If you figure it out, do let us know...

Broben, I've tried to install the stations, but I get errors regarding the submodels. I'm not sure if we're supposed to delete or override the sub_models folder or what, but I'm sure that you'll have to install them before you install the ships. And yes, normally you just extract the folder to the ships folder. 🙂

Thank you Brianetta for the script. I have yet to try it out, been busy at work. But I shall visit Werribee very soon. I have been meaning to ask...do you intend to include bigger ships that can carry little ones? Ships that are too big to enter an atmosphere but carry smaller ships to conduct business, mine and explore? In line with that, will the player be able to own their own base(s) on worlds they decide to colonise for mining (or whatever) purposes? This game reminds me of the 'X' series only you're able to land on planets and literally go anywhere. Provided you have enough fuel and don't run out in a system that has no spaceports...not that I did that... It was...someone else I know... What a dumbass... 😯

Ships that carry smaller ships, possibly - but not yet. Regarding colonisation, the answer is no. You're simply not that big a player in the universe. Don't expect to be commanding fleets or building your own space stations.

Ah well, I look forward to motherships at any rate. It doesn't have effect when you're orbiting a planet looking down on it from the cockpit of a one man fighter or a slightly larger cargo ship. But to look down upon it from the command deck of a mothership whilst your crew preps a shuttle with fighter escorts for launch...that I could get used to... It's not a fleet, just a man with a big ship and a couple pilots on the pay roll... 💡

Regarding the colonisation should someone along the line be able to program it it it would be quite and very plausible and possible to pull off. Small scale colony control if u have enough funds no doubt u can setup youre own business and a few planets on the outer rim.

I would say fleet commanding at some point may be a bigger issue than small space station ownership

Of course all theoretical until someone or a group comes along. Getting back to the original idea of bigger ships that carry smaller ships its a step in the right direction im seeing mining ideas going in on another part of the game this is also a good step for resource acqueistion

I have a question about the Moon. Is it me or does it look at bit on the small side when viewing it from Earth?

That picture was taken during the final Columbia mission. So it was probably taken at a little less than half the altitude of your screenshot. So they were a bit closer to the Moon.

But, the biggest difference is "field of view". Look how the horizon of the Earth is almost flat which indicates that quite a bit of zoom was used.

The man does have a point though... The moon is roughly a quarter the size of earth, and only (hah, ONLY) 380,000km away, give or take, so we should be able to see something. A grey ball at the very least... I guess it's a draw distance thing. In line with that, why the hell is Gates Spaceport 1/3 of the way to the moon?

some creative programming to solve this little condrum

It's not a draw distance thing. We see the moon a lot bigger in real live than we're actually supposed to see it. Part if it has to do with atmospheric lensing, but the major parts concern our own eyes, and Albedo. We do not have a flat perception, but a flat interpretation is what we are forced to draw on the screen. Our eyes have an FOV of almost 180 degrees, but they actually ZOOM IN on what they focus. If you'd simulate that on a screen, you'd get kind of a fish-eye vision. The only way to evade this would be to have a screen that extends 180 degrees around us and set the field of view to 180 degrees.

The other problem is albedo: In Pioneer planets don't actually reflect light. They get lit up when turned to an active lightsource, but they do not become themselfes lightsources and emit light back. Pioneer has no moonlight on earth, and we have no earthlight on the moon (or in orbit, for that matter). So we don't see these objects as prominently as in real life.

The first problem is pretty much unsolvable without an awesome-ish screen, the second would be solvable theoretically, but it gets you into ray-tracing hell, and the hardware requirements would increase quite a bit.

The scales are correct. The problem is that Pioneer renders a field of view of over 80 degrees. Your small screen certainly doesn't fill 80 degrees of your actual field of view. Consequently the sun & moon look too small.

The "problem" can be solved by editing pioneer's config.ini and changing FOV from 80 to 40. Now, try to fly without using autopilot, Good Luck!.

Mine's already 60. Reducing it to 20 wouldn't greatly harm the ability of a competent pilot, because our instrumentation is so much better now.

Thanks for that tip Brianetta 😉

I tried this, and I have to say that all the game objects—terrain, stars, planets—now look much more like the size you would expect if you were actually a human looking out a window into space. I'd always thought that everything looked too small, and never imagined that there would be an option to change that. (Should this be in the in-game options screen, by the way?)

I would argue that the current default FOV is too small for the purposes of eye-candy and mimicking human vision. With FOV 80, there is even a sort of reverse fish-eye effect in which the image at the edges of the screen is dilated, so there is a lot of room for adjusting down. This may also depend on the resolution people are using—I'm on 1280x800.

OK, had a little play around with the POV settings. See what you think. The Moon is just above the crosshairs. Note the change in the perspective of the buildings too. These screen shots were taken shortly after take off from London.

60 POV looks more like what you'd expect... I'm going to make the change too. 😀 Funny thing is, I didn't really notice it until it was pointed out... Does that make me a bad person? 😳

Depends on your Point Of View. 😉

Hello, everyone. I'm completely new to both Pioneer and Frontier but discovering that there are Newtonian space simulations out there for pure, procedural, realistically-scaled exploration has nearly brought me to tears. I play mostly Minecraft because a few minutes of exploration is about the most videogaming I can fit in these days, and exploration is what I prefer. That coupled with my love for human-centered science fiction has made me suspect I'm about to lose a lot of time in this game. In fact I've spent most of my time practicing manual maneuvering around the space stations (although I was disappointed after I thought synchronizing my rotation and orbital velocity with that of the station that I couldn't plant my ship on the end of it). And, of course, for anyone approaching that period of her or his life when it's too late join the Air Force in hopes of making it into some space program, moon landings. Many many (at first, failed) manual moon landings. I love you all for this game.

All that considered, I have a bit of an embarrassing question (considering the existence of Google), but after scouring information about Frontier: Elite II and the boards here, I still can not figure out how to engage one's hyperdrive. I got a mission early on to travel to Grecan (which I found in the star map accidentally, I think, as I didn't entirely interpret the coordinate system properly after rotating the map) and started randomly looking at systems. The first one I pulled up because it was inhabited also had a binary star system and now I'm absolutely dying to go fly around in it. It seems that there's a button (f7 I think) that should show up when there's a hyperspace target selected but I can't seem to get it to show up. I've selected systems both near and far (all within the range of my drive) but can't get anything to happen besides their selection in the f3 map screen. Once I go back to the f1 view, I'm back to targeting objects in local space. (One final thought that just came to mind: should I not be targeting anything in local space when I pull up the f3 map?)

Also, I'm using the Christmas Alpha.

How far in ly (light years) is that system?

Do you have enough fuel? Is that system actually in hyperspace range of your ship?

Any plans to include the awesome geodesic habitat domes from Frontier? I've always been partial to them.

I did it finally. Turned out a target selected in the f2 starmap only sticks if you're not targeting anything in local space.

My next, again elementary, question is, how do I clear targets?

That's not the case at all. They're completely independent.

Click them.

Hmm. It's definitely only giving me the hyperdrive button if I don't have anything already targeted in local space. I'm using a hybrid dvorak keyboard that simultaneously lets me type using dvorak but keeps qwerty mapping in games. It's been known to screw with other games so that might be it. (The function keys will randomly stop working for me until I alt-tab to desktop and back. I'm used to fussing with the keyboard drivers af this point.)

I'm just going to sit down with the Frontier manual in case I'm missing something. Thanks for the help.