Realistic Space Flight Simulator

[Urwumpe]

So no, there's no different versions of truth. as far as I am concerned.

Oh, you are wrong there. There are MANY different versions of truth, but the trick is to find the one that is most suitable for all. Ever watched the classic Japanese movie "Rashomon"?

The key issue is: Everyone only sees a small slice of the reality. And everyone only sees a small slice of a simulation game sometimes. Everyone has his own preferences what he sees.

Claiming of something like an universal truth to not just exist, but to be also known, is pretty much hubris... after all, the scientific method is about that problem: How to approach THE truth, when the best you can have is the best possible approximation to it?

 

[4throck]

Please forgive the religious reference, but the nature of truth has been debated for centuries:

Quid est veritas?


Since I've been wrong many times, for me there's more than one truth, it changes depending on your knowledge.

 

[Thorsten]

There are MANY different versions of truth, but the trick is to find the one that is most suitable for all.

I don't think climate change is going to go away just because humanity decides it's 'most suitable for all' if coal burning continues. The thing with truth is that's not voted upon, that you can't argue against an equation and that 'suitability' really doesn't play a role (usually truth does in fact not suit people...)

Since I've been wrong many times, for me there's more than one truth, it changes depending on your knowledge.

You need to distinguish 'truth' as concept from your (or my) knowledge of truth. In any case, if you're interested in the topic, I refer you to my position on Postmodern Philosophy (epistemic relativism, many truths,...)

To quote from the summary:

the way we talk about things is very dependent on cultural context (we might talk about electricity or the anbaric demon) but the underlying reality is not (both electricity and the anbaric demon require the power chord to be plugged in for a device to work). Thus, it is correct to say that there is no such thing as 'electric current' outside a particular framework of thought since 'electric current' is just a way to talk about a phenomenon - however there are properties which won't change no matter what other words we use to talk about the same thing.

 

[4throck]

I understand what you mean.
The earth is round, regardless of you believing it or not.
You need food in order to live, etc, etc.

But human behavior, specially as a group (society) is governed by belief(*) and some times its even irrational. So the "subjective truth" does matter.

* - It's funny to see scientist say they believe in science ! That's a contradiction to the scientific method.

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't think climate change is going to go away just because humanity decides it's 'most suitable for all' if coal burning continues. The thing with truth is that's not voted upon, that you can't argue against an equation and that 'suitability' really doesn't play a role (usually truth does in fact not suit people...)

No, it is not going away - but how humans see it is not universal. We have no universal sense of climate. Climate change is something that happens at so long scales, that it is even hard for experts to make good predictions. And if you remember that even operational decisions in economics (which means: Time scales less than one year) are hard for experienced humans, it should be no surprise.

So, you will always have different perceptions of climate change. You will also have many wrong perceptions of it, because after all, you need to put things into relation, that humans have no sense of. A cold winter and many humans will think climate change can't work out because it got colder. That climate change can even mean colder local weather despite global warming is something that even scientists have a hard time to get explained.

So, even if climate change is a fact and AGW very likely a fact, it does not mean that all humans agree on seeing it the same way. Like the blind people touching an elephant.

And so is realism in video games. We have no universal sense of it. An experienced A-10C pilot could play DCS and would likely find many examples how it feels wrong, despite doing it right. A casual video gamer would on the other hand believe that many of the wrong things are right.

 

[Thorsten]

It's funny to see scientist say they believe in science ! That's a contradiction to the scientific method.

No, not really. You cannot prove the truth of science or the workings of the scientific method from within itself, you can only show that it's a self-consistent framework. You can also show that it's an incomplete framework, which is to say that there's questions which the scientific method can never decide.

So the "subjective truth" does matter.

There's no question at all that it matters - nations go to war over subjective truth about the other's inferiority/evilness,...

But I would raise the question - should it matter?

Would you want to live in a world in which whether your employer has to pay you for work you do or not is a matter of subjective truth, i.e. you think yes, he thinks no, and you both agree that you just hold different notions of what the truth of a contract is? Would you want a world in which a criminal gets to walk free by arguing 'well, I'm sure I didn't do it, and if you think otherwise, that's just your subjective opinion?' Would you want to participate in road traffic when people can't agree whether the traffic lights are red or green at any given instance of time?

Arguing different versions of truth is a very dangerous game if you carry it just a bit further into your everyday life.

An experienced A-10C pilot could play DCS and would likely find many examples how it feels wrong, despite doing it right. A casual video gamer would on the other hand believe that many of the wrong things are right.

And the former would be qualified to make the judgement because he has the required knowledge and comparison standard whereas the latter would not.

If I want to know whether some animal is a fox or a cat, I'd better ask someone who knows what a fox is. That people can not recognize unfamiliar animals doesn't mean there's no truth to animals being foxes or cats and it's all in the eye of the beholder - that'd be silly.

 

[Urwumpe]

Arguing different versions of truth is a very dangerous game if you carry it just a bit further into your everyday life.

No, it is not. This is called empathy. Seeing the world with somebody elses eyes. It is not dangerous, unless you believe that your thoughts should be kept pure and your vision clear. Quite contrary. Would humans show some empathy more often, we would have less problems in the world.

---------- Post added at 11:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 AM ----------

And the former would be qualified to make the judgement because he has the required knowledge and comparison standard whereas the latter would not.

Absolutely. He buys it. He decides if he plays it or not. Who else should do that?

 

[Thorsten]

Absolutely. He buys it. He decides if he plays it or not. Who else should do that?

Why should the fact that someone buys something factor into whether the flight dynamics is realistic or not?

Realistic flight dynamics is a statement about agreement of response to control input in the simulation with the real thing (among other things) - whether it feels good to you doesn't factor here.

This is called empathy. Seeing the world with somebody elses eyes.

There's no connection here - I can empathize with someone, yet be convinced that he is wrong in his views.

 

[C3PO]

I think the main problem is that in this case "Realistic" is a subjective attribute. It's describing if it makes you feel like you're doing the actual ting you're simulating. Some people can look at the numbers on OrbitMFD and go "Yep, this is realistic" while others 'sit' in a DG 3D cockpit during reentry and say exactly the same.

 

[Thorsten]

Which is why I spent some texts earlier in the thread making a difference between the concepts of 'immersion' (what makes you feel as in the real thing) and 'realism' (factually verifiable closeness in responses to input).

 

[Urwumpe]

Why should the fact that someone buys something factor into whether the flight dynamics is realistic or not?

Realistic flight dynamics is a statement about agreement of response to control input in the simulation with the real thing (among other things) - whether it feels good to you doesn't factor here.

So, there should be a central committee on realism, defining which game is realistic and that the user should agree on it being realistic, because the experts say so? And this committee should see things as one-dimensional as you? There is a vertical velocity component, and if you pull the stick back by 33%, the vertical velocity should change like this....

Of course, you ignore there, how the aircraft structure rattles, how it sounds like, how your field of view narrows, how different you hear the world.

Technically, from a very narrow definition, it is realistic then. But from a subjective human position, which mostly perceives with emotions made for dinosaurs, it feels sterile. Not realistic at all.

There's no connection here - I can empathize with someone, yet be convinced that he is wrong in his views.

Convinced - that is the problem. If you are convinced, like he is, its impossible to make one of both of you realize that he is himself wrong. That is the problem with convictions.

 

[Thorsten]

So, there should be a central committee on realism, defining which game is realistic and that the user should agree on it being realistic, because the experts say so?

I'm not sure why you feel the need to ridicule the idea that there's objective criteria to determine the degree of realism of a simulation.

I'm also not sure why you take my example of such a criterion (qualified properly and for that very reason with among other things) as the extent of all possible criteria and construct from that a 'very narrow definition'.

But since you do both, I guess I'm done discussing this with you, I don't feel ridiculing the other's position is particularly fruitful.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm also not sure why you take my example of such a criterion (qualified properly and for that very reason with among other things) as the extent of all possible criteria and construct from that a 'very narrow definition'.

Because it simply gets you into some kind of madness. I have a book here on my nightstand, a B-58 pilot manual. As some kind of alternative fact, it has a few million multi-dimensional plots of its behavior included.

Would I turn this into some kind of test data, a B-58 simulation would be approximately a 2000 dimensional entity. 2000 dimensions, all of them independent. How realistic can a simulation of it be on a PC? For some combinations of the dimensions and flight conditions, I don't even have test data to compare, I would need to fly a few B-58 to destruction for this. And this does not even include structural simulations, I just assume the structure to fail as whole, like the manual does.

And the Space Shuttle, that you should know pretty well, there are far more dimensions. And far more configurations that add dimensions to it. How can you verify it to be "realistic".

For SSU, we are aware, that realistic is an approximation. That we can't simulate subsystem level with full accuracy, but need to use pre-calculated data and simplified models (Like how the data bus behaves). We can't create a FVM of the hydraulic circuits and solve it in real time, so that the flow changes include turbulences and local voids properly. We can't even create a simplified two dimensional flow model of it to solve in real time and expect it to be playable.


And don't get me started on simulating a SSME properly during startup. I am happy the way it is right now, because no number cruncher simulation exists right now that can reproduce the measured data of the SSME during startup. Simulating three-phase flows with the necessary accuracy and complex combustion processes at the same time is still impossible. Despite NASA sure trying to get one. The German DLR measured the Russian RD-0120 around 2000 very accurately on their test stand for one day having a simulation of it - but there is still no simulation model.

Even simulating a fuel dump properly under varying conditions of the Space shuttle would increase the CPU load a lot. CPU load, that we can use elsewhere better.

 

[Hielor]

...a difference between the concepts of 'immersion' (what makes you feel as in the real thing) and 'realism' (factually verifiable closeness in responses to input).

An iPad game will never achieve immersion in a flight simulator, but it can certainly achieve some degree of realism.

"Realistic" doesn't need to be a binary "it supports all known mechanical laws down to individual molecules" or "not realistic." There are shades of grey, and something can be realistic within the limited scope it's attempting to accomplish.