Artistic style suggestion

Suggestions
21

Hard sci-fi [quote=“INovaeKeith, post:7, topic:438”]
Are you defining a realistic art style as everything being a sterile white color? I think our art style is very well grounded in what could be realistic for space faring people. Our ships have weathering and in particular our industrial ships have a very grungy, well worn look to them.
[/quote]

Not talking about the textures here, talking about the vessel designs.

The ‘evenly distributed armour plating across everything with holes in for engines, windows and whatsits’ look has been the staple of the video games industry pretty much forever.

Just once I’d love to see a game where ships were built with exposed modular components on truss work-frames and spaced armour. I’ve never seen the likes of the Nightingale or Valley Forge in a game, it makes me so sad.

But that’s a gripe for the entire games industry, not you guys.

1 Like
22

I think you will be pleased with the content we are saving for the KS video then :wink:

4 Likes
23

personally, I love the current art style. There’s a good variety to choose from and they all look great. I cannot wait for the KS, I’m gonna end up giving you guys way too much of my money :stuck_out_tongue:

24

Yay! I guess I won’t be a virgin forever after all. :blush:

25

They may look good, but they also need to be compelling.

26

I think the gist of what the thread is asking is along the lines of “more Nautilus X, less Millennium Falcon”.

27

More Kubrick, less Lucas?

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28

Please keep in mind that all of our recent artwork has been for a single faction. In fact it has been for a single corporation within a single faction.

29

This is the first that I’VE heard of that, as far as I know. But if that’s the case, then show us. If all you show is one corporation, then that’s all we know.

A sketch. A WIP render. That’s all we need. If the Kubrickans have something to look forward to, show them. If they don’t, tell them. Otherwise, they’re gonna keep asking.

If it’s crunch time, I get that; say no more, we CAN wait. But we can’t know what you don’t show.

30

The faction guidelines have the styles clearly spelled out. The closest we have to the OP’s suggestion is the Centaurus faction. That concept art in the guidelines is what we can show at this time. We will not show you anything new on the Centaurus because we do not have anything new on the Centaurs. As explained in the past we are concentrating on Star Fold, as the minimum crowd funding will only contain the Star Fold faction. If funding allows, we will add more factions to I:B.

31

I don’t think it’s Centaurus stuff that they’re asking for; rather, it seems to me that what is being asked for is a design aesthetic more in line with modern-day rocketry than with traditional depictions of science-fiction spacecraft.

Something similar to this (obviously not as “primitive”):

in place of/alongside this:

Unless, of course, I’ve completely misunderstood what the thread is about.

1 Like
32

That’s not what I see in the OP’s render.

33

In 2012, NASA physicist Harold White revealed that he and a team were working on a design for a faster-than-light ship. Now he’s collaborated with an artist to create a new, more realistic design of what such a ship might actually look like.

That is the very beginning of the article linked in the OP as the source of the image. A little research tells me that Mr. White is indeed involved in research into non-netonian propulsion and did indeed design the ship linked in the OP, based on current non-newtonian propulsion theories.

It is no less ‘real’ than the Nautilus-X.

34

Non-netonian proplexion

35

Ugh. Not this again. White’s research is more overblown than a haystack in a hurricane. His lab basically works on figuring out what kind of energy distribution is necessary to optimize the Alcubiurre metric. We’re not even capable of producing those energy distributions, however, as they require particles with negative mass. To have him out there working on concept art for a warp enabled ship is putting the cart so far before the horse, the horse is going to die of old age before it ever catches up.

This publicity stunt currently has as much basis in reality as Star Wars does. There’s a reason that ship in the OP looks like a sci-fi model from the 1970s: It’s the only reference point Dr. White and his artist have to work from.

I hope Sonny’s having fun, and I’m sure there’s some interesting advancements to be made in the field of GR theory from his work, but unless negative mass exists, we’ll all be waiting an exceedingly long time for the USS Enterprise to beam us up.

36

more in-line

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Larry+Niven’s+Known+Space+Art
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=space+shuttle

37

yes. that is correct.

I hope Sonny’s having fun, and I’m sure there’s some interesting
advancements to be made in the field of GR theory from his work, but
unless negative mass exists, we’ll all be waiting an exceedingly long
time for the USS Enterprise to beam us up.

He’d probably have more fun with your butt than negative mass.

38

Uhhh… What?

39

And even if they somehow got their hands on negative mass and built the thing, and somehow optimized it so it wouldn’t require a few Universes worth of energy to run it, there would still be problems like the bubble filling with instant-death radiations, or emitting a planet-destroying gamma ray burst when stopping…

While we’re talking about Sonny, just for fun, could his q-thruster thingie could be used a free-energy machine? Somehow I can’t work the math right.

More on-topic, seeing the OP concept made me remember why my most prefered ships on the old forum were often Centauran ones (even though I would play Deltan, given the choice).

More contenporary-looking ships like Nautilus-X-inspired ones would look good, but they would look as out-of-place among the others than a galley at the battle of Midway.

40

Just skimming the Wikipedia article, no. I don’t believe there’s any claim that they could be used as a free-energy machine, either. There’s a different between free propellant and free energy.

You’ve heard of the quantum foam, right? The basic gist of the quantum foam is that fluctuations in the vacuum energy of empty space cause the spontaneous production of matter/anti-matter pairs (usually electron/positron pairs, but there’s no reason higher mass particle pairs can’t be produced given higher fluctuations). These particle pairs a) pop into existence, b) live for a few small fractions of a second, and then c) collide, paying back their mass energy to the vacuum.

It’s possible to interrupt this chain of events at point b) by separating the two particles, thus preventing annihilation. The thing of it, though, is that the vacuum energy must be repaid from somewhere. If it’s not going to get it back from the particle’s mass-energy, it has to come from something else.

This is the mechanism that underlies Hawking’s classical theory of black hole evaporation. The particle/antiparticle pair are created just above the black hole’s event horizon. One of the particles (particle A) are created flying in the direction of the event horizon. By conservation of momentum, the other particle (particle B) is created flying in the opposite direction. If Particle A crosses the event horizon, and Particle B is created with enough momentum to escape the black hole, that mass energy is lost to the vacuum. It needs to be repaid from somewhere, though, and it’s repaid by the black hole. In spite of the fact that the black hole has just absorbed a massive particle, the black hole actually loses mass.

In the quantum vacuum thruster, the matter/antimatter pair are separated by a strong electric or magnetic field. That field, which is generated by the ship, needs to contain a huge amount of energy. When the particles are separated, it’s the electric/magnetic field that repays the energy to the vacuum. The electric/magnetic field is also used to accelerate the newly captured particle pair away from the ship, generating thrust.

So, the ship still needs to be able to generate a huge amount of energy. Significantly more, in fact, than would be required if they carried propellant along with them. But they’d get away without having to carry the mass of that propellant, and without running the risk of running out of propellant.

The whole concept, basically, is built on the idea that we’ll overcome the energy production side of things.