they simulate 'flying' ingame by keeping the player stationary (so the cell remains stable) and moving all the other objects proportionally to the speed/direction of player "movement". 
If you want sci-fi games that take the whole space flight stuff somewhat serious I could recommend Everspace 1 and 2 (for combat heavy space games) plus Elite Dangerous. Also unironically No Man´s Sky has a fair bit of stuff to do in space by now.
Everspace 1 and 2
i loved everquest 2, but i never progressed far enough to get a spaceship, just a magic wand
good post!
Elite Dangerous was a terrific space sim despite frontier being just terrible stewards
Everspace 2 is exactly what I wished Everspace 1 was.
Everspace 2 is great, although I didn't finish it and it will be very hard to go back to it now
The writing is still meh but much better than 1. Did you get too far in early access and don't want to start over?
No I just started Starfield and I don't see being able to pull myself away from that anytime soon
so the cell remains stable
lmao almost like a TES-style engine is a terrible fit for a space game
Isn't that the Futurama joke version of how their spaceship works?
because of the havok physics, objects inside the ship moved whenever the starship went really fast, so any objects/npcs in the spaceship would flop all over and when yo got where you were going everything was a mess. so they reversed it and left the ships technically stationary but every other thing gets moved, since their interiors are not loaded & physics enabled while in flight. 
Yeah but the reason for it in video games is usually because of issues caused by floating point errors.
The "A" button cycles targets in space and will show the distance to it
Thanks! I feel dumb.
Don't feel dumb. This game doesn't spend a lot of time explaining itself and kind of just throws you out there.
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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