Test Pilots Required

[Xelene]

We're making a space flight simulator and need some pilots to test out the flight controls. At this point in time, all pilots must have and be familiar with an xbox 360 pad and be aware that this simulator is a long way from being a game.

Any pilot that signs up will have access to early builds of the simulator, but should also be prepared to give feedback on the controls. First deployment is in 4 days.

We need 4 test pilots. Register your interest here or mail me in trust.

 

[Xelene]

I assume this on the PC but using the 360 pad?

Correct. The most common controller other than mouse/keyboard on a PC is this pad and we really want to get the flight mechanics right on this. Once that's done we can tailor the flight controls for mouse/joystick but the pad is a widely available device with 3 seperate degrees of Analogue input.

 

[Xelene]

I'll be up for that mate. Have a wired and wireless pad, plus numerous other flight controllers.

Trackir, x52, pedals etc if needed.

Perfect, thank you. We'll ideally get on to testing all of that stuff but for now it's about getting the basics right.

 

[Xelene]

I'm willing to test if there is a spot going. Have a wired Xbox 360 controller at the ready!

Everyone is welcome, we just need one more test pilot.

 

[Xelene]

We have a test wing,

Doomedspeed
valkynaz
Nadrian
MarkeR

I'll send details of the ship (and a download) in the next day or so.

 

[Xelene]

any other information? going on this

I'm the lead developer of this project, we're big fans of Elite and are trying to make a multiplayer game based on that. I want the game to control like the best of TV scifi so have asked a set of people to volunteer to be test pilots. In terms of gameplay, i'm trying to get something like a fighter in BSG but have asked for test pilots to make sure it works.

 

[Xelene]

ah cool sounds interesting, may i ask about the flight mechanics?

Ask away. It's not set in stone (there's a reason I asked for a flight team to test it)

Just let me know by trust mate!

Thanks

You are part of the test team.

 

[Xelene]

i was wondering if it was Newtonian based or not?

The fundamentals are yes, however my opinion is that Newtonian mechanics are not helpful to gameplay. The test pilots will help me draw a balance between fun and physics.

As an example, the planet Jupiter would take 47 hours to traverse at conventional speeds.

 

[Xelene]

i understand, the balance is always difficult.
thank you kohlditz

You should be involved in this game.

 

[Xelene]

I know you have got the people you need but I'll put my name forward anyway! Got 360 pad, mouse/keyboard and X52 pro set up (for the future!)

Love sci-fi space combat

e: Failing that, do you have a website or forums or anything that I can follow this on? Definitely would be on my "to get" list!

I'll be posting a build here in a day or few, it's very definitely Alpha. You are in a 50km bubble and will have a few rectangles and spheres to fly around.

I think those two things clash tbh

Why? Xbox pad is a very common widely available and cheap controller that has two full analogue axis, force feedback, a limited third axis and 8 or 10 digital inputs. It's a great controller. Mouse and Keyboard are suboptimal for this kind of gameplay, joysticks are rare.

Sounds pretty interesting.

If you in need of a publisher, not one of those big evil types but one that lets you do your own thing drop me a trust

Maybe later, this is a gameplay and control experiment currently.

 

[Xelene]

The fundamentals are yes, however my opinion is that Newtonian mechanics are not helpful to gameplay. The test pilots will help me draw a balance between fun and physics.

As an example, the planet Jupiter would take 47 hours to traverse at conventional speeds.

Note, the ships motion is entirely Newtonian. We're layering a fly by wire system over the top of the real physics to make it feel more like dog-fighting. You can flip 180 degrees and fly backwards. As soon as you engage the computer it will try to make flight feel like an atmospheric plane.

EDIT: This is what i'm asking you to test, how strong should the fly by wire be? What feels right.

 

[Xelene]

Developer/s. Is this you in this video with your game?

Skip to 5.55. This was in the same year as Tetris was released.

Nice and nerdy. Go watch Battlestar Galactica episode Scar. That's where were going with this.

 

[Xelene]

Same here, I've got a PS3 controller hooked up to my PC though.

Honestly, at this point we would like any and all feedback about how the ship controls. This is a few day or week cycle to make the flyability of your ship the best it can be.

A few people have signed up for Alpha testing and they will get early builds more frequently and be asked to perform certain tests.

 

[Xelene]

This is a very early test render of Europa and Io transiting Jupiter. All three bodies, and the Sun were drawn at 1:1 scale - 1m in this engine is equivalent to 1m in our solar system. Europa is 1,560,000 M in diameter. Jupiter is roughly 800,000,000,000 M from the Sun. Every single body in this scene is drawn to actual scale and the engine is precise enough to draw items that are a few millimetres across.

Getting an engine to draw that range of scales is pretty hard actually, your graphic card certainly doesn't like doing it and there's all sorts of cheats involved. In that scene Jupiter is warped much closer than you think and shrunk to a fraction of its real size.

The hardest part is making a ship fly in a fun way. I kind of mentioned this before, but if you had a WW2 fighter it would take 2 or 3 days to cross the surface of Jupiter at full speed. If the ship flies much faster, and could traverse Jupiter in say 20 minutes then it would be moving so fast that you would have no chance to target and shoot another ship.

The Elite sequels (Frontier specifically) had full Newtonian mechanics, it was two ships flying at a significant fraction of the speed of light towards each other and jousting. Did I hit him? No, lets spend 2-3 minutes readjusting our velocities and try another joust.

The Wing Commander games adopted air physics and slowed the speed down. They were unrealistic for sure, but a key point was it was a game. You could bank away and get on the tail of an enemy to dogfight.

This simulator is fully Newtonian, but you have a flight computer assisting you. It will apply thrust to make your ship go in the way you point. You can flip direction on a dime and you will fly backwards. If you are going really fast it will slow your turning rate down so that you don't get pulped by inertial forces, but if you are going slowly it will turn on a dime. If you really need to turn, then disable the nav computer and flip - it will try to fix your attitude and velocity when you re-engage it.

The test pilots are going to give feedback on how strong the NavCom is and how fast the fighter should be.

(In Battlestar Galactica, a viper can do a 180 turn in 0.35s is that too fast, too slow?)

 

[Xelene]

Hi,

I'm just in the process of getting some forums and such up and running. In the meantime, here's an interim build that has the core controls setup.

http://smkd.net/builds/080613.rar

Controls:
Left & Right Triggers - Roll
Left Analogue - Yaw & Pitch
Left & Right Bumper - Set desired speed

Info:
This is a focus build around getting the game controls feeling right, collision detection is turned off so you can fly through the two objects in the scene. Graphics are placeholders also.

The two objects in the scene are a long rectangle, it's 10km in length and 500m across the other sides. The sphere is 10km in diameter, much smaller than a real planet.

The flight controls are Newtonian, with a computer assist. The computer will attempt to correct your heading but it can take some time to compensate for current inertia. At lower speeds the ship will be much more precise (in areas such as Asteroid fields you'll want to dogfight at much lower speeds if you don't want to be smashed).

I'm interested to know whether:

You'd prefer roll and yaw switched over in the controls.
Whether the ship accelerates and decelerates quickly enough or not.
Whether the turning circles in the various axis are quick enough or not.
Is the computer course correction about the right sort of strength?

Next build will have a toggle for the computer assist - so you can fly backwards for dogfighting, and hopefully a barebones cockpit that you can glance around. I'll also put in some better furniture, to get a more useful perspective on scale.

 

[Xelene]

This is a short video of flight in game. The models are borrowed, but should give you an idea of scale: