Universe Completely to Scale; Computer Requirements

[IronDusk33]

So, I'm curious what computer specs would be required to run a StarMade with completely realistic universe settings.

I've done some calculations, and the following settings should make StarMade completely to scale:
SECTOR_SIZE = 2,000,000,000
(2 billion km) The orbit of Eris in the Kuiper belt goes out to 14.5 billion km from the center, so a sector size of this would make each system about the size of our solar system

UNIVERSE_DAY_IN_MS = 86,400,000
This would make each day in Starmade equal to 24 hours in real life. (I do know that different planets irl have different day cycles, but I thought this would be a good starting point)

THRUST_SPEED_LIMIT = 100,000,000
This is 33% of the speed of light, and it about the fastest you can go without experiencing a large amount of time dilation.

PHYSICS_LINEAR_DAMPING = 0
PHYSICS_ROTATIONAL_DAMPING = 0
PROJECTILES_ADDITIVE_VELOCITY = true
For that Newtonian Physics

PLANET_SIZE_MEAN = 13000000
PLANET_SIZE_DEVIATION = 12999900
This is the big one, so the standard diameter is similar to Earth's diameter, and I set it so that planets can be up to twice as big, and down to 100m in diameter. Just a note, my game ran out of memory at 1km diameter. (I have 2gigs of vram and 8gigs of ram, so not the best stats).

And that's it, obviously there are issues with this setup that make it not entirely realistic.
Firstly, I've noticed that the light of the stars decreases a lot quicker than in irl, so the sun probably won't be visible beyond the sector it's in.
Secondly, the day cycle for all planets are the same, which isn't the most realistic.
Thirdly, the size of the irl universe is F***ING MASSIVE!!!!!!! So it will be hard to get places.

 

[StormWing0]

I think the largest planet radius anyone here has been able to support is around 3k or something. Not sure though so you'd have to ask around.

 

[Crusade]

Sector sizes that large runs into floating point rounding errors, resulting in buggy positioning and badness.

Planets that large would not be possible to load or generate in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Hemmingfish]

Even technical issues aside, it wouldn't be very fun. The real universe is a whole lot o' nothing. Even if you have 100mil max thrust it doesn't change the fact you'd be crossing billions of KM of empty space.
Add to that the fact that precise movement with such high speeds would be impossible: one tap of W and you're hundreds of thousands of KM away. Good luck mining anything that isn't a planet, or even landing at a station.

In short, nah.

 

[StormWing0]

Well push effects might be useful for very short distances. The thing is a really tiny ship with just a core, power block, and thruster can hit max speed rather instantly so one tap of the movement keys and you are already a system away.

 

[therimmer96]

Floating point issues are not a problem. Floating origin would solve this. Simply have the player never move more than say 6km from 0 0 0 of the sector and all will be fine. Physics issues over a distance is a none issue simply because you can't see the shake at that distance.

Planets not rendering or generating in reasonable time is also fine. Use Azer's LOD idea to assume what the chunk will look like, and only generate what is needed at that time. the big issue with planets atm is that the game tries to do them all at once.

This would obviously need major gameplaychanges, and an FTL system just for getting around a single system.

This would be cool. Just not in starmade. it would need such drastic changes that its not worth it.

 

[StormWing0]

You kinda forget that the floating origin would work well until you start adding players. How'd you account for up to several hundred players on a server with the universe moving in relation to them?

 

[therimmer96]

Floating origin in multiplayer has been done in other games with multiplayer.Look at elite.

Simply don't track players that are too far away. The issue with floating point is things far away from the player. Things far away like other players are not of concern because they're not visible, let alone in range to be doing physics or weapons with them.

infact, we already don't do physics or weapons or rendering of things too far away.

 

[Edymnion]

Even assuming perfect computing ability, this would still be a horrible idea.

I don't think you truly understand how *BIG* a galaxy really is.

Here, watch this:

Pluto is on average about 6 light hours from the sun. At 33% light speed, that would be a trip of 24 hours just to get from the sun to Pluto in game.

24 hours of *NOTHING*.

The asteroids? Forget it, in real life you can stand on one asteroid and not be able to see another one. They're so far apart, NASA basically doesn't bother worrying about them when sending a deep system probe like Cassini out.

There is a reason every science fiction show or story about space travel has warp drives. It wouldn't just make the game difficult, it would make it entirely unplayable.

 

[Andir]

Other things to consider:

Weapon ranges depend on sector size so you would be attacked from something you probably can't see.

Warp Drives are also based on sectors.

 

[GRHayes]

So, I'm curious what computer specs would be required to run a StarMade with completely realistic universe settings.

I've done some calculations, and the following settings should make StarMade completely to scale:
SECTOR_SIZE = 2,000,000,000
(2 billion km) The orbit of Eris in the Kuiper belt goes out to 14.5 billion km from the center, so a sector size of this would make each system about the size of our solar system

UNIVERSE_DAY_IN_MS = 86,400,000
This would make each day in Starmade equal to 24 hours in real life. (I do know that different planets irl have different day cycles, but I thought this would be a good starting point)

THRUST_SPEED_LIMIT = 100,000,000
This is 33% of the speed of light, and it about the fastest you can go without experiencing a large amount of time dilation.

PHYSICS_LINEAR_DAMPING = 0
PHYSICS_ROTATIONAL_DAMPING = 0
PROJECTILES_ADDITIVE_VELOCITY = true
For that Newtonian Physics

PLANET_SIZE_MEAN = 13000000
PLANET_SIZE_DEVIATION = 12999900
This is the big one, so the standard diameter is similar to Earth's diameter, and I set it so that planets can be up to twice as big, and down to 100m in diameter. Just a note, my game ran out of memory at 1km diameter. (I have 2gigs of vram and 8gigs of ram, so not the best stats).

And that's it, obviously there are issues with this setup that make it not entirely realistic.
Firstly, I've noticed that the light of the stars decreases a lot quicker than in irl, so the sun probably won't be visible beyond the sector it's in.
Secondly, the day cycle for all planets are the same, which isn't the most realistic.
Thirdly, the size of the irl universe is F***ING MASSIVE!!!!!!! So it will be hard to get places.

Your scale is a bit off. Consider this the closest star is 5 light-years away. If you are to assume starts fit the center of each solar system then that would be the size of a sector. Which equals 4.73e+13 Km. Size of teh Milkyway 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km Consider that is not the largest of galaxies either. The milky way is about 100,000 to 120,000Ly across were as IC 1101 is 5,800,000 ly. One of the farthest detected object we know of is EGSY8p7 at 13.2 billion Ly.

While current computer systems may not have the memory to load a fraction of the data we can display most of what is in visible range of us currently. For example we don't have to render the entire scene to scale we can scale objects as this game here does rather than moving a full size object. Scaling is used to handle making an object look like it is further distance than it actually is. Also detail can be limited to what would potentially be visible. In fact Multi-part scene rendering for highly detailed a large scenes is fairly common these days.

I think the largest planet radius anyone here has been able to support is around 3k or something. Not sure though so you'd have to ask around.

Actually plenty of people have render real size planets including myself. The level of detail is varied depending on distance. Then you limit your rending before even getting to stuff like back face culling you simply cut off the back side of the planet. Then adjust for what view frustum can take in and enough to handle turning without popping. Rendering a live size planet close up is easier than at a distance to some extent. At a distance hardware has issues with z-buffering so you are back to scaling and and setting of order of display ... While up close you can pretty much cut out what isn't visible and z-buffer issues like z-fitting are less of an issue. People employ different tricks.

The biggest problem with displaying a 1 meter scaled universe is the storage of the detail to that level. Which is why procedural is used a lot too fill in.

However if you are looking for accurate data on the earth to build say road maps cities hills.... http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod/
GNIS has the names of cities location... You can find everything from satellite maps and more. Its free. I've used it for web development and more.

 

[PIE_OF_DOOM]

Even at a distance would we need to render the planet? We could just be seeing the atmosphere of the planet and by the time we are in proper weapons range then the planet would effectively look flat. You would only need to load a small part of the full planet at that time and not have to worry about the rest. Weapon range would of course have to not be based on sector size for this to work. Keep current ranges but larger scale. I don't see a current weapon ranges from 1km to 5km (just example values) getting through an atmosphere without being at least in low orbit.

 

[GRHayes]

Even at a distance would we need to render the planet? We could just be seeing the atmosphere of the planet and by the time we are in proper weapons range then the planet would effectively look flat. You would only need to load a small part of the full planet at that time and not have to worry about the rest. Weapon range would of course have to not be based on sector size for this to work. Keep current ranges but larger scale. I don't see a current weapon ranges from 1km to 5km (just example values) getting through an atmosphere without being at least in low orbit.

It depends on the type of planet as to what needs to be rendered. This game currently doesn't have anything like gas planets or planets without atmosphere. If it was to be realistic you can see the entire earth from the moon that is 200,000 miles from. In fact you can see the entire planet quite a lot closer. It does depend on your view frustum's angle. You can see a the majority of the diameter under 1000Km even 500Km. Considering how far we can shoot missiles and other weapons. You also would have a lot of potential glide time and gravity assist to boot. You are more than close enough at that point for combat in real life.

Lets face it this game has nothing on realism when it comes to combat. We use guided smart missiles and bombs we can send through a person's front door. We don't even have to have them on the horizon. A cruise missile has a range greater than 1000Km. In real life if or when we have space combat it will be a matter of who gets their hit on target first as to who wins if they can avoid the other shot. With as accurate as our computer systems are today it will be a point and shoot war. We also have capabilities such as FOF were our so called missile swarm isn't going to be hitting our own ships.

We also in real life don't need spend anyways close to the excessive power requirements this game has on space to wage war. We don't just have active radar we also use passive and a lot more in real life currently.

If we ever encounter a hostile alien race wanting to wage war the closest start is 5 light years away . Their power and technology compared to ours we would be a bad joke.

 

[Dire Venom]

AWESOME idea, however very difficult to achieve XD
+1 For the effort

 

[MConlisk]

This is awesome, thank you for running the numbers. I may set my sector size to this sometime, even if just to watch it crash...

 

[Gasboy]

Well since this has been dredged up recently, has anyone tried this with the current build of StarMade and seen how it runs?

 

[OfficialCoding]

Well since this has been dredged up recently, has anyone tried this with the current build of StarMade and seen how it runs?

What's the point? this wouldn't work would it?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

As awe inspiring as this concept is...

1) The game would not be able to handle IRL celestial object scale. ...At least its current state.

2) Distance between objects would be far too great for mining, combat, exploration, etc. to occur at a rate and/or frequency that will hold the attention of most players.

3) To compensate for this extreme distance a new mode of sub-light and FTL travel will be required, as well as nav points to get you to the general vicinity of whatever it is you are trying to travel to. Elite Dangerous has the right idea but even this can be tedious at times.

 

[Gasboy]

As awe inspiring as this concept is...

1) The game would not be able to handle IRL celestial object scale. ...At least its current state.

2) Distance between objects would be far too great for mining, combat, exploration, etc. to occur at a rate and/or frequency that will hold the attention of most players.

3) To compensate for this extreme distance a new mode of sub-light and FTL travel will be required, as well as nav points to get you to the general vicinity of whatever it is you are trying to travel to. Elite Dangerous has the right idea but even this can be tedious at times.

What if we just did one system?

 

[Dr. Whammy]

What if we just did one system?

Possible... But you'd have to either scale down the planets or make them something other than block-based. Otherwise, every computer loaded with this game will suffer immediate cascade failure followed by a core meltdown.

Oh, and by the way...

Spoiler

dibs on Neptune... it's purrty