Universe Completely to Scale; Computer Requirements

[Gasboy]

I think computers could handle the solar system to scale. Maybe.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Just look at Space Engine. It's not voxel, but it its still awesome

 

[DrTarDIS]

After giving it a fair amount of thought, I don't think any PC could handle to-scale starmade. That's not because of the computation, it's because starmade's engine can't handle an entity large enough. Specificly, any planet plate over ~8km or so would just "break" the engine. Ditto for asteroids.

MAYBE if you could on-the fly change the number of plates, keeping them all around 2-4km and wrap a globe with them (pentas are fine for this, cubes would also be fine at this scale and offer better ttransition) it could just load-unload the visible bits.

Other than that, space being "mostly empty" and the stars being simple elements means you'd just have to make what is now considered a "galaxy" into a portion of a solar system map. Really, that "mostly empty" bit is what makes Newtonian space sims so easy to code for and run as-is.

 

[Excelsior]

-"honey ? What are you doing? I need this milk for you son !"
-"I'm minning RGX982 dear, I'll go to the shop in a few"

[1/10 the planet later...]

-"Honey? what are you doing ? You really need to take your medicine for your parkinson!"
-"Right dear... Right dear... I'm.. hum... Still mining RGX982 i think... But parkinson is helping juuuuuuuuuust fine for clicking.... Juuuuuuuuuuusssst fine!"

 

[takethispie]

it wouldn't be really interesting to play a full-scale universe game I think
also I'd like to point out people used Elite Dangerous as an example but the thing is ED is not a continuous universe: it has solar systems instances you jump between, it's not continuous wich is hidden with a very clever absence of "barriers"

 

[Dr. Whammy]

also I'd like to point out people used Elite Dangerous as an example but the thing is ED is not a continuous universe: it has solar systems instances you jump between, it's not continuous wich is hidden with a very clever absence of "barriers"

That's why I said "The game, in its current state". StarMade is not instanced but it would need to be in order to pull something like this off.

DrTarDIS' multiple planet plate idea was mentioned in several previous threads but it's probably the best way to pull off real-scale planets and asteroids. StarMade could load these elements procedurally (as originally intended) but split each planet, asteroid, or other solid object into plates; each plate would have its own instance with adjacent plates being loaded around each active plate. Anything outside of adjacent plates would be unloaded to free up ram.

Multiplayer and shared instances would be the hard part. With all the plate blocks and mining, it would be a lag fest.

 

[takethispie]

That's why I said "The game, in its current state". StarMade is not instanced but it would need to be in order to pull something like this off.

DrTarDIS' multiple planet plate idea was mentioned in several previous threads but it's probably the best way to pull off real-scale planets and asteroids. StarMade could load these elements procedurally (as originally intended) but split each planet, asteroid, or other solid object into plates; each plate would have its own instance with adjacent plates being loaded around each active plate. Anything outside of adjacent plates would be unloaded to free up ram.

Multiplayer and shared instances would be the hard part. With all the plate blocks and mining, it would be a lag fest.

it would take years to make such a radical change, schema would need to do a whole new game to implement that I think....

what are you meaning by "plate" ?
because if a plate is a certain amount of blocks then what you are describing is litterally how starmade works: chunks with an octree structure or maybe another faster data structure type (Idk as I am not working on the game)

 

[Gasboy]

It wouldn't take a whole new game, though I admit such a suggestion may be clunky. I think it comes down to 1) do people really want an actual space sim where there would be months and months of ZZZZzzzz followed by 30 seconds of OHSHI-? and 2) accepting concessions for both game balance and average computing power of the playerbase.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

it would take years to make such a radical change, schema would need to do a whole new game to implement that I think....

what are you meaning by "plate" ?
because if a plate is a certain amount of blocks then what you are describing is litterally how starmade works: chunks with an octree structure or maybe another faster data structure type (Idk as I am not working on the game)

Trust me. I totally understand. That's why, as intriguing as the idea is, I don't consider it practical in terms of Schine's current development path (the game in its current state). This is also why I have both StarMade and Elite Dangerous installed on my PC. One is my "gotta-have-a-lot-of-cool-stuff-everywhere-I-go" game. The other is my "I'm-in-the-mood-for-a-long-ass-interstellar-road-trip" game...

By "plates" I suppose the word "tiles" would actually fit better. Basically, each solid planet/asteroid (moot point for gas giants) would be comprised of hundreds of "tiles" arranged either in a sphere (for planets) or irregularly (for asteroids) that a player can land on; each one having its own topography (mountains, craters, valleys, etc.) based the overall surface texture map of the planet.


Each "tile" would be its own instance; with the player who lands on the tile starting that particular instance (similar to the way StarMade loads sectors). Other players can enter or leave that instance and even approach from nearby plates. However, tile topography would be determined by the first player who starts an instance on the tile and would persist in the way StarMade saves sector layouts. When all players leave the tile, it unloads. If this system could be optimized enough (performance-wise) tiles adjacent to the player(s') currently loaded tiles(s) could be loaded to allow for near-seemless transitions between adjacent tiles.

The size of the tiles would be governed by server config; allowing for as large or small of a planet as needed for server and clients, while loading (as blocks) only the tiles that are in use, while displaying the rest of the planet as a large spherical background texture.

 

[Edymnion]

Just running a couple of quick numbers here...

The wiki says a galaxy is 8,589,934,592 sectors. I believe a galaxy is currently 8 systems tall, so divide that sector total by 8 and we get 1,073,741,824 for the number of sectors in a horizontal "slice" of the universe. Take the square root of that and we get the number of sectors wide the universe is, which is 32,768 (which is 2,048 systems wide). Default sectors are 2 km, so the current Starmade galaxies are 65,536 km wide.

For comparison, the Earth's diameter is about 12,742 km, and the moon is about 384,400 km from Earth.

So at realistic scales, the Earth would be about 400 systems wide (about 1/5th of an entire current galaxy in diameter), and have the equivalent of almost 6 galaxy's worth of empty space between it and the moon.

Yeah, pretty sure the game would melt trying to render JUST the Earth and moon.