And the willing suspension bridge of disbelief came crashing down....

[Vegosiux]

1) Yup, think we can draw the line there.

2) Photons have zero mass, so I don't see how magnetism or gravity would affect them. Flexible speed of light would kind of crash most of the 20th century physics, really. But the beauty here is that when something "impossible" happens, science usually realizes it simply had the wrong idea of what's "impossible". So, I don't know, maybe the speed of light can be manipulated, but so far, as far as I know, the only thing that affects is what medium it's traveling through.

 

[tahrey]

the things I really hate are those that would only require editing a bit of text, as in thats all you would have to do to fix it, no change in gameplay or plot or art/models, just one line of text to increase immersion.

For example, in ME2, the universal thermal clips. If their universal why don't I have a shared ammo pool with weapons that simply consume different amounts of ammo. Why can't I reuse heated clips by letting them cool off.
It would be so easy to just say that the clips use a chemical compound to absorb/negate heat and what im picking up is refill vials/capsules of the compound that can't really be emptied from the guns with out taking it apart with tools.

Maybe they're made out of the stuff that you get in chemical hand warmers, but works in reverse? You have to boil those to regenerate them. Your clips therefore may have to go into a deep freeze.

As for them not being properly universal, who knows. It's silly. But perhaps they're like alkaline batteries - effectively, they're "universal" because they can run any device which has the right shape receptacle and has a low enough power drain, but they still come in different sizes depending on the required balance between size/weight and power output/energy capacity. Including one visually very different type (9V) that provides for things which need a high potential difference but don't consume much current.

 

[tahrey]

Photons have no mass, so I don't see how magnetism or gravity would affect them.

Distortions in spacetime. Look up "gravity lensing".

Flexible speed of light would kind of crash most of the 20th century physics, really. But the beauty here is that when something "impossible" happens, science usually realizes it simply had the wrong idea of what's "impossible". So, I don't know, maybe the speed of light can be manipulated, but so far, as far as I know, the only thing that affects is what medium it's traveling through.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to go google up this article now...
*googles*

OK, what they actually did was take a common or garden gas sample, then supercool it until an entirely new phase of matter was created, with light then passing through at less than 40mph (and a suggestion that speeds down to a few inches per second were expected), and there is a suggestion that in that material NOTHING would be able to exceed that pace (and even coming close would produce shockwaves and Cherenkov radiation).

So, yeah. You sort-of win that one merely by mention of it having to be in a certain medium. But it IS possible. Who's not to say that the Star Wars beams are in a pocket of this gas - said pocket held in place and insulated down to the critical temperature by some kind of electromagnetic field? With the limit being relative to the position/movement of the gas itself (so a bolt could be shot, or a saber swung at more than 40mph even if the light inside is moving slower than that relative to the bolt enclosure)?

Argh I have work to do. Shouldn't be arguing this crap

 

[Vegosiux]

In any case, I'll definitely look it up. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[Magicmad5511]

Doctor Who. I enjoy the show but a lot of the time it occurs to me that a lot of the time he saves the day with complete and utter "Deus Ex Machina" magic, especially the bits left on cliffhangers. It's less with Matt Smith because I can't think of any sitting here but with David Tennant a bit. I know lots of shows do this but this one sticks out for one reason.
It often uses time travel mechanics to fix problems.

Doctor Who time travel annoys me. Some things can happen then some things can't happen the fixed points can be unfixed and if a paradox happens giant Time Reapers appear and eat everyone.
It's all got completely arbitrary reasoning and doesn't make sense.
In reality it would be impossible to change the past(at least in my opinion) because if you are going to do it in the future then you will have be a part of your own past which means you must therefore fail to change the past.
Time does not act like a river where if you change it, it takes a new path.
Time is like a book. The past is written and if you go back all you can do is add more words.

 

[WaReloaded]

The paintbrushes in TES: Oblivion and how you could solve almost any puzzle or difficult situation by using them, it definitely wasn't a game breaker but I've never forgotten it. In fact, I suppose you could say that the paintbrushes have left with nothing but fond memories. Gravity defying paintbrushes are a boon no matter the game you play.

 

[Bruenin]

That one movie, I actually forgot the name of it. I never even wanted to go see the movie after I saw the trailer. It started talking about how people only use 10% of their brain and they have a pill that lets them use all 100% all of the time. So now this guy is super inteligent and he has people coming after him.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

So Escapists, has your own knowledge ever broken your willing suspension of disbelief?

It may not be a deal breaker, you can still enjoy the game, movie, show, book whatever but something just niggles at the back of your mind? Has something ever been so wrong that you just couldn't enjoy the subject matter anymore?

Recently I learned that the LD-50 (lethal dose for 50 percent of a population) for ionizing radiation for humans is 4 Gray or 400 rads. Playing Fallout 3 and my character is suffering radiation poisoning at 600rads. so either she is very very lucky or she is Dead!
Like I said not a deal breaker it just bothers me.

Fallout doesn't have that kind of radiation.

But in answer to your question, ALL THE GOD DAMN TIME.

Ignorance is bliss i guess, but at least i can superior in my lack of entertainment

 

[Joccaren]

Photons have no mass, so I don't see how magnetism or gravity would affect them. Flexible speed of light would kind of crash most of the 20th century physics, really.

Actually they are affected by gravity, and it is the carrier or the electromagnetic force from memory. Flexible speed of light is also something that has been thought about and debated, the question is 'How would we know if light is travelling faster?' and 'Can we make an experiment on a local scale that will test this?'. We know that time flows at different rates dependent on various factors; Satellites in Near Earth Orbit (NEO, FTW!) measure time at a different rate to those on Earth's surface.

OT: Not much really. The one thing that will occasionally do it for me is the rapidly regenerating health with no reason at all given. I can be very believing, just give me ANY goddamn reason, and don't tell me to make one up myself, that's not how this works! (To all game devs using that mechanic)

 

[jawakiller]

Indestructible terrain. Yes, I know, most games have this but it can get on my nerves. You have this RPG, fire it at a piece of plastic tarp and the fucker on the other side is still alive. I think the military needs to invest in this magic tarp because it can stop everything short of a nuke.

And when you pred missile a shack, the building takes zero damage. I'm like what-the-fuck-thats-made-of-frickin-sheet-metal!

Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship(tm)

Stormtrooper marksmanship is sort of handwaveable if we assume they're mass-recruited grunts with minimal training, rather than the Kenobi description of them being the elitest of the elite. Any time we've seen a popular uprising on the TV recently, they seem to be employing a Stormtrooper style spray-and-pray approach to shooting at the enemy...

Cracked actually did an article on that one.
http://www.cracked.com/article_18858_the-biggest-star-wars-plot-hole-explained-by-science.html

Enjoy.

 

[Vegosiux]

Well, they are affected by the warping of space-time, that happens because of the presence of mass, yes, but that's an entirely new can o' worms (a pretty fun one to discuss, too, but my brain currently isn't in a state to get into it, I'm afraid.). I was more meaning that if you light up from the ground the photons will travel no slower than if you light down from an airplane.

 

[Jakub324]

You know that bit in Sunshine where some people were in the vacuum? That annoyed me. People do not freeze in the vacuum.

 

[gentleben]

I'm doing a dual degree of Science (majoring in biomedical physiology) and Law.

Seeing as how about 50% of television made is about either doctors, lawyers or both, I find a lot of television unwatchable.

YOU CAN'T USE A DEFIBRILLATOR ON A FLATLINING PATIENT! WHAT LEGAL SYSTEM ARE TV LAWYERS OPERATING IN THAT ALLOWS THEM TO BRING A TRIAL A WEEK AFTER FIRST MEETING THEIR CLIENT?!

 

[Nergy]

Fringe is pretty ridiculous now. I was struggling with it but once Leonard Nimoy possessed the main character that was it for me I couldn't watch it anymore.

fringe is pretty ridiculous right from the first episode, isn't it? although i'm not so sure because i never got past the first... 20 minutes of it, i guess... i just finished watching all the X Files episodes, and i was expecting something like that, a show artfully balancing on the edge of sci-fi/conspiration theories, and reality/debunking them, not letting you to breathe properly in anticipation, until the last moment and even after that.

and what i got was "OMGZ GENETICALLY ENGINEERED MUTANTZ", or what... it was just so silly and cheap compared to X-Files that i wasn't even willing to watch more

Fringe kind of had an excuse as both universes were clashing and the boundaries of physics were warped. and they still are in turmoil, so more of the people they encounter are just crazy people.

If you're looking for something that shatters your suspension of disbelief look at Eureka. They might speak some real science sometimes, but then they're suddenly spring a science McGuffin with no explanation.

I still love both shows, I forgive science fiction shows more, my suspicion of disbelief is for things that claim to be based in the real world.

 

[Vegosiux]

YOU CAN'T USE A DEFIBRILLATOR ON A FLATLINING PATIENT!

Well, you CAN, but it's a rather stupid thing to do *grin* Sorry just had to.

But yes, that's something that really makes me go *eyeroll* whenever I see it. Along with the CPR thing I mentioned, too.

 

[Bassik]

Explosions. I have never seen a realistic explosion... never. Every single time i watch an explosion (video games, TV, Movies) its so beyond what it would have been in reality. People just want explosions to be huge and flashy but they give real names of explosives and than have no continuity past that.

My father has been in Ordinance my entire life. I have learned a ton about all matters of Ordinance and I have never seen a realistic one in my life. Really ruined Michael Bay (that and his terrible directing)

Believe it or not, my buddy who is also into explosives has the same gripe, and told me that the only realistic explosion he has ever seen on TV was in the last episode of the Doctor Who serial "The greatest show in the galaxy."
This blew my mind.

 

[Rossmallo]

Graphical glitches boot me out of the immersion of a game significantly. It was like in Deus Ex HR a few days ago for me. I was talking to some random chinaman in a quest or something, and suddenly -

"*CIVILLIAN* OVER HERE THE AMERICAN"

Blurgh. Only game I can tolerate that in is Oblivion or other Bethesda games, coz it's part of the appeal with those games these days.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

any movie tv show where computers are hacked as if by magic

 

[Vrach]

Wearing armour may have increased the fatigue points for performing an action, I'm not entirely sure of the engine dynamics; all I do know is if you sapped all your fatigue by fighting, blocking and jumping you could run in circles in full Daedric armour and watch you fatigue bar refill.

By run you mean walk... but yeah, I know what you mean. It's actually something they could change with a Fallout-like Hardcore mode (or just implement it as is, but I imagine it'd annoy some/most players) - as you do more and more actions (bonus points for heavier armor/weapons/bag content), they accumulate and you need to rest (which already exists in TES/Fallout 3/NV) before you can replenish it.

It's just on SP. Admittedly I'm playing through on hard, but I swear those eagle-eyed buggers all have telescopic thermal vision. So yeah, there are some quite large AI issues. And the number of rounds that hit home from one of their five round bursts at long range is almost enough to make me think their weapons don't suffer from spread either, but that's probably me just being paranoid.

Yeah, I'm feeling you there, I've complained as much myself. I actually stopped playing the campaign (something that rarely happens for me) midway cause I got to a point where a combination of that and a bug (more like shitty 'event' timing actually) just stopped me. You get into a position where you have enemies at both the front and the sides, your own team mates die and they don't respawn until you walk forward for a while. Problem is, walking into the trigger area means walking into a hailstorm of bullets and even after that, the mobs are far happier shooting at you and they have a combination of uncanny awareness (able to sense me flanking them and see me through bushes) and ridiculous precision, which, coupled with the fact there's ~5 of them and none of them are interested in my team mates unless I'm in cover, means I get my ass shot to hell every time I lift my head up.

I tried to get through a number of times, but in the end decided it wasn't worth the fucking headache, the multiplayer is far more fun and there's still a lot for me to do in it in terms of progress (leveling/unlocking/etc.)