Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, UK
Posts: 6

What's everyone views on Newtonian vs. Normal physics anyway?

Personally, I think implementing full Newt physics in FS2 would be a Bad Thing.

I haven't played many Newt physics games, but I have found combat in all of them insanely hard, with the exception of the Frontier and First Encounters. Every other one used some sort of pulse-weapon which had a finit travel time, and usually you're travelling at such insane speeds that you have to aim 2 parsecs ahead for the pulse to hit your target!!
(The reason Newtonian ain't so bad in Frontier and FE was because a) It wasn't a combat game - you just mostly traded and travelled (at 200+km/s , and b) You had beam lasers on your ships (Oh, and the ol' Large Plasma Accelerator *drool*), so aim-ahead wasn't a problem.)

However, I agree it would be cool to flip a 'fury around and shoot backwards.

So, this made me wonder - "How could you implement Newt' without making the game handling suck."

If FS2 had full true Newt physics, here are some issues that could arrise:
a) Max speed is C (Speed of Light) - Hitting anything would be nigh impossible for anyone using finit-speed weapons (i.e. everything except for beam lasers) since everyone would be flying around at such great speeds

b) Changing the velocity vector (i.e. the direction your ship is travelling, *not* where it's facing) takes a very long time, esp. at high speeds - In Frontier and FE, you were often facing in a completely different direction to where you were travelling during combat, because even the most powerful engine could only put out something like 13G (127m/s^2 accel), but since you're travelling at over 200km/s that really didn't impact the velocity much.

c) Because of the potential high speeds available, you can either be slow and manouverable, or fast and unmanouverable. The tendancy will be towards fast (All FS players are usually running with the throttle at max), so fights will end up more like jousting - Fly at each other at high speed, fire, turn around, wait 5 days for velocity vector to change, repeat.
With a beam weapon you at least have a good chance of hitting the other ship, but with pulse weapons that whole 2 parsec aim-ahead thing kicks in.


I can see 2 (obvious?) solutions:
a) Leave FS2 physics alone, but bolt-on some sort of exaggerated 'slide' physics into it (It seems to be in there already - watch how Shivan fighters move, esp. the Dragon . Also, crash into a cap-ship at high speed - you bounce off: Flying backwards! - Could we implement this for the player?). The 'slide' mode could be bound to a key or something which, when pressed, kills your acceleration and allows you to continue to drift in the same direction, but allow you to turn the ship around without it affecting your velocity vector. Releasing the key would turn off the slide physics and your ship would recover and start to move in the direction it's facing again.

2) Implement full Newt, BUT, limit the max speed of all ships to whatever their speed is. The handling of all ships will probably be really 'funky' compared to normal FS2, but since people won't be moving at insane speeds, the weapons and aim-ahead scope won't be totally out of whack.

I think 1 would be a much better solution than 2 in this case (I don't really want full Newt physics - I just wanna fly backwards and shoot stuff!).

Comments?
Thoughts?
Suggestions?

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Finland
Posts: 576

Have you played either of the I-War games? They had pretty good use of newtonian physics. Most of the problems were solved by using a sort of an "autopilot", that automatically helped to keep your ship moving forward and turning properly. Also, what would be the point in moving six gazillion mph? As you said, it would be impossible to hit anything, so why do it, even if you could?

Anyway, I think implementing newtonian physics in FS2 would be one sh1tload of work, and I really doubt they are going to do it. After all, there are other B5 sims with newtonian physics out there.

Last edited by pera on 10-05-2002 at 02:34 PM

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Joutsa, Finland
Posts: 564

quote:

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Originally posted by pera
Also, what would be the point in moving six gazillion mph? As you said, it would be impossible to hit anything, so why do it, even if you could?

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Worked well in Warhead... Only useful weapon were missiles, but who cares!

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Finland
Posts: 3194

I haven't played the original I-War, but I-War 2 Edge of Chaos is one of my favorite games. It does have newtonian physics, perhaps not 100% accurate but pretty damn close anyway.

I love I-War 2.

But for FS2, I think there will be some elements from newtonian but not full newtonian flight model.

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Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by Prophet

Worked well in Warhead... Only useful weapon were missiles, but who cares!

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I don`t believe it! Someone else who played that game! I was beginning to think I was the only one

For those who haven`t played it Warhead was written by one of the guys behind I-war and although simpler was better in many ways.

As for the comment about reaching the speed of light It takes a ship several seconds to go from 0 to 60m/s have you got a couple of years cause that's how long it would probably take you to reach lightspeed

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Joutsa, Finland
Posts: 564

quote:

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Originally posted by karajorma
I don`t believe it! Someone else who played that game! I was beginning to think I was the only one

For those who haven`t played it Warhead was written by one of the guys behind I-war and although simpler was better in many ways.

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Glyn Williams actually...
Ah, the good old days.

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Registered: Dec 2001
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"Finite speed weapons," are not a problem. Unless you are accelerating rapidly. Any bullet, missile or plasma bolt will have the launch vehicle's momentum imparted to it.

A handy thing they put in Terminus (the only full Newt game I've played) was a maximum acceleration. In other words, if you exceeded a certain point, you engines would start going faster than the ship, causing a loss of hull integrity and if you didn't hit the reverse thrusters HARD, a fiery death.

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Registered: Jun 2002
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I love I-War 2 as well. My fights usually do end up as jousting matches, but it is fun to approach a Maas cruiser group at about 1,500 m/s and turn off flight assist, then spin round and pelt it with lots of Whitestar beam (get it at http://mods.firstones.com/buda5/) for the ultimate B5 experience.
The unlimited speed is good fun as well, as you can outrun said Maas vessels which are in low-level LDS with judicious use of the accelerate button and then use LDS to kill your speed (firing an LDSI missile at the persuers to stop their LDSI missiles)
One last thing. I have to get the original I-War and Defiance from somewhere in Britain. Where? (I also want to get Terminus and Warhead, the descriptions make me drool)

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Registered: May 2002
Location: Sigma 957
Posts: 162

There is a way to setup ship tables to use the 'z' key to fly backwards.

It's this entry in ships.tbl:

$Rear Velocity: 0.0

Set it for however fast you want the ship to revers

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Registered: Dec 2001
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Terminus wan't all that great, it had a lot of good features, but had the frrl of a Beta. It was designed to run on three platforms, PC, mac and Linux. Yes it will run on all of them, but it's the lowest common denominator.

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Last edited by FlakBait on 10-06-2002 at 02:52 AM

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Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by BananaOfTheNight
One last thing. I have to get the original I-War and Defiance from somewhere in Britain. Where? (I also want to get Terminus and Warhead, the descriptions make me drool)

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Registered: Aug 2000
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Just as a side note, your 'Normal' physics are commonly referred to as 'arcade' physics.

By the way, FS2 already has slide vectors mapped in, but the AI goes insane trying to handle it. A possible solution is to map Alpha 1 to a slide-enabled StarFury and the rest of Alpha to non-slides, but that would require doubling that section's VP file, and VP file limits are rather...strict.

Of course, I'm sure it's been done to hack the VP file size limit to double or triple or whatever with a source code modification, but TBP's not using any source mods for R2, so any type of slide setup would have to wait until R3 or later. And even then, it might be hideously unbalancing, requiring a ton of missions to be redone...which is a lot of work

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Registered: Jan 2001
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I've spent time playing Warhead also. It played quite well.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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I'm lost...

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Registered: Sep 2001
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your telling me.

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Registered: Aug 2002
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Warhead...

I still have it somewhere...in my too-large-archives...

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Registered: Feb 2001
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OK, let's dumb FS2 and begin making TBP for Warhead.

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Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by Mr. Fury
OK, let's dumb FS2 and begin making TBP for Warhead.

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Sounds like a good idea. Anyone know how to hack 12 year old amiga games?

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Registered: Jun 2002
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quote:

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Originally by Cyker
The 'slide' mode could be bound to a key or something which, when pressed, kills your acceleration and allows you to continue to drift in the same direction, but allow you to turn the ship around without it affecting your velocity vector. Releasing the key would turn off the slide physics and your ship would recover and start to move in the direction it's facing again.

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This manuever is really cool. All who know Tachyon will know it.
I always wanted a mix of Tachyon and X-Beyond the Frontier. In X there are side und up/down thrusters and in X theres the sliding.
Unfortunately in X the thrusters worked that way: Hold the button and move to joystick in the direction you want to go, while flying forward. There is no way to turn the cockpit while using the thrusters, so B5-like manuevers are impossible.

I think there should be one button for reverse, one for sliding and the numpad (or some other keys) for the thrusters (up, down, left, right).

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