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Hello everyone,

Things still seem to be continuing to rocket by at the moment. Time seems to be moving fast ! But before I get on to the inevitable pretty screenshot spam ...

Too late !

That one was illuminated by the light of a Neutron Star, shortly before :

Diving into the streamers to get a hyperdrive jump boost.

Back to the real world ? I should have a couple of days off this week ! Yey ! This is mostly due to getting close to busting the flexi time working hours credit limit though, with more of those long hours to come later. I don't mind that, because those super long days are due to getting out of the office and seeing Stuff. Stuff that I can't talk about here because of you know, it's work :-D And I try to keep the work stuff out of this blog.

Oh - click for bigger on the pictures as per usual. Apparently they aren't in the full 1440p source resolution but I hope they still look amazing.

Plan for the two days off involves chilling out (of course) and ... hopefully a trip into Wales again. I want to look at a castle, plus there's Cardiff and the book caves and the sweet shop and the occasional music store and ... (hushed voice) .... Lego shop. Yep.

Other game, big ship. I think it's from either X Wing, or it's an Imperial Assault Gunboat from Tie Fighter. Big ship now in Lego. I'm not fussed about the other new Lego stuff that's coming, it's either Meh or seen it before. But I do want that big one, if I can find a place to put it.

 Might melt in the sun though.

I'm almost getting to the end of the music library with what I've managed to listen to as well. Not long left, only about 350 tracks. That's taken over a year ! It's good to listen to it all again. I have a few things in mind actually for content to come :

Something about soundtracks. Some films are memorable for their story, some films are more memorable for the soundtrack. The best films match an incredible story and great soundtrack. I want to talk about those someday soon. This thought brought to you by listening to soundtracks from :

John Williams - incredible soundtracks for Star Wars, Raiders, Jurassic Park, ET, Jaws ... and so many more. The magic of this one is that, while you can recognise the style of the composer, the soundtracks are different and fit the film.
James Horner - wrote the memorable soundtrack of Wrath of Khan as well as Battle Beyond the Stars.
And a few more (Stu Phillips, Barry Gray, John Barry, Hans Zimmer, Bear McCreary) but that would be spoilers for the talking about movies post !

I'm wanting to do a few more Elite videos as well. The subjects in mind are :
Neutron Star Boosting
Exploration and the new Discovery Scanner system.
Both of these should do for some short and hopefully sweet videos with pretty stuff on screen. And apparently it's stuff people want to see.

Like nebula ! And a paint job apparently getting a bit tatty.

That looked amazing while jumping towards it. This was the Bubble Nebula. Quite little actually.

I think it looked better from the outside to be honest !

I caught this shot after jumping away one spot as well. A local star, with the bubble nebula behind.

This was the next nebula, Altera's Eye. There's actually a black hole in there. I thought there'd be a chance to land and take a nice screenie with black hole distortion but that wasn't to be. Next time ! To be honest, I was feeling a little burned out on the exploration run and wanting to complete the route before the time limit expired. The other routes that I have in mind have more generous times.

The second last stop was in the Gorgon Nebula. This was another one where the region of space appeared first as a small feature on the galactic ribbon, with those brighter stars all spread out there in a distinctive cluster. And then you get closer and the feature steadily resolves. This was the last jump before the destination :

The Gorgon Nebula research facility. Another asteroid base, in the rings of a gas giant. A good stopover before the last stop :

A station so posh looking on the inside, I thought I had to get the paint job sorted out before taking the screenshot.

It's a curious layout actually ... That's the docking bay on the inside of a rotating section. It's a bulbous cylinder pattern on the outside split up into distinct sides on the inside, with the docking landing pads taking up the whole of one of those sides. The centripetal gravity goes towards the floor, or rather it goes directly outwards. So where the sides join, gravity is not straight down.

That must blow the mind if you were to actually try and walk around in there. I suspect space legs would soon acclimatise to the irregular spin gravity though. The hab sections of the stations tend to be more like :

That's an old one, showing the docking bay in the centre and a habitation ring surrounding it. The farther out you go, the faster the linear velocity and the higher the spin gravity. So the hab ring will be at higher gravity than the cargo and docking area. (This is a good thing for healthiness). That's Pratchett's Disc and the screenshot is from my first Elite pilot ... That long ago !

It's good that stuff like this is in the game. It looks great and there's a nod to science and a proper physics way of doing things without cheating too much.

Because I do like my internet spaceships to not cheat too much :-). It's also good that they've added in various tribute locations, like Pratchett's Disc, as well. It's a lovely gesture.

More travels of Commander Sleepy

Hello everyone,

Been back in the pilot's seat again. Out in the stars, finding the lovely looking places.

And of course, landing by them and taking the screenshots (click for bigger as always). Before diving too deeply into those internet spaceships :

Work stuff - I don't talk about work stuff much here because ... work. There were a couple of away trips last week that were instructive plus a couple more away trips this week which we'll hopefully learn more from. And more to come ! Busy.

Outsides - I'm going to talk about these in more detail at some point. After perhaps 8 years of the long term condition, I'm actually almost better now. It's very, very close. It must have been a case where the damage increased so quickly and dramatically that my immune system just couldn't keep up and it took a while to stabilise the condition and get it under control before repairs could happen. Almost there now though.

Feeling old on the inside now though.

Film stuff - Ad Astra is worth a watch. It's a new film starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut who has to appeal to his astronaut dad to resurface from being holed up at the other end of the solar system. It's been described as a mix between 2001 and Apocalypse Now. I need to watch Apocalypse Now again at some point to see if that's a fair comparison but it feels about right. There are stunning visuals here, great action sequences and in between those, what felt like a fair bit of psychological nuance going on. It feels like the mix is a fair comment.

Worth watching. Leave your expectations at the door as usual, ignore the dodgy science (gravity simulation in films is tough) and see what it's got. As mentioned, there are a few bits of dodgy science in there but nothing on the scale of Interstellar's dodginess and I rate this and Interstellar pretty high on Intriguing Film, Worth Watching.

Talking of science, I know more about this one now. The crater to the right has a distinctive pimple in the middle. I've learned that this is a telltale for a particularly heavy impact, the type that makes craters a few kilometers wide.

Did I mention that the rover has a name now ? Searching For Biscuits is the mothership, the Crumb is the rover.

Found a Jellyfish Nebula on the way ...

And a Crab Nebula too, with the ribbon of the Milky Way running down its centre.

And more opportunities to take beauty shots of Biscuit and Crumb.

This is a nebula in the NGC 1491 region.

Before heading off to an encounter with a ghost ship, the Zurara. One thing I look for in games is how things are put together. So here, we have a space ship with a couple of partial spinning habitation rings. There is a command section up at the bow :

And an engineering section aft, with a pair of gargantuan engines coupled to it. One thought about those engines, there'd be massive torsional stress going through the pylons as the engines fire up and go forward with the pylons transmitting that thrust to the central body. The engines want to move, Newton's Laws say that the centre section doesn't want to. The pylons are what connect them up and transfer the force.

There we go. I do like my internet spaceships to make a certain amount of sense and it's great how much of stuff like that has been hidden in the game.

I attempted a landing on the engineering section but didn't get in. No keepsie salvage this time.

On to the next way point and this planetoid was close enough to that sun that the fuel scoop was happily collecting more hydrogen.

I never want to get too close to these, the distortion in the Galactic Ribbon is the lensing effect of a black hole.

I think I'm learning the trick of getting close to these though. That's a Neutron Star at the centre, a star that's gone boom in a nova but isn't quite massive enough to collapse completely into a black hole. They're also known as Pulsars, as the streamers you see there give off EM Radiation (X Ray radio waves) that our telescopes can pick up and we see them on Earth as pulses of signal as the neutron stars rotate. In game, if you fly into the streamer, you get bounced around a bit (dangerous) but you can jump 4x the distance you can normally. Handy for going long distance in less time.

You do miss the sights though, like this moon that is so close to the gas giant's rings that it's almost touching them. I had the happy sight of seeing this one in daylight today after landing there in darkness yesterday.

On to the last location, ominously named "Explorer's End". Ominous.

That's the sight as you drop out of hyperspace. The orange star is a super young Herbig AE/BE star. (More on Wiki). The star is 0.777 times the radius of our sun. Not big. The white one is another matter, it's a Class O giant star, 158 times the radius of our sun. Chunky.

Those are the same two stars, after backing away a bit. But that's not all for this system. There are also a couple of black holes. One was only 2.5 Light Seconds away when dropping out of hyperspace, the other was safely ages away. (2.5 Light Seconds is about twice the orbit distance of the Moon). The issue with this system is that you can drop out between the two stars, instead of to the side like I did there. Or ... you can drop out too close to the Black Hole. That's always a bit bad.

I'm actually finding Elite to be a little grindy at the moment though. It's like my mind wants to be playing other games (it does) and is resenting being on a bit of a timescale for the current exploration run. Not too far to go though before civilisation.

 That's the Jellyfish Nebula again and the faint lights of another asteroid base.

It is a very pretty game though.

More Tales From The Frontier

So I left yesterday's post with a picture of the Searching For Biscuits, landed at a space port ...

I had a chance to do a little more flying around yesterday, following a new expedition route.

This route has nebulae ... lots of them. I'm hoping to find some amazing screenshots from this route. As always, click for bigger. Most of these are in 1440p from the game, although there's a reduced hi-res one later.

About that one though, I'd been looking for a Voyager Surfs The Rings shot for a little while now. If you've watched Star Trek Voyager, you'll know the shot I mean, it's from the intro sequence. A rather fine intro sequence too, although flying through the rings like that is kinda vandalism. You can't do the astronomic vandalism in Elite but you can acquire some very pretty screenshots. In this case, there's an asteroid base tucked inside one of those inner rings. More later.

I did 3 stop offs on the route yesterday and found things more mysterious than nebulae ...

What is this ? A crashed ship ? Looks like a Cobra Mk3, the ship of the first game. Investigating further, you find various logs from the pilot. Who could it be ?

It's a little faint but the word Jameson emerges from the dark ... (That's the default name from the ancient BBC B game and there's a fair bit of game lore built up around him).

Turns out there is various skullduggery going on. The story goes that our Commander Jameson was dispatched on a mission to protect human space by planting a virus that disables the hyperdrives of the Thargoids, preventing them from using faster than light travels. Except .... the virus doesn't just target the equipment, it targets the life forms too. Skullduggery indeed. Our nameless, faceless skullduggers go even further, by planting a bomb on Commander Jameson's Cobra Mk3, disabling all power systems and stranding him on this desolate, airless planet.

It's great when lore like this finds its way into the game. You get the impression that there is an absolute tonne of stuff to find.

Also bases, carved out of rocks in the rings surrounding the gas giant, with a great view overlooking the Hind Nebula. I found another mystery out there too :

A quiet, dead looking ship going by the name of Alcatraz. A prison ship apparently ... and crippled by an attack by unknown forces.

You may spy the words "Cell Block" around there. I wasn't going to get too close. But. What's this ! The computer announces "Frame Shift Surge Detected" and out pops a new object.

It's small compared to Alcatraz megaship but you may be able to pick it out on the right hand side, just below the far end of the megaship. There was a scary moment as it pops out into real space, as the surge makes the ship computer drop offline. Totally immobile, drifting, powerless, lightless. A definite enigma, with capabilities we don't fully understand.

A closer look at this mysterious octagonal object that seems to fly around through pure anger at the presence of humanity in this system. Perhaps it still remembered the anger at what Commander Jameson's mysterious masters attempted to do to its Thargoid ancestors. It allowed me to close and follow and while missiles from the megaship were bouncing off it, it allowed me to follow along without incident.

Time to move on though.

I've actually been to this station before. It's the Witch Head Nebula science station, in the rings of another gas giant. A quite beautiful sight with a very white looking gas giant and very bright rings. One thing I missed with the trading and combat interludes was how pretty this game can be when you're getting out and about.

On to the next destination and we see the Orion Nebula, albeit somewhat occluded by the rings of another gas giant.

And another view, this time of the other side of the nebula emerging from above the ring.

That was it for Sunday's investigations. Maybe more tomorrow. We shall see !

Last post for today ... sometimes the screenshots don't go quite as planned :

This was an attempt at a high res special screenshot of the Searching For Biscuits closing in on the central node of the Alcatraz in order to scan for communications logs. The high res screenshots work by rapidly capturing many images to build up a higher resolution whole. For my set up, the standard 1440p screenshots become 5760p, or 16 times the pixels. (4x4). Except sometimes it doesn't quite work ... I suspect being inside the gas cloud messed up the lighting and you should be able to see the resulting patchiness.

Still, it was a good interlude, hanging around while the Thargoid Medusa Interceptor had a good look around the megaship. And a fun session too.

What's in a ship name

I saw a tweet earlier that sparked a thought or two ...

It was from Think Defence and it was asking "Any suggestions on the best names for the new RN mini frigates ?"

Not that one. That's a curious looking ship though, wonder if it's still available ?

There it is. New ship design, just announced. It's the Type 31e, following the Arrowhead 140 design which is based on the Dutch Iver Huitfeld design. So a similar shape and insides and then we'll tailor it to the equipment and systems of working that we want to put in it.

Looks tidy. But there's a difference to "it looks nice" and it being able to go anywhere, kick butt and get out again. We'll see what this one turns out like !

This post isn't one to be about naval ship design though. This one is for the names !

The last ship of mine that I posted on here was the Black Sheep :

Seen there investigating the treasure trove of Dav's Hope. The next one was "Strength of Atlas", a Type 9 freighter put together for taking lots of cargo to a trading community goal.

She'll be back out carrying more cargo for future community goal missions. The freighters aren't much fun to fly though. They don't turn, they orbit.

Effective for what they do though and they don't need to be unlocked like the Imperial Cutter or Federal Corvette. The next ship was for combat :

An Alliance Crusader, going by the name of Goldie Runner. I'm using dog names as the theme for the Alliance ship names, so the first one was "sCRUFFY nEIGHBOURHOOD". Yep. Forgot about caps lock and by then, the name was baked in and it's bad luck to change it. Goldie was an athlete who loved to run fast... and I'll think of something suitable for the Ben-ship at some point. The current ship is :

Searching for Biscuits. She's an Orca class passenger ship (no passengers allowed) who will be going on a couple of short range exploration expeditions and I'm hoping to acquire some amazing looking screenshots.

But how about these new Navy ships ? The various ship classes have their names arranged by themes so :

At the moment, Duke class frigates with names like Richmond, Northumberland, St Albans.
Minehunters named after seaside towns like Grimsby, Penzance.
Destroyers with names starting with D like Daring, Dragon (like that one), Diamond.
River class patrol vessels like Mersey and Tyne.
City class Type 26 ships coming with names like Glasgow and London.

One of the reasons for the new City class names was to try and encourage recruitment by connecting the ship to a place to recruit from. Something like : "I'm a Glaswegian serving on HMS Glasgow and my pop helped build the ship." That's powerful.

But .... where to go for the next ships ? You could go a bit boring and safe and traditional with something like towns. As in, smaller population areas to go along with the cities. There are 5 of these planned so 5 names for each category.
Let's see : Warwick, Chichester, Salisbury, Ramsgate, Bodmin. Safe, boring.
Battles : Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Dunkirk, Tobruk.
Football clubs and stadia : Anfield, Stamford Bridge, Highbury, Old Trafford, Ashton Gate.

Pop culture is also incredibly powerful in the youth that the Navy want to recruit from. So let's see ...

Sci fi can be a goldmine of names. Enterprise is already taken (she's a survey ship), so Defiant from Deep Space 9, (Millennium) Falcon from Star Wars, Rocinante from The Expanse, Prometheus from Stargate and Galactica (or Pegasus) from the Battlestar show. Pegasus is a great name for a ship.

And then there's : Thundercat, Thunderbird, Dogtanian, Fireball, Stingray, Greyskull.

Not sure about those. And Emmerdale, Walford, Erinsborough, Benwell, Holby City.
Kent (got one already), Wayne, Oliver, Stark, Rogers, Xavier. (6 because Kent is taken already)

Some names are definitely better than others. AND WE HAVEN'T GOTTEN INTO GAME CULTURE YET !

From Warcraft : Proudmoore, Windrunner, Arthas, Thrall, Stormwind.
Halo : Spartan, Cortana, Keyes, Locke, Arbiter.
Not done with pop culture yet either : Anakin, Amidala, Ahsoka, Ackbar, Andor. (The A-class is already taken by submarines though).
There's more : Tracer, Bastion, Hanzo (ship namers wouldn't know the consequences), McCree, Winston.
Also : Wick, Breakpoint, Jaeger, Fyra, Revolt.

Addon - couple more :
Stokes, Archer, Cook, Atherton, Botham.
Lineker (perhaps no),  Beckham, Butcher, Pearce ... and that's all I got for footballers.
Wilkinson (would become the Sword), Warburton, Hastings, Johnson, O'Driscoll.

So many names. I'm probably disqualified from naming any ship though, after my current form. (Elite Fleet list is at the link). In my current save, I've gone through :
Starters : Money Spider, Undaunted, Dragonbug, Greater Dragonbug, Mini Magpew, Keela's Wings, Dauntless and Mighty Magpew.
Explorer ships : Day Tripper, Searching For Tea, Chrissa's New Potato and Searching for Biscuits.
Scavenger ships : Porpoise Prospector, sCRUFFY nEIGHBOURHOOD.
Fighty ships : Mostly Toothless, Commander Fuzzy, Captain of Elysium, Goldie Runner.
Tribute ships : Niki and Charlie, Kerr Avon Forever, Rage of Kashyyyk
Trading ships : Needs More Pewpew, Empire's Bounty, Tortoise Beats Hare, Black Sheep and Strength of Atlas.

Naming things is fun.

May need a "Searching for Lego".