Kilometers per Second

[NeonSturm]

It doesn't matter how many there are, that only eats up disc space. Only the planet that you're on is loaded into RAM. The real problem is the physics calculations though. Planets are hard to calculate physics with. That's not something that can be fixed easily, if at all, sadly

Fwyrl
I think I know a way, but I am not experienced enough in coding stuff for the graphic card.

Graphic cards are meant to compute a lot of things in parallel - different values / array indexes, but the same (maybe easier as with */+- if) code - are I right with that assumption?

And can you generate a multi-layer high-map for both - the floor and ceiling?

Then can you generate another pair of high-map for your ship - again bottom + top? You have a horizontally scaled input, but it should be possible - or not?

You could generate 3 pairs (1-bit bitmaps of 400x400 for old planets with about 160'000 bytes per layer) for x/y/z. 160 KB for an old 400m planet surface! That is not perfect, but sufficient for a big ship which can not enter caves.

And for small objects, would it not be ok to just check all blocks vs all blocks in vicinity? The ones which are not surrounded by others and not exposed.

 

[Fwyrl]

Fwyrl
I think I know a way, but I am not experienced enough in coding stuff for the graphic card.

Graphic cards are meant to compute a lot of things in parallel - different values / array indexes, but the same (maybe easier as with */+- if) code - are I right with that assumption?

And can you generate a multi-layer high-map for both - the floor and ceiling?

Then can you generate another pair of high-map for your ship - again bottom + top? You have a horizontally scaled input, but it should be possible - or not?

You could generate 3 pairs (1-bit bitmaps of 400x400 for old planets with about 160'000 bytes per layer) for x/y/z. 160 KB for an old 400m planet surface! That is not perfect, but sufficient for a big ship which can not enter caves.

And for small objects, would it not be ok to just check all blocks vs all blocks in vicinity? The ones which are not surrounded by others and not exposed.

That would work if Starmade's collision engine worked like Minecraft's. but, because the ships don't align to a grid, heightmaps won't work.

The floor is already optimized, which is why one lags far less flying on the bottom of a planet than the top.

Starmade can't use the GPU for these calculations; the engine for this is not implemented, so if that does happen (which I actually hadn't thought of doing), it is a long time coming.

It is true, however, that you could use a heightmap if the planet had no caves, trees, ledges, etc, but that's a bit limiting, and would make removing blocks much laggy-er.

Right now, Starmade uses physics casts, but planets have huge, highly complex, physics casts,which makes them laggy, compared to the simple, smaller physics casts of a ship.

 

[Zovc]

The minimum speed for orbiting earth is about 28200 kilometers per hour. That equates to about 7.8 kilometers per second. In StarMade, I am able to fly past a planet in like 5 seconds at 50 kilometers per hour. That puts the average planet in StarMade at about 4 km diameter. The smallest planet in the Solar System is Mercury, which is about 5000 km diameter.

I assume the reason for this crime against physics is the size of the player, and I realize that it's just a game and it doesn't have to reflect reality very closely... but come on. Those numbers are just awful.

Simply changing the units of speed from k/h to k/s will make the game-universe feel much bigger, and it will make interplanetary flight somewhat more exciting IMHO. You don't even have to change the size of the player; after all it's just a game, etc.. I think it's much easier to assume that the player and his ship is misproportioned than that the universe is misproportioned.

P.S. This is a really awesome game Great job to the dev team!
Thanks for reading.
Zac Slade

Wow, wow wow wow.
Idk where you got that planet from. The diameter LxW of a planet is roughly 400m. You should look into stuff, And your right, its just a game and it doesn't have to reflect reality very closely... but it doesn't have to that dam much, 1 block is 1x1x1 meters. We do not need planets bigger than any dreadnaught, and lagging the hell out of players, just for realism. The current unit is B/S! B/S not km/h, that's a fasle pretense. It takes less then 30 minutes to travel 100km so don't be afraid of those numbers. Idk what the min speed for orbiting earth has anything to do with a video game.


At 100 B/s It takes 16.6 minutes to travel 100 km.
At 100 KM/s It takes 1 second to travel 100 km.
See what im getting at? Its fine the way it is. Sorry if im rude, but I don't like the realism.

 

[Vyor]

To put what Azereiah and Fwyrl are saying into layman's terms, the problem with making planets bigger is the same problem that really big ships have; you're trying to view a ton of blocks at one time and not everyone's computer can handle so many blocks being nearby.

True, but planets don't usually have as much empty space inside of them

 

[Fwyrl]

The problem with planets is not the block count, but the complexity and size of physics cast, but essentially yes.

 

[Lecic]

they should change that km/h its strange you go slower than an car in space

100m/s is ~224mp/h. Cars do not go that fast.

 

[Vyor]

100m/s is ~224mp/h. Cars do not go that fast.

Yes they do... the fastest car in the world goes around 250-275...

 

[Lecic]

Yes they do... the fastest car in the world goes around 250-275...

The average car does not go 224 miles per hour. I seriously doubt that testkil was referring to the fastest car in the world when they made that post.

Also... "The official land-speed record (measured over one mile) is 1,227.985 km/h (763.035 mi/h) (Mach 1.020), set by Andy Green (UK) on 15 October 1997 in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA, in Thrust SSC." -Guinness World Records

 

[NeonSturm]

That would work if Starmade's collision engine worked like Minecraft's. but, because the ships don't align to a grid, heightmaps won't work.

The floor is already optimized, which is why one lags far less flying on the bottom of a planet than the top.

Starmade can't use the GPU for these calculations; the engine for this is not implemented, so if that does happen (which I actually hadn't thought of doing), it is a long time coming.

It is true, however, that you could use a heightmap if the planet had no caves, trees, ledges, etc, but that's a bit limiting, and would make removing blocks much laggy-er.

Right now, Starmade uses physics casts, but planets have huge, highly complex, physics casts,which makes them laggy, compared to the simple, smaller physics casts of a ship.

Can a high-map which is rotated and translated not be used to create a different high-map aligned and scaled to a grid which either has all of the original below it or averages below and above?

((I was speaking from ship-floor too, dunno if you thought about that too))

That is performance killer #1 :p

Big ships can't fly into caves. Caves are just filled from the point of view of a large ship, as the result will be very similar - you need just the collision coordinates.
((I don't know the exact block add/remove code, so dunno... but I think it would not be that much lagier (area instead of volume) and only during construction ))

If 2 big objects collide, a 1m block glitch is not what you are looking for or even noticing. A 10 or 16 block glitch would be noticeable. It is not a real world sim - you are allowed to use minor cheats to increase performance!

 

[Vyor]

Can a high-map which is rotated and translated not be used to create a different high-map aligned and scaled to a grid which either has all of the original below it or averages below and above?

((I was speaking from ship-floor too, dunno if you thought about that too))

That is performance killer #1 :p

Big ships can't fly into caves. Caves are just filled from the point of view of a large ship, as the result will be very similar - you need just the collision coordinates.
((I don't know the exact block add/remove code, so dunno... but I think it would not be that much lagier (area instead of volume) and only during construction ))

If 2 big objects collide, a 1m block glitch is not what you are looking for or even noticing. A 10 or 16 block glitch would be noticeable. It is not a real world sim - you are allowed to use minor cheats to increase performance!

I think that this mod adds something similar:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...y-working-worlds-around-forgeinstallerserver/

It isn't as laggy as you would think, it can't collide with other blocks, but meh, same concept.

 

[Vyor]

The average car does not go 224 miles per hour. I seriously doubt that testkil was referring to the fastest car in the world when they made that post.

Also... "The official land-speed record (measured over one mile) is 1,227.985 km/h (763.035 mi/h) (Mach 1.020), set by Andy Green (UK) on 15 October 1997 in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA, in Thrust SSC." -Guinness World Records

That wasn't a car... that was a rocket engine strapped to a bit of wood(I kid). Also, someone(might have been the same guy), got passed that(not by much).

 

[Fwyrl]

Can a high-map which is rotated and translated not be used to create a different high-map aligned and scaled to a grid which either has all of the original below it or averages below and above?

((I was speaking from ship-floor too, dunno if you thought about that too))

That is performance killer #1 :p

Big ships can't fly into caves. Caves are just filled from the point of view of a large ship, as the result will be very similar - you need just the collision coordinates.
((I don't know the exact block add/remove code, so dunno... but I think it would not be that much lagier (area instead of volume) and only during construction ))

If 2 big objects collide, a 1m block glitch is not what you are looking for or even noticing. A 10 or 16 block glitch would be noticeable. It is not a real world sim - you are allowed to use minor cheats to increase performance!

Well, you could always suggest that to schema, but I'm not sure how that would work, as you'd end up with weird collision, and/or non-block collision, both of which would be bad. (though it <i>would</i> be useful for large ships, so possibly over a certain size, near planets, could do that. Good idea about the rotation though.)

The thing you're suggestion with caves, is actually already implemented, in a way. When doing physics calculations, the engine goes through a number of layers of physics calculation complexity, saving the most accurate for last. The caves would (probably) be ignored for most of the calculations just because they're so far away. The real problem is the pillars, mountains, etc.