!! Pioneer Question Time !! - Ask them here

[UncleBob]

Quote:
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?
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.

[tomm]

Cailean556 wrote:
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?
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.

[durandal]

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!.

[Brianetta]

durandal wrote:
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.

[Geraldine]

Brianetta wrote:
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

[ElectricSkies]

durandal wrote:
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!.
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.

[Geraldine]

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.

[Cailean556]

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?

[Marcel]

Quote:
Does that make me a bad person?
Depends on your Point Of View.

[lowesox]

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.

[durandal]

How far in ly (light years) is that system?Do you have enough fuel? Is that system actually in hyperspace range of your ship?

[prismra]

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

[lowesox]

durandal wrote:
How far in ly (light years) is that system?Do you have enough fuel? Is that system actually in hyperspace range of your ship?
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?

[Brianetta]

lowesox wrote:


durandal wrote:
How far in ly (light years) is that system?Do you have enough fuel? Is that system actually in hyperspace range of your ship?
I did it finally. Turned out a target selected in the f2 starmap only sticks if you're not targeting anything in local space.
That's not the case at all. They're completely independent.
Quote:
My next, again elementary, question is, how do I clear targets?
Click them.

[lowesox]

Brianetta wrote:


lowesox wrote:


durandal wrote:
How far in ly (light years) is that system?Do you have enough fuel? Is that system actually in hyperspace range of your ship?
I did it finally. Turned out a target selected in the f2 starmap only sticks if you're not targeting anything in local space.
That's not the case at all. They're completely independent.
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.

[ollobrain]

actually the frontier manual is no good this game is actually i think well beyond it its a open source project started from sctrach to have the spirit of frontier only. That said back to previous comment about the geo domes its a good idea might be usseful for later colony management to to have somewhere to stash the worker bees

[Brianetta]

ollobrain wrote:
colony management
Whatever game you have pictured in your mind as you write this, it isn't Pioneer.

[lowesox]

One needs hydrogen in their cargo to jump to hyperspace, I see.

[robn]

lowesox wrote:
One needs hydrogen in their cargo to jump to hyperspace, I see.
Yes, hydrogen is the basic fuel for your hyperdrive.

[DaWheel92]

Hello again! I was wondering how one goes about making their own .hmap file!I tried to just save my intended height map as "name.hmap" and it didn't work. Also, are the heightmaps in greyscale or RGB?Any assistance is greatly appreciated! = D