Is That a Sparse Matrix? Extraordinary!

OMG this game is so cool … I’m fairly sure the “sandbox” you fly around in is what Mathematica calls a “sparse matrix”.

Check this out: billions of square (or possibly even cubic) kilometers of empty space, and you can fly into any point in that space you wish!

Of course the LaGrange points allow some “chunking” of that massive vector space, but the space you get to seamlessly fly around in is still huge.

How did the designers do it? How can they let you fly through a mind-bogglingly huge sparse matrix at millions of km/s?

This is the FIRST and ONLY game that really gives me a feeling of “the vastness of space”. You can cut the LDS drive a “mere” 10,000 klicks away from a target … then realize that your thrusters are going to take weeks to get you the rest of the way. The unmanagability of manual LDS because of the number of orders of magnitude crammed onto the throttle’s input domain took my breath away. I was awed by the immensity of it all, and humbled enough to let the computer handle the LDS.

How did they do it? How did the designers make that enormous vector space and make the player’s ship fly through it at such speeds with such apparent ease? I’m … blown away.