Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12

I think you are wrong here, and i curse myself for coming to LA's defense here, but you're not actually moving at all via multiple layers of physics grids, and this is also where ED's instances come into play.

Physics grids only exist within the region you are in. From the game's perspective, you are not moving at all, the rest of the system is moving, but there are no physics grids from the perspective of where you are (the instance). That's why planets can intersect. They exist as models, but not physical models outside their own instance bubbles.

Two people on opposite sides of the planet do not share an instance bubble and do not share a physics grid. Even players relatively close, i don't know, let's say 100km apart are not in the same instance (spitballing a number here, i don't know how far they stretch for sure) and are not sharing a grid. Only when instance bubbles merge will they share the same physical universe as it were.

Happy to be corrected here, but I think its how i think it works from a technical point of view.

This doesn't mean its not a great technical achievement, and indeed, it probably makes sense to do it this way from a computational perspective and have less bugs trying to constantly update moving physics grids of whole planets. It might also be why CIG have to be very careful when it comes to adding more and more to their systems, and also why they don't have moving planets and stuff, because if they did that, the servers and clients would melt (more).
You've not disproved the nested physics grids in Elite Dangerous, but you did just describe how grids work with Dynamic Server Meshing (and the associated instances) ;)
 
Last edited:
The foyer instance is not a viewport, it is definitely active as part of the instance in the game.


It's an outpost.

That's a good question, I'm not sure there's a way for players to glitch out of the coriolis station foyers and what would happen if they did in relation to the rotation correction etc. I know that the player will slide off the ship if they tilt too far so down is still down even though they are outside of the station, but what's interesting is that in another livestream, they glitched out to space and then jumped/glitched through the station to the landing pad that was upside down and ended up on the bottom of another players' ship that was parked there, the owner of that ship went to the landing pad and they were both able to see each other with them being upside down in relation to each other. So I'm not sure what is happening there in relation to the instance/grid/gravity etc.. I'm not in a position to find it right now unfortunately, but maybe someone else saw it can recall which video it was?

Ok, glitches can lead to unpredictable results, although the ability to glitch through the station in itself is interesting. However, it doesn't prove the physics grid thing one way or another. Remember what I said about instance merging, which is a well documented feature of ED. They move from one instance to another, and at that point, the physics grids become common, and with ships, it doesn't matter what way they are oriented, because they are just models, just like the player.
 
You've not disproved the nested physics grids in Elite Dangerous, but you did just describe how grids work with Dynamic Server Meshing (and the associated instances) ;)

I've not proved or disproved anything because its largely speculation. I think i have shown though that nested physics grids are not required, and Occams razor and all that...
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
I've not proved or disproved anything because its largely speculation. I think i have shown though that nested physics grids are not required, and Occams razor and all that...

Not sure I understand you mate 😋 Nested grids, each one with its own set of coordinates and physics, are indeed required in ED. Each star system in ED is a huge matrioska of nested grids. Without them, moving around on a planet or transitioning from a planet to another or to a station or to deep space would be near impossible.
 
Last edited:
Not sure I understand you mate 😋 Nested grids, each one with its own set of coordinates and physics, are indeed required in ED. Each system in ED is a huge matrioska of nested grids. Without them moving around on a planet, or transitioning from a planet to another or to a station, or to deep space would be impossible.

And that is where i disagree. From my understanding of things, they are not required at all. Don't confuse physics grids with mechanics.

I feat you have fallen into the Chris Roberts trap of assuming that maximum fidelity is the only way of doing things.

Therefore I prescribe you take 3 Idris per day and call Jared in the morning :D
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
And that is where i disagree. From my understanding of things, they are not required at all. Don't confuse physics grids with mechanics.

I feat you have fallen into the Chris Roberts trap of assuming that maximum fidelity is the only way of doing things.

Therefore I prescribe you take 3 Idris per day and call Jared in the morning :D
Ah ok, your issue is with "required". Fair enough. Not sure if those grids are strictly required but they do seem to exist in Elite. You still need coordinates to track stuff across the whole system. Fidelity or not.

So if you don’t think nested grids are necessary, strictly speaking I suppose one could conceive instead a model where absolutely all object coordinates in a star system in Elite were all directly based on a unique point as origin of coordinates for absolutely everything... Including, say, the coordinates of a player that moves in the interior of a fleet carrier that orbits a planet that is the satellite of a planet that is satellite of a gas giant that orbits around a secondary star that orbits around the focal point of the orbit with its primary star. I would not want to be the dev who has to make the code to calculate all those absolute coordinates plus specific and distinct physics for discrete and arbitrary regions of all that space, all managed from the same single origin of coordinates... I much rather like the idea of managing coordinates and physics on local more manageable grids that are nested to each other like they are in Elite, but hey, I am not a dev 😋
 
Last edited:
I bet in 2012 none of us expected that Chris Roberts would come back to the world of PC gaming to save it from microtransactions and abusive publishers by selling ship packs for thousands of dollars.
In 2012 we were told release would be around 2014! Genuine Roberts just needed a little bit more time and cash to finish what he'd been whittling away on for a year already, and much more than that things would begin to get stale.

2024 won't see a released game.

Neither will 2025, 2026, and for 2027 I bet Little Ant an Idris - it won't be out then either.
 
In 2012 we were told release would be around 2014! Genuine Roberts just needed a little bit more time and cash to finish what he'd been whittling away on for a year already, and much more than that things would begin to get stale.

2024 won't see a released game.

Neither will 2025, 2026, and for 2027 I bet Little Ant an Idris - it won't be out then either.
Whatdoyoumeaaaannnnn ... it's out already!

Just this very day I saw Drew from the Twitch park his chariot, then get in a floaty train thing with chums, then rubberband violently through ugly pink clouds, clipping through buildings before arriving at his destination for a pretend pint in the bar. Drew chuckled nervously.

Gaming is saved.
 
And that is where i disagree. From my understanding of things, they are not required at all. Don't confuse physics grids with mechanics.

I feat you have fallen into the Chris Roberts trap of assuming that maximum fidelity is the only way of doing things.

Therefore I prescribe you take 3 Idris per day and call Jared in the morning :D
Here's an interesting idea though. We know planets orbit in real time (with their own plane of gravity) in ED. We know there are some ridiculously close orbits in the game. Can we get a player on one body waving to another on a close body (with their own plane of gravity) that is close enough for you to see them (maybe via an executioner scope)? Would that satisfy you? :p
 
"Physics grids" are one of many meme techs of Star Citizen where they try to make 10 lines of code sound like some sort of gaming revolution. It's obvious from how you can fall through a moving ship that it's no fancier than the moving platform method that everyone else uses where you're copying a parent's translation/rotation and adding a force for gravity relative to the parent.
 
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtKzFBMsMvg


Some patches ago, you could see easily lights of ground vehicles from space.

And you can see the lights of settlements from space in ED, but if you can be in space and see the lights of ground vehicles on a "planet" then your planets are ridiculously small, so small in fact the probably don't qualify as planets. On a proper sized planet you shouldn't be able to see ground vehicles from space, I mean how many cars and lights of individual cars can they see from the ISS? But they can see city lights, as you can in ED.
 
So I have been playing for a couple hours and have not any issues with the gameplay I am interested in. None.

If the gameplay i was interested in was walking around lorville until I starve to death.

If I wanted to do anything else, it is embarrassingly and horrifyingly broken.

I am getting like 70fps walking around lorville though. touching 90fps every now and then. Which is probably the best fps I've ever had here/there.
 
and probably the least important out of everything, but why are all the markers blinding now???

vqHEKgQ.png
 
Back
Top Bottom