A fifth ship stat?

[Drakkenmensch]

I was chatting with Lunar earlier today and while discussing turning performance and strategies, it became apparent that letting go of the gas pedal, while beneficial for my Piranha, would bring his Van Uber to a dead stop. This got me thinking.

As most of you surely remember, there was a ship stat in the FIRST Wipeout game that was never used again since 2097 when the shields became an important feature. That stat was MASS. How can mass be important in Pure?

Simple: INERTIA.

When you let go of the gas, your ship will slow down in a ratio inversely propotional to your ship's mass. The heavier you are, the longer it takes for you to slow down from air friction. This is, as we realized, a rather important factor in your piloting style.

Seeing how the Piranha hardly slows down at all from letting go of the gas pedal, its mass rating is obviously a 5, while the Van Uber is probably a 2. Anybody else interested in trying to figure out the mass rating of all the ships in Pure? :)


EDIT: I just had an idea to explain this difference - could it be possible that the mass rating of a ship is the exact opposite of THRUST - that it decelerates at the exact same rate as it accelerates?

[Seek100]

Well, it is true that in many cases the inertia of a ship will be tied to it's acceleration, but it's not necessarily so.If they brought back a mass rating for ships it would be possible to have an incredibly heavy craft with a large amount of thrust, the acceleration would be based on both a craft's thrust and it's mass, I've completely forgotten all of my A-level maths (I only got a 'D' :roll:) but here is the wikpedia entry explaining thrust which even I can basically get:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust

So for example if the Piranha was a fairly light craft (it looks it to me) then it's low mass would partially offset it's dreadful thrust to provide a fairly decent 'acceleration', we use the terms thrust and acceleration interchangeably here when talking about pure but they are infact very different things.

I think if the new inertia system is preserved in future wipEouts a 'mass' stat which combines with 'thrust' to affect acceleration and also combines with speed to affect inertia.

[element42]

It wouldn't surprise me if Pure's physics engine did take into account the mass of the ships, it's just a stat that we don't get to see. I remember reading somewhere that Fusion's physics dealt with over 50 factors controlling how the individual ships handled but obviously we only saw a few of those.

[lunar]

there`s some good info and discussion about this sort of thing, and other recent "supership" debates, on pages 4 and 5 of this topic:

http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1712&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=100

it includes some wise words about AG ship horsepower, straight from the horse`s mouth. :)

[Drakkenmensch]

Indeed there was!

I was going through the early entries and found the following gems - now bear in mind that these were posted before the game was released!


eliminator is in the game - yes i know i'm not Colin but im sure i saw it said somewhere on the net.
There was no eliminator in the end, but racing with some of the maniacs on the zone, it sometimes feels like it though!


The Quake does not fire backwards - that was a lesson we learnt from Fusion
Riiiiiiiight :twisted: ... and speaking of eLhabib!


a cyan - orange ship, a bit bulky in shape, no idea what team...
and another one which looks almost like the one above, might even be the same, I'm not sure, but it did look a lot like assegai from w3o
eLhabib not recognizing his precious Assegai... priceless ;)


"mAximum speed with less than the best handling"
are you saying piranhas handling stats have taken a beating or something?
Let's see... Piranha handling stat... TWO... check! Shield stat... THREE... doublecheck! Thrust stat... TWO... triplecheck!

Hindsight is always 20/20, after all...

[eLhabib]

^^
cool post that, melikes :D

[Sausehuhn]

I loved the time when everybody was speculating what the new WipEout would look like. We looked the trailers up and down just to get all the small informations that were included.
Great time!! :)

[Sven]

In addition to mass/inertia, the aerodynamics of a ship will also play a significant role. If the inertia is how easy it is to change the ship's speed, aerodynamics determines how much an effect that will have.

For example, the AG-Systems is light, but has good aerodynamics, so it will have better speeds under 0 thrust than, say the Auricom, which doesn't have quite as good aerodynamics. But the Tigron, being a heavy aerodynamic wall, will just push all the air out of the way due to its inertia, and maintain speed.

In theory anyway. I didn't test any of that.

[syckls]

Methinks an aerodynamics model alongside all the other cool stuff this game has would be quite a strain on the system. I think the simplest approach would just be that deceleration is at the same rate as acceleration. Mass may well be a factor, however... does anyone still have that Feisar XML file? We may be able to discover something from that.

EDIT: Dug it up from my Recycle Bin, and there is a mass stat in the Feisar XML file. Whether it has anything to do with deceleration and other factors is a different question entirely. It would be pretty helpful if we could get XML files for other ships as well. My question is, what is Colin Berry doing?

[defor]

I'm just posting this to show what's on the disc for those curious.. The same information exists for all ships...

Extracted from the PAL UMD:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<Handling>
<Stats team="Feisar">
<InternalCamera fov="65" headtilt="0.4" height="0" length="3" pitch="0"/>
<BackwardCamera fov="65" headtilt="0.8" height="0" length="3" pitch="0"/>
<BonnetCamera fov="70" height="2.0" length="0" pitch="0"/>
<ExternalCameraFar fov="60" lookat_height="0" lookat_length="20" pos_height="4.0" pos_length="-19.0" spring_horiz="10" spring_vert="10"/>
<ExternalCameraClose fov="60" lookat_height="0" lookat_length="25" pos_height="4.0" pos_length="-15.0" spring_horiz="12" spring_vert="12"/>
<AirbrakeGraphics amount="30" down_speed="100" up_speed="500"/>
<Misc height="3.5" length="13" shield="100" width="5.5"/>
<Class name="VECTOR">
<Engine accelcap="35" amount="291" falloff="500" gain="900" turbo="200"/>
<Brakes amount="100" falloff="100" gain="100"/>
<Turning amount="1.7" falloff="850" gain="700"/>
<Airbrake amount="10" drag="2" falloff="500" gain="900" turn="10" slidegrip="80"/>
<Antigrav grip_air="1.0" grip_ground="2.5" landing_rebound="0.450" rebound="0.550" rebound_jump_time="1.0" ride_height="6"/>
<Physical flight_gravity="90" mass="1" normal_gravity="5" track_gravity="80"/>
</Class>
<Class name="VENOM">
<Engine accelcap="30" amount="398" falloff="500" gain="900" turbo="200"/>
<Brakes amount="100" falloff="100" gain="100"/>
<Turning amount="1.8" falloff="900" gain="650"/>
...(Cont.)

This goes on for each speed class.

[bakeded]

8O very interesting...

[Sven]

I wonder....Can you change the values and recompile it into an .iso to play it hacked?

[Sausehuhn]

I would say "try it" if we weren't in this forum ;)

[Sven]

Methinks an aerodynamics model alongside all the other cool stuff this game has would be quite a strain on the system.Actually, the aerodynamics model could be as simple as a negative accelaration that's proportionate to speed. It doesn't have to be that complicated.

[eLhabib]

As Drak, Hellfire and my humble self have tried and tested, aerodynamics DO exist in this game. At first I couldn't believe it myself, but the purE physics engine really is a lot more elaborate than it shows at first sight.
Drak put up an experiment of accelerating his Piranha on the long start/finish straight of sagarmatha, one time without pitch adjust, and one time with pitch down. I did the same with my Assegai. We tried to accelerate to the highest possible speed before hitting the wall of the first turn. The results were shocking, to say the least: a solid 5%-15% acceleration increase, depending on ship and speed class. Pushing the nose down will have to become an important factor for TTs, as I have beaten various of my own record times by as much as 2.5 seconds since yesterday, simply by using pitch to push down the nose whenever I am on a long straight, when I fly over a speedup pad, or when I need to accelerate quickly out of corners.
Try it for yourself - it might take a while to get used to with the analogue nub (don't know how it would work with the d-pad...), but once you are able to maintain your racing line while pushing your nose down, you'll see the results are overwhelming.

[Drakkenmensch]

Indeed they are - and so another technique is added to the roster of skills required for experimented racers. It's a tricky one to master here, but one which makes a truly remarkable difference. I can tell it's going to take me a while to get the hang of it, but this is REALLY worth the effort in learning!!!

[xEik]

In fact, you can do complete laps in some circuits (haven't tried all of them) just by using the pitch and never pushing the accelerator button.

A few days ago I thought of a challenge that consisted in completing a TT without ever using the accelerator, only pitch, turbos and sideshifting. But in the end I discarded it as possibly too boring.

[Drakkenmensch]

That actually sounds crazy enough to be interesting - I imagine one would have to use a turbo from the start line, and grab speed pads repeatedly to keep moving forward, but the momentum is very difficult to kill entirely short of slamming the brakes and putting both feet on the track Flintstone style.

I might give that a try! (the no gas pedal thing, not the Flintstones feet braking)

[xEik]

Just in case I didn't make it clear in my previous post, the pitch thing is not about aerodynamics.
You can start moving from a status of speed = 0 in a flat straight just by pressing UP.

[eLhabib]

no you cannot, at least not at EVERY flat straight. try it at the starting line of sagarmatha. push down the nose without pressing (x). you won't move an inch. on what track have you experienced this? maybe it WAS sloping down ever so slightly.

[Drakkenmensch]

I'm guessing that this would be why you can't do it on EVERY track - you need at least a TINY downward slope on the starting grid to pull it off.

[defor]

and yes, editing the files modifies the ingame stats...

now if only I could track down the folder structure for the wad files It might be possible to add whole new teams...

Apparently the US release has a pile of bugfixes and updates from the Japanese release and is thus broken into an excessive number of packs, the PAL release is much easier to work with, only having the data, front end, and front end data packs...

-Off-Topic-Sorta-

if progress was made of decrypting the addon pack wad files, we could stand a chance at creating new ships from these property files.

They appear to be encrypted, however not using the same signing as psp applications... who knows- that's a little out of my area of study...

[Purist]

*plays mod for the day :wink: *

defor... watch yourself buddy, myself included there's more than several peeps from SL here and I'm sure they don't appriciate you fooling around with their baby.

What you're upto isn't entirely legal 8O and therefore shouldn't be discussed here. However you are relatively new to the boards and I'm sure you'll be cut some slack.


... simply by using pitch to push down the nose whenever I am on a long straight, when I fly over a speedup pad, or when I need to accelerate quickly out of corners. Try it for yourself - it might take a while to get used to with the analogue nub (don't know how it would work with the d-pad...), but once you are able to maintain your racing line while pushing your nose down, you'll see the results are overwhelming.

Excellent... I'll have to try this :D

[SMThomas]

...As most of you surely remember, there was a ship stat in the FIRST Wipeout game that was never used again since 2097 when the shields became an important feature. That stat was MASS. How can mass be important in Pure?...


Have you played WipEout Fusion? That stat Mass was shown there.

[Drakkenmensch]

I stand corrected! :)

[Sven]

now if only I could track down the folder structure for the wad files It might be possible to add whole new teams...Also, hypothetically, if one were to hypothetically crack the dowload file structure, one could, hypothetically create a hypothetical "download" that creates a hypothetical custom soundtrack. Hypothetically.

[defor]

Purist- fair enough
I got myself into trouble once before with direct linking the pure website before it was out...

I realize the hypothetical-ness of the situation, but it's intriguing to work with making addons, mods, what have you for games that I enjoy- And since I firmly believe in buying copies of anything i mod, and makign that a requirement (where I can)- you know...

<RANT>
I'm a designer, if I see something, I enjoy it for what it is, then I want to do my part to make it better, or at the least, show my vision.
</RANT>

anyway- gotcha... how would you suggest proceeding with user-created content exploration- the other topics here seem to be more interested what to put into the game than how...

[MaxxMedievil]

Hmmmm...... :?:
Aerodynamics................. :!: :!: :!:
Virtual crafts sliding in the air............. :bat
when something is in suspension................anti gravity............... 8O

Remenber one thing first, you are racing in anti-gravity crafts.

First, no gravity, so in a similiar space, you accelerate but when you want to stop, you have to reverse thrust, no gravity, no drag, don't stop, no matter your quantity of mass. :|

Second, no gravity, your craft maybe a cube, it's the same than a ferrari. :|

Is this correct :?:

[element42]

air resistance. :roll:

[Megatron42]

But there IS gravity. Otherwise you'd have Descent game physics. There's just a repelling force that's probably some function of distance from the ground and the craft's current velocity and such.

[MaxxMedievil]

I have some dificult to explain me in english, this is more technical, i have to consullt dictionary. Next time with more time, sorry. :oops:

But air resistance, is probably.................................hmmmmmmmm mm...................
complex.................the game as to be explained to think better

we have no gravity
air, because we need, or not, oxygen bottles?

more mass, ,more dificult to turn....................
greater mass, stop faster with gravity, no gravity i'ts the same, you don't stop, bigger thrust's to stop.

:wink: :radar

this is a anti-gravity game :?: i think :?:

[Drakkenmensch]

It's not gravity that slows you down, it's air resistance. The reason why there's no slowing down the space shuttle isn't the lack of gravity, it's lack of air to cause friction.

[MaxxMedievil]

lift versus gravity
thrust versus air resistance

this is an equation so simple that put craft's in the air.

cut the first :?:

[Seek100]

Erm, not sure I understand you there Maxx, but air resistance and gravity are 2 completely different concepts.

Air resistance is a function of the molecules that make up your craft coming into contact with the molecules that make up the atmosphere, they hit each other and rebound off of each other, as the air hits the front of your craft, it is rebounded 'forwards' that is away from the front surface of your craft, in return Newton's laws state that the molecules of your craft have to move backwards (or in this case slow down slightly) to compensate for the air molecules moving forwards. This has nothing to do with gravity it only involves the interaction at the molecular level.

Gravity on the other hand is a function of some as yet unexplained force. It involves 2 objects, each with mass; in our case your craft having a mass, and the planet Earth having a mass. Gravity functions by the fact that the mass of the Earth pulls your craft towards itself, by the same token the mass of your craft, pulls the Earth towards itself. The amount of movement is determined by the relative masses of the objects, so the Earth being bloody facking massive will exert a massive pull on your craft, but the craft having a mass will still pull the Earth ever so slightly, it's just completely unnoticeable at that scale. We know this happens because we can observe the Sun being pulled about in small circles by the orbits of the planets in the solar system. There is a theoretical concept of a particle called the 'graviton' appropriately which if discovered might make it possible for us to manipulate gravity's effects by concentrating or dispersing these 'graviton' particles as we need. But that's all nothing more than theory at the moment, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton)'s the wikipedia entry on the hypothetical graviton particle for those interested in a brief summary of the concept and the trouble with integrating it with current physical models.

[MaxxMedievil]

two diferent concepts that interact, when you have something in movement. As you have said the battle craft versus earth is greater than battle air resistance versus craft.
When you have a supersonic warplane like F-15E, that is cx is almost nul, if you have no gravity and stop is engines:

It was a very long wait until it stop's, inverse of that, with gravity it falls down like a stone, with more speed than the speed it goes at the moment that it stops the engine.

i was trying to say that, with no gravity you have the greater problem resolved.

i think :)

[Sven]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at....With gravity, as it's falling, its velocity is increasing. The horizontal component of the velocity decreases at the same rate as it would with no gravity, and the vertical component of the velocity increases from zero at a rate of 9.8m/s^2, no matter the mass of the craft. So with a negligible "cx" (air resistance?), the horizontal velocity would remain constant, and the plane would actually be accelarating, not slowing down at all.

The F-15 does indeed have a very low aerodynamic profile, so it would take a long time to stop just on air resistance, but they put airbrakes on the thing to let them slow it down faster...same with the Wipeout Craft.

[MaxxMedievil]

exactly 8)
a big air brake, F-15 is a supersonic airplane the profile of the is designed for that purpose, low air resistance, not for high lift like the warplane A-10. So it's velocity to landing is faster than A-10, need the airbrake when is near the ground. :)

[Seek100]

Even though air-resistance is negligible with a fighter-jet like the F15E it still is not related top gravity, in your post before mine you mentioned 'cut the first?' referring to gravity, this implied to me that you thought that by removing the ffects of gravity - that is destroying or transforming the graviton strings - you would also at the same time remove air-resistance, which is a fallacy as as long as there is still air infront of the craft there will be air-resistance, and with something with such a huge frontal profile as say the Triakis you will notice the effect of 'drag' because of air-resistance, it won't flow through the air as easily as say the Feisar which has a much smaller and more aerodynamic frontal profile. And believe me at the speeds those craft are going air-resistance should play a huge part, mainly in acceleration and ability to hold speed.

The airbrakes work so well because at those speeds sticking a big lump of metal into the oncoming air will slow you down bloody quick, at 500km/h or whatever a reasonable speed for a wipEout craft is, they will work much better than at only 100km/h where their impact will dramatically drop off. Put simply you cannot remove air-resistance, which would only be possible by racing in a vacuum anyway, because then the system the craft use to maneouvre (airbrakes and in previous wipEout games they had ailerons for normal pitch-n-roll) would cease to function effectively.

[xEik]

no you cannot [accelerate just by pressing up], at least not at EVERY flat straight. try it at the starting line of sagarmatha. push down the nose without pressing (x). you won't move an inch. on what track have you experienced this? maybe it WAS sloping down ever so slightly.
I'm sorry the reply to this comes so late but I couldn't test it and reply until now.
Besides I hate being corrected when I am, in fact, right. ;)

Yes you can start moving from v = 0 only by pressing UP. On every flat straight. In both directions of the flat straight (forwards and backwards). So no need of a slight slope. In fact, I finished a TT in Vector Sagarmatha with Triakis (low acceleration) by just using the nub. Not a single button.

The ony place where you can't accelerate from v = 0 by just pressing UP is an upwards slope. The acceleration you gain with this method is not enough to make your ship start moving.

I guess you just didn't have the patience to see your ship slowly accelerate. Granted, without speedpads, turbos or downwards slopes the ships won't make it faster than 30 km/h.

[username]

what i like to do is go onto multi-player in wipeout fusion. park one ship still and get another ship to ram it like mad, i remember someone saying that because tigron has such a big mass and van uber so little you can nearly destroy it!! :twisted: piranah is exelent for that on pure too! (against some little weakling like ... harimau) :D

[Drakkenmensch]

Now, since it's proven that you cen get forward momentum through pitch alone, wouldn't it be fun to have speed contests? Two categories - with and without speedpads/turbos

[JABBERJAW]

Lateral stability I believe would have to do with aerodynamics somewhat for the fifth ship stat in wipeout xl. I had discovered a gameshark code to adjust this. If you put it really low the ship would stutter around. Iv'e got to get back to finding those codes again.

[eLhabib]

Yes you can start moving from v = 0 only by pressing UP. On every flat straight. In both directions of the flat straight (forwards and backwards). So no need of a slight slope. In fact, I finished a TT in Vector Sagarmatha with Triakis (low acceleration) by just using the nub. Not a single button.

The ony place where you can't accelerate from v = 0 by just pressing UP is an upwards slope. The acceleration you gain with this method is not enough to make your ship start moving.

I guess you just didn't have the patience to see your ship slowly accelerate. Granted, without speedpads, turbos or downwards slopes the ships won't make it faster than 30 km/h.

8O wow, I guess I really WAS too impatient... have you tried this with other ships, too, or just triakis?

[Sven]

I guess it's just the antigrav generator pushing the ship forward due to the pitch?

[djlucite]

That's exactly what I was thinking.

[eLhabib]

yeah, that makes sense!

[djlucite]

My thumb got sore attempting to do an entire time trial by pitching upward, though. Better add that to the side effects list :P

[Drakkenmensch]

Forcing myself to play with the nose pointed down, I have learned some greater measure of control over my ship's performance. The wobble is much less of an issue once you learn to locate the apex of the nub's upward position - the uppermost orientation seems to have a "groove" of sort where you can lock the nub in place to have a perfect forward line with pitch down. Once you learn that skill and can race for nearly whole races without wobbling left and right - and without cramping your thumb too fast - you will be able to claim your prize:

A sustainable top speed increase of roughly 20-25 kph.

That may not seem much at a glance, but over a 3 minute race on a straight line, that represents in a full kilometer lead. I've been redoing some older time trials on my japanese version and I'm annihilating my old records.


Pride.
Power.
Piranha!