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long shaped ship

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the engine in the middle oriented in what sense? facing to one end of the ship? or facing perpendicularly away from the ship ?

hmm..let me make one of my cheesy photoshop images to explain
linky
the red part is the engine...could this thing get any worse?

Edit: Fixed linky(I think)

Edited by - sycho_warrior on 11/27/2004 12:01:26 AM

Wolfy...I dont understand the pic...I can see the engine, , but erm...what type of engine is it and how does it work? ecause if it is like thrusters or sth the ship would go up is my guess, or is it just an engine?
Hmm I dont know if that made sense but oh well

You mean you're asking would the entire ship move at once, if the engine were to be applied in space? The answer's no. Motion takes an amount of time to be transmitted through an object. The delay wouldn't be nearly significant enough to bend your ship or anything, but it's still there.

There's a classic idea about communicating faster than light involving a massive long pole, and all you have to do is move it at one end and it'll move at the other end, but that wouldn't work for the same reason.

Also, about the little bit of fuel going a long way - yes, it's true, but even though there's no friction or applicable gravity, you still have to overcome inertia. That generally requires quite a large amount of fuel.

inertia is directly relative to the wieght(or is it mass) off the object isnt it...or thats what we learned in science.
Isn't objects "weightless" in space? And because off that wont have inertia?

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Actually, intertia is related to mass, not necessarily weight... On Earth or another environment with gravity mass is linked to weight due to the gravitational force and thus most people think inertia has everything to do with weight, but actually it's the mass that counts

And in space, you might not have a "noticable" gravitational force working on your space ship, but it still has a certain mass that needs a certain amout of energy in order to reach a certain speed.

For example, if you have a mass of 1 kg and you apply a force of 10 N it reaches a certain speed, but if you have a mass of 10000000 kg and you use that same force of 10 N it would take a helluva lot longer to accelerate to that same speed.

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Isn't objects "weightless" in space?

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It's a common misconception that mass and weight are the same thing. They're not. Mass is a measure of just how much matter there actually is in an object. That's not subject to variation (except when you start talking about relativity, but that's something different). Weight is a very variable quantity. It's calculated by multiplying an object's mass by the strength of the appropriate gravitational field. Weight should actually be measured in Newtons (N).

Example: an object has a mass of 10kg. On Earth, our value of g that we multiply the mass by is often taken to be 10. So a 10kg object 'weighs' 100N on Earth. It's the difference in the values of g on various planets and moons that causes the weight differences.

Oh I know there is a difference between mass and weight...I just couldnt remember which one is related to inertia...
I never remember the important stuff.
so am I getting this right...the weight has no effect in space, but the mass does? or is it the other way round?

yes sw, weight doesnt have an effect in space, mass does. if weight had an effect, the asteroids that are the size of mountains would never go anywhere.

Hmm, well, disregarding solar winds (No puns please) here's what I think:

There's no friction, untill you run into a planet or an astroid or something like that.
The thing wth games is that theree is "friction". Every ship I've flown in (SL, FL, FS2) always slowed down when you stopped the propulsion. So in my opinion, the games do have friction, but are still wrong because there shouldn't be friction.

Regarding fuel in space: Engines only propulse and do not maintain speed. In space where there's no friction, continuous propulsion would lead to contionous acceleration (not keeping in mind Einsteins lightspeed thingy). So, unless somethin is slowing it down, the ship will continue to accelerate as long as you keep propulsing.
The only reason you slow down is because of friction, which in space would be your forward thrusters, or anything you run into.
So, Unless you want to run in a straight line at a constant speed, you will use a lot of fuel. Slowing down, accelerating, turning left or right will always require fuel, unless you use the gravity of planets/suns/moons
The reason you keep peopulsing on earth is becaus you constantly slow down caused by the friction of the wind and road or water..
To put physics into a game which resemble reality would make a game less interresting.

To answer Wolfy's question: No, the parts at the end of the "wings" (extreme left and right) would respond later due to "motion delay" (EDIT: Inertia? Looked it up and I think that's the word). It's the same as getting pushed back into your seat when a car or a rolercoaster is accelerating. The ends of the ship will respond later, but because the ship will be quite rigid(sp? I meant stiff but that sounds weird) the ends of the ship will seem to respond at the same time.

Just read back, seems everyone said what I said. Yay, I'm good at this

Edit: Damn spelling

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possible definitions of the word Diskette:

1- Female disk
2- The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority regarding disks

Edited by - Nickless TW on 11/28/2004 3:57:36 PM

Wouldn't "Propulsing" stop when the speed of the particles being expelled from the engine rearward matched the forward speed of the ship in space?

Freelancer has Drag or Friction.

A video space game using real physics would be no fun.

There was one once and the company that made it went bankrupt.

Glock36
"No Comment"

There've been several "real space" games, that featured playing in a world without friction. One of the major titles (it won critical acclaim, and sold fairly well) was Independence War.

Personally, I thought it stank on ice. It was incredibly difficult to steer, and combat was a nightmarish mix of the worst features from the Trek series (shield facings, complex engineering issues, power management) and just plain awful game design (the guns, for example, were exceedingly difficult to aim).

I've modded FL so that every ship in the game moves without friction... it's not much fun. I built this as a test case, when I was learning about physics implementations for FL so that my mod would work as planned.

Even after doing a lot of work with it, so that acceleration and top speed were evened out appropriately and having landing zones fixed so that you could dock... it wasn't much fun.

Why? In large part, because it took a great deal of the spontanitity out of the game. The AI flies OK, and you can too, but it's dull- using Thrusters becomes a problem of inertial management, and much less of a tactical tool, except in the strictest sense. In short, it became a game an engineer might like... but I didn't care for it.

Could I make a game with "realistic physics" in the FL engine, that didn't suck? Probably. I can make a fun game out've anything. But I'm not interested enough in "realism" to even bother. If you want to try it, put up a post in the Editing Forums, and we can talk about the nuts and bolts. It's not hard to do.

"In short, it became a game an engineer might like... but I didn't care for it."

That's funny, from the first time I saw your postings I figured you were an engineer.

Nope, I'm an artist and game designer. I rely on engineers to make things happen the way I dream them Without engineers, my dreams don't exist. Without artists, there aren't any dreams worth building