News From orbit down to Europa

[W4rSkuLL]

All of these please!

Heat haze from vents would be cool and some damp/smoke cant hurt to get the bases alive. When base lies in the shadow. Light sources light up the base. I guess light sources are already in the game when its dark at bases. Frontier has good enough time to add to the bases during patches and updates in the future. So I am not worried about graphics and details. It will come. Really looking forward to land one of my ships on a planet on Monday and drive around in the SRV

 

[[SI] Bobdelion]

The thing that really gets me is how people don't seem willing to give Frontier the benefit of the doubt. They are working hard to make this game the best it can be. Don't be so too eager to assume they are trying to do you wrong.

 

[The Law]

The thing that really gets me is how people don't seem willing to give Frontier the benefit of the doubt. They are working hard to make this game the best it can be. Don't be so too eager to assume they are trying to do you wrong.

I think most developers in gaming business have learned to ignore the obviously nitpicky joes and negative nancies in their community. Because people love to moan. It is far easier to ignore those and focus on those who are positive and supportive. And the actual constructive criticism is always easy to spot among the general moaning.

 

[monkeymagoo]

When all the extra effects are in place (sub surface scattering etc) and ice worlds are looking something closer to those asteroids - which I've no doubt they will - but with lots of extra hues thrown in because of the various other minerals, landing on an ice world is going to be immense. Gleaming and glinting icy canyons and mountains are going to look sooooo good.

 

[sbdags]

Only thing that concerns me is the pop up. We see this now with asteroids, ships and stations which leads me to believe we will with planets.

Which is a shame.

 

[Zplintz]

Me thinks DB is spending way too much time playing ED (but thanks for sharing the vids).

Only thing that concerns me is the pop up. We see this now with asteroids, ships and stations which leads me to believe we will with planets.

Which is a shame.

I think the planet is already visible from SC and when you drop out of SC (without pop up), perhaps you mean LOD changes (Level Of Detail) as you approach the surface?

No pop ups anywhere would be nice - less noticeable LOD changes would be nice too, but this game has to run on a multitude of machines not just those of us with uber rigs and I would rather have pop ups and LOD changes than low/inconsistent FPS rates any day.

Expectations need to be reasonable - sometimes (perhaps) some people expect too much from a game designed to run with the avg current technology rather than top of the range.

 

[Mucka]

Me thinks DB is spending way too much time playing ED (but thanks for sharing the vids).



I think the planet is already visible from SC and when you drop out of SC (without pop up), perhaps you mean LOD changes (Level Of Detail) as you approach the surface?

No pop ups anywhere would be nice - less noticeable LOD changes would be nice too, but this game has to run on a multitude of machines not just those of us with uber rigs and I would rather have pop ups and LOD changes than low/inconsistent FPS rates any day.

Expectations need to be reasonable - sometimes (perhaps) some people expect too much from a game designed to run with the avg current technology rather than top of the range.

It should be designed for cutting edge technology but made scaleable and if that isn't possible then up the spec requirements instead of making something for console.

The problem for me is that income is put before quality and we have seen that as pattern from day one when the game was released much too early to catch the holiday market - it is till incomplete now from what we were promised.

 

[nexxo]

No income, no game at all. So yeah, I imagine it's pretty high on the priority list.

 

[viz]

I think the "Glide" phase should be renamed to something more fitting, "Deorbit Burn" springs to mind.

 

[RevEm]

Thank you for sharing David, Looks amazing.

 

[nexxo]

I think the "Glide" phase should be renamed to something more fitting, "Deorbit Burn" springs to mind.

Sounds more hardcore, therefore I approve.

 

[Zplintz]

It should be designed for cutting edge technology but made scaleable and if that isn't possible then up the spec requirements instead of making something for console.

The problem for me is that income is put before quality and we have seen that as pattern from day one when the game was released much too early to catch the holiday market - it is till incomplete now from what we were promised.

Sorry, I couldn't disagree with you more.

Even though I am fortunate to have a upper mid-range (or perhaps lower high range) rig and could (if I didn't insist on having two gaming capable pcs) afford a high end rig, I still cannot agree with you that if FD cannot make a particular aspect completely scalable, that they should then expect a higher minimum spec.

How would alienating or losing 50% of the customer base because they cannot run the game be good for the game in the short or long term just to satisfy the uber rig players' needs to push their equipment to the limit.

To think you can completely ignore income when running any business is naive at best and to increase costs and cut off potential customers by setting the min spec too high just to make one aspect prettier would be foolish. (IMO)

I think the "Glide" phase should be renamed to something more fitting, "Deorbit Burn" springs to mind.

Sounds more hardcore, therefore I approve.

Glide does sound a little gentle doesn't? However there would be no 'burn' when there is no atmosphere.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

This whole Glide mode thing is rather odd, I suspect its been added to stop players crashing into planets for starters, but also to give time for the engine to load the assets for said planets in as well. If anyone has ever used Space Engine will know if you zip across to a planet surface it takes an age to load everything in.

Seems like the will be at least limited manoeuvrability in this mode though. Unfortunately I predict a ****storm coming with this, as FD have clearly stated in the past that planetary landings would be seamless with no loading. Of course that's ridiculous because at some point there would be instance loading and secondly the game is always streaming data anyway. So in effect loading is constantly going on. I imagine this will be called 'loadinggate' within a few weeks.

Personally It doesn't bother me if it fits in the context of the game, which in this case it does seem to.

 

[Kissinger]

This is amazing DB, a hell of a lot smoother than reaching space stations.

Is it possible to import a similar approach system for stations in space so it doesn't look like they suddenly appear right in your face?

Oh yes - indeed - +1. If they can do it for entire planets..

 

[Jigsaw]

It not a loading screen (in the sense you think), its the transition between instances that are loading which is currently unavoidable.

So, you are saying it's not a loading screen, except that it happens when it's loading instances? It doesn't really matter if it's loading graphics assetts or ship positions from the server. Loading is loading, so it's exactly in the sense he thinks.

Great video.

Good to see that even David Braben makes the same mistakes we all do:

- spamming the boost key when the capacitor is empty

What I take from that: everyone keeps boosting, because the ship's maximum cruise speed is way too low across the board. Boosts should be a last resort maneuver in combat situations and not a standard cruising procedure.

Glide does sound a little gentle doesn't? However there would be no 'burn' when there is no atmosphere.

Well, but without atmosphere there isn't a "glide" either, since "gliding" is a specific term for utilizing aerodynamic/aquadynamic properties in gases or liquids without propulsion. No atmosphere/liquid, no Bernoulli effect, no lift, no buoyancy, no gliding.

 

[Cosmo]

So, you are saying it's not a loading screen, except that it happens when it's loading instances? It doesn't really matter if it's loading graphics assetts or ship positions from the server. Loading is loading, so it's exactly in the sense he thinks.

It's a pause to load the instance, not a loading screen to mask loading of a new map.

They ought to make the transition smooth so we don't notice the pause.

 

[Nagual]

So, you are saying it's not a loading screen, except that it happens when it's loading instances? It doesn't really matter if it's loading graphics assetts or ship positions from the server. Loading is loading, so it's exactly in the sense he thinks.

Most of the time is spent working out instances rather than loading anything, the server has to work out what other players are in the area, and then work out if the player can join any of them and this occurs via the p2p bit of the networking. The time it takes, I would guess (as obviously I'm not a dev) is the various handshaking, ping checking etc that the game does to make sure it's going to run smooth enough for all the players in an instance or potential instance. Yes the game obviously has to load something, but I really do think it's not the loading that's the problem, it's the p2p checking bit. In theory, there could be two separate instances already (separate due to the distance between players in the game) and when you appear in normal space, depending on where you are you could be smack in the middle of them and be in range of both instances, in effect joining them into one big instance. If the pings all work out. It's a complicated system they have going.

 

[Jigsaw]

It's a pause to load the instance,

Exactly!

 

[jonne]

As far as I know, there is no upper or lower limit - just no atmosphere and non-gas giants.

I guess the race is on - who can land on the biggest rock. IIRC some planets in earlier Elite would suck you in if the gravity was strong enough.

Also, What is the biggest rock?

[video=youtube_share;aO0TUI9r-So]https://youtu.be/aO0TUI9r-So[/video]

 

[CaptainKremmen]

I think the "Glide" phase should be renamed to something more fitting, "Deorbit Burn" springs to mind.

I think the idea is, if you want to go somewhere else on the surface that's not all that close, you ascend to the Glide altitude, fly along at (say) 2500m/s speed, then descend once you're where you want to be.

That neatly avoids clunky and complex transitions from Supercruise to Normal Space, which would otherwise be required for covering any real distance.


This would have been a critical feature in order to manage short-term persistence for surface installation states (eg. stuff you'd blown up or affected - power stations, gun emplacements...).

The SC transition is a full instance change every time. By jumping from planetary flight to SC, you risk losing all the states of the things on the surface... depending on whether there is any other player still down there. It's a case of "last one out, please turn off the lights" for any instance.


By adding a midway-speed "Glide Mode", FD get planetary flight to work with the instancing system instead of against it. While you're flying around the planet, things on the surface remain in a consistent state, just the way you left them. Because you haven't left them... and Glide Mode is there to get you from A to B fast, without cutting over instance transitions.


Conjecture, of course. But that's kind of how I expect it to work.

Guess I'll find out in a day or two!