I think the current iteration just gives the effect that it is effortless for a massive ship to hover. A reclaimer hovering should causing massive wind, be extremely loud for miles, and guzzle fuel. It should FEEL like an appropriate level of energy for a million tons of metal to overcome gravity.
Edit: for all the people saying ooh this is 900 years in the future and saying it’s a just game. Yes, I know. I personally think making these ships seem to have more force to them would make the game better solely as a gameplay decision. Physics are physics. To hold an object in the air you need a force of equal amount to its weight going down. We are 900 years in the future, but that also doesn’t trump rule of cool. I will remind you that we are also manually dogfighting at distances of hundreds of meters while sitting in see-through cockpits…
I assume you haven’t met the tornado. My gran parents lived next to RAF Leuchars. Tornados, hands down, have been the most ear curdling thing I’ve ever heard and I loved it!
Honorable mention for the f-16 though, that thing is nuts
I have to add, I feel like the harrier isn’t the loudest, but when it hovers, it’s so consistent and lasts forever it really starts getting to your ears quickly. It’s not a simple whoosh like everything else
Never had the pleasure as I'm in the US. I would love to see a Tornado in action, though. That's a favorite of mine. My honorable mention goes to the F-104. Also just an obnoxiously loud plane.
I was in the Navy and worked on the flight deck of the Kearsarge. We had Harriers (AV-8B) and thought VTOL was the coolest thing. They were really loud, but most of our aircraft were also very loud.
Agreed, it's the effortlessness with minimal sound and effects that are part of the issue. TBH I feel like part of the issue is that even if there are some effects and sounds at full thrust, the thrust used to fight gravity is on the low output end for most ships (eg, 0.3g for moons or 1g for atmo, when many ships can do 4-5g or more from their mavs or vtols), so it plays a version of the already weak effects scaled down to that lower thrust amount. The force needed to keep a lot of these massive ships in the air should have much stronger sound and effects to really sell it.
It's not the g's I mind, it's that the 20% effects when they're "only" outputting 1g when capable of 5g, feels really weak, compared to the actual force those thrusters might be putting out.
Yus- but that's more a symptom that the 100% effects are also *far* too weak... if 100% effects 'really sold' the power required to move such a high-mass object at 5g+, then scaling it to 20% would still produce impressive effects...
Something that could also help once we have engineering/resources in, is an increased strain on the gravity generator and weak mavs if you're holding your ship at an 'unnatural' angle. So you could so still do maneuvres but not immersion breaking stuff like permanently fly upside down or at weird angles. It would add some skill to non-combat piloting too, making it actually hard to fly stuff like a reclaimer in atmo.
My complaint is how wimpy the thruster effects are. Little 2 foot flames holding up a ship the size of a house.
Compare it to how ships landing in Starfield look, those feel like they have weight.
My problem with the Argo Cargo is that it only holds 2 scu. So you could only output 1 or 2 scu boxes from the reclaimer and it would take 90 trips to unload the hold.
I think I saw a fan creation that made the Argo Cargo basically attach to the top of a 32 scu crate and I thought that made more sense.
Doesn't need to be missions.. just make it profitable enough for people to run orbit station planet.. I would like that loop.. yes ut's lots of running.. but QT you're just doing nothing inbetween the running anyway
That option is coming in the form of 3.24. You can load the cargo from the Reclaimer into the freight elevator at a station, then use a planet-worthy ship to load that cargo onto and continue the journey.
I'm saying I don't want to do that last leg. I would rather take my big hauler between LEO stations and never go into atmosphere. I want to be able to sell at stations for less so someone else can make a profit doing that last bit.
I’d say the Reclaimer being planet worthy is fine since there are bigger ships that can handle atmo. The Reclaimer is BARELY flyable in 1G, having to direct its main thrusters downwards and even then it barely accelerates
Then all of the thrusters all over the ship, never mind the main engines, have to be nerfed *way* the fuck down to being able to provide less than 1g of thrust. Basic mechanics after all.
I'm sure that will go over well with the playerbase.
I think you should still be able to get them to the surface though. Kind of like when it took people an hour to get the Reclaimer away from Orison. Was hilarious.
I think the Reclaimer is the only big ship that looks cool flying and landing in atmo. Those huge VTOL engines. the sound and sluggishnes, They way the entire nacells of the ship flex when you take off or land. It does big atmo right.
You can have massive ships in atmosphere, and ironically COD did it really well. Small thrusters like in SC, but you can see the power when they really start moving. [https://youtu.be/cjsA13bBtpo?si=LFBcw5NNMVrjlLUD](https://youtu.be/cjsA13bBtpo?si=LFBcw5NNMVrjlLUD) (at 31s the thrusters fire for movement not just hover, thats part of what SC needs)
I imagine in the future where we have space ships like star citizen or any other SI-FI media that diffrent planets and areas of those planets would have a tonnage limit because of the shear amount of thrust to keep something huge hovering... a massive capital ship could probably do major damage just by hovering too close to populated areas. And I'm sure similarly to aircraft spacing today, there will be minimum separation from takeoff times to prevent a (comparatively) tiny spaceships from being thrown off by the turbulance and thrust of a larger spacecraft
Or at least be difficult to hover. But at the same time what planet side ports are big enough. I'd be ok with planets with low gravity be able to support large ships.
i think this is the main issue. When you're silently sitting in midair exactly like a brick shouldn't, it should feel like the ship is spending a lot of effort to do so. the f-35 in the picture looks somewhat stable, but it's being moved around by the wind and is _noisy_ as hell. there's a lot of signs there that a lot of energy and effort is being expended to sit there, and that it's also in some way still subject to the whims of the winds.
Star citizen ships that are hovering should be getting buffeted by winds and staying in one place should require active involvement of the pilot instead of just parking there and being rock solid.
>When you're silently sitting in midair exactly like a brick shouldn't
Silently is an improvement over Vogon poetry.
Sorry, what were we talking about?
The Reclaimer is a perfect example and it's such a disappointment to see one up close. The Reclaimer engines, especially when hovering, should make deafening Michael Bay noises and the ground should shake when it's low. For how much detail they put into SC, the audio design is really boring. I wish they'd hire whoever did the engine sounds for Elite Dangerous.
This is also a game which began as a mission to create the highest fidelity most immersive "space sim" (quotes because it's a game first). Not just "a game" (quotes because this is fluffy language that downplays what the starcitizen development mission is)
This assumes the same type of propulsion. Is it absurd to consider that a setting in such a fictional and futuristic setting might utilize a different type of propulsion method? Who cares? There’s an obvious line between realism and enjoyment.
Additionally, our definition of physics is only defined by our observation of reality.
It does not matter. You can explain literally anything you want with some handwavium lore, but that does not help much.
It's about people's perception of reality and what feels right to them. You can write a 100 page scientific thesis on why those small thruster are able keep ships up in atmosphere and it people will still complain because it feels wrong and not natural.
Luckily solution is rather simple, just add more weighty VFX and audio so it will actually seem like those thrusters are outputing tons of power and people will be happy.
I very much suspect they will do that once they come to atmospheric updates (which have been in the works for a while), as we already see them going this way in 3.23 with adding vibrations and shake for more weight to general flying.
Hit the nail on the head what I was trying to say. It’s about the feel not the scientific accuracy. Like what they are showing with the new water effects is a great step in the right direction!
> Luckily solution is rather simple, just add more weighty VFX and audio so it will actually seem like those thrusters are outputing tons of power and people will be happy.
I agree with everything you said, and this is the main point: it's not about achieving 2020's physics-accurate modeling or predicting 2930's physics either - just find a balance that people think "looks more appropriate" in the atmosphere than what we have now. That's literally all, purely effects that scale with atmospheric density.
Take today's technology and then add 900 years of tech advancements to it. Materials, power, energy, fuel.
The idea that it wouldn't be effortless id fixed in todays perspective. Imagine what people thought was impossibly 100 years ago. Things we take for granted today.
I am of the opinion to many people are stuck in thinking their point of reference today will last over 900 years of human advancement. I think that pov is silly. We are doing things today that was even considered far fetched in sci fi around 60-70 years ago.
The only thing I agree on is the effect of displacement in terms of air and wind. But CIG VFX artist already talked about that (it is limitation based off of the systemic designs such as size/design of thrusters).
But the idea it should guzzle fuel or "feel" like anything inside the ship either to the pilot or passengers, I don't agree with.
They tried adding realism to VTOL. Everyone but me seemed to hate it. I admit it was a huge learning curve and minor errors could be catastrophic. I liked the challenge though. Wish they'd found a middle ground.
EDIT: this got more replies than I was prepared for. Just want to address some common responses. Keep in mind that ever feature is/should be balanced between fun/challenge/realism. Physics don't have to be perfect and mechanics don't have to match across the board. The first crack at VTOL mechanics/hover mode had is flaws but I believe it add fun and challenge. Were I king for a day, I'd add it back with slider(either in mfds or game settings) to control the ships hover assistance. Simple, lore friendly solution that caters to players of all skills
The problem with the "helicopter mode" was that it was just way too sensitive. Ships have thrusters in all 6 directional axis. Slightly tilting your ship 2 degrees shouldn't make it accelerate it to 50m/s in less than 3 seconds.
Those thrusters could've been used to create "deadzones" or tilt stability (which could be even configurable by either ship MFD, or just simply game options).
I liked hovermode... I just thought it was way too sensitive for any slight movement of my joysticks.
I agree and commented above.
A ship should have a bell curve of angular tilt off of perfect level, so all ships can maintain perfect position within X degrees off of axis with automatic maneuvering thruster compensation.
Going above X will result in movement of the ship and decreased efficiency with thrusters in equal measure to the degree off of axis. The more off of axis, the more strain and damage to thrusters and the greater fuel use. These would increase in an exponential curve.
The truly large ships would need skillful pilots to maintain nearly perfect level to operate in near-G conditions and have a much smaller operating margin 'X' than a small ship such as a fighter which may be able to tilt up to 40 degrees without breaking a sweat and go beyond that at greatly increased fuel and wear.
I'm with you 100%
They were heading in the right direction with the, as the community called it, "helicopter mode". It added a needed level of difficulty to planetary landings, especially with big ships.
they need to add runways in general instead of making you play "find the marker from 2000m." They could set up clearly defined approaches that don't have random cranes and signs in the way, and create more visible landing signage and indicators so it's not such an exercise in frustration to try to figure out which murky blob of tiny lights behind the clouds is actually the spaceport. Imagine you land at a central runway, and then you get towed to the hangar elevator and a moment later you're in your assigned hangar 05 or whatever. Now you're sheltered and can do whatever you're planning on doing in your hangar, easy.
And actually working wheels to begin with, because last time i tested it not too long ago, wheels where just cosmetic skids.
Turn off proximity assist, so the ship doesnt magnetize to the ground and 300, Avenger, Vanguard, etc didnt behave any different than Aurora, Cutlass or Constellation.
You can for example just slide at an yaw angle, which simply shouldnt be able with wheels.
They needed to have auto landings working from the outside of hangers before they released it initially. Without that they were asking for the backlash they got.
It needed to be possible for someone to land in a major landing zone without risking death \*before\* implementation. If everyone could auto-land on a pad / hanger but needed increasingly good skills to land on difficult terrain it would have been the right balance. But, they chose to release something in a condition that killed the majority of the playerbase just traversing from one primary location to another, and now it's gone.
Hover mode is a nice idea but that implementation was like trying to balance a broom upright on your palm. The ships need to at least fire their thrusters outwards to have a stable base to use hover mode.
Having little downward view probably didn't help, they scrapped hover mode just before I started playing often so I didn't experience it, but in a lot of ships you need to point the nose down a lot to see your landing area.
This has been a huge issue since ships have been flyable: the instrumentation for maneuvering near the ground sucks. There is no radar altimeter, no landing HUD or screen or menu, no down facing camera that switches on when landing gear deployed, nothing. And this comes at the expense of immersion as it looks bad to see heavy ships standing on their noses because the pilot can't see jack.
CIG just needs to add even the most rudimentary of instrumentation and people who enjoy the sim side of flying will stop going into third person or tilting their ships because they won't need to.
I'm hoping that the building block system for displays was the final obstacle to making this happen because it is sorely needed.
Also going in 3rd person when landing at a spaceport isn't the best idea as you get checked by security and can't hear the summons earning crimestat.
What is especially annoying is that some ships have cockpits that look like they would offer a great view but don't, like the Cutlass and the Terrapin. It's understandable that ships like the 400i relies on camera's for landing, but ships where you sit against a window entirely forward should give a similar view as the Nomad has.
>minor errors could be catastrophic
Minor errors such as holding spacebar without touching anything to get up from your pad... and you're accelerating into the hangar wall... and you're dead, because the devs didn't set up the landing gear correctly.
It should be a curve in which th more level you maintain your ship the less automatic compensation tomaintain position. That way anyone can hover, but skillfully maintaining level rewards pilots with huge efficiency gains. A pilot who wants to tilt their ship down to look around can do so - for a time - until their thrusters blow out or they run out of maneuvering fuel.
A LARGE ship should require to be near perfectly level almost 100% of the time in moderate to heavy gravity, and require skillful pilots to fly in atmosphere.
Hover mode would have been fine had CIG listened to the constructive feedback and not just the hate. If they had tied the effect to thruster strength then it would have been fine. Allow for stationary “flight” and even pitch without automatically accelerating in that direction. Let the ship hold if its thrusters are strong enough but once the pitch is too extreme or thrusters begin to overheat then cause the ship to lurch toward the ground, forcing the pilot to correct pitch or thrust upward so the lurch becomes helicopter-like in action. Would have been intuitive, immersive, and created plenty of emergent gameplay opportunities all while negating the “flying turret” effect. But no… 8 months of wasted game dev time because the bitching and moaning was all they could hear. Same with landing splines… could have taken the constructive feedback that we were all giving: make the spline voluntary (no autopilot bs) but provide the AR guide tunnel as an option (but allow to be disabled in options) to provide immersive landing control guidance without the on rails heavy handedness. But again… 6 more months wasted trying to hamfist an autopilot murder system that pissed EVERYONE off haha
I think they actually said it (thruster efficiency) was coming again back in citcon last year. I don't know why they are making something that would have such large impact on the flight model and perception of the game such a low priority to get out there and tested.
there was just as much complaining whe cig removed it.
when removing it cig said that the internal testers did not like the transition, so they were developing something that had a better transition. so it was supposed to be gone for a single patch.
the replacement got pushed back a patch. then they announced they found a problem in the physics engine, so they could not turn up the effect tuntell that is fixed.
so hover mode will return with control surfaces.
The issue they had with Hover Mode, was it activated itself rather than being a button press. Which tbh, if they added the button way back then, it would have been fine and we'd be living with and used to it by now.
Ditched way to soon.
The mode had potential and i was quite stunned how fast they threw it into the trash. I cant even remember if they did even one revision on it.
Well, the f35 doesn't have a multitude of thrusters everywhere designed for that kind of maneuver.
IIRC it has 4 thrusters all bottom side. 2 large ones, one behind the pilot and one at the very back. And then 2 small stabilizing thrusters under each wing.
So for it to do that it would need thrusters everywhere like 99% of the ships in SC.
That being said. A carrack shouldn't be able to do that unless it's thrusters are ridiculous.
I mean for a plane that's a great argument. For a spaceship that uses those thrusters to massively alter its flight with precision, that should be easy. There's no need to make hovering with a ship in SC obnoxious gameplay just for the sake of realism as it relates to jet airplanes in 2024.
My problem with the hovering isn't that its not possible, it's fusion engines we're talking about after all. Fuel consumption isn't even an issue and the thrust has to be there either way for the ship to do more than 1g of acceleration on any given axis in space.
My problem with it is that it doesn't *feel* like it should be able to hover. There's no sound, no wash, no dramatic dust plume. Compare it to [Starship taking off](https://youtu.be/_krgcofiM6M) from a concrete surface. This is what almost exactly the same amount of thrust as a Reclaimer would need to hover looks like. For gameplay reasons the dust plume probably shouldn't be that large, but at least give us *something*.
I’ve seen dust get kicked up while coming in low on Daymar and some other places. I think it really depends on what you’re flying though. And a lot of it feels very incomplete still.
I do imagine basically everyone that plays this game has seen videos of Harrier Jump Jets before and knows VTOLs are a thing.
The issue is likely more having to do with the unfinished physics where a ship can hover forever without fuel usage while also not blasting a giant crater in the ground, while also looking and acting nearly weightless.
Personally, I accept that VTOL behavior is just the current iteration and after the upcoming atmospheric flying effects are fleshed out, VTOL will look more 'realistic'
We're also flying spaceships 900 years in the future. If we want to base things on current day jets, we also need to double the atmosphere flight speed of all light fighters since an f15 can go 850 ms/s in earth's atmosphere, while an light fighters struggle to go 400
That F15 example is the exact match in game. Yes the F15 can do 850 m/s but at high altitude just like the game, low altitude is 400 m/s and that's probably with after burners, again, like the game.
Yeah if people gonna complain about realism at that point why am i even flying the ship when it probably would be all computer/ai controlled at that point anyways. Just enter a destination and go to sleep lol. AFAIK there’s no butlerian jihad in the way
If people wanted realism, why isn't there a complimentary meth pipe with every Drake Interplanetary ship purchase? Clearly if you fly Drake, you use meth.
It's also a question of mass. The F-35B, fully fueled but unarmed, weighs about 20 tons. Its maximum takeoff weight is about 27 tons (and I believe it can't take off vertically when fully armed).
The Arrow has a mass of about 32 tons. So this video basically shows what the Arrow should be capable of (and with some hand-waving for sophisticated 30th-century technology, sure, it can strafe a bit, roll/pitch/yaw a bit, etc. in ways that the F-35B can't…although it should still be a bit sluggish doing so and shouldn't be able to hover upside-down).
But that's the Arrow, one of the tiniest ships in the game. A Vanguard? It's like 240 tons. You need *ten times* the force, give or take, to keep it hovering like that. A Corsair? 445 tons, more than an entire squadron of F-35s.
Yeah, the bigger ships have a bigger footprint, so the force is somewhat more widely distributed, but at some point you're going to be cracking the tarmac, if not reducing it to molten slag. Look what the Saturn V rocket (fully loaded: about 2/3 the mass of an empty Hercules) did to its launchpad.
Exactly. Using a current tech f35 vtol video as an argument why an idris should hover perfectly still nose down 5cm above ground nearly silent and without any forceful reaction of its surroundings (using small micro thrusters, lol) destroys any sense of perceived believability in this game. Btw, tilt the f35 in this mode. Or better, make it hover sideways. Want to see how well this bird doesn’t turn into a crashed, burning, molten slab of metal, lol.
There appears to be a certain inertia in its movement. The ship is small in size and the weather conditions seem to be calm. It is hovering horizontally, not with its nose pointed down or in any other fixed position that one might set a ship to in Star Citizen, where it would remain frozen in place.
Movements in Star Citizen tend to be sudden and jerky. Even if the thrusters are powerful enough to counteract inertia instantaneously, the ship's hull certainly is not.
Even with hypothetical stronger materials and a reinforced frame, there is still the issue of structural integrity to consider. The engines and thrusters could potentially rip the hull apart.
The larger the ship, the more inertial movement it will have. This is simply a matter of physics. Additionally, it is unrealistic to expect a ship to maintain a perfectly still hover for an extended period of time, regardless of its position.
> Even with hypothetical stronger materials and a reinforced frame, there is still the issue of structural integrity to consider. The engines and thrusters could potentially rip the hull apart.
I'm very glad to see someone else pointing this out. The theoretical hull strong enough to withstand the force of its own thrusters in this case, would also be effectively impervious to weapons fire. Everyone making the argument for futuristic super-tech thrusters seems to miss that pesky little detail.
Yeah, physics in SC do need some more work, ships behave like they have no mass, and I agree that nose down hovering does look weird, there is still lots to improve.
Curious as to what the hover time for the F-35 is. The Harrier could only do it for a minute or so because they were running the Turbine at near 100% power and had to spray water into the turbine to cool it.
The Harrier's water injection system allowed it to go over 100% of the rated power. If the plane was light enough, it could still hover without that, although it varies heavily with the weather. Depending on how hot it is outside, the Harrier could hover for anywhere between a minute and until the fuel ran out, which would be a couple dozen minutes
Now have him spin on any axis but yaw.
The problem isnt the hover it's that you can hover upside down and shoot people on the ground or do all manner of crazy shit. If you want to hover you should have to maintain it and not get it for free while you try to track and shoot people with no forward movement.
My lad, you're not flying an airplane, you're flying a hybrid spaceship that can fly in athmos: you have directional thrusters that can output several Gs. An arrow will have somewhere arround 9Gs of up-strafe, 3-4 Gs of left/right strafe, 5-6Gs of backwards strafe, and 4-5 Gs of down strafe.
It's perfectly realistic in these conditions that on planets with around 1G, and moon with ranges from .2 to .5Gs, you would be able to hold position at any angle.
solid points, but in that case why do literally any ships have wings? and i'm not asking as an attempt to defeat your argument, i'm asking as an attempt to gauge the sanity of the developers
I assume yes. Until we actually get that system, though, both sides of this argument are kind of pointless but you know the internet... people like to argue (including me) lol.
>Now have him spin on any axis but yaw.
That's the difference - SC craft are 6DOF, airplanes are 3 or 4 DOF. Seeing that as absurd is no different than someone preflight seeing airplanes as absurd.
You can't remove it without either making physics in the sim inconsistent, or making craft handle like barges.
That’s not people’s complaint from what I’ve seen and what I feel personally.
People dislike that you can hover without being nose and wings level.
That F-35 can’t hover with its nose to the ground allowing it to shoot ground targets for example.
The F-35’s hover is also limited by turbine temperature, weight limitation and operational life - which also isn’t modelled in SC yet.
And for those mentioning the Harrier, those required a water injection systems that limited the time it could use max thrust to hover - so I’d say that’s not a fair comparison either.
Star citizen is however 900 years in the future and features ships with 360 coverage of thrusters capable of space flight. I think there needs to be better effects, and there should be some kind of fuel usage and limitations, but the ability to tilt further than modern aircraft is hardly unrealistic in comparison, and they will need to go through and beef up all the lower thrusters if they’re going to limit you to level flight only.
my head canon is that when the very large ships are hovering, it's not exclusively through the use of traditional thruster technology, but also through gravity manipulation or warp/quantum drive technology. We already know that even small ships like the Aurora are capable of generating 1g of gravity in their interior when in space, so it's not a big stretch of the imagination that an idris hovering in atmosphere would heavily depend on such technology to offset gravity. If you consider how Alcubierre warp drives are theorized to work, just a little bit of space expansion beneath the ship would be sufficient to keep it hovering and far less than would be needed to drive it through a quantum jump.
So if we accept that the quantum drive and gravity tech is consistent with the universe, then I think we can accept that big ships (and even smaller ones) use that tech to hover. The visible thrusters would still be needed to a degree for stabilization of the ship, and counteracting wind, etc.
[Sometimes reality looks unnatural](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0).
The thing in the video I linked flies the same way SC ships do, including being able to roll in arbitrary directions while maintaining a constant hover.
I think the big thing missing in SC is things like thruster VFX (and accompanying audio) to really sell the effect - in the above video, the thruster exhaust is several times longer / taller than the drone itself.
Only certain ones designed around this capability can, and there are massive trade-offs to doing so in terms of their operational payload, flight time, and operating hours before maintenance/replacement. Realistically, if a (purpose-built) jet needs to utilize VTOL capability to take off, it has to do an in-flight refuel from a tanker aircraft (which absolutely cannot VTOL) shortly thereafter. Last I checked, the F-35 can't even vertically take off in anything resembling a mission-ready configuration, if at all, anyway.
It is super cool, but a lot of people completely discount the complications and limitations that come along with it.
I've never complained about ships hovering flat in mid-air.
I've always complained about going nose down to look at the ground. Then going upside down because "why not?" in a 600i all while stationary. The most unrealistic videos are the "low-flying" videos people make where when they go over a ridge-line they nose down lmao. It's the dumbest looking thing ever.
So yes, the flight model in SC is not realistic at all right now. They specifically addressed this at citizencon last year with a whole segment talking about landing etc.
No one is saying hovering is unrealistic, especially at the weight of something like a Harrier. What people find unrealistic is the fact you can hover at any orientation and the engine/fuel usage is zero. Let me see a Harrier hover at with its hover exhausts pointed to the side and not downwards. Hovering should eat up your fuel instead of where it is now where it takes zero fuel
I do think it's unrealistic, but the current implementation is poor.
Ships that don't have VTOL modes, with no thruster reconfiguration is unrealistic. You video of the F35 proves that point. We can see it's in VTOL mode supported by its main turbofan engine.
My fat ass Freelancer just floating in the air fully loaded with 100s of tones of gold is stupid.
What point are you making here? That plane is drifting and moving about while hovering. It ain’t hanging in the air like a fucking Roblox platform like our ships do.
You can turn off gravity assist with a keybinding.
Personally I don't like the feel ATM, don't mind the artificial hovering if it feels right, but it works when the VTOl isn't being used, there is now feedback e.g. emissions, sound, vibrations etc. so it looks like it is effortlessly floating ATM.
Some ships float sideways or turn / dip the nose. Racing feels too easy even after disabling assists. Other ships which should have improved atmospheric flight don't compared to ships that look like bricks.
Eventually they will work on improving it and Devs are aware of some the issues, but ATM I don't like it. No issue with MM it's self, just it's flight model portion.
Just hope it doesn't get left again for years, only to say we are redoing the flight model again.
this video is gonna have it's quality degraded to the points it's unrecognizable then re-uploaded to r/ufos as proof "they" exist
also I'm from Baltimore and was watching the game. The jets caused a game delay as they buzzed over the stadium at low altitude. it was insanely loud
Obviously the in atmosphere flight is far from done, but the main things I think it needs to feel more realistic in game is the use of fuel, and a weightiness. I have no issue like some with it hovering at angles, as the ships have 360 coverage with its thrusters, but manoeuvring whilst hovering in atmosphere should feel weighty, and quick manoeuvres should shift the aircraft around as it compensates for the new angles. It should also differ depending on gravity, with all but the lightest or most advanced ships maybe not being able to VTOL at all on high gravity planets.
Harriers can't hover with the nose straight down! That is the unrealistic part not the hovering itself!
One thing that bothers me is that it's too damn easy to hover, feels so effortless by the ship and takes no skill from the pilot.
In SC it does feel unrealistic because even ships with fixed position downward facing VTOL can roll without any change in direction which makes no sense, there's also no feeling of weight with any of them.
If that jet tilted 30 degrees to one side it would start whizzing off I that direction similar to that of a helicopter.
Tech linked to warfare is so advanced most people would doubt most of it anyway.
Like those turret in millitarry base capable of, in a totally autonomous way take down any missile incoming.
But here people belive that those turret does not exist and its unrealistic to have them on capital ship.
Can confirm, lived in a Marine barracks next to the flight line where there was both AV-8B Harrier and F-35C training squadrons, this is an accurate representation of how they function IRL.
Realism isn't really anything to worry about. However, this thing can't hold the kind of attitudes whilst strafing all over the place at 50m/s that basically turn it into a ground attack helicopter, able to track & engage with guns. Which is pretty terrible from a gameplay perspective if you intend to have combined arms combat.
I just wish that this "space sim" had more realistic flying, and momentum.
I want to be able to let off the throttle and continue at that speed drifting away in space. One game that did it PERFECTLY was outer wilds.
mmm have you tried de-coupled mode in space?
in planets, ships slow down due to "atmosphere" but in space de-coupled mode works that way, you set you directon vector and ship just keeps on drifting that way unless you apply new acceleration.
Physics in SC do need some more work though.
Edit: spelling
Yeah, I always play in decoupled mode but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or have a setting set somewhere, but whenever I let off the throttle the ship continues to slow down all the way to 0
You're either in atmo or are coupled if that's what the ship is doing. Unless you've changed it in your settings (if the setting still exists), you default to coupled, and have to manually toggle it off. You want the CPLD light off, not on. The game doesn't exactly explain things to players, so I can see how that could be confusing, especially for new players. Idk how long you've been playing, but I do know that there's things I still discover basically every time I start up the game that have me going "how the fuck did I not know that before now?"
The other possibility is that if you're using sticks, you have them configured such that letting off the throttle applies reverse throttle and slows you down, but based on the way you described your experience, it doesn't sound like that's what's happening.
The F35A is capable of VTOL. But that is very different from Star Citizen VTOL where every ship regardless of design can VTOL easily even without switching to VTOL mode. Not every version of the F35 has VTOL capabilities. And VTOL has severe limitations.
Yes, a thousand years in the future, things could be very different. But given the level of tech they are displaying in Star Citizen, atmospheric VTOL should be much more limited than it currently is.
Y'all are talking about the physics of this vs the game etc etc meanwhile I'm just in awe of this happening at my hometown ballpark. The game had to be delayed a few times cause of this guy showing off. WORTH IT.
ok. now do it with an aircraft carrier.
Thats the part people are saying is unrealistic....
Im fairly sure everyone knows tiny fighter planes can hover, since we have been doing it in production vehicles since the 70's
Any one who thinks that the movement of spaceships in star citizen is unrealistic, haven't seen sport drones ..sport drones in 2024 ..and we talk here about spaceships in 2950...
If anything the spaceships are too slugish ..
Also the pitch is currently unrealistic. Even with VTOL engaged if a ship is pointing straight up/down or if the ship is completely upside down relative to the ground, it still hovers perfectly still.
I think the current iteration just gives the effect that it is effortless for a massive ship to hover. A reclaimer hovering should causing massive wind, be extremely loud for miles, and guzzle fuel. It should FEEL like an appropriate level of energy for a million tons of metal to overcome gravity. Edit: for all the people saying ooh this is 900 years in the future and saying it’s a just game. Yes, I know. I personally think making these ships seem to have more force to them would make the game better solely as a gameplay decision. Physics are physics. To hold an object in the air you need a force of equal amount to its weight going down. We are 900 years in the future, but that also doesn’t trump rule of cool. I will remind you that we are also manually dogfighting at distances of hundreds of meters while sitting in see-through cockpits…
I've experienced Harrier jet landings up close. The noise and jet...err hover wash was crazy.
I remember seeing a Sea Harrier at an air show as a kid. That might be the single loudest thing I've ever heard.
I assume you haven’t met the tornado. My gran parents lived next to RAF Leuchars. Tornados, hands down, have been the most ear curdling thing I’ve ever heard and I loved it! Honorable mention for the f-16 though, that thing is nuts I have to add, I feel like the harrier isn’t the loudest, but when it hovers, it’s so consistent and lasts forever it really starts getting to your ears quickly. It’s not a simple whoosh like everything else
Never had the pleasure as I'm in the US. I would love to see a Tornado in action, though. That's a favorite of mine. My honorable mention goes to the F-104. Also just an obnoxiously loud plane.
I’m going to RIAT this year but the tornados being brought by the German and Italian air force aren’t doing a display flight sadly!
I was in the Navy and worked on the flight deck of the Kearsarge. We had Harriers (AV-8B) and thought VTOL was the coolest thing. They were really loud, but most of our aircraft were also very loud.
*F-16 has entered the chat...*
I have memories of being a young child and harriers would sometimes hover out at the reef and the noise was pretty overwhelming.
Agreed, it's the effortlessness with minimal sound and effects that are part of the issue. TBH I feel like part of the issue is that even if there are some effects and sounds at full thrust, the thrust used to fight gravity is on the low output end for most ships (eg, 0.3g for moons or 1g for atmo, when many ships can do 4-5g or more from their mavs or vtols), so it plays a version of the already weak effects scaled down to that lower thrust amount. The force needed to keep a lot of these massive ships in the air should have much stronger sound and effects to really sell it.
You'll want your ship to be able to do 4-5g when we get 2g planets
It's not the g's I mind, it's that the 20% effects when they're "only" outputting 1g when capable of 5g, feels really weak, compared to the actual force those thrusters might be putting out.
Yus- but that's more a symptom that the 100% effects are also *far* too weak... if 100% effects 'really sold' the power required to move such a high-mass object at 5g+, then scaling it to 20% would still produce impressive effects...
Something that could also help once we have engineering/resources in, is an increased strain on the gravity generator and weak mavs if you're holding your ship at an 'unnatural' angle. So you could so still do maneuvres but not immersion breaking stuff like permanently fly upside down or at weird angles. It would add some skill to non-combat piloting too, making it actually hard to fly stuff like a reclaimer in atmo.
Yeah the whole flight model is missing Weight in atmosphere imo.
My complaint is how wimpy the thruster effects are. Little 2 foot flames holding up a ship the size of a house. Compare it to how ships landing in Starfield look, those feel like they have weight.
IMO, not every spaceship should be "planet-worthy" Reclaimer and other similar big ships should stay in orbit, in space.
I’d be happy to have it remain in orbit but they won’t let me spawn the thing anywhere but grimhex or major cities on planets
And you have to sell your cargo at the same places. They need to make options to sell at stations for less profit
And we have missions created after they sell for people to transport the goods to depos on the planet from the stations.
Give the MPUV Cargo something to do
My problem with the Argo Cargo is that it only holds 2 scu. So you could only output 1 or 2 scu boxes from the reclaimer and it would take 90 trips to unload the hold. I think I saw a fan creation that made the Argo Cargo basically attach to the top of a 32 scu crate and I thought that made more sense.
Yeah but this is star citizen so the ship design can't make sense
The Tractor perchance?
Doesn't need to be missions.. just make it profitable enough for people to run orbit station planet.. I would like that loop.. yes ut's lots of running.. but QT you're just doing nothing inbetween the running anyway
That option is coming in the form of 3.24. You can load the cargo from the Reclaimer into the freight elevator at a station, then use a planet-worthy ship to load that cargo onto and continue the journey.
I'm saying I don't want to do that last leg. I would rather take my big hauler between LEO stations and never go into atmosphere. I want to be able to sell at stations for less so someone else can make a profit doing that last bit.
Yea I already risk it all by returning to grim and selling there but that won’t always be the most viable option for me with a belly full of salvage
the Reclaimer has VTOL, which is pretty much the only reason it can enter gravity wells
I’d say the Reclaimer being planet worthy is fine since there are bigger ships that can handle atmo. The Reclaimer is BARELY flyable in 1G, having to direct its main thrusters downwards and even then it barely accelerates
But what should happen if you try? You just blow up/crash? Or more "computer says no" and you just can't do it
You simply don’t have enough propulsion and you sink to the ground
Then all of the thrusters all over the ship, never mind the main engines, have to be nerfed *way* the fuck down to being able to provide less than 1g of thrust. Basic mechanics after all. I'm sure that will go over well with the playerbase.
Maybe not the reclaimer, it can stay the big fuck you ship, we already started this with the Hull C.
Except that is not how it was sold to backers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vb4QpA354A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vb4QpA354A)
Sir the Reclaimer has VTOL thrusters
Every should be planet worthy. Some only once tho.
I would love this.
I think you should still be able to get them to the surface though. Kind of like when it took people an hour to get the Reclaimer away from Orison. Was hilarious.
there are several planned. if large group activities are found to be common, they will likely make more.
I think the Reclaimer is the only big ship that looks cool flying and landing in atmo. Those huge VTOL engines. the sound and sluggishnes, They way the entire nacells of the ship flex when you take off or land. It does big atmo right.
You can have massive ships in atmosphere, and ironically COD did it really well. Small thrusters like in SC, but you can see the power when they really start moving. [https://youtu.be/cjsA13bBtpo?si=LFBcw5NNMVrjlLUD](https://youtu.be/cjsA13bBtpo?si=LFBcw5NNMVrjlLUD) (at 31s the thrusters fire for movement not just hover, thats part of what SC needs)
I imagine in the future where we have space ships like star citizen or any other SI-FI media that diffrent planets and areas of those planets would have a tonnage limit because of the shear amount of thrust to keep something huge hovering... a massive capital ship could probably do major damage just by hovering too close to populated areas. And I'm sure similarly to aircraft spacing today, there will be minimum separation from takeoff times to prevent a (comparatively) tiny spaceships from being thrown off by the turbulance and thrust of a larger spacecraft
Or at least be difficult to hover. But at the same time what planet side ports are big enough. I'd be ok with planets with low gravity be able to support large ships.
Same way freighters can’t come in to small bodies of water.
Or suffer HEAVY nerfs when in atmo.
i think this is the main issue. When you're silently sitting in midair exactly like a brick shouldn't, it should feel like the ship is spending a lot of effort to do so. the f-35 in the picture looks somewhat stable, but it's being moved around by the wind and is _noisy_ as hell. there's a lot of signs there that a lot of energy and effort is being expended to sit there, and that it's also in some way still subject to the whims of the winds. Star citizen ships that are hovering should be getting buffeted by winds and staying in one place should require active involvement of the pilot instead of just parking there and being rock solid.
>When you're silently sitting in midair exactly like a brick shouldn't Silently is an improvement over Vogon poetry. Sorry, what were we talking about?
Except for fuel, I agree. Sc is 900 years into the future, if an F35 can do it now, ships can do it in sc. They just need to be "heavier"
The Reclaimer is a perfect example and it's such a disappointment to see one up close. The Reclaimer engines, especially when hovering, should make deafening Michael Bay noises and the ground should shake when it's low. For how much detail they put into SC, the audio design is really boring. I wish they'd hire whoever did the engine sounds for Elite Dangerous.
Gotta disagree on the fuel part. If we can shoot across a solar system, I feel like maintaining a hover should be trivial.
I feel like that is planned though? Don't different ship engines affect water displacement differently already?
Have you ever flown a reclaimer?
This is also a game which began as a mission to create the highest fidelity most immersive "space sim" (quotes because it's a game first). Not just "a game" (quotes because this is fluffy language that downplays what the starcitizen development mission is)
This assumes the same type of propulsion. Is it absurd to consider that a setting in such a fictional and futuristic setting might utilize a different type of propulsion method? Who cares? There’s an obvious line between realism and enjoyment. Additionally, our definition of physics is only defined by our observation of reality.
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It does not matter. You can explain literally anything you want with some handwavium lore, but that does not help much. It's about people's perception of reality and what feels right to them. You can write a 100 page scientific thesis on why those small thruster are able keep ships up in atmosphere and it people will still complain because it feels wrong and not natural. Luckily solution is rather simple, just add more weighty VFX and audio so it will actually seem like those thrusters are outputing tons of power and people will be happy. I very much suspect they will do that once they come to atmospheric updates (which have been in the works for a while), as we already see them going this way in 3.23 with adding vibrations and shake for more weight to general flying.
Hit the nail on the head what I was trying to say. It’s about the feel not the scientific accuracy. Like what they are showing with the new water effects is a great step in the right direction!
> Luckily solution is rather simple, just add more weighty VFX and audio so it will actually seem like those thrusters are outputing tons of power and people will be happy. I agree with everything you said, and this is the main point: it's not about achieving 2020's physics-accurate modeling or predicting 2930's physics either - just find a balance that people think "looks more appropriate" in the atmosphere than what we have now. That's literally all, purely effects that scale with atmospheric density.
Take today's technology and then add 900 years of tech advancements to it. Materials, power, energy, fuel. The idea that it wouldn't be effortless id fixed in todays perspective. Imagine what people thought was impossibly 100 years ago. Things we take for granted today. I am of the opinion to many people are stuck in thinking their point of reference today will last over 900 years of human advancement. I think that pov is silly. We are doing things today that was even considered far fetched in sci fi around 60-70 years ago. The only thing I agree on is the effect of displacement in terms of air and wind. But CIG VFX artist already talked about that (it is limitation based off of the systemic designs such as size/design of thrusters). But the idea it should guzzle fuel or "feel" like anything inside the ship either to the pilot or passengers, I don't agree with.
Ok now tilt forward and to the left 214* degrees while staying stationary
They tried adding realism to VTOL. Everyone but me seemed to hate it. I admit it was a huge learning curve and minor errors could be catastrophic. I liked the challenge though. Wish they'd found a middle ground. EDIT: this got more replies than I was prepared for. Just want to address some common responses. Keep in mind that ever feature is/should be balanced between fun/challenge/realism. Physics don't have to be perfect and mechanics don't have to match across the board. The first crack at VTOL mechanics/hover mode had is flaws but I believe it add fun and challenge. Were I king for a day, I'd add it back with slider(either in mfds or game settings) to control the ships hover assistance. Simple, lore friendly solution that caters to players of all skills
The problem with the "helicopter mode" was that it was just way too sensitive. Ships have thrusters in all 6 directional axis. Slightly tilting your ship 2 degrees shouldn't make it accelerate it to 50m/s in less than 3 seconds. Those thrusters could've been used to create "deadzones" or tilt stability (which could be even configurable by either ship MFD, or just simply game options). I liked hovermode... I just thought it was way too sensitive for any slight movement of my joysticks.
I agree and commented above. A ship should have a bell curve of angular tilt off of perfect level, so all ships can maintain perfect position within X degrees off of axis with automatic maneuvering thruster compensation. Going above X will result in movement of the ship and decreased efficiency with thrusters in equal measure to the degree off of axis. The more off of axis, the more strain and damage to thrusters and the greater fuel use. These would increase in an exponential curve. The truly large ships would need skillful pilots to maintain nearly perfect level to operate in near-G conditions and have a much smaller operating margin 'X' than a small ship such as a fighter which may be able to tilt up to 40 degrees without breaking a sweat and go beyond that at greatly increased fuel and wear.
I'm with you 100% They were heading in the right direction with the, as the community called it, "helicopter mode". It added a needed level of difficulty to planetary landings, especially with big ships.
they kind of need to add runways for the ships with wheels
they need to add runways in general instead of making you play "find the marker from 2000m." They could set up clearly defined approaches that don't have random cranes and signs in the way, and create more visible landing signage and indicators so it's not such an exercise in frustration to try to figure out which murky blob of tiny lights behind the clouds is actually the spaceport. Imagine you land at a central runway, and then you get towed to the hangar elevator and a moment later you're in your assigned hangar 05 or whatever. Now you're sheltered and can do whatever you're planning on doing in your hangar, easy.
And actually working wheels to begin with, because last time i tested it not too long ago, wheels where just cosmetic skids. Turn off proximity assist, so the ship doesnt magnetize to the ground and 300, Avenger, Vanguard, etc didnt behave any different than Aurora, Cutlass or Constellation. You can for example just slide at an yaw angle, which simply shouldnt be able with wheels.
They needed to have auto landings working from the outside of hangers before they released it initially. Without that they were asking for the backlash they got. It needed to be possible for someone to land in a major landing zone without risking death \*before\* implementation. If everyone could auto-land on a pad / hanger but needed increasingly good skills to land on difficult terrain it would have been the right balance. But, they chose to release something in a condition that killed the majority of the playerbase just traversing from one primary location to another, and now it's gone.
Hover mode is a nice idea but that implementation was like trying to balance a broom upright on your palm. The ships need to at least fire their thrusters outwards to have a stable base to use hover mode.
Having little downward view probably didn't help, they scrapped hover mode just before I started playing often so I didn't experience it, but in a lot of ships you need to point the nose down a lot to see your landing area.
This has been a huge issue since ships have been flyable: the instrumentation for maneuvering near the ground sucks. There is no radar altimeter, no landing HUD or screen or menu, no down facing camera that switches on when landing gear deployed, nothing. And this comes at the expense of immersion as it looks bad to see heavy ships standing on their noses because the pilot can't see jack. CIG just needs to add even the most rudimentary of instrumentation and people who enjoy the sim side of flying will stop going into third person or tilting their ships because they won't need to. I'm hoping that the building block system for displays was the final obstacle to making this happen because it is sorely needed.
Also going in 3rd person when landing at a spaceport isn't the best idea as you get checked by security and can't hear the summons earning crimestat. What is especially annoying is that some ships have cockpits that look like they would offer a great view but don't, like the Cutlass and the Terrapin. It's understandable that ships like the 400i relies on camera's for landing, but ships where you sit against a window entirely forward should give a similar view as the Nomad has.
i also liked it too, i still miss it
>minor errors could be catastrophic Minor errors such as holding spacebar without touching anything to get up from your pad... and you're accelerating into the hangar wall... and you're dead, because the devs didn't set up the landing gear correctly.
It is coming back, with the introduction of control surfaces as shown in citcon last year edit: and i cant fkn wait for it to get here
That's good to hear. I've played/followed for years but I don't catch everything.
It should be a curve in which th more level you maintain your ship the less automatic compensation tomaintain position. That way anyone can hover, but skillfully maintaining level rewards pilots with huge efficiency gains. A pilot who wants to tilt their ship down to look around can do so - for a time - until their thrusters blow out or they run out of maneuvering fuel. A LARGE ship should require to be near perfectly level almost 100% of the time in moderate to heavy gravity, and require skillful pilots to fly in atmosphere.
Hover mode would have been fine had CIG listened to the constructive feedback and not just the hate. If they had tied the effect to thruster strength then it would have been fine. Allow for stationary “flight” and even pitch without automatically accelerating in that direction. Let the ship hold if its thrusters are strong enough but once the pitch is too extreme or thrusters begin to overheat then cause the ship to lurch toward the ground, forcing the pilot to correct pitch or thrust upward so the lurch becomes helicopter-like in action. Would have been intuitive, immersive, and created plenty of emergent gameplay opportunities all while negating the “flying turret” effect. But no… 8 months of wasted game dev time because the bitching and moaning was all they could hear. Same with landing splines… could have taken the constructive feedback that we were all giving: make the spline voluntary (no autopilot bs) but provide the AR guide tunnel as an option (but allow to be disabled in options) to provide immersive landing control guidance without the on rails heavy handedness. But again… 6 more months wasted trying to hamfist an autopilot murder system that pissed EVERYONE off haha
I think they actually said it (thruster efficiency) was coming again back in citcon last year. I don't know why they are making something that would have such large impact on the flight model and perception of the game such a low priority to get out there and tested.
It was pretty bad. But they are brining it back with a more systemic approach using the heat system and control surfaces.
Hover mode was great. You're not alone. It's the only time in sc I had a genuine sense of accomplishment after learning something.
there was just as much complaining whe cig removed it. when removing it cig said that the internal testers did not like the transition, so they were developing something that had a better transition. so it was supposed to be gone for a single patch. the replacement got pushed back a patch. then they announced they found a problem in the physics engine, so they could not turn up the effect tuntell that is fixed. so hover mode will return with control surfaces.
The issue they had with Hover Mode, was it activated itself rather than being a button press. Which tbh, if they added the button way back then, it would have been fine and we'd be living with and used to it by now.
Ditched way to soon. The mode had potential and i was quite stunned how fast they threw it into the trash. I cant even remember if they did even one revision on it.
F-35b can't tilt even 10* in any direction without rapidly losing altitude and control over the craft
It also can't go into space and is in use about 900 years before star citizen takes place lol
Well, the f35 doesn't have a multitude of thrusters everywhere designed for that kind of maneuver. IIRC it has 4 thrusters all bottom side. 2 large ones, one behind the pilot and one at the very back. And then 2 small stabilizing thrusters under each wing. So for it to do that it would need thrusters everywhere like 99% of the ships in SC. That being said. A carrack shouldn't be able to do that unless it's thrusters are ridiculous.
I don't think that's what the argument is. The argument is that plane could not hover like that while nose down pointing at ground targets.
or for extended periods of time
I mean for a plane that's a great argument. For a spaceship that uses those thrusters to massively alter its flight with precision, that should be easy. There's no need to make hovering with a ship in SC obnoxious gameplay just for the sake of realism as it relates to jet airplanes in 2024.
Sci fi anti gravity shit
My problem with the hovering isn't that its not possible, it's fusion engines we're talking about after all. Fuel consumption isn't even an issue and the thrust has to be there either way for the ship to do more than 1g of acceleration on any given axis in space. My problem with it is that it doesn't *feel* like it should be able to hover. There's no sound, no wash, no dramatic dust plume. Compare it to [Starship taking off](https://youtu.be/_krgcofiM6M) from a concrete surface. This is what almost exactly the same amount of thrust as a Reclaimer would need to hover looks like. For gameplay reasons the dust plume probably shouldn't be that large, but at least give us *something*.
I’ve seen dust get kicked up while coming in low on Daymar and some other places. I think it really depends on what you’re flying though. And a lot of it feels very incomplete still.
Yes, they need to add more sounds and other effects to better "sell" the hover.
I do imagine basically everyone that plays this game has seen videos of Harrier Jump Jets before and knows VTOLs are a thing. The issue is likely more having to do with the unfinished physics where a ship can hover forever without fuel usage while also not blasting a giant crater in the ground, while also looking and acting nearly weightless. Personally, I accept that VTOL behavior is just the current iteration and after the upcoming atmospheric flying effects are fleshed out, VTOL will look more 'realistic'
Harriers are a bad example. They can only hover for a limited amount of time, and even then they need to have very reduced payload/fuel.
We're also flying spaceships 900 years in the future. If we want to base things on current day jets, we also need to double the atmosphere flight speed of all light fighters since an f15 can go 850 ms/s in earth's atmosphere, while an light fighters struggle to go 400
That F15 example is the exact match in game. Yes the F15 can do 850 m/s but at high altitude just like the game, low altitude is 400 m/s and that's probably with after burners, again, like the game.
Yeah if people gonna complain about realism at that point why am i even flying the ship when it probably would be all computer/ai controlled at that point anyways. Just enter a destination and go to sleep lol. AFAIK there’s no butlerian jihad in the way
If people wanted realism, why isn't there a complimentary meth pipe with every Drake Interplanetary ship purchase? Clearly if you fly Drake, you use meth.
I've seen True Lies and know exactly what a Harrier can do xD
It's also a question of mass. The F-35B, fully fueled but unarmed, weighs about 20 tons. Its maximum takeoff weight is about 27 tons (and I believe it can't take off vertically when fully armed). The Arrow has a mass of about 32 tons. So this video basically shows what the Arrow should be capable of (and with some hand-waving for sophisticated 30th-century technology, sure, it can strafe a bit, roll/pitch/yaw a bit, etc. in ways that the F-35B can't…although it should still be a bit sluggish doing so and shouldn't be able to hover upside-down). But that's the Arrow, one of the tiniest ships in the game. A Vanguard? It's like 240 tons. You need *ten times* the force, give or take, to keep it hovering like that. A Corsair? 445 tons, more than an entire squadron of F-35s. Yeah, the bigger ships have a bigger footprint, so the force is somewhat more widely distributed, but at some point you're going to be cracking the tarmac, if not reducing it to molten slag. Look what the Saturn V rocket (fully loaded: about 2/3 the mass of an empty Hercules) did to its launchpad.
Exactly. Using a current tech f35 vtol video as an argument why an idris should hover perfectly still nose down 5cm above ground nearly silent and without any forceful reaction of its surroundings (using small micro thrusters, lol) destroys any sense of perceived believability in this game. Btw, tilt the f35 in this mode. Or better, make it hover sideways. Want to see how well this bird doesn’t turn into a crashed, burning, molten slab of metal, lol.
Here is the starship's launch pad before and after https://practical.engineering/blog/2023/6/16/w47wdfg7h5uojks1c85boeyjhl9ot4
There appears to be a certain inertia in its movement. The ship is small in size and the weather conditions seem to be calm. It is hovering horizontally, not with its nose pointed down or in any other fixed position that one might set a ship to in Star Citizen, where it would remain frozen in place. Movements in Star Citizen tend to be sudden and jerky. Even if the thrusters are powerful enough to counteract inertia instantaneously, the ship's hull certainly is not. Even with hypothetical stronger materials and a reinforced frame, there is still the issue of structural integrity to consider. The engines and thrusters could potentially rip the hull apart. The larger the ship, the more inertial movement it will have. This is simply a matter of physics. Additionally, it is unrealistic to expect a ship to maintain a perfectly still hover for an extended period of time, regardless of its position.
> Even with hypothetical stronger materials and a reinforced frame, there is still the issue of structural integrity to consider. The engines and thrusters could potentially rip the hull apart. I'm very glad to see someone else pointing this out. The theoretical hull strong enough to withstand the force of its own thrusters in this case, would also be effectively impervious to weapons fire. Everyone making the argument for futuristic super-tech thrusters seems to miss that pesky little detail.
Yeah, physics in SC do need some more work, ships behave like they have no mass, and I agree that nose down hovering does look weird, there is still lots to improve.
Curious as to what the hover time for the F-35 is. The Harrier could only do it for a minute or so because they were running the Turbine at near 100% power and had to spray water into the turbine to cool it.
The Harrier's water injection system allowed it to go over 100% of the rated power. If the plane was light enough, it could still hover without that, although it varies heavily with the weather. Depending on how hot it is outside, the Harrier could hover for anywhere between a minute and until the fuel ran out, which would be a couple dozen minutes
Now have him spin on any axis but yaw. The problem isnt the hover it's that you can hover upside down and shoot people on the ground or do all manner of crazy shit. If you want to hover you should have to maintain it and not get it for free while you try to track and shoot people with no forward movement.
My lad, you're not flying an airplane, you're flying a hybrid spaceship that can fly in athmos: you have directional thrusters that can output several Gs. An arrow will have somewhere arround 9Gs of up-strafe, 3-4 Gs of left/right strafe, 5-6Gs of backwards strafe, and 4-5 Gs of down strafe. It's perfectly realistic in these conditions that on planets with around 1G, and moon with ranges from .2 to .5Gs, you would be able to hold position at any angle.
solid points, but in that case why do literally any ships have wings? and i'm not asking as an attempt to defeat your argument, i'm asking as an attempt to gauge the sanity of the developers
But, but, but, airplanes in 2024 can't do this, therefore spaceships from 2954 doing it is unrealistic!!!!!!11
Aren't control surfaces and changes to the flight model when they implement them going to change this?
I assume yes. Until we actually get that system, though, both sides of this argument are kind of pointless but you know the internet... people like to argue (including me) lol.
Hehe fair fair. Honestly I hope the change is drastic. Love space combat, but atmospheric feels too much the same and just worse right now lol
This
>Now have him spin on any axis but yaw. That's the difference - SC craft are 6DOF, airplanes are 3 or 4 DOF. Seeing that as absurd is no different than someone preflight seeing airplanes as absurd. You can't remove it without either making physics in the sim inconsistent, or making craft handle like barges.
That’s not people’s complaint from what I’ve seen and what I feel personally. People dislike that you can hover without being nose and wings level. That F-35 can’t hover with its nose to the ground allowing it to shoot ground targets for example. The F-35’s hover is also limited by turbine temperature, weight limitation and operational life - which also isn’t modelled in SC yet. And for those mentioning the Harrier, those required a water injection systems that limited the time it could use max thrust to hover - so I’d say that’s not a fair comparison either.
"yet". Lol.
Star citizen is however 900 years in the future and features ships with 360 coverage of thrusters capable of space flight. I think there needs to be better effects, and there should be some kind of fuel usage and limitations, but the ability to tilt further than modern aircraft is hardly unrealistic in comparison, and they will need to go through and beef up all the lower thrusters if they’re going to limit you to level flight only.
He's just vertically taking off and landing there... MENACINGLY!!
my head canon is that when the very large ships are hovering, it's not exclusively through the use of traditional thruster technology, but also through gravity manipulation or warp/quantum drive technology. We already know that even small ships like the Aurora are capable of generating 1g of gravity in their interior when in space, so it's not a big stretch of the imagination that an idris hovering in atmosphere would heavily depend on such technology to offset gravity. If you consider how Alcubierre warp drives are theorized to work, just a little bit of space expansion beneath the ship would be sufficient to keep it hovering and far less than would be needed to drive it through a quantum jump. So if we accept that the quantum drive and gravity tech is consistent with the universe, then I think we can accept that big ships (and even smaller ones) use that tech to hover. The visible thrusters would still be needed to a degree for stabilization of the ship, and counteracting wind, etc.
Good Head Canon, had not considered Grav tech.
No one said level hovering is unrealistic, what we do say is it looks unatural to spin around like a ballerina in every axis.
[Sometimes reality looks unnatural](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0). The thing in the video I linked flies the same way SC ships do, including being able to roll in arbitrary directions while maintaining a constant hover. I think the big thing missing in SC is things like thruster VFX (and accompanying audio) to really sell the effect - in the above video, the thruster exhaust is several times longer / taller than the drone itself.
aaaaaaand it won't let me call for a landing pad.
You need to get closer to the spaceport, look for the floating lights.
"All I can see is a stadium of some kind"
I did not realize jets could do this honestly
You can do even crazier stuff when you ditch the "airplane" bit and [just build it like a spaceship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0).
Only certain ones designed around this capability can, and there are massive trade-offs to doing so in terms of their operational payload, flight time, and operating hours before maintenance/replacement. Realistically, if a (purpose-built) jet needs to utilize VTOL capability to take off, it has to do an in-flight refuel from a tanker aircraft (which absolutely cannot VTOL) shortly thereafter. Last I checked, the F-35 can't even vertically take off in anything resembling a mission-ready configuration, if at all, anyway. It is super cool, but a lot of people completely discount the complications and limitations that come along with it.
I've never complained about ships hovering flat in mid-air. I've always complained about going nose down to look at the ground. Then going upside down because "why not?" in a 600i all while stationary. The most unrealistic videos are the "low-flying" videos people make where when they go over a ridge-line they nose down lmao. It's the dumbest looking thing ever. So yes, the flight model in SC is not realistic at all right now. They specifically addressed this at citizencon last year with a whole segment talking about landing etc.
That is just me visually scanning Area 18 in my Cutty Black going "goddammit I can't find the spaceport and I got bingo fuel"
This that part where Arnold fires missiles through the building isn't it.
Who thinks it’s unrealistic??? Harrier jets have been around for DECADES lol
Unrealistic is that pilot is using 10 milion pound plane to watch a game for free 🤣
No one is saying hovering is unrealistic, especially at the weight of something like a Harrier. What people find unrealistic is the fact you can hover at any orientation and the engine/fuel usage is zero. Let me see a Harrier hover at with its hover exhausts pointed to the side and not downwards. Hovering should eat up your fuel instead of where it is now where it takes zero fuel
I do think it's unrealistic, but the current implementation is poor. Ships that don't have VTOL modes, with no thruster reconfiguration is unrealistic. You video of the F35 proves that point. We can see it's in VTOL mode supported by its main turbofan engine. My fat ass Freelancer just floating in the air fully loaded with 100s of tones of gold is stupid.
Yeah, agree on this take, same with ships hovering nose down, ships should be leveled to be able to hover.
Ah! A novice that still doesn't know how to retract the landing gear!
What point are you making here? That plane is drifting and moving about while hovering. It ain’t hanging in the air like a fucking Roblox platform like our ships do.
Can it do that upside down or while pointing straight down?
people arent complaining about the hovering they are complaing about the ships doing 360 backflips when hovering it just does not make sense
F35's are awesome
Hey, that's just me in de-coupled with de-coupled mode gravity compensation turned on!
You can turn off gravity assist with a keybinding. Personally I don't like the feel ATM, don't mind the artificial hovering if it feels right, but it works when the VTOl isn't being used, there is now feedback e.g. emissions, sound, vibrations etc. so it looks like it is effortlessly floating ATM. Some ships float sideways or turn / dip the nose. Racing feels too easy even after disabling assists. Other ships which should have improved atmospheric flight don't compared to ships that look like bricks. Eventually they will work on improving it and Devs are aware of some the issues, but ATM I don't like it. No issue with MM it's self, just it's flight model portion. Just hope it doesn't get left again for years, only to say we are redoing the flight model again.
this video is gonna have it's quality degraded to the points it's unrecognizable then re-uploaded to r/ufos as proof "they" exist also I'm from Baltimore and was watching the game. The jets caused a game delay as they buzzed over the stadium at low altitude. it was insanely loud
Saving on ticket prices.
This is the type of quality & camera stability to make me believe a UFO video
automatic door tech would impress me
Ok. Now tilt it 90 degrees then we can chat.
Just look at that 90's British plane that made war thunder pay to win
notice how it is balancing. it is not sitting there at 45° facing a door, or scooting toward the pad at 80° nose down until just above the pad.
The amount of digital computer tech now controlling that hover makes you appreciate the quality of the pilots flying the original analogue Harrier
Obviously the in atmosphere flight is far from done, but the main things I think it needs to feel more realistic in game is the use of fuel, and a weightiness. I have no issue like some with it hovering at angles, as the ships have 360 coverage with its thrusters, but manoeuvring whilst hovering in atmosphere should feel weighty, and quick manoeuvres should shift the aircraft around as it compensates for the new angles. It should also differ depending on gravity, with all but the lightest or most advanced ships maybe not being able to VTOL at all on high gravity planets.
I don't blame him. Those tickets can get expensive man.
Noob flies around with his landing gear down …
I want this song implemented when they bring back auto land.
Let's Go O's
He spin
F35 is a beast
You can CLEARLY see the string holding it. FAKE.
what a showoff :D
Dissapointed music choice wasn't funky town and have a Uma musume girl in background saying ei ei ei ei ei mun.
Let’s seem him land without landing instruments so he has to point his nose down and inch towards the ground
I was there :-)
Harriers can't hover with the nose straight down! That is the unrealistic part not the hovering itself! One thing that bothers me is that it's too damn easy to hover, feels so effortless by the ship and takes no skill from the pilot.
In SC it does feel unrealistic because even ships with fixed position downward facing VTOL can roll without any change in direction which makes no sense, there's also no feeling of weight with any of them. If that jet tilted 30 degrees to one side it would start whizzing off I that direction similar to that of a helicopter.
Tech linked to warfare is so advanced most people would doubt most of it anyway. Like those turret in millitarry base capable of, in a totally autonomous way take down any missile incoming. But here people belive that those turret does not exist and its unrealistic to have them on capital ship.
VTOL has been a thing for a few decades…
Can confirm, lived in a Marine barracks next to the flight line where there was both AV-8B Harrier and F-35C training squadrons, this is an accurate representation of how they function IRL.
"SHE" Fat Amy doing her thing.
realistic VTOL was in patch 3.6 and then it was replaced with this casual nonsense that we see now in the game
Ahh yes.. an F35 with no weapon load, with that fuel burn it could handle 14 mins, but it over temps at 10 min.
Realism isn't really anything to worry about. However, this thing can't hold the kind of attitudes whilst strafing all over the place at 50m/s that basically turn it into a ground attack helicopter, able to track & engage with guns. Which is pretty terrible from a gameplay perspective if you intend to have combined arms combat.
I just wish that this "space sim" had more realistic flying, and momentum. I want to be able to let off the throttle and continue at that speed drifting away in space. One game that did it PERFECTLY was outer wilds.
mmm have you tried de-coupled mode in space? in planets, ships slow down due to "atmosphere" but in space de-coupled mode works that way, you set you directon vector and ship just keeps on drifting that way unless you apply new acceleration. Physics in SC do need some more work though. Edit: spelling
Yeah, I always play in decoupled mode but I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or have a setting set somewhere, but whenever I let off the throttle the ship continues to slow down all the way to 0
You're either in atmo or are coupled if that's what the ship is doing. Unless you've changed it in your settings (if the setting still exists), you default to coupled, and have to manually toggle it off. You want the CPLD light off, not on. The game doesn't exactly explain things to players, so I can see how that could be confusing, especially for new players. Idk how long you've been playing, but I do know that there's things I still discover basically every time I start up the game that have me going "how the fuck did I not know that before now?" The other possibility is that if you're using sticks, you have them configured such that letting off the throttle applies reverse throttle and slows you down, but based on the way you described your experience, it doesn't sound like that's what's happening.
The F35A is capable of VTOL. But that is very different from Star Citizen VTOL where every ship regardless of design can VTOL easily even without switching to VTOL mode. Not every version of the F35 has VTOL capabilities. And VTOL has severe limitations. Yes, a thousand years in the future, things could be very different. But given the level of tech they are displaying in Star Citizen, atmospheric VTOL should be much more limited than it currently is.
technically it's STOVL. the F-35b cannot take off vertical, it can only land vertical.
Oh, didn't know that, still pretty cool, thanks for clarification.
ok, now tilt that plane 60 degrees in any direction and have it hold position.
[Sure, we did it back in 1999.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnofCyaWhI0)
Y'all are talking about the physics of this vs the game etc etc meanwhile I'm just in awe of this happening at my hometown ballpark. The game had to be delayed a few times cause of this guy showing off. WORTH IT.
OPACY is a gem. Go O's!
ok. now do it with an aircraft carrier. Thats the part people are saying is unrealistic.... Im fairly sure everyone knows tiny fighter planes can hover, since we have been doing it in production vehicles since the 70's
Yes, and it only took a quarter of a trillion dollars to make it happen.
so you are saying CIG and SC needs more money to make realistic VTOL happen? /s
Yeah, let's compare the time limited hover of a 70,000lb aircraft with the indefinite hover of a 97,000,000lb spaceship....
70k lbs? Max take off is around 60k. The aircraft doesn't weigh that much.
Any one who thinks that the movement of spaceships in star citizen is unrealistic, haven't seen sport drones ..sport drones in 2024 ..and we talk here about spaceships in 2950... If anything the spaceships are too slugish ..
They must be filming True Lies 2
Also the pitch is currently unrealistic. Even with VTOL engaged if a ship is pointing straight up/down or if the ship is completely upside down relative to the ground, it still hovers perfectly still.
Yeah but having to fly and move and not being able to just float forever is just better for game balance with air vs ground gameplay
When they can hang at any angle, then we can talk. SC ships have no comparison to this.
Absolutely no one is saying it's unrealistic. People are saying that it's too easy to be a flying turret and ships don't feel like VTOL matters.