After looking at the image titled "Relative Scale" in the news, I was blown away to see how much bigger the HAC and the new Constellation are compared to the other ships in the game.

Personally I had nooo idea they were so much bigger. I love the difference in scale, it fantastic.

So my question is, how come it doesn't seem to be the case in game? The new Constellation really didn't look all that much bigger than a Trident, which doesn't look all that much bigger than a Moth, which doesn't look all that much bigger than a vulture!

What is it about the optics of the game that make things look so similair? Is there a way to remedy this? A setting I'm missing? Something to do with the FOV being set at 75?

Projection of a three-dimensional world onto a flat surface? The horrible way the game maps the skybox (look at the corners of your screen sometime when the skybox is there! eugh!)? Perhaps the FOV? I dunno, but I know what you're talking about.

It's the texture combined with the resolution of your monitor.

A way to overcome this problem is to introduce ambient noise of ships when you are near them. A deep bass VRRRRROOOMM when you are close to cap ship will give one a sense of scale that is at the moment missing.

[edit : I should clarify. With texture I mean, the game does not hae a consistent pattern that one can tune your brain to. The ships all have different kinds of style, so there is no natural ruler for one's brain to scale the ships. An example is Star Wars, the old one. The ships there have a certain consistent "texturing". So a Star Destroyer looks big compared to the Millinieum Falcon.]

I'm no graphics guru; I'm sure one of the other guys can give you a complete explanation. But I would say that the biggest factor is the lack of depth perception. Obviously our binocular vision allows us to perceive distance, and so if part of the object is close and part is quite far away, it appears bigger compared to smaller objects nearer to the eye. I have a head-mounted display capable of showing an offset image to each eye (only works with nvidia in windows). Using this, the HAC looks *huge* regardless of other graphical settings. Too bad it gives me a headache within 30 minutes.

I'm guessing it would take a lot of work to make VO work with 3-D glasses (AKA Nanosaur 2), then?

I'm not familiar with Nanosaur. There's no need to support it in VO, though, depending on the implementation. The stereo3d nvidia drivers take care of it on windows, and they work with any 3d glasses supporting field-sequential input (1 vga- l/r every other frame). This includes shutter glasses. Actually, I think there might even be an option for red/blue 3d glasses in that driver.

I'm talking about red/blue glasses ;)
I meant would it be possible to have an option in VO that converts the game into something useable with red/blue glasses, without video card drivers for it?

EDIT: SS of Nanosaur 2 in red/blue: http://www.pangeasoft.net/nano2/files/screenshots/anaglyphs/ana3.jpg

I think softy's onto something with his pattern or scaling argument.

A standard look for a certain turret, docking bay, engine, or whatnot would be nice. The engines on the raptor and the teradon look the exact same, although apparently the engines on the teradon are roughly, what, 4X bigger physically?

Sense of scale requires a standard unit of measurement, so to speak. Of course, I have not seen one of these Constellations yet, so I'm gonna go look for one.

I also agree with Softy, on both accounts. The cappie engines sound kinda weak ATM.
It would be kinda neat if your ship rattled just a little when you came near a Constallation's engines.

The advantage with red/blue glasses is lack of headache. Shutters lens basically drives down the refresh rate (not FPS... actualy screen refresh) down by 50% and thus introduces a flicker effect that's hard on the eyes and optic nerves. It can actually cause seizures in some people (that are epileptic of course).

I agree that the textures throw things off a bit. It is the same with the station textures (and the older ship textures). The level of detail that you can see on a (oh let's say) 10 metre wall is the same as on a 10 cm piece of metal.

But what I'm refering too specifically is that I can fly my ship up to a Capital Class ship until I bump into it, hit F9 a couple times to get to the 3rd person free floating camera, and my vulture looks maybe half the size of a moth. My moth looks like its at least as tall as a Teradon (this last one might be a bit exagerrated, I can't get in game right now to test).

Pics!

This is a Centaur against a Trident; I think the sense of scale is okay:


Now this one is a Centaur next to a Prometheus; horrible scale, anyone?


From what I've seen of the Connie, it does dwarf all other ships correctly. However, bear in mind resizing ships means resizing meshes which means heavy ship tweaking which means Devs not working on UI or content!

The cappie engines sound kinda weak ATM.

Actually, just to "rub-it-in" with the sound issue... technically, no ship but your own should make any sound in space.

But to quote Lucas... "a spaceship battle with no sound is borring".

Or we could use the Chaplin era approach: no sounds but a piano sound track. Ah! Fun times with cent-wielding Harold! And what sight for sore eyes be a Moth-baring Laurel and Raptor-tripping Hardy.

Picture the Serco connie being swamped by [ITAN] members like last night, with this sound track:
http://www.laurel-and-hardy.com/sound/kukuk.wav

Jex : you are missing the point.

If you put two ships next to each other, you can get a sense of scale alright.

THe problem is when you look at the ships alone.

(And when did you start worrying about devs not working on content? I want the old ascerbic cynical jex back.)

Or we could use the Chaplin era approach: no sounds but a piano sound track. Ah! Fun times with cent-wielding Harold! And what sight for sore eyes be a Moth-baring Laurel and Raptor-tripping Hardy.

Hey, Screwball, are you reading this? Time to update TGFT radion playlist :D

It's all in your head, softy, sez I.

Besides, I don't think that taur looks OK next to that prom; remember the cent has more cargo space!

LAstly, the more content, the less people running aimlessly to run into and shoot me; if they are busy on some mission or another, they tend to leave me alone and I can actuall sneak in for a back/type kill :P

Actually, from momeraths connie battle a few nights ago, three connies together make each other look extremely small when nobody else is around... I guess its more of an optical illusion since you can't judge your own size while looking through the HUD.

I really had to see a connie in the wild to get an idea of just how big it was.

~Nautargos

About the Prom looking out of scale.. I think I have a great solution to this.

Ready?

Delete the Prom.

Hehehehe

YESH!

NO MORE SERCO SPECIAL SHIP!

I think if we ad a real COCKPIT VIEW, we wouldn't have such a scale issue !
=p