Excellent post mcsven.

There is another potential problem with demanding broad and deep (or even X and deep) and that is that the definition of "deep" is quite variable depending on who is using the word.

As an example for combat: the military flight simulator DCS has a component called Flaming Cliffs 3 where planes have significantly developed flight physics; where there is a degree of startup sequence; and where combat is realistic in the sense that you need to know the ins and outs of your weapons and radar systems on an almost fundamental level, as well as a detailed knowledge of flight tactics in order to win any sort of engagement, even in single player. Learning a new plane takes about a night or three of practice. Learning to use it effectively takes two or three weeks.

On LT, many would say this sort of simulation is more than deep enough - but Flaming Cliffs 3 is the shallowest DLC that DCS has - most modules have fully clickable cockpits (and the largest collection of initialisms you'll ever see) and take weeks of constant practice to even begin to become familiar with the aircraft in question. This is not an exaggeration. In the DCS community, these detailed models are the deep ones, and FC3 is the shallow one. For LT, it's the difference between very deep and extremely deep.

So my point with all this is: where do we stop? If Josh, with the push by the community, decides to go for broad and deep, and what point will he be satisfied that a given component is deep enough? We've seen his penchant for accepting nothing less than perfection; what if that also extended to component depth? Will LT ever come out? When it does, would the community really use each component to its fullest potential?

I'm happy with combat and trade being as deep as they are right now, and other components existing at a playable level. From what I know of Freelancer, it was not a simulator; and inasmuch as I don't believe this game really is Freelancer 2, I think that if Josh wants that sort of spirit to it then I believe component depth is of secondary importance.

So for some discussion of the actual devlog
I watched the video in the meantime. Very interesting, but with a few caveats. Disclaimer: I only have a Bachelor degree in Physics (working on the Master) so this is a bit out of my league. Nevertheless.
1. About the firewall paradox: he explains why Bob can only observe Alice as being evaporated. What he doesn't explain though is why Alice observes herself being fine despite passing a boundary of 10^whatever degrees. So I'm not really convinced about that...
2. But more importantly: the Sherlock Holmes quote at the start. Yeah, that's not how science works. There is no such thing as scientific absolute truth. There are physical models and those models can describe reality accurately (up to a certain point) or they can not do that. The fact that a model does describe reality accurately doesn't mean it is "the truth" because there usually is an other model that interprets things differently but predicts the same results (example: in Electromagnetism, you can say that something is a magnetic field, or you can say that it is an electric field in a moving reference frame. Both predict the same result and are correct). So evaluating all possibilities and only keeping the "one thing that is not wrong" is bollocks.
The holographic principle is indeed a very interesting and cool hypothesis, but has absolutely no evidence going for it (yet) and is therefore not anymore the truth than any of the plenty models that are being proposed right now.
3. As stated in the Wikipedia article, solutions of Einsteins equations of General Relativity exist that have more entropy per volume than Black Holes, which makes his 'the universe is a hologram' a bit moot, methinks.

Dinosawer wrote:... Disclaimer: I only have a Bachelor degree in Physics (working on the Master) so this is a bit out of my league. ...

Love that line. Dude you have no idea of feeling out of your league. This conversation makes me feel like the blond girl in "Big Bang Theory" than again so do a few others!

Your post seemed very good and I applaud your stance to say it like you see it, bollox, which was my impression when I saw it, but I was working on gut rather than education!

After watching that video, a couple of things stuck out for me.
1. All the examples he gave, dealt with static information and never really seemed to touch on dynamic information, which would probably be the case, in information involving a living, breathing and dynamic part of Josh's game. So I don't think it would really help in that respect.

2. He comes up with that minus rule, but it's not really new. He is basically saying "matter," is never destroyed, but changes the word matter to data. Sure you may be able to interchange the two, but calling it data instead of matter hasn't really changed much, at least in my mind. He is just calling particles data. Listen to the talk, change the word, "data," when he says it, to matter, and its the same thing.

As far as compressing the data of the far off bubbles, it seems to me that what you are trying to accomplish, is a way to maintain an overall integrity of a dynamic world bubble that you are not directly involved with or have a view of. If it was me, I would break it down into smaller pieces because the overall task is a large problematic one, but really consists of smaller ones that work together to make a bigger overall problem.

Seems to me, the first thing you would want to do, is decide how to scale down, or lower the fidelity of those world bubbles as they get farther away. So, you would need to decide what kind of scale you are going to implement in order to know when to downgrade any particular bubble. I would imagine either a linear or exponential scale. Probably exponential would be my choice as the prime solution for various reasons.

So then, as distance gets farther, and assuming an exponential scale, at certain points of distance, those bubbles will compress down in data detail. So, how do you compress it?

Well first, at the very lowest level of compression, what information would need to be known for it to move forward without any player actions or input, assuming it has at least been discovered at some point by the player, who has no resources near the bubble nor is he himself anywhere near it.

So the starting point would be what was its state when he first encountered it and then left? What information would be needed to move that information forward in time? And what about time? Time itself is also a factor. Then you have to consider, does the player have any assets including himself, moving towards that bubble intending to do a task. As long as the player is letting that AI ship do the walking, then you probably don't need to raise the fidelity, you only really need to deal with time and then whatever effect time had on whatever task is assigned, like a market for instance.

To sum up, scaling down far off bubbles, will probably have to consider time passed from it's last "viewed," state, save the pertinate info somewhere along with some kind of timer of sorts, that when the player or one of his assets arrives, it can use that time, plus the arrival time to figure out how much elapsed time has passed, and then use it to itinerate the bubble mechanics like market or whatever.

I probably didn't explain it very good, and some stuff is still bubbling around in my head, but just thought I would throw this out there.

Josh, you are a tease. Happy belated birthday, LT.

That by far is the most exciting devlog I have read in 2 years. For this ...

Who knows, we might be looking at a lifetime of work here

That was a superb log entry, Josh (Monday, December 1, 2014). I wish we had seen more of this over the years. The inclusion of screenshots would have been very welcome. I do hope you will continue to thrill gamers with exciting and innovative products in the years to come. You have a gift that many here envy and we need games developers with integrity and talent.

Then we finally get a screenshot in the devlog and it's 2.5 years old
I kid, obviously. Cool stuff!

Anyway. Waxing nostalgic can be entertaining. Especially when you need to distract the crowd from a stealth bomber

Am I being a bit dense or is that code for "incoming", Josh.

Victor Tombs wrote:

Anyway. Waxing nostalgic can be entertaining. Especially when you need to distract the crowd from a stealth bomber

Am I being a bit dense or is that code for "incoming", Josh.

Josh is probably like right now.

Sorry I broke your bomber Josh. I feel bad now, especially if it was setting off. Which is the impression I got from today's log, so am hyped

Wondered about the scale of asteroids in an asteroid belt almost behind a planet. They appeared still quite large in the video, seemed like moons. Mayhaps they were too large somehow or the planet in question really super tiny?

youngneil1 wrote:Wondered about the scale of asteroids in an asteroid belt almost behind a planet. They appeared still quite large in the video, seemed like moons. Mayhaps they were too large somehow or the planet in question really super tiny?

They never struck me as huge? They are rocks, not much bigger than your run of the mill boulder. I think your sense of scale is off Although the planets are scaled down a bit.

They never struck me as huge? They are rocks, not much bigger than your run of the mill boulder. I think your sense of scale is off Although the planets are scaled down a bit.

Yes, so I thought too for those near the player. Than I saw those half-covered by the distant planet. I mean, the fact alone that I could see those far distant ones as individual boulders seemed wrong in scale to me. Unless the planet was really extremely small.

youngneil1 wrote:

They never struck me as huge? They are rocks, not much bigger than your run of the mill boulder. I think your sense of scale is off Although the planets are scaled down a bit.

Yes, so I thought too for those near the player. Than I saw those half-covered by the distant planet. I mean, the fact alone that I could see those far distant ones as individual boulders seemed wrong in scale to me. Unless the planet was really extremely small.

planets ARE extremely small in LT compared to the real world