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/vi...=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 : ... 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

[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.