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The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive... This has to be different Seth MacFarlane than the one I am thinking of right?
[1] http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/whatrsquos-seth...
Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?
The rest just invent whatever through the magic of procedural generation, which is cool but not coherent with using actual astronomical data.
Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?
Star Citizen perhaps, since they out of the games you've mentioned hew closest to established astronomy. The rest just invent whatever through the magic of procedural generation, which is cool but not coherent with using actual astronomical data.
Those games' established plots are apparently compelling enough, but would they drive learning if their current environments were swapped with something based on reality?
It uses random points for stars, but tracking "the nearest few thousand stars" from Earth would be pretty simple.
I actually want to make a scientifically educational game. I want to make a game that demonstrates the concepts of relativity with accurate space travel at near light speed.
Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?
ehrm, Elite: Dangerous actually use real data.
Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?
Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.)
No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation.
Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the immediate visceral.
Notably all three of those pretend space ships are, like WW2 planes, subject to air drag, have a terminal velocity and have no automation on-board whatsoever, and astronomic physics aren't even considered in the first place. These games are literally WW2 fan fics in "space". (Or really, ether, as old-timey people thought of what's between planets.)
If you're looking to teach physics and astronomics, Kerbal Space Project does that quite well, even though it also ignores relativity and speed of light considerations.
More importantly, none of these games are even remotely able to tackle the topic of civiliations and saving them, which won't be done with a gun, but with the word. The closest thing i can think of to that are the Mercenary games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_(video_game)
Edit: Not saying that the three mentioned are bad games, just that they can't be taken seriously as space games.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ehrm, Elite: Dangerous actually use real data.
Yeah, the entire Elite series has always used real star coordinates and names, at least for those close to Earth.
Setting aside the ideas for the plot, could games like Eve, No Man's Sky, or Elite: Dangerous accomplish the same thing if they used actual astronomical data?
They can't. In order: Eve is a murder/capitalism simulator and has almost no physics in the first place. (There's 3-dimensional positioning, but you can fly through planets and shoot through other ships as much as you like; also the entire world is static.) No Man's Sky is 90% an art piece with some added murder simulation. Elite: Dangerous, also a murder/capitalism simulator, only unlike Eve it's more about the imme…