this is similar to the Kerbal Space Program Kraken right? floating point errors due to the massive scale involved? At least in the KSP case they could mitigate it by moving space instead of moving the ship. In the Star Citizen case they'll have to get really clever.
Maybe you're thinking Outer Wilds. The kraken in KSP is due to a lot of stuff but it mostly comes down to the vagaries of n-body physics sims on dozens of objects that are touching too close. Mods that fuse ships together (auto struts or the like) remove most kraken attacks.
Outer Wilds does a lot of dynamic physics stuff and does indeed move the universe around the player.
Apparently KSP moves the universe now too, which caused the opposite problem of exploding nearby ships as you passed them. Which honestly is fucking rad, like you're sonic booming them to death.
Outer Wilds also I think switches to a simplified physics system for small, faraway objects, so they don't succumb to floating point bullshit while you're away from them.
KSP has a dozen tricks to sell you the illusion of traveling vast distances without actually having to deal with the consequences of putting vast distances in the game world, I remember one of the original devs HarvesteR having a website with dev diaries going back to the earliest alpha versions of the game but I can't find it now.
Outer Wilds also had the genius idea of making all the planets actually just... really small. Like, in-universe. I maintain the opinion that this is the only way to make a true open-world space game.
KSP never had n-body physics, but you can read about the Kraken and how it was solved here. Basically when you go above a certain speed the game will stop actually speeding up your ship and instead speed up the universe around you.
It doesn't have n-body physics on orbital simulation but every rocket part is physical to every other part on the same craft. It's how space stations get really wobbly.
(Super Monkey Ball voice) FALL OUT
this is similar to the Kerbal Space Program Kraken right? floating point errors due to the massive scale involved? At least in the KSP case they could mitigate it by moving space instead of moving the ship. In the Star Citizen case they'll have to get really clever.
Maybe you're thinking Outer Wilds. The kraken in KSP is due to a lot of stuff but it mostly comes down to the vagaries of n-body physics sims on dozens of objects that are touching too close. Mods that fuse ships together (auto struts or the like) remove most kraken attacks.
Outer Wilds does a lot of dynamic physics stuff and does indeed move the universe around the player.
Apparently KSP moves the universe now too, which caused the opposite problem of exploding nearby ships as you passed them. Which honestly is fucking rad, like you're sonic booming them to death.
Outer Wilds also I think switches to a simplified physics system for small, faraway objects, so they don't succumb to floating point bullshit while you're away from them.
KSP has a dozen tricks to sell you the illusion of traveling vast distances without actually having to deal with the consequences of putting vast distances in the game world, I remember one of the original devs HarvesteR having a website with dev diaries going back to the earliest alpha versions of the game but I can't find it now.
Outer Wilds also had the genius idea of making all the planets actually just... really small. Like, in-universe. I maintain the opinion that this is the only way to make a true open-world space game.
KSP never had n-body physics, but you can read about the Kraken and how it was solved here. Basically when you go above a certain speed the game will stop actually speeding up your ship and instead speed up the universe around you.
It doesn't have n-body physics on orbital simulation but every rocket part is physical to every other part on the same craft. It's how space stations get really wobbly.