I agree with all your points, but I think they need to get the basics right first. I'm sure they are planning on updating the graphics, we are in this for the long run. Anyway if they don't they will get eaten by the competition (Infinity already looks great)...
News From orbit down to Europa
- Thread starter David Braben
- Start date
I agree with all your points, but I think they need to get the basics right first. I'm sure they are planning on updating the graphics, we are in this for the long run. Anyway if they don't they will get eaten by the competition (Infinity already looks great)...
awesome video. can't wait to do it myself. They should put signs near the landing pads with the name of the commander or NPC currently docked there, or the ship name or something.
Noob question: You can land on surfaces right? Not just on landing pads? I can just select a random atmosphere free world and land right? Is there anything to do on an abandoned world besides riding endlessly across rugged landscapes?
Planting a flag should be in it... it just has to be.
Noob question: You can land on surfaces right? Not just on landing pads? I can just select a random atmosphere free world and land right? Is there anything to do on an abandoned world besides riding endlessly across rugged landscapes?
Planting a flag should be in it... it just has to be.
Scanning and gather materials that will be useful for the crafting system. And FDEV hinted that there will be secret things (?) to find even outside the human bubble.
It looks good, there's some rough edges:
- short draw distance of surface details
- loading between orbital cruise and normal flight
Can the transition be made seamless so we don't notice a pause to load the P2P instance? :S
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I suspect the problem with that is that once the glide phase is over the ship is potentially instanced in "normal space" with other players' ships. If two ships were instanced together they could conceivably have a closing velocity of 5000m/s which is way above what the networking code, and possibly the graphics engine, can cope with. Once you're into the zone where "normal" flight is possible, each ship's maximum speed has to be 500m/s for legacy reasons.
I'm interested to know what sort of ship-to-ship interactions are possible in glide mode, though, because it's after the wobbly drop and so must include other players' ships. Direct combat is probably out of the question for the same networking reasons but maybe there's a suborbital version of interdiction, where you can knock another ship out of glide mode using some sort of module?
I have a question which I'm not sure has been asked - there are a crazy amount of contacts on the scanner when approaching the base, but the base appears to just have one ship landing and a handful of skimmers. Are all the other contacts ships within the base, buildings and pads or...?
Why would all these structures be able to be selected individually? is this a part of the base raiding mechanic?
Why would all these structures be able to be selected individually? is this a part of the base raiding mechanic?
I would think slowing down the glide speed as it approached the point of normal space would work. I also suspect that glide mode is solo player mode to solve any issues with other players.
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Quite possibly they are the generators, gun turrets, skimmers etc. Letting you know what you still have to zap, if you were the zappy sort of player..
Quite possibly they are the generators, gun turrets, skimmers etc. Letting you know what you still have to zap, if you were the zappy sort of player..
Good point - that's a lot of blips to blap.
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First Off So Much Awesome... Can't Wait...
Now From the start of the Glide at 1:06 internal Temps are at 30, At the end of the "Safe Entry" glide at 1:37 temps are up to 42. Looks like your engines are heating you up to slow your Big Butt down to flight speed and i bet the steeper you come in
The Hotter your Seat Gets... The angle of the Dangle and all...
I think it looks Awesome...
Now From the start of the Glide at 1:06 internal Temps are at 30, At the end of the "Safe Entry" glide at 1:37 temps are up to 42. Looks like your engines are heating you up to slow your Big Butt down to flight speed and i bet the steeper you come in
The Hotter your Seat Gets... The angle of the Dangle and all...
I think it looks Awesome...
Yes, that might work. There's some slowing down at the end of the glide phase (it's not instantaneous) so having it happen earlier and for longer might feel less jarring. It's still "braking with no friction" though so one way or another it's realism being trumped by the realities of the underlying code.
We don't know enough about how the various phases are implemented to really say. If the glide phase just serves as a buffer between the vast velocities of orbital cruise and the 500m/s limit of normal flight, maybe we can't have much in the way of manual control. If we did, we could keep the ship above 500m/s until right over the base, thus avoiding many of the defences (if indeed such defences are restricted to "normal" flight).
The whole glide phase thing is a massive grey area, because as far as I know it wasn't even mentioned anywhere until the sneak peek video. I was certainly under the impression that it would be orbital cruise, possibly with some velocity bleed, all the way down to the point where a normal flight instance would be generated. Glide mode is something wholly original and unexpected.
Hopefully only two more sleeps until much of this is answered...
All of these please!
awesome. great. now i can't wait anymore.possibly alien artifacts with certain hints to future updates?
there is no sub surface scattering in these previews as David Braben said. here i just rendered this as an example:
the material on both these blocks is exactly the same except the near block has sub surface scattering. Notice how light seems to penetrate a certain distance 'into' the cube, scattering as it does. This gives a much more 'ice like' appearance and adds a lot of depth.
I imagine the Ice worlds will look much better once sub surface scattering is added. personally i love how it looks now anyway. i didnt like the purpleish look from the first video but the 2nd video where he landed looks very much like the real Europa to me
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As the guy above me said, we should expect results like this once Sub-Surface scattering is added.
Check the icy asteroids as a good example.
Check the icy asteroids as a good example.
yes thanks for posting, this image is the perfect example. you can see here how the light penetrates the ice and gives it the appearance of depth.
I really think people are getting ahead of themselves complaining about things like the ground appearance when we havn't actually played it yet..
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