Hand Crafted Planets post Odyssey?

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi

FWIW, I saw a crater with a central peak in Odyssey the other day.

Yes, I've also seen those when out exploring.
'Volcanoes' or 'vents'? whatever it was supposed to be, I lost a DBX when I got 'stuck' down in what was a deep hole. Even logging out and restarting the game didn't work.
I had to self destruct to get me out of it in the end!

Jack

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I don't understand why there aren't planets with earth like atmospheres but many other games achieve this no issues, Empyrion and NMS to name a couple.

It all depends what shortcuts you can get away with taking.

I like NMS' planets and they're good fun to explore because there's a lot more variety of things to find than on most ED worlds, but in terms of portraying ELW-like environments they take a lot of shortcuts [1].
1) Single static water level. Below that level is wet, above that level is dry, there's a little bit of cosmetics on the borderline to simulate waves, but no rivers/mountain lakes/currents/tides/etc. Rainfall doesn't leave surface water except very briefly cosmetically.
2) Single planet-wide weather. If it's clear, it's clear planet-wide. If it's stormy, it's stormy planet-wide. If it's weird anomalous stuff, it's the same weird anomalous stuff across the entire planet too.
3) Single terrain type (hills of various sizes)

The problem with portraying an ELW isn't the graphical display of a thicker atmosphere - Frontier could turn up the refraction index and add some cloud-style high-level fog to the existing low-pressure worlds pretty easily. The problem is all the other differences between a tenuous world and a thick-atmosphere world: Elite 2 technically had ELW landings back in 1992, but in terms of what you could actually do there was no difference between an ELW and a no-atmosphere rock other than the ELW settlements having Odyssey-style open air landing pads.

If we do get further "landable" planets my guess is that the next ones will be gas giants and the ultra-high-pressure rocky worlds where your ship would be crushed long before reaching the actual surface: the atmosphere is dense and there's a lot of scope for spaceships, floating stations, floating space jellyfish, etc that aren't really possible in the existing environments, but the atmosphere's interaction with terrain doesn't need to be considered and so the weather systems might vary planet-wide but are relatively simple and can be long-term stable (e.g. Jupiter's red spot and bands, or even Earth's upper-atmosphere stable convection cells)

[1] Every game portraying any part of an ELW necessarily takes a lot of shortcuts; for your typical "set on Earth FPS" the shortcut is "don't map more than a few square kilometres of it", for example; for Civilisation the shortcut is "extremely low-res abstracted map". This isn't a criticism of those games. The problem is that the shortcuts other games take wouldn't really be compatible with Elite Dangerous: a single planet-wide weather condition is fine in NMS (you have to pay a fair bit of attention to notice that's how it's done) but has big problems in ED because of the much higher multiplayer persistence and the aim to be portraying 80s Serious Military Scifi rather than 60s Pulp Scifi ; restricting people to not leaving the spaceport is fine for a lot of games but again not for ED, etc.

 

[Ceres_O7]

restricting people to not leaving the spaceport is fine for a lot of games but again not for ED, etc.

I honestly feel that a port restriction is a good choice of "shortcut" for inhabited ELW that would fit within Elite quite well. While its hard to procgen an ELW to begin with, doing it for cities and civilisations too is even harder and I wouldn't blame them for (if they ever added ELW landings) restricting inhabited planets to just having a ground port section of a city as the playable area.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Can't speak for Empyrion as I've never seen it but there's a huge difference between the tiny procedural rocks in NMS and the 1:1 scale planets in Elite, not least the fact that the latter is actually based on actual known data about how planets can be formed. The fantasy design of NMS isn't enough for what Elite would require to emulate actual, to-scale Earth likes using procedural generation.

I think not enough people realise quite how much mathematics goes into planetary generation in Elite. Also, NMS may do stunning visuals for its planets but it doesn't create believable inhabited planets. Imagine how worlds in Elite might actually be when populated by millions or billions of humans. Imagine NMS attempting to emulate that with its fantasy worlds filled with dinosaurs and bugs.

I agree that "hand crafted" worlds aren't necessary and procedural is how Elite would likely handle earth likes if we ever get them but the amount of effort that would be required for Elite to do this would be more than any of its releases to date, I am certain of it. And that isn't impacted in any way just because "NMS does it". It doesn't. It does its own thing.

I cant see FD any able to pull off populated planets. NMS chose a story to avoid the trillions of ppl living planetside. It's just too ressource heavy to do. Currently, i.e.

 

[Ydiss]

I cant see FD any able to pull off populated planets. NMS chose a story to avoid the trillions of ppl living planetside. It's just too ressource heavy to do. Currently, i.e.

"NMS can do it" is one of the worst arguments for suggesting Elite should do a thing. As if NMS could emulate a 1:1 scale version of our galaxy if the same logic was applied in reverse.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

"NMS can do it" is one of the worst arguments for suggesting Elite should do a thing. As if NMS could emulate a 1:1 scale version of our galaxy if the same logic was applied in reverse.

There is no point where I suggested so. I said NMS doesn't do super dense population either.

 

[Alec Turner]

Pretty sure there is little random about the terrain procgen in ED - planets that looked entirely different every time you visited, and for every visitor, would be kind of annoying.

Just to chip in on this - procgen relies on the fact that the so-called "random" numbers that computers generate are actually "pseudo-random". What this means is that, given a starting "seed", a computer will happily spew out an infinite sequence of seemingly random numbers but, since they're produced by a software algorithm, given the same starting "seed", the algorithm will spew out the exact same sequence of numbers every time. Progen relies on this fact to ensure that every player sees the same galaxy, even tho' that galaxy is produced by a random number generator.

I have a longer post on this which you can read here.

 

[Codger]

Maybe they can start with just my backyard. Procgen a couple dogs, and some grass, and a few poop piles, and you got it.

Of course, the system requirements for procgen poop is very high, so most folks won't be able to run it without upgrading to a better machine.

Seems like a plan to me.

 

[Ydiss]

There is no point where I suggested so. I said NMS doesn't do super dense population either.

Not every reply to you is arguing with you

Read my comment again but assume I'm agreeing with you, instead.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Not every reply to you is arguing with you

Read my comment again but assume I'm agreeing with you.

I think I got you now.

 

[Fizzatron]

So frontier have definitely been doing behind-the-scenes work on cloud rendering technology of some sort. Whether or not it means anything for potential future expansions, eh that steps a little too far into tinfoil world for my tastes.

Why wouldn't it? Seems perfectly natural to consider that any work on volumetric clouds would have applications for any future gas giant exploration as a matter of purpose. If you mean that Frontier are actively working on gas giants right now, I don't think I said that. I don't know what work is being planned/done on any future Elite expansions.

I honestly feel that a port restriction is a good choice of "shortcut" for inhabited ELW that would fit within Elite quite well. While its hard to procgen an ELW to begin with, doing it for cities and civilisations too is even harder and I wouldn't blame them for (if they ever added ELW landings) restricting inhabited planets to just having a ground port section of a city as the playable area.

If I'm understanding correctly, the suggestion would be to do a Starfield approach and have limited areas to go to with a transition screen rather than free flight? While I can see how that would work as a baby step it does fly in the face of the freedom of movement exhibited everywhere else in the game when it comes to landing on presently landable planets/moon.

I don't know, Frontier created a 1:1 scale representation of the Milky Way with billions of stars/planets, but using a similar, and documented, method to achieve the same for terrestrial worlds is too much? It's literally like how stations and settlements are already propagated through the galaxy but on steroids. I don't see that part as the improbable part, it would be coming up with a nanite like system to keep the rendering within the constraints of reasonably powered consumer tech. However, just finding out that Unreal 5 is open source would provide a potential path to solve that problem, and a lot of the current issues with Odyssey performance with it. Note that I'm really talking about the technical possibilities, the development costs and time associated with making it happen may ultimately be the thing that prevents it from happening, but that's more a won't than a can't. However, as a point to consider heavily in the equation, this would be a major milestone in delivering what I would suggest is a highly sought after feature to Elite.

 

[MariusTitus]

Something to think about:

Frontier: Elite II had random generated cities, and it fit on a diskette.

 

[jojon]

I guess the bodies of the Sol system would be probable exceptions to the fully-procgenned rule -- Earth, Luna, and Mars in particular could be likely to receive greater amounts of pre-mapping, at different levels of scale... Seem to recall somebody with-or-without inside knowledge claiming that FDev had specific plans for the Moon - one might presume underground facilites for that one... :7

 

[Fizzatron]

Speaking of planet/terrain generation, here is another video that talks about what goes into constructing a minecraft world. I think some of the proceses here might be very similar to how Frontier generate the planetary features etc as both use procedural generation heavily, and probably applies to the Stellar Forge, especially in relation to how to ensure that star quadrants are aware of their neighboring quadrants' density:

I find it fascinating on how using "simple" criteria and noise profiles it is possible to generate such terrain, and I think it shows the potential possibilities for how earthlike terrains could be generated for Elite in the future, or how a future V3 planetary tech could work to include overhangs etc.

 

[zimms]

Could.

DB once did a TED talk about PG and talked about cities amongst other things. I think a video about Minecraft is even further away from what we might actually see in Elite some day.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

@Fizzatron thanks for sharing. I don't play or even care for Minecraft, but that was an awesome talk. Very intersting .

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I honestly feel that a port restriction is a good choice of "shortcut" for inhabited ELW that would fit within Elite quite well. While its hard to procgen an ELW to begin with, doing it for cities and civilisations too is even harder and I wouldn't blame them for (if they ever added ELW landings) restricting inhabited planets to just having a ground port section of a city as the playable area.

True - though if they want to add city interior gameplay, there are plenty of existing large-scale settlements they could do that for without them needing to be on ELWs. Exactly what colour the skybox is if you're underground or even in a domed habitat (or an Orbis habitat ring) isn't that important.

Frontier: Elite II had random generated cities, and it fit on a diskette.

Sure. And at the level of detail involved in FE2 (or even FFE), the equivalent cities and settlements in Elite Dangerous surpassed it by a substantial margin with the initial Horizons release.

 

[MariusTitus]

Sure. And at the level of detail involved in FE2 (or even FFE), the equivalent cities and settlements in Elite Dangerous surpassed it by a substantial margin with the initial Horizons release.

Apples and oranges. 1993 game running on prehistoric hardware will get surpassed by 2014's version, oh wow, who would ever expect that? What I'm saying is if it could be done back then, it can be done now.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Apples and oranges. 1993 game running on prehistoric hardware will get surpassed by 2014's version, oh wow, who would ever expect that? What I'm saying is if it could be done back then, it can be done now.

That depends very much what you mean by "it".

If they could put random uninteractable sprites down in 1993, then yes, they can do that now. And they have - with polygons, higher-res textures, collision detection, and even a bit of interaction possible as well by SRV or on foot. Job done.

If they could put random uninteractable sprites down in 1993 then in 2023 they can randomly generate an interactable drivable/walkable city with NPC presence at least at the gameplay and graphics quality of the existing Horizons and Odyssey settlements? That doesn't automatically follow. Producing a random city plan that looks reasonably plausible from a few kilometres away and dropping some pre-made building models onto it is not the hard bit there.

 

[MariusTitus]

is not the hard bit there

Exactly. Putting down reasonably plausible city is 1993. Making it interactable/walkable with NPC presence is the 2023. Anyway, the cities don't have to random, settlements aren't either.