon is always in the same relative position from where you are. If you're walking in a forest, you get your sense of movement from the trees passing by you/in front of the moon. If you are on the ocean (presuming you can't see waves etc.) your sense of movement is vastly diminished.
The bottom line is I have been overruled, and it is unlikely we'll be seeing more of that.
Awww.
And Alpha looked so cool.
Surely big gas planet with little moons, works from both perspectives?
You can't say the lack of scale isn't authentic!
I still prefer skyfile planets though. At least I'd like it for ones like Earth. Come on, it should be taking up the lower half of our screen.
forward this video to them plz -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKTu6B4Rgek
/yesiamalmost40
Hm. It feels really weird to me to have that sense of movement. That's precisely something I disliked about space maps, pre-alpha.
I have less problem with smaller reference objects for movement but always hated that I could loop a planet in a minute.
It's not really engine limits. It's imposed limits based on design. The designers have resource budgets (i.e. texture sizes, number of different textures, number of polygons in models) when creating the graphics. It's because there may be dozens or more of players at the same place on the same map and no two players/ships being the same. Your computer has to (attempt) to render all of that stuff at the same time. In a single player or MOG, they can afford to use bigger budgets as the designer can better control what shows up on the screen.
With the limited size of the texture they use on planets, if they make the planets too big the texture will start to deform and pixelate. It's a similar effect of blowing a tiny picture to 5x bigger. It doesn't look too good.
If you want to see an absolutely gorgeous looking and properly scaled system. Do the KDF mission "Alpha". I can't say enough good things about that space map.
I agree. For regular missions it's not necessary, but when you are in a mission that requires perspective, it does add a great deal.
A great example is Alpha, where that huge planet skyfile makes you really feel that you are in orbit around a gas giant. Or in Khitomer Accord (more or less) feels like you are in orbit around a planet.
And I say BAH to the overrule. BAH I say. Add more junk into the map is need be, but the planets in the skyfiles are awesome. The "Alpha" space map is new favorite map after the Dera systems map.
I can understand not using that technique with social zone and high uses space maps. But we need more maps of "Alpha"'s caliber not less.
DS9 has a lot of traffic that they did not show, but during the Dominion War there were regular cut shots of DS9 with fleets of ships around it.
I do not mind the planet scaling too much, the ones that bug me a little are things like the scale of fighters to ships. Some of those shuttles are almost the size of an escort ship, and the scale with the space station (I do not like that in an escort my ship is often barely able to fit into the Earth Space dock doors, let alone trying to imagine a half dozen or more ships docked inside).
"I believe I speak for all of us when I say; to hell with your orders."
I agree. It works in some cases, but other times it just feels silly. That might have to do with the fact that being used to things like the moon and the sun which don't move, and moving planets and stars feel stupid. So, don't listen to your compatriots. I WANT MORE SKYBOX PLANETS.
Well, I've made the argument before that social hubs should be handled as a large skybox planet below (whether centered or to the side) because, as a rule (not uniformly followed but in general):
Planets that were supposed to be "home" for a story (in particular Mars and Earth) tend to be shown as large and acting as the horizon. Planets that are meant to be "alien" tend to be at or above the ship's horizontal axis and depicted as smaller or more distant from the ship.
In general, when showing a starship "in orbit" you see the whole planet. When visiting a starbase "in orbit" the planet takes up the whole horizon and the facility in orbit is the object used as the motion reference. On the shows anyway.
Here's Earth Spacedock:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spacedock_(Earth)?file=Earth_Spacedock%252C_2293.jpg
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spacedock?file=USS_Enterprise_approaches_Spacedock.jpg
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tsfshd/tsfshd0643.jpg
http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Orbital_Drydock-Photos-1830374-Orbital_Drydock-713419.html?pid=0
Note how Earth is depicted almost like an ocean beneath the bases. ESD is pointed down at Earth, not perpendicular to it. And ships in drydock have their bottom section parallel with the ground.
Planets are generally not used as reference points except when there are no other reference points for movement. (Which is most of the time. But whenever you see extensive bases and such, the planet on the shows is given the skybox/ocean treatment and motion is relative to drydocks/facilities.)
Only problem I could potentially see is if someday Cryptic decides to add orbital rotation of the Sun and Moon around the Earth.
Wonder if the team would just experiement with the idea and put it on tribble to gauge reactions?
Would be nice to also be able to have certain missions where you could fire from space and hit targets on the planet surface, I think its was KDF Academy back in the day that you could do this, always enjoyed it.
ESD is in a geosynchronous orbit. So there's no need to show planetary rotation. Instead, you'd see the sun move around the station much as it appears to on Earth.
I'm sorry, you misunderstood my "orbital rotation" comment. I didn't mean ESD orbiting over the Earth, I meant the Sun and Moon around the Earth from that stationary position. :P
Meaning if you guys did turn Earth into a skyfile, the Sun and Moon would be orbiting around the Earth model. Of course, you guys likely would just keep them in a permament stationary position. Though be interesting if we did see them change positions. Especially the light from the Sun.
I'd be all for this.