Fighter environmental settings for sensory feedback

[Micah461]

I've been working on some fighters for a book I'm writing and something occured to me. In the shirt-sleeve environment of a spaceship fighter, would a pilot in an acceleration couch"tune" their seat by reducing the inertial compensation to get a sense of the ship maneuvering? Nothing crazy like a TOS Star Trek bridge, just enough to give the inner ear feedback to get a feel for the ship.

Micah461

 

[Grav_Moped]

Why not?

On the other hand, "shirt-sleeve?" The pilot ought to be wearing a vacc suit of some sort, even if it's just a pressure suit with minimal thermal control and life support functions (the heavy lifting is done by the spacecraft's life support system -- the suit is a safety backup).

Think in terms of the suits worn by SpaceX Dragon crews rather than NASA EVA suits.

 

[coliver988]

I agree: there would be a better "feel" if reducing any intertial compensation. Think driving a sports car vs a minivan (I drive both): I can feel every bump in the road and curves as I take them in my tiny car. The van absorbs a lot more, including cornering, so I don't feel as attuned to the road.

And yes to some sort of g-suit/emergency vacc suit as well, despite being a shirt sleeve environment (which it is until the cabin gets a hit). Plus, if a decent technology, it could also act as part of the flight system: launch missiles with a flick of the finger, turning your head & focusing through the helmet/HUD can auto-assign targets, that sort of thing. Even to the point of feeling stresses on the ship: you can feel just how tight a vector change is via pressure on you via the suit itself.

 

[whartung]

I agree: there would be a better "feel" if reducing any intertial compensation. Think driving a sports car vs a minivan (I drive both): I can feel every bump in the road and curves as I take them in my tiny car. The van absorbs a lot more, including cornering, so I don't feel as attuned to the road.

The feel of the car on the road is part and parcel to controlling it, especially at the edge like a race car driver. They need to feel the wheels through the wheel as well as the car via their Mark I Butt so they tell how close they are to losing traction.

I don't think that star fighter pilots need to have that same sense of feel. Also, it's very difficult for those senses to matter much in space (where there are few, if any, visual references), especially at "space ship" encounter ranges.

 

[Condottiere]

Could be simulated with separate machinery, since considering the consequences of uncompensated inertia on the human body, you might not want to screw about with allowing leakages.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Could be simulated with separate machinery, since considering the consequences of uncompensated inertia on the human body, you might not want to screw about with allowing leakages.

That depends on whether inertial compensation is all-or-nothing, or controllable.

 

[infojunky]

Hum… A Fighter in space is really only going to have one dominant directional feeling that is thrust Either down or back depending on the layout. Though at slower speeds and delicate maneuvering you could be feeling all the little thrusts.

Then the question becomes what realm is your fighter operating in? How much haptic feedback is required for said realm.

 

[Dragoner]

I posted in another thread a paper on zero-G, they say that people in zero-G become disoriented by gravity, with manual controls. So I sort of feel, to avoid adaptation syndrome, or the disorientation, one is going to try to keep doing what they are doing without modifying their environmental controls. EG if there are inertial compensators, they will train with them, and keep them on all the time. However, if this is a story element, go for it, because maybe training can overcome the disorientation also.

 

[Enoki]

Why would this be necessary? I'll give a current example. If you have never driven a stick shift vehicle, you likely pay scant attention to engine noise and revs. The automatic transmission handles this and you don't.
So, if there were a starship / spaceship that were maneuvering, and you had never experienced G-forces as a result of that, why would you expect or want to experience these? You are used to maneuvering without them.
Now, ZG is a different thing. If the ship's grav system went offline and the ship was in ZG, not only might you experience maneuvering forces, but the simple fact you were in ZG now might have similar affects to seasickness on you. I got drug on a cruise by the wife a while back. It was a smaller ship and at sea there was some motion aboard. Having been in the Navy a long time, I got my sea legs quickly and could deal with it easily. She, already having balance issues, was bouncing off the bulkheads a lot. It's the same idea in reverse.

 

[Spinward Flow]

 

[Condottiere]

Acceleration, assuming you're positioned aligned with the propulsion units, is going to be felt mostly pressing you to your seat. or couch.

For normal human beings, not trained fighter pilots, you should get along fine with seventy to one hundred forty percent Terran standard sustained, since in zero gee that's the only force that applies.

Part of the problem is that it's not clearly defined how inertial compensation works, so it's mostly guesswork on how far it extends, how much pressure it removes, and so on, and different editions have different available accelerations.

 

[tjoneslo]

I've been working on some fighters for a book I'm writing and something occured to me. In the shirt-sleeve environment of a spaceship fighter, would a pilot in an acceleration couch"tune" their seat by reducing the inertial compensation to get a sense of the ship maneuvering?

This is something I've seen widely missed by most discussions, but very curious if you have included it in your write-up. Using sound as a secondary source of information. This is something that comes out of the modern day Gaming setups, where the gamers all want extensive 3D sound via expensive headsets, and the sound designers for the games include that as part of their game designs.

This also covers the Star Wars "Sound in Space" problem, by allowing a high definition sound system let the pilot be aware of the situation around them without having to visually process everything at once. So the pilot can focus on the target they are chasing, and the sound awareness lets them know where their allies and other combatants in the area are.

This may especially apply to hunter species (e.g. Vargr, Aslan, etc), but may also apply to every species.

 

[whartung]

Part of the problem is that it's not clearly defined how inertial compensation works, so it's mostly guesswork on how far it extends, how much pressure it removes, and so on, and different editions have different available accelerations.

It's clear enough. It removes "as much as necessary". TNE has it limited by tech level. As you go higher in TL, more Gs can be compensated.

I mean, it either works or it doesn't. A couch is already a component of inertial compensation. A crude one to be sure, but that's the design. Same for race car seats and pressure suits.

In high tech sci-fi terms, we have direct evidence that inertial compensation can still be overcome by sending people flying over rails, and knocking down chairs, but not splattering folks in to paste on to walls and, somehow, it leaves coffee cups standing as if nothing happened at all. Perhaps it's a momentum thing. Go too far, and it snaps.

 

[whartung]

This also covers the Star Wars "Sound in Space" problem, by allowing a high definition sound system let the pilot be aware of the situation around them without having to visually process everything at once.

That's an interesting idea.

The sensor suite on the ship simply gives each sensor target (perhaps selectively) a sound, or even a different sound, and then creates a 3D audio environment manifest through the head set. So, for example, if a ship is being pursued, the pilot can "hear" them getting closer. As you fly by, it won't Doppler per se, but you can hear the target getting closer and then farther away.

 

[Micah461]

That's an interesting idea.

The sensor suite on the ship simply gives each sensor target (perhaps selectively) a sound, or even a different sound, and then creates a 3D audio environment manifest through the head set. So, for example, if a ship is being pursued, the pilot can "hear" them getting closer. As you fly by, it won't Doppler per se, but you can hear the target getting closer and then farther away.

In 1986 while stationed in Las Vegas at Nellis AFB, I got a check ride in an F-16 for 1.5 hours. Great fun, puked into the bag about 30 minutes in and enjoyed the rest of the flight a lot. A prime example of what might happen to a untrained crew member or passenger that has never experienced zero-g because of the the wide spread use of grav-plates and inertial compensation.

The primary take-away from it was that I realized I was wholly un-qualified to fly a fighter jet. I could not, and still cannot multitask. Fighter pilots are made of different stuff. There is a multitude of controls, indicators, and sounds cues that they manage. Perhaps situational awareness would be enhanced with a 3D sound system to give them positional data of the of battle arena.

This may especially apply to hunter species (e.g. Vargr, Aslan, etc), but may also apply to every species.

Probably more so to those two major races and several minor ones the evolved as hunter/killers.

 

[whartung]

One of my favorite vicarious encounters with a F-16 was from a local radio DJ doing a live broadcast from one.

Simply, he was on the radio talking about how they were taxing, and how they were taking off, and boy how fast it and ....uuunnnhhhh!!!...

That's when the pilot kicked in more throttle and pulled up on the stick.

 

[Condottiere]

Going by the current set of MongoVerse options, where you could have afterburners, for a potential acceleration of twenty five gravities, you might want to know exactly what kind of coverage inertial compensation provides.

It's been an article of faith that maximum acceleration was, until recent events, stuck at factor six, with the implication that was due to the limitation of inertial compensation; though if missiles can be made faster, why not crewed spaceships?

That's why, inertial compensation has never been clearly defined, probably deliberately, so it's one of those magic elements in Traveller.

 

[tjoneslo]

If you pulled out the TNE rules with the HePLAR rules, you could get the same kind of performance. And they were clear about the limitations of the inertial compensators (6G of acceleration) . Or the GURPS Vehicles rules where you could get some insane levels of acceleration and compensation as well.

 

[mike wightman]

You could stack the inertial compensators, this was clarified in FF&S2 for T4.

 

[Condottiere]

1. I've been picking my way through Fire Fusion Steel.

2. Presumably the chart indicating compensated gees, which starts at one at technological ten and adds one each level up, is the equivalent of onboard inertial compensation, or is a side effect of an artificially induced gravitation field.

3. I'm speculating it requires one percent of enclosed volume and five kilowatts of power per tonne and five hundred starbux, which would explain the cheapness of planetoid hulls.

4. But wouldn't explain the expensiveness of normally configured gravitated hulls.

5. It seems to state that inertial compensation is inbuilt to the hull.

6. If I recall Tee Five correctly, which contradicts it's an effect of the manoeuvre drive.

7. In either case, would not account for the necessary compensation required at factor twenty five acceleration.