problem about km, mph and distances...

[zandadoum]

So, my opinion is that something is way off with distances in this game
this is based on pure feeling, i havent done any stopwatch calculations (but i might later on)
first off, distance between 2 points on the map is shown in kilometers (which I am ok with as european)... but then speed dial in vehicles is displayed in miles (MPH) ...
i think it should really be kilometers just by the feel of speed while driving. is my Coyote really goin gat 199mph? nah, i think it's probably ment to say 199km/h which would "feel" more accurate

also, i think overall displayed speed is too high. it displays 80mph and if feels like i am driving at half that.
and then, distance. from one corner of night city to the aldecaldos camp... 6km? that just doesn't seem right either. way too close. you get there way too fast.
i know they had to construct the map on a scale, but the camp should be at least 20km out of the city. i mean 6km is like nothing. city center alone should take that

POSSIBLE SOLUTION?
well, first, consolidate speed and distances to the same metric. either metric or imperial (or both, with an option in settings). but dont mix them
second, at least double or triple distance display. meaning: something that now sais is 2km away, should be 6km away. something that now sais 6km away should say it's 18km
third and last: change displayed speeds. what now is displayed as 199mph (which is 320km/h!!!) feels like half that ... example: the Coyote max speed should maybe be 200km/h which is 125mph

what does everone else think?

 

[strangerr3]

I think there is some inconsistency with those values and I recall watching some youtube video where someone tested speeds and scale with a conclusion that its not right. I dont mind different units although it would make sense to use one system at the time and I dont really care too much about how precise it is - its not simulator so it really doesnt affect gameplay at all. I think its good question to ask Miles at one of his streams as at least he should know how scale looks in a game.

 

[Didacgomez]

Taking into account that a in-game day is compressed to 3 hours of real time, but our perception/reflex is not i didn't really paid attention to distance/speed scaling.

 

[zandadoum]

Taking into account that a in-game day is compressed to 3 hours of real time, but our perception/reflex is not i didn't really paid attention to distance/speed scaling.

i didnt even think about time measuring here, you're right. ingame time passing might have to need an adjustement too if distances are changed in any way.

 

[Bartinga2077]

So, my opinion is that something is way off with distances in this game
this is based on pure feeling, i havent done any stopwatch calculations (but i might later on)
first off, distance between 2 points on the map is shown in kilometers (which I am ok with as european)... but then speed dial in vehicles is displayed in miles (MPH) ...
i think it should really be kilometers just by the feel of speed while driving. is my Coyote really goin gat 199mph? nah, i think it's probably ment to say 199km/h which would "feel" more accurate

also, i think overall displayed speed is too high. it displays 80mph and if feels like i am driving at half that.
and then, distance. from one corner of night city to the aldecaldos camp... 6km? that just doesn't seem right either. way too close. you get there way too fast.
i know they had to construct the map on a scale, but the camp should be at least 20km out of the city. i mean 6km is like nothing. city center alone should take that

POSSIBLE SOLUTION?
well, first, consolidate speed and distances to the same metric. either metric or imperial (or both, with an option in settings). but dont mix them
second, at least double or triple distance display. meaning: something that now sais is 2km away, should be 6km away. something that now sais 6km away should say it's 18km
third and last: change displayed speeds. what now is displayed as 199mph (which is 320km/h!!!) feels like half that ... example: the Coyote max speed should maybe be 200km/h which is 125mph

what does everone else think?

Agree with you on all points. However, as you said before, they had to base calculations on this scale, so to my guess it will always turn up inaccurate when measured with the real life calculations. Night City is based on California's traffic, the way I understood it, hence all the vehicle's speed gauges show the speed in mph.

Why the distance is shown in meters, can best ask CDPR.

 

[83427]

vehicle speed cant be displayed in mph cos even kmh doesnt match to:
1. movement speed which is much slower
2. distance decreasing during travelling

i mean, if you drive a car with speed of 200kmh (caliburn for example) and need to drive 300 meters far. its should take less than 6 seconds. but it takes much more in the game. So how the speed could be in mph? 200mph is about 320kmh.

 

[Didacgomez]

i didnt even think about time measuring here, you're right. ingame time passing might have to need an adjustement too if distances are changed in any way.

I would tend to believe that in a game of this characteristics its all gamified and its just "increase perception of speed"/"bigger numbers are more speed and takes less to cover a distance"... maybe based on some game testing of how long it takes to go over the city with a car/on foot and apply "we want them to spend x minutes".
Although, you are quite right that Nomad camp in the badlands is kind of joke... they are at 6km from Night City and "hidding" from Militech and the Wraiths... I mean, how long it will take for some patrols to cover the area?-not counting drones,airplanes or spy satellites-... at the end, as @strangerr3 said is not a simulator and the gameplay impact is null-or at least for me, I can understand some people would prefer better consistency-.

 

[83427]

if they prolong shown map distances, it will be just more accurate.

 

[Ydiss2077]

I did once try walking 800m and it felt about right. I mean, I can run 5k in about 30 minutes currently. I reckon it'd take about that length of time to do the same in the game; perhaps faster, which just tells us V is more athletic than I am - no surprise there . Whether the scale of the city is too small... yes, it is. Central London (not even Greater London) is way over 20km across.

Buuut... do you think they can actually build a city the size of an actual city? I mean, how many years did it take them to design NC? You need to be realistic.

And driving about 6-8km absolutely feels quick when you can do it at about 200mph and ignoring traffic entirely. Just try driving by obeying real life rules of the road (no overtaking unless it's safe to do so, 30mph on streets, 20mph on narrow streets, 40-50 on wider roads and no faster than 70 anywhere else) and see how fast you feel I do actually think 30 mph feels like 30 mph and I drive at that speed a whole ton in real life. It's like how slow 30 mph feels IRL when you've just been driving on a 50 or 70mph road for a few hours. It feels sluggishly slow. When, in the game, we can routinely accelerate up to 150+ and do so frequently to get around quickly, normal speeds will absolutely not feel "right" to us.

I'm not belitting the issues raised but to expect a game to have any sort of real life scaled city in it is a bit unrealistic. And so, naturally, getting about it will be too quick at a standard maxuimum pacing (the pace most of us will naturally choose because who wants to waste time?) and so attempting to navigate at normal speeds (walking or driving normally) will feel way too slow. Just like San Andreas, actually, which isn't much larger (I actually think NC is larger?)

 

[zandadoum]

@Ydiss2077
dunno, it's just i am driving at 160mph through the city and it feels like i am going 50
and the aldecaldo camp being 6km out (if i start from the far side of city) is just MEH

like i explained, simply multiplying the numbers we players SEE would make that much more realistic

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Taking into account that a in-game day is compressed to 3 hours of real time, but our perception/reflex is not i didn't really paid attention to distance/speed scaling.

That makes... a ton of sense. I had the same questions as OP for a while but I never took this into account.

I think there is some inconsistency with those values and I recall watching some youtube video where someone tested speeds and scale with a conclusion that its not right. I dont mind different units although it would make sense to use one system at the time and I dont really care too much about how precise it is - its not simulator so it really doesnt affect gameplay at all. I think its good question to ask Miles at one of his streams as at least he should know how scale looks in a game.

Could you link that video?

 

[Farbros9]

I also have seen the speed calculation video, and it says that the game speed is around 1/2 of the shown. For myself I simply take mph as km, means if the game shows 50 mph, it's 50 km for me, so it is close to real number.

 

[mattcaron]

I always assumed it was in kph, otherwise, my driving habits are tremendously irresponsible.

 

[Durandal_IV]

I always assumed it was in kph, otherwise, my driving habits are tremendously irresponsible.

You can drive responsibly in this game? I can't even gently brake properly without reversing into someone else's vehicle (or person).

Jokes aside, I thought the distances felt off. Driving a km feels way longer than it should.

 

[ArturoLund]

I think it's in kmh. Not sure because of the game speed now...
When I converted some meanings I saw to mph: https://oneconvert.com/unit-converters/speed-converter/kph-to-mph
I understood that it was quiet impossible to go that fast in mph.

 

[DerHoss]

As someone who modded that stuff:
The values shown in game are in mph. But the values shown are too high. How much too high? Depends on how fast you are driving.

The game takes your current speed in m/s, converts it to mph... and then multiplies a correction factor. The factor is 1.0 when you drive very slow, it reaches ~2.0 at around 200mph (meaning 200mph display value is 100mph actual value, but 50mph display value is (checkes notes) about 40mph actual speed)

Why? If I should take a wild guess, its because moving very fast puts a lot of strain on the engine. Look on how many complains we already have regarding LOD. The faster you move, the faster the game needs to load assets

 

[Tarille]

As someone from the UK... Having distance being in KM and speed in MPH is just business as usual... We Brits like to use every system of measurement for no reason.

In regards to speed/distance. It mostly comes down to typical video game restraints.

It's not feasible (Nor particularly interesting) to make actual sized cities. No-one wants to spend an hour just driving across a city, especially when they'll need to do that hundreds of times throughout the game. Nor can a game run particularly well having to load so much data at realistic speeds.

So they fudge things around. Scale distances and speeds so they make sense on a surface level (My expensive super car has a 200 MPH top speed. Not 50 MPH. Going from the city to the Aldecaldo's camp is 6KM not 1KM.). This allows one to make sense of what should be the case for how things work.

With the cost being that if you examine it too closely, you can see the cracks where nothing is what it appears.

Even "Realistic simulator" type games such as The Crew or Eurotruck Simulator that supposedly feature real world locations end up shrinking them down and scaling the speeds to make for a more enjoyable gaming experience. Let alone an open world RPG which will be using the typical design philosophy of avoiding "Dead space" where there aren't areas that simply have nothing in them (You can see the difference in using and forgoing this philosophy when looking at Bethesda titles. Comparing the worlds of the Fallout/Elder Scrolls games to the planets of Starfield. The latter didn't use the standard content density and most people found the planet exploration to be boring as a result)

 

[XutrynX7]

So, my opinion is that something is way off with distances in this game
this is based on pure feeling, i havent done any stopwatch calculations (but i might later on)
first off, distance between 2 points on the map is shown in kilometers (which I am ok with as european)... but then speed dial in vehicles is displayed in miles (MPH) ...
i think it should really be kilometers just by the feel of speed while driving. is my Coyote really goin gat 199mph? nah, i think it's probably ment to say 199km/h which would "feel" more accurate

also, i think overall displayed speed is too high. it displays 80mph and if feels like i am driving at half that.
and then, distance. from one corner of night city to the aldecaldos camp... 6km? that just doesn't seem right either. way too close. you get there way too fast.
i know they had to construct the map on a scale, but the camp should be at least 20km out of the city. i mean 6km is like nothing. city center alone should take that

POSSIBLE SOLUTION?
well, first, consolidate speed and distances to the same metric. either metric or imperial (or both, with an option in settings). but dont mix them
second, at least double or triple distance display. meaning: something that now sais is 2km away, should be 6km away. something that now sais 6km away should say it's 18km
third and last: change displayed speeds. what now is displayed as 199mph (which is 320km/h!!!) feels like half that ... example: the Coyote max speed should maybe be 200km/h which is 125mph

what does everone else think?

I saw somewhere that the actual speed of the vehicles is divided by to. So Caliburn is going 200/2=100 mph. You can also switch to the metric system in the settings.

 

[Farbros9]

As someone who modded that stuff:
The values shown in game are in mph. But the values shown are too high. How much too high? Depends on how fast you are driving.

The game takes your current speed in m/s, converts it to mph... and then multiplies a correction factor. The factor is 1.0 when you drive very slow, it reaches ~2.0 at around 200mph (meaning 200mph display value is 100mph actual value, but 50mph display value is (checkes notes) about 40mph actual speed)

Why? If I should take a wild guess, its because moving very fast puts a lot of strain on the engine. Look on how many complains we already have regarding LOD. The faster you move, the faster the game needs to load assets

Not only that. The default angle basically zooms in the picture, making it look even slower. Mods like better vehicle first person let you change the camera position and angle while driving, and it makes a huge difference in the feeling of speed when you are driving with 80+ degrees.

 

[BeanstalkerLMK]

Compressed distances... perhaps Night City is actually travelling at relativistic speeds?