5 Times Games Got Space Really, Really Right

so much please meet a theatre much like Godzilla face is big beautiful and indifferent to human life it doesn't want to kill you but it will also like Godzilla space is regularly misunderstood he's just trying to restore the balance of nature huh by killing the meters before they breed with each other uh-huh what about space now space is regularly misunderstood or misrepresented in popular fiction for reasons we'll get into but videogames sometimes get it really really right let's give him credit I brought you here to talk about Mass Effect 2 basically and now you've started watching you can't stop me beware of spoilers ahead for portal 2 gravity and that guy Pierce movie set on a space prison I will say look though look out look out in space no one can hear you scream because in space no one can hear you anything space is loads of empty nothingness and sound waves travel by jostling the particles of whatever they're traveling through so soundly the medium to propagate in like air or water or string hello science because space isn't air or water or string sound can't propagate through it so space is silent no one told video games the problem is explosions sound excellent and no one really wants silent space even space tenants like me so we'll allow it for effect on the other hand some games do break out the scientifically accurate silence or almost silence like that bit in Mass Effect 2 it turns out that space walks are quieter than the deadly Prius in an interview NASA astronaut Michael massimino said that during extra vehicular activity in faith the only thing you can hear is what's piped in through your headset so in other words if you were to take a hammer and bang on the spacecraft you wouldn't hear that so the only thing you hear is the electronic signal that comes in through your headset and also your breathing because there is air inside your suit and maybe the sound of the pumps and fans that circulate air and water around your astronaut onesie otherwise there's a lot of quiet going on which is perfect for the tense and scary spacewalks of alien isolation look happened here these do a good job of recreating the coast robic near silence of a spacewalk most of the time you're doing good tape I said most of the time oh and oculus rift space survival experience adrift cleaves pretty close to realistically spooky space islands except for all the extremely loud alarms telling you you're about to die it's actually really hard to find an accurate depiction of spacewalks that are quiet because what they tend to do is like glub-glub underwater sounds like space just muffle sound like in dead space which you know is pretty good at some space stuff it's just kind of yeah exactly like muffling like this some air but not a lot of it I don't face is very very cold the background temperature is about minus 270 degrees C or about 3 degrees higher than absolute zero also known as the coldest it's physically possible to be that's one of the reasons you don't go out in it in just your pants but it's also the reason that when you're trying to hide in space heat is a dead giveaway it's just so easily detectable against a backdrop of no heat at all in spacy simulator elite dangerous for instance spotting other ships is all about detecting their heat signatures as a leak developer frontier says heat has to be radiated away to prevent overheating and degradation of system performance this radiant heat provides a telltale signature that is used to provide the information on your scanner about the other ships in your local space so a hot little spaceship is mega conspicuous you can lower your heat profile by turning off ship systems or you can go all-out stealth by shutting down your heat vents for silent running the problem with keeping all that heat yourself being that you're gradually going to cook your ship and yourself inside it like a boil in the bad kipper in Mass Effect the Normandy stealth system is based on the same premise for most ships the heat generated through standard operations is easily detectable against the absolute zero background of space Shepard ship can store the heat generated by ship operations in an internal emission sink deep inside the hull combined with refrigeration of the exterior hull the ship can travel undetected for hours but again the Normandy has to at some point vent heat and give away her position before the entire crew evaporates crowding heat through propulsion and weapons will let us use the internal emission sink for three hours longer than normal if it overloads propulsion for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction that's Newton's third law and jet propulsion in a nutshell and no one knows it better than rocket science sandbox simulator Kerbal space program except maybe Isaac Newton here good old-fashioned Newtonian physics rule with an iron fist that's the harsh reality of aerospace engineering which is Kerbal space programs entire bag and speaking of harsh realities Kerbal space program doesn't neglect Newton's first law either Newton's first law says that a body in motion remains in motion going at the same speed and in the same direction unless a force acts on it again because space is a big empty abyss of nothing there's no friction or drag because there's nothing to rub against so there's no slowing down if you send a ship off at speed it'll keep going and going and if you send someone twirling off into the void then they'll keep going further and further into the soul-crushing abyss like George Clooney in that one movie Batman and Robin be harsh the absence of friction and other aerodynamic gubbins in space is what makes spaceflight different to flight flight and that's the challenge of piloting in KSP you win again space space is more frictionless van teflon-coated Teflon bought transitioning from space to not space is not we're gonna make it are we sir I don't want to die out here diving into the upper atmosphere at typically high space speeds means dealing with a whole bunch of air resistance halo knows we're in the rigs and is very fun sure you wouldn't rather take a seat you'll be fine that friction creates a whole load of heat for which you'll need insulation to keep your cool and ablative shielding to burn off on re-entry neither of which commander shepard has in her slim fit spacesuit that's how she gets turned into a human meteor not like Guy Pearce in that space prison movie where he parachutes out of a space station onto a highway Jake okay we all know what happens when space meat not space decompression happens when you or one of your jerk enemies breaches your pressurized space vessel and the inside and the outside or space try to equilibrate but although if you do poke a hole in the wall of a spaceship the air inside would expand and rush out at approximately the speed of sound often it wouldn't go on as long as the typical long-winded explosive space Ark favored by science fiction depending on circumstances long winded ha get it already where those it's there's not so much gas inside a small spaceship to produce several minutes of hurricane style depressurization trying to blast you out into the void like the crew cabin in the space shuttles total pressurized volume is about 74 cubic meters the award for most scientifically sound and extreme instance of this whole deal goes to portal 2 for the ending so spoilers ahead but the game was like 6 hours long and it came out four years ago so come on right at the end you open up a portal on the moon which evacuates the Aperture Science bossfight chamber in the style of rapid decompression and it goes on and on unabated until the portal gets closed space the trick here is that the moon has no pressure like space and it's trying to reach equilibrium with the whole earth or at least the hole very large aperture chamber this is going to take a while guys actually if you didn't close the portal wouldn't that make the portal gun kind of like a weapon of mass destruction because you could suck all the air off the surface of the earth and kill everyone yeah yeah basically those were five times video games did their homework and gave us the kind of scientifically accurate space simulation we all crave but with noisy explosions thanks for watching subscribe and like if you would like to see more of this kind of thing and see you next time on outside Xbox

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 1,833,476

Keywords: space, outsidexbox, top 5, top 10, list, top 7, alien: isolation, alien isolation, dead space, nasa, astronaut, spacewalk, kerbal space program, KSP, portal 2, portal, moon, space shuttle, adrift, mass effect, mass effect 2, normandy, elite, elite dangerous, shepard, stealth, silent running, heat, cold, science

Id: wFgJMPVsVPM

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2015