News Sneak Peek - Europa from orbit
- Thread starter David Braben
- Start date
Great video David, you tease! 
Even though the graphics appear to all be loaded, you'll still need to swap instances to land / dock I expect.
Maybe is like you drop to a station... you just enter the station, there are no more loads at that point! I expect a loading when droping to orbital cruise... but from that point to the ground I was hoping to be seamless just like they showed in the live stream videos. This is why I really want to see that part in a video. Or it is really good and they want to keep the surprise or its not that good and they dont want to kill the hype.
I'll take it either way... but show it already!!!
The moons are orbiting nearly on the same level as the ring system, so you are looking exactly onto the thin edge. That's why you cannot see it from europa.
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Given that you can land anywhere on a planet and based on David's previous video (Vulture flying over settlement) I would say any "loading" is done at the transition point which David confirmed to exist between Orbital Cruise and surface flight i.e. you don't need to drop into a new instance when approaching a base.
I would imagine the local system 'instance' in supercruise just ends up being the same one when you are on the planet surface. If you land or take off from a base then thats where the 'boundary' of the instance changes I would imagine. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to do seamless space to surface. If only they could apply that to the stations as well and make it truly seamless (other than hyperspace of course).
I have to say DB is a bit of a tease, just land already! ;o)
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I'm pretty sure mr Braben has told us it won't be seamless. Only the part of supercruise switching to orbit flight (vice versa) will be seamless, the actual landing takes place in another instance.
I have a feeling that interdiction won't be possible in orbital cruise, but it will be interesting to see what reason is given - probably something along the lines of the FSD Interdictor module only works on frame shift drives (hence the name) and not on the Planetary Approach Suite. Do we know if orbital cruise uses the FSD or the PAS?
I guess it depends on your definition of seamless. Supercruise > Station is not seamless , Supercruise > RES is not seamless. However if all it is that at a certain altitude above a planet you 'drop' from orbital cruise to planetary landing mode and the planet itself is still in view, I would call that about as seamless as it can gets.
Would be nice to know one way or the other, as there is a lot of information out there but its all a bit wishy washy so far.
We have not seen the complete sequence from SC to landing. If yo look at I: you will see that they probably mask it during the atmospheric entry. However it look very seamlessly from space to planet. So I expect that FD can do something similar.
.... but *they* said that we should leave Europa alone....
Attempt NO landing there....
I don't think we know yet. Do we even know if the PAS is some kind of thruster suite - it could be a sensor / guidance package. I'd guess that OC still uses the FSD, based on the silky smooth transition into OC from SC. His velocity just slowly dipped below the 30Km/s SC lower limit, and there was no sound in the background of FSD dialling down nor a different form of drive spooling up to take up the slack.
Since the FSD performance is hindered by nearby masses, it's possible that the interdiction module too - which interacts with other crafts' "frame" - would be greatly hindered by the nearby planet's mass in OC and thus wouldn't work.
Ship becoming unresponsive because of the new instance loading (comparable to hyperjump or dropping from supercruise) is what I call "not seamless". Pretty sure we'll get something like that between orbital flight and planetary flight. But yep, agree with the rest: can't wait to see a full landing, from approaching a planet to touch down in the dust of its surface.
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That's fair enough, although with a planet / moon without an atmosphere you cant really hide the fact. As you say that's not necessarily seamless, but as long as it looks OK I'm OK with that.
With planets with atmosphere's you could explain it away as entering the atmosphere and the friction making the controls unresponvive, which again I would be OK with as long as it looks fine.
That doesn't happen now: ships near planets are fairly easy to tether (although there is a danger of dropping out of supercruise if you swerve towards the planet) as it is moving slowly.
Also, the transition into and out of frameshift drive is fairly dramatic. We didn't see that here. Based on previous comments from David, I agree that approaching the planet closer will drop us out of FSD into normal drive, likely with the traditional lightshow and roller coaster ride. Interestingly, planet textures, as they were visible in supercruise, don't currently "pop in" on Supercruise exit. Just stations and ships. Either way, I don't care. BTW, there is a load point on station approach for station interior at about 200 meters out from the station. You can see the interior pop-in if you happen to be looking through the slot. Again. Don't care. It's not an immersion breaker for me.
...Is it Monday yet?
Looks great!
I'm starting to regret that I didn't buy beta access...
I'm starting to regret that I didn't buy beta access...