5 ms·

I am not familiar, so I don't know, but do they assume something like 31,536,000x speed of light to make the galaxy even remotely navigable, e.g., the ability t

I am not familiar, so I don't know, but do they assume something like 31,536,000x speed of light to make the galaxy even remotely navigable, e.g., the ability to navigate from Earth to Alpha Centauri within 4.34 seconds?

wakeforce 1y ago
There's FTL travel of course, but you can navigate at 'normal' speeds as well. The normal speeds really show how there's no way to get to any other object even at full throttle (without FTL). It's just for asteroid belts, space stations and so on. the way they did it gives a really nice intuition of the enormous size of space. It's a fantastic game!
- luxpir 1y ago
  Agree. I've mentioned to a few friends how that feeling of emptiness and scale is quite awe inspiring and was a first for me. Theory can't replicate how small and isolated you physically feel when you are between systems. At least not for me.
- baggy_trough 1y ago
  I suppose they can’t simulate time dilation, which does make it possible to visit other galaxies without FTL.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - greenbit 1y ago
    You certainly could simulate time dilation, I'd be surprised if that isn't already an element of some game out there. If you go close enough to the speed of light, what you actually see is that space appears to shrink (in the direction of travel) and the trip seems to take less time than light would, because you've apparently covered less distance. Of course what those on the planets would see is that time has been moving oh so slowly on your otherwise speedy ship. There are equations you incorporate into a simulation that would account for this. If the game mechanics were such that you could could see what day/month/year it is in local time, vs your ships time, it would quickly become apparent that bashing through the void is no way to get anywhere.
    - mr_toad 1y ago
      You couldn’t simulate time dilation in a multi player game, at least not in any way that didn’t involve some players waiting for others.
      - nilamo 1y ago
        Sure you could. Each local area (such as a planet) is a single timezone, and everyone there experiences time at the same rate. Someone leaving that timezone would experience time dilation... But in game it would just appear as a communications lag, just as it is for people on different planets. Then, once you've arrived at your destination, there's no longer any lag with your new timezone, and your lag with the original time zone is now fully synched with everyone else on your new planet.
        wizzwizz4 1y ago
        Player A remains on planet A. Player B remains on planet B. Player C commutes between planets A and B, accelerating hard enough for measurable time dilation.
        manquer 1y ago
        Yeah but by the time player C reaches the other player A thousands of real years have to pass so neither player A or player B can meaningfully interact with player C or each other . Time dilation is just shortcut to say you are no longer sharing the same frame of reference. If everyone has their own frame of reference there is no difference between single player game and multi player one
- pavlov 1y ago
  This was already present in Frontier: Elite II released in 1993. You could travel at sub-light speeds as far as you wanted, visiting gas giants within the same star system and scooping fuel. But to get anywhere else, hyperspace was the only practical option. The crazy part is that this 3D game was programmed in 68k assembly, ran smoothly on Amiga and Atari ST home computers, and fit on a single 1.44MB floppy. The massive universe with realistic solar systems was almost entirely procedural.
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - mr_toad 1y ago
    Jupiter is between 4 and 6 AU from Earth. So at the speed of light it would still take over half an hour to get there. It’d be a dull game flying anywhere at sub-light speeds.
    - deleted 1y ago
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    - pavlov 1y ago
      It’s been over thirty years since I played Frontier, but I think you could accelerate the in-game time. So you didn’t have to sit still for hours to get to Jupiter. For your character, that time did pass.
      - davedx 1y ago
        Yup that’s how it worked - there were several time advance multiplier buttons. Anytime an enemy ship engaged you it forced you back to 1x time, annoyingly
14 1y ago
When I try to explain to someone just how big and massive our universe is I usually fall back to the Voyager 1 satellite which was launched almost 50 years ago. I like to tell people that it is traveling at an amazing 17km per second! Even at such an amazing speed it has still only just traveled approx 1 light day. At such a speed it will travel about 1 light year every 18,000 years. Then I like to say the nearest next start is roughly 4 light years away. So even at 17km per second, or about 10.5 miles per second, it will still take approx 72,000 years for it to reach the nearest star. That star is 4 light years away and our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The next galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away!!! So at the incredible speeds of one of our fastest man made objects it would take something like 45 billion years to just get to the next galaxy! Seeing how the known universe is estimated at over 46 billion light years in size and looking back on the other numbers I wrote it quickly becomes apparent that to travel across the galaxies one would need to be able to reach unbelievably unimaginable speeds. Even the speed of light as you mention would not be even close to fast enough to get anywhere significant. On a side tangent I was always a trekie back in the day. I know their warp drive was faster then light but now I almost want to go back and look at the math of how fast they must have been going to be going the distances they were going.
- watersb 1y ago
  > I almost want to go back and look at the math of how fast they must have been going While there's a rough polynomial (v =~ c * w^3, I think) for post-TOS Star Trek warp factors, the only consistent rule: a starship travels at a velocity that helps tell a good story. It's fun to try mapping Star Trek stories, anyway; it helps you ponder how much time they must have spent in transit. They have to find things to occupy their time.
  - 14 1y ago
    Yes I think you are spot on, they move at the speed of how fast the plot needs them to move. After posting my comment and looking online at some suggested speeds for the various warps speeds it is very inconsistent and far from realistic given the size of the universe. One would need to be able to travel at something like 100,000 times the speed of light to realistically travel just around our galaxy. Probably would need to travel at about 1,000,000 times the speed of light wanting to make it to the next galaxy in a realistic time. Even at 1,000,000 times the speed of light it is going to take years to just reach the next galaxy so it is no where near fast enough to get around like they did in star trek. But I absolutely loved the show growing up so not here to knock them. I am sure in hindsight they may have come up with a better definition of how warp speed works and how they can travel great distances. I won't think about it too much.

wakeforce 1y ago

There's FTL travel of course, but you can navigate at 'normal' speeds as well. The normal speeds really show how there's no way to get to any other object even at full throttle (without FTL). It's just for asteroid belts, space stations and so on. the way they did it gives a really nice intuition of the enormous size of space. It's a fantastic game!

luxpir 1y ago
Agree. I've mentioned to a few friends how that feeling of emptiness and scale is quite awe inspiring and was a first for me. Theory can't replicate how small and isolated you physically feel when you are between systems. At least not for me.
baggy_trough 1y ago
I suppose they can’t simulate time dilation, which does make it possible to visit other galaxies without FTL.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- greenbit 1y ago
  You certainly could simulate time dilation, I'd be surprised if that isn't already an element of some game out there. If you go close enough to the speed of light, what you actually see is that space appears to shrink (in the direction of travel) and the trip seems to take less time than light would, because you've apparently covered less distance. Of course what those on the planets would see is that time has been moving oh so slowly on your otherwise speedy ship. There are equations you incorporate into a simulation that would account for this. If the game mechanics were such that you could could see what day/month/year it is in local time, vs your ships time, it would quickly become apparent that bashing through the void is no way to get anywhere.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    You couldn’t simulate time dilation in a multi player game, at least not in any way that didn’t involve some players waiting for others.
    - nilamo 1y ago
      Sure you could. Each local area (such as a planet) is a single timezone, and everyone there experiences time at the same rate. Someone leaving that timezone would experience time dilation... But in game it would just appear as a communications lag, just as it is for people on different planets. Then, once you've arrived at your destination, there's no longer any lag with your new timezone, and your lag with the original time zone is now fully synched with everyone else on your new planet.
      - wizzwizz4 1y ago
        Player A remains on planet A. Player B remains on planet B. Player C commutes between planets A and B, accelerating hard enough for measurable time dilation.
        manquer 1y ago
        Yeah but by the time player C reaches the other player A thousands of real years have to pass so neither player A or player B can meaningfully interact with player C or each other . Time dilation is just shortcut to say you are no longer sharing the same frame of reference. If everyone has their own frame of reference there is no difference between single player game and multi player one
pavlov 1y ago
This was already present in Frontier: Elite II released in 1993. You could travel at sub-light speeds as far as you wanted, visiting gas giants within the same star system and scooping fuel. But to get anywhere else, hyperspace was the only practical option. The crazy part is that this 3D game was programmed in 68k assembly, ran smoothly on Amiga and Atari ST home computers, and fit on a single 1.44MB floppy. The massive universe with realistic solar systems was almost entirely procedural.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- mr_toad 1y ago
  Jupiter is between 4 and 6 AU from Earth. So at the speed of light it would still take over half an hour to get there. It’d be a dull game flying anywhere at sub-light speeds.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - pavlov 1y ago
    It’s been over thirty years since I played Frontier, but I think you could accelerate the in-game time. So you didn’t have to sit still for hours to get to Jupiter. For your character, that time did pass.
    - davedx 1y ago
      Yup that’s how it worked - there were several time advance multiplier buttons. Anytime an enemy ship engaged you it forced you back to 1x time, annoyingly

14 1y ago

When I try to explain to someone just how big and massive our universe is I usually fall back to the Voyager 1 satellite which was launched almost 50 years ago. I like to tell people that it is traveling at an amazing 17km per second! Even at such an amazing speed it has still only just traveled approx 1 light day. At such a speed it will travel about 1 light year every 18,000 years. Then I like to say the nearest next start is roughly 4 light years away. So even at 17km per second, or about 10.5 miles per second, it will still take approx 72,000 years for it to reach the nearest star. That star is 4 light years away and our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The next galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away!!! So at the incredible speeds of one of our fastest man made objects it would take something like 45 billion years to just get to the next galaxy! Seeing how the known universe is estimated at over 46 billion light years in size and looking back on the other numbers I wrote it quickly becomes apparent that to travel across the galaxies one would need to be able to reach unbelievably unimaginable speeds. Even the speed of light as you mention would not be even close to fast enough to get anywhere significant. On a side tangent I was always a trekie back in the day. I know their warp drive was faster then light but now I almost want to go back and look at the math of how fast they must have been going to be going the distances they were going.

watersb 1y ago
> I almost want to go back and look at the math of how fast they must have been going While there's a rough polynomial (v =~ c * w^3, I think) for post-TOS Star Trek warp factors, the only consistent rule: a starship travels at a velocity that helps tell a good story. It's fun to try mapping Star Trek stories, anyway; it helps you ponder how much time they must have spent in transit. They have to find things to occupy their time.
- 14 1y ago
  Yes I think you are spot on, they move at the speed of how fast the plot needs them to move. After posting my comment and looking online at some suggested speeds for the various warps speeds it is very inconsistent and far from realistic given the size of the universe. One would need to be able to travel at something like 100,000 times the speed of light to realistically travel just around our galaxy. Probably would need to travel at about 1,000,000 times the speed of light wanting to make it to the next galaxy in a realistic time. Even at 1,000,000 times the speed of light it is going to take years to just reach the next galaxy so it is no where near fast enough to get around like they did in star trek. But I absolutely loved the show growing up so not here to knock them. I am sure in hindsight they may have come up with a better definition of how warp speed works and how they can travel great distances. I won't think about it too much.