My ship is shaking!!! Wait,what the…?

PolarBear · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 17:59

I’ve noticed that in the game, the bigger the system is - the more your ship shakes. You can notice it in cockpit mode more then in 3rd person mode, yet it happens there too. I remember I tried once to create a huge system (I don’t remember it’s size) and the ship just broke apart into meshes… Can someone explain me why does it happen? Or if it can be removed?

Thanks,
Poly.

Alex. · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 18:09

As you cruise further away from the sun, eventually your ship starts shaking. A while later, it explodes.

PolarBear · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 18:21

Stop joking, I’m seriouse!
It happens even when youre in the very center of the system (where the sun usually is). It depends 100% on the system’s size, thats what I know.

Alex. · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 18:38

I’m not joking, this is what I have observed in-game when cruising away from the sun in Vanilla systems. I don’t know what you’re doing different.

PolarBear · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 18:47

What you observed is probably the “System Borders” - when you cross them you die. It appears in many games.
What I’m talking about is what happens in the whole system: from the center to the border. Try to see if you have it too. Launch to space from a large system (size of 100k+) and check it out on cockpit mode.

IrateRedKite · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 19:52

IIRC it’s an engine limitation. Issue was discussed back in the day. not sure if anyone ever found a way around it.

Sizer · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 21:03

it’s called floating point error. Freelancer keeps track of your position based on your distance from the center of the system. The farther away you get, the less certain FL is of your position (due to limitations of the data type FL stores positions as)

So when FL is uncertain of exactly where you are, it displays you where ever it best thinks you are, which may be a few meters up or down or left or right every time a new frame plays on your screen. Multiply that by 30-60 frames per second, and multiply that by increasing uncertainty the farther you fly from center.

As for the Wall of Death, that was added in 1.1 because of this issue, IIRC, its ~900km in radius.

Timmy51m · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 21:07

This has always puzzled me. When I’m importing ship models into the game I usually stack them up as solars next to the missouri, right now I have around 30 ship solars stacked in rows there and they all shake. Now I’m wondering whether it’s the solars that are shaking or my ship that’s shaking, maybe everything is shaking.

w0dk4 · wrote on 15 Apr 2011, 21:11

Do you know the search function?

http://the-starport.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?start=0&topic_id=887&viewmode=flatℴ=ASC&status=&mode=0