You don't have to listen, but procedurally generating a planet from the ground up (literally) is a lot more complicated than modelling a landscape by hand and then giving it a PG overlay for detail. Outterra just has to render mountain where there is supposed to be mountain; field where there is supposed to be field, sea where there is supposed to be sea. In ED the planet generator also has to decide where there should be mountain, field and sea based on real-life geological principles. For all types of planet. And they did that in nine months. Whereas Outterra has had five years to get just one data-modelled planet looking right.
Planets grapihics quality leaves a lot to be desired
- Thread starter kiario
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You don't have to listen, but procedurally generating a planet from the ground up (literally) is a lot more complicated than modelling a landscape by hand and then giving it a PG overlay for detail. Outterra just has to render mountain where there is supposed to be mountain; field where there is supposed to be field, sea where there is supposed to be sea. In ED the planet generator also has to decide where there should be mountain, field and sea based on real-life geological principles. For all types of planet. And they did that in nine months. Whereas Outterra has had five years to get just one data-modelled planet looking right.
Agree with the specular on oceans. Disagree with the ice one: I'm not that sure icy planets would be cristal-clear like ice cubes
Antartica isn't that reflective, is it?
This. PG is just a tool. But FD produces such planets on the fly. Outterra has perfected one planet - which is amazing achievement, don't get it wrong - but it is still authored.
I believe that first, we will see much better Europa today - if they have fixed that icy look - and futher down Season 2 we will see more and more visual improvements to planetary side things, lava, volcanoes included. It's huge task.
edit: also lightning has come up quite frequently in discussions and David have said they plan to upgrade it but it is matter of planning and resources. They aim to do it during Season 2.
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This is all true. I feel that Elite Dangerous is missing some really great lighting. Flying around icy planets the stars should cause massive specular lighting, the earth like world's water surfaces should also have massive specular lighting and wouldn't be mixed with the land mass planes.
ED lacks so much in its current state that it really feels and looks u finished.
Auroras, storm cells that have lightnings, moving cloud planes etc.
What we have now is big plastic spheres.
But, I'm confident FD will increase the visual fidelity over time. I just hope it doesn't take too long...
Well...
Infinity: since 2004
Outerra: since 2010
Space Engine: since 2005
ED planet generator: since around January 2015
Let's give them some time to catch up.
Makes sense, thanks.
Nexxo, PG for terrains is about defining rules that resemble natural patterns and processes. In this respect what Outerra is doing and what Ed is doing is no different.You're making one sound magical and hard work while down playing the achievements of the other. You've got it backwards. Anyone can take real life, freely available low res data and apply it as a displacement on something. Thats not interesting at all.
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In the other respect however, ED defines rules that resemble natural geology, not just surface detail. Not just how the mountain looks, but where it will be. It goes a lot deeper. You are focusing on the bit that is similar and dismissing where they differ.
You are also ignoring the fact that Outerra has a four year head start.
You are also ignoring the fact that Outerra has a four year head start.
I can think of far better things to complain about than the graphic on these videos. The graphics look fine to me. It's a computer game. It is never going to be exacly like real life.
Do I want the developers to spend another 6 months working on this to keep the moaners who have forgotten the game and moved on by the time they have made it the way they like it?
No.
Would I prefer the developers moved on and addressed the far bigger issues with the game that I myself would like to see them work on?
Yes.
But my opinion doesn't matter any more than yours does.
Do I want the developers to spend another 6 months working on this to keep the moaners who have forgotten the game and moved on by the time they have made it the way they like it?
No.
Would I prefer the developers moved on and addressed the far bigger issues with the game that I myself would like to see them work on?
Yes.
But my opinion doesn't matter any more than yours does.
You are a slicer?
As you've set the bar so high for a "v1.0" release, I think you're going to be disappointed... in much the same way that I was often dissappointed with how ED's planets look in v1.0 . (But to give credit to FD, they've since heavily reworked the planets MORE than once, and they now look pretty fantastic when seen from orbit. I'm pretty sure the same will eventually apply to Horizon's planets seen from the surface.)
But personally, I'm pretty happy with the detailed (rocky) ground textures you seen - they exceeded what I was expecting. Yeah Europa looked bland, but we know the very important SSS effect wasn't working.
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Hah, please don't start that again. We already went through that 12+ months ago, in the run-up to the first commercial release of ED. At that point everyone & his dog was saying "don't worry, it's only gamma/beta" or "don't worry, it's just a vertical slice". Turns out that all we got at release was a (somewhat) debugged version of the beta. Which is exactly what we should expect: "Beta" is supposed to mean "feature complete but may contain bugs", therefore all we should expect between now & release is for bugs to be fixed. Cool new stuff will have to wait for the next major update (v2.1) sometime next year.
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I don't think we need to start complaining when we haven't seen it our self yet. I: is a good benchmark for the graphics.
I hope that FD as Its a larger team can do better. Its all about pushing the limits for what can be done.
When Elite came out the first time, we were all amazed by the fact that you could have all that on one floppy disk.
Today, 1TB in a computer is nothing, most new computers come with 16GB of RAM and a decent GPU. I also believe that you can do a lot with TEXTURES and the lightning in the game. Its not an easy task, if it was everyone would be doing it right?
I hope that FD as Its a larger team can do better. Its all about pushing the limits for what can be done.
When Elite came out the first time, we were all amazed by the fact that you could have all that on one floppy disk.
Today, 1TB in a computer is nothing, most new computers come with 16GB of RAM and a decent GPU. I also believe that you can do a lot with TEXTURES and the lightning in the game. Its not an easy task, if it was everyone would be doing it right?
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It´s Europa ...... what u want trees and lakes on there?
Wrong thread.
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Agree...to a certain degree. Exploration really benefits from good and detailed planet graphics.
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Of course not
I want to see detailed textures. Realistic looking craters. And not a planet stations site looking like it was copied and pasted on a flat 1 color surface without any shadows, lightning etc