Atmosheric flight simulation - Found possible!

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Supramence
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Post by Supramence »

This morning, I was trying to pinpoint the values in Allegiance which determines how much a ship 'skids' during flight when turning. Today, I successfully recreated the flying controls of an X-Wing. I mean, I made it so that flying ships in Allegiance would be like flying Arwings in 'Star Fox 64'! (in some places the game is known as Lylat Wars)

In Allegiance, ships go towards places where you point their noses at, but 'skid' in the process. In Star Fox 64, they do the same, but unlike Allegiance, skidding never exists there.

This 'feat' is done by increasing the maximum thrust of ships to a high number (9000 max thrust!!). The engines then work with much power to enable smooth flight patterns.





During my tests, the ship I was in never went off-course, was able to perform a smooth loop (useful for dogfighting!) and dodged bullets sprayed from attack drones, thanks to increased agility from the extra thrust. smile.gif

However; during testing, some issues were observed. sad.gif For unknown reasons, the ship came to a full stop instantly (as if a force held it back) instead of slowing down due to inertia. It also causes boosters to work badly - the max speed of the ship was 130 mps, but the boosters could only get the ship to 140mps. Sad. sad.gif
"I can duel and dogfight. I'd like to have a role as a dogfighter, but I can't command well though." -_-
Icky
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Post by Icky »

Supramence, again, please learn a little more about how things work before you try to "improve" everything. The reason that you slowed down so quickly is that retro thrusters automatically kick in according to throttle. If your ships max speed at 100% throttle is 100 mps, and you drop from 100% to 50% throttle, then the retros (think of thrusters on the front of your ship pointing outward) slow you down as quickly as possible to get you to 50 mps. You can hear this effect if you listen in a game. With a value of 9000 on the thrusters, it would make sense that you stop instantaneously. Your ship automatically kicks in your side thrusters in flight, which makes the g-indicator ( ) follow your nose more closely. That's why you have the "atmospheric flight simulation" effect, your side thrusters are so crazy powerful they overcome any inertia of the ship.
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Supramence
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Post by Supramence »

mrgreen.gif *Heh, heh, heh...*
"I can duel and dogfight. I'd like to have a role as a dogfighter, but I can't command well though." -_-
apochboi
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Post by apochboi »

I really dont want to get too detailed with this, but suffice to say, High thrust is a bad thing, High thrust causes people with a tiny amount of lag to lag jump all over the game screen, so again, another post which could of been prevented had you waited till you knew how to play allegiance.
Sushi
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Post by Sushi »

apochboi wrote:
QUOTE (apochboi @ Mar 13 2008, 04:38 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I really dont want to get too detailed with this, but suffice to say, High thrust is a bad thing, High thrust causes people with a tiny amount of lag to lag jump all over the game screen, so again, another post which could of been prevented had you waited till you knew how to play allegiance.


That's hardly a fair criticism (in this case). Playing Alleg doesn't teach you much about the limitations of core-making, especially something as non-intuitive as the case you mentioned.
Adaven
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Post by Adaven »

This is exactly how I said you could simulate the "no skid" flight model, by increasing acceleration (thrust).

The problem is that this is not "Atmospheric" as I had mentioned earlier. Real planes "skid" quite a bit, its just the way physics work.
If you look closely, standard allegiance already models atmospheric flight to a degree. In real space, there is no drag, and ships would skid all over the place as it would take more effort to overcome any momentum they built up. Because of this, as long you keep your engines running, there is no top speed (ignoring relativistic effects, which would take a long time to really kick in) as you will always go faster and faster. In order to keep the controls a little tighter, the creators of Allegiance introduced a drag term in the equations of motion, which basically turns it into an atmospheric system. Anguirel@PK always liked to say that the physics system of Allegiance is like driving submarines underwater, but any fluid would really do.

I think part of your confusion is how Noir listed phoenix as having an "atmospheric flight model". When he says that he's not refering to 'skidding' or other momentum effects. He is just expressing how the ships turn better up/down (pitch) than they do left/right (yaw). Real airplanes work like that because the control surfaces on the wings are much larger than those on the tail, allowing them to push on more air in order to rotate the craft more quickly. That's why you see airplanes banking into tight turns.

Rix works the opposite way if you notice, they have excellent yaw but horrible pitch. Noir just wanted to make something different in phoenix, coupled with the fact that better pitch than yaw would be intuitive to folks who are used to playing more serious flight sim games.

What apoch and icky said are right as well. Side/rear thrusts increase this drag effect when changing directions/stopping. Also, very high acceleration (thrust) increases the possible changes in postion between server updates which can make lag more noticeable. If you want to make your changes into a real core, you should probably to some group testing to refine things to a playable level.
Now I'm not trying to knock what you are doing, playing around with ICE lets us discover new things that might make a core interesting. I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't be calling things Atmospheric that aren't.
Last edited by Adaven on Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Adept
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Post by Adept »

I'm shocked that anybody would try to "fix" the brilliant newtonian (or pseudonewtonian anyway) flight dynamic of Allegiance to anything resembling X-Wing / Tie Fighter.

That is so wrong. My beloved Wing Commander series had two kinds of games. Those with inertia, and those without it. Those without it sucked ass, and I only played them through to see the story.

The flight model of Allegiance is a beautiful thing, and very inspired (with the space drag keeping the speeds manageable).
Last edited by Adept on Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Supramence
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Location: Singapore

Post by Supramence »

One more issue with the non-skid dogfighting - I was testing the system with an attack drone, and we dogfought against each other. But we were agile enough to avoid each other's gunshots, the test took forever until I quit the mission.
"I can duel and dogfight. I'd like to have a role as a dogfighter, but I can't command well though." -_-
Psychosis
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Post by Psychosis »

.... nix has very silly hitboxes, and your aim sucks

I reiterate, you are rapidly moving to my ignore list. please stop posting until you actually understand more of the game then NIX ROX0rZ!!
Last edited by Psychosis on Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Clay_Pigeon
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Post by Clay_Pigeon »

Supremance,

You obviously have a great deal of intelligence and potential that I would hate to see go to waste. Take a piece of advice from your old Uncle Pigeon (and Training Zone Lead hottee): this button -> is seriously damaging your chances of ever being taken seriously in this community. You would do well to avoid that button for the next few months and commit yourself to learning and understanding how the game works.
Last edited by Clay_Pigeon on Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Damn typos
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