They talk a bit more about lighting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Et5Ivi_yIg&feature=youtu.be&t=1h1m40s about some of the tricks they do with lighting and textures when you have huge distances to consider. They don't want to show any of it yet, though.
Elite Dangerous: Horizons - How to Make a Real World Livestream on our official YouTube Channel 7PM BST 14th Oct
- Thread starter Edward Lewis
- Start date
My guess is that when they recorded the videos they set the quality at 100%. Depending on the codec, that probably includes a lot of unnecessary information. (PhotoJPEG at 100 is slow, PhotoJPEG at 80 is faster, smaller, and looks the same to the human eye. H.264 is usually pretty speedy overall, but if they're streaming off the same machine that might slow it down a bit.)
What I'm curious about is how the different aspects of the planet are laid out in the node network, and where the Stellar Forge information gets fed in. They probably haven't finalized all that yet, though. I'd love to see the network if it's laid out visually, though I guess they may be driving the thing mostly via code. I guess that's another question: what tools have they built to work on this? I think they said something about the artists having some input? What does that look like?
I'm also curious about whether there are going to be various ice shaders and so on for the different kinds of planets.
I wonder what sort of performance we can expect from Horizons? Obviously I fully expect it to require a fair bit more power than what we currently need for the game but I suspect that the nice solid 60fps I get now in most places (station interiors and oddly while looking directly at a star at close range being the two main areas my fps takes a hit) is not going to be achievable down on planet surfaces. Also is the extra computing work required to setup and render the planets with more stellar forge data going to cause the return or increase the dreaded stutter when approaching a planetary body at all?
Thats is the issue, when you are talking about objects on a massive scale, then lighting and shadowing kinda 'breaks down' and doesn't really work.
I would imagine there will be something there but it will be 'faked' massively to the point where it won't be a resource hog. It probably won't look pretty. but then on a planetary scale it doesn't really need to.
Pure speculation, but I would imagine that station interiors would be more graphically intensive than terrain as you're surrounded by hi fidelity whatnots usually at close enough range to be high LOD. The terrain is likely to be more CPU intensive though if the client is calculating it in realtime.
Hi guys,
As promised. Here's the raw footage from last night's stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIrUQnUM0M&feature=youtu.be No audio on this, for that watch the original!
Ed
As promised. Here's the raw footage from last night's stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jIrUQnUM0M&feature=youtu.be No audio on this, for that watch the original!
Ed
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Sqeeeeeeeeeeeee incoming 
Hey Matt,
Unfortunately I missed the livestream cause i had to go to work, but I watched it from archive and I do have some questions, that I would have liked to ask.
1. How rare will the landable HMC and Metal-Rich planets be in 2.0? Will there also be planets tinted in all colors? (Blue for copper ions or raw Cobalt, Green for Vanadium or Nickel Ions, Pink-purple for Manganeese, Red for Chromium ions etc.)
2. On my journeys, I have seen a lot of planets that have 0.00 Earth Atmospheres, yet are not classified as "NO ATMOSPHERE". How will those planets be handled? Will they be landable?
3. What about the lava planets. Quite a few of those have no atmosphere. Will we be able to land on them? If so, is it gonna be dangerous?
4 In connection with previous question, will temperature on the planets be a concern? Driving around on a planet that has surface temp of 4000 Kelvin would be no picknick I imagine.
Thanks
Unfortunately I missed the livestream cause i had to go to work, but I watched it from archive and I do have some questions, that I would have liked to ask.
1. How rare will the landable HMC and Metal-Rich planets be in 2.0? Will there also be planets tinted in all colors? (Blue for copper ions or raw Cobalt, Green for Vanadium or Nickel Ions, Pink-purple for Manganeese, Red for Chromium ions etc.)
2. On my journeys, I have seen a lot of planets that have 0.00 Earth Atmospheres, yet are not classified as "NO ATMOSPHERE". How will those planets be handled? Will they be landable?
3. What about the lava planets. Quite a few of those have no atmosphere. Will we be able to land on them? If so, is it gonna be dangerous?
4 In connection with previous question, will temperature on the planets be a concern? Driving around on a planet that has surface temp of 4000 Kelvin would be no picknick I imagine.
Thanks
Really curious about that myself, been trying to ask that on the stream (and in this topic, afterwards):
Alas, I'm guessing they are not prepared to answer that, sadly...
There WILL be stuttering to some degree, I don't know of any open world games where that doesn't happen. People should get used to that because its a certainty in open world games.
Its just a matter of minimising it as much as possible. Unfortunately there will be lots of people assuming this will all be silky smooth with no stuttering or pop in of LOD's. That's not going to happen so peeps should reign their expectations in some
Ditto.
Also can't resist the urge to add that with Thread Display Mode = 'Linear - Newest First' your use of "^^" for me refers to the next message and not the previous one
Yah was good fun
The teams feeling really excited having seen the positive reaction from the work we showed off.
Keep in mind that there will always be nitpickers (I am one of them), but you guys are doing a great job and it shows in your work. I'm going to enjoy playing and exploring in this game for many years, if not decades.
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I don't see any stuttering playing the game, except for the occasional internet or instance loading lag related stuff.
People using less capable systems who are experiencing "smoothness" issues should lower their settings as needed or desired.
Having a higher end system myself, I want more quality potential than what the game currently offers on the ultra setting. The game settings currently don't go high enough to utilities my computer's potential. Specifically, less obvious pop-in would be nice, and I'd like to be able to see inside station ports from outside at greater distances.
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Maybe there will be a transition to move into orbit and the terrain detail is created (like the exiting of hyperspace).
That's the sort of thing I worry FD won't have time to implement before their self-imposed "Holiday 2015" deadline... and then might have difficulty adding afterwards, due to the presence of players.
Why wouldn't they be able to update these things going forward?
That's the plan anyway with volcanism, atmosphere, oceans/lakes/rivers, vegetation, wildlifem cities and so on...
Doing "liquid features" is something thay are going to have to address further down the line anyway...so leaving that bit for when it's more relevant makes sense from a development perspective. Then it will "just" be a matter of taking the "liquid work" and remove the actual liquid...tada! Dried out riverbeds.
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Not quite: Surface water doesn't *come* from having an atmosphere... An atmosphere just prevents you from loosing it (over millions of years), and allows it to stay liquid. Although in the case of a planet like Venus, it's atmosphere makes/keeps(*) it so hot that you won't find liquid water on the surface.
(* which way depends on whether you believe the relatively recent orthodox explanation (or not), which is that global warming caused Venus to be extremely hot. There are those who argue that global warming would never raise temperatures to the levels seen on Venus, which are hot enough to melt lead, and instead another mechanism must be at work.)
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