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SvennoJ on 08 August 2013
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HigHurtenflurst said:
SvennoJ said:

Sailing has come quite a way since last I was on the water. (Which was before gps became public domain, us old people used to work with simple weather vanes on top of the mast)
Vestas sailroacket 2 is now the fastest sailboat on the planet at 65 knots / 75 mph / 121 kph, 2.5 times faster then the wind speed.

 
http://www.sailingworld.com/sailboats/worlds-fastest-sailboat-quantum-leap

Take that Epona.


Now what really pisses me off is the way 'flying' is portrayed in space... Just make a submarine game if those are the physics you're going to use.

Is that still classed as a sailboat? I mean from what I saw it has a fixed sail so it can only sail in certain directions (ie in the video it wouldn't be able to sail the opposite way along the beach unless the wind changed direction)

It's kinda like calling a land speed record vehicle a car.

As for the spaceflight issue, I guess you mean that real spaceflight wouldn't have a discernable down direction until in orbit? If so I think it's just an ease of control issue. I'm pretty good with spatial thought so generally don't have too much issue with the feeling of being upside-down but lots of people would find a game confusing without some kind of spatial plane to default to.
Oh wait, maybe you mean the way VG spacecraft seem to be able to do banked/arced turns with the method of thrust always pointing backward to the direction of travel (rather than the direction of accelleration)?... Manouvers that are theorhetically possible I think, but in space would require constant (and thus wasteful) firing of some kind of manouvering thrusters to pull off.

All of those. 'Hold the thruster to get up to a maximum speed, let go and you slow down again' is the most idiotic. And yes most games use a horizontal plane, banked turns, even a maximum height that you can deviate from the virtual plane.

Frontier: first encounters did it right but the space flight computer was extremely dumb. A big ship would chase and overshoot a small moon indefinetely on autopilot instead of calculating an intercept course. Getting into orbit was very difficult to do too, but landing from space safely on to the ground felt very satisfying. Ofcourse combat was all kinds of wrong with newtonian physics, ships zooming past at great speed, reversing again and doing the same over and over like a bunch of angry flies.
Realistic space combat wouldn't be much fun I guess, dodging a computer aimed laser beam isn't going to work. And why move the ship if you can fire rockets, it makes as much sense as battleships at sea trying to dodge guided missiles.