My impressions of Horizons so far...

First off well done FD! This is very impressive work. It does a great job of adding a lot more 'world' to the the game. It now feels much bigger. ED has always been very big but in game terms you see the same 'screens' all the time. This adds a lot more to the experience of flying around.

All that said, we are now in Beta and bugs are both rife and to be expected. In the short time I have played with it I have found that the buggy controls need to be looked at. Not because they are wrong or anything like that but that I have found that a lot of of the time when you map buttons and sticks from the joypad they do not seem to work.

The throttle in particular needs a 'thrust' type set up similar to the ships. At the moment you can engage the throtle forward or reverse like an automatic car but aswell as this function it would benefit greatly if you could simply nudge the buggy along and when the button is released the throttle falls back again.

If you think of the Mars rover and the guys controlling that, every movement is controlled since one error could end the whole expedition. This is a little bit like that since these worlds you have created have very dangerous ravines and jagged surfaces (especially the metal planets!) The currrent throttle is a bit all or nothing and makes traversing difficult terrain very difficult. The pitch forward and back seems to be stuck in one format. It cannot be reversed even though you can set the sticks the way you want. There is also a 'invert' function for the axis but neither of these methods work and seems to be bugged.

The other issue I would mention and again am aware this is Beta and optimisation is sure to come in the future. I just bought a new high end laptop two days ago. I won't go into the specs but it is a good machine and the game itself chose high settings for Horizons. I am running at 60FPS in space and abot 30-40 FPS down on the planets. The game runs very smoooth and looks fantastic on my new machine. However, when cruising the planet surfaces I do still see quite a bit of pop up detail which is a little jarring.

I have also noticed a bug where the actual throttle display on the buggy disappears.

Other than that it all looks fantastic!
 
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Have you been doing any of the new, multi-layered missions?

No. I don't bother with missions in Beta's since they gain me nothing in the game. In fact, I don't usually bother with Beta'ss at all 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 Betas were all completely ignored by me other than a quick look at one or two things. I rather play the game where what I do actually matters. This beta obviously offers a bit more to see so naturally I was curious. It looks very good. I see great potential in many areas. I really hope it allows the game to grow and ties into the BGS in a more meaningful way in the future.
 
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Not had the same issue with the buggy controls. All the jotlysticks maps have stuck. Also my throttle is set the same as my ship with forward only thrust and toggle for reverse which works fine meaning I can drive along at steady speeds. The only axis problems I have had is with the pitch, even when I invert they do not change.
 
I'm really enjoying horizons so far. I don't seem to be having the problems you're having though. My x55 throttle is working the same in the SRV as in flight. Nice smooth acceleration. I also haven't seen any pop in of textures since Horizons yet I was seeing it all the time in 1.4. How much ram do you have on your card? I'm running 1980x1200 with 1x supersampling and everything on max. I have no pop in at all. It looks gorgeous from space all the way to the ground. I do have 6gig on the card though and 16 on the board. It might be a ram issue but I'm no techie. All I know is that the graphical issues I had in 1.4 are gone now.
 
All that said, we are now in Beta and bugs are both rife and to be expected. In the short time I have played with it I have found that the buggy controls need to be looked at. Not because they are wrong or anything like that but that I have found that a lot of of the time when you map buttons and sticks from the joypad they do not seem to work.

The throttle in particular needs a 'thrust' type set up similar to the ships. At the moment you can engage the throtle forward or reverse like an automatic car but aswell as this function it would benefit greatly if you could simply nudge the buggy along and when the button is released the throttle falls back again.

You may have assigned the joystick axes to directional keys instead of turn and throttle axes, did you check the assignments? There was another thread about a HOTAS acting as if it had no analogue input but the problem turned out to be the assignments were incorrect.
 
I have no pop in at all. It looks gorgeous from space all the way to the ground.

Have you tried landing on the planets in SOL? I didn't have any popups in the PG systems, but when entering the hand crafted SOL system the loading of textures isn't that good and the ground doesn't look as detailed as in other systems....
I went from 'WOW' moment in the PG systems to slightly dissapointed when I got too SOL and landed on Mercury....
 
If you think of the Mars rover and the guys controlling that, every movement is controlled since one error could end the whole expedition.

considering the signal delay between earth and mars ranges from 4 to 24 minutes I highly doubt manual control of a rover would be advantageous.
 
First off well done FD! This is very impressive work. It does a great job of adding a lot more 'world' to the the game. It now feels much bigger. ED has always been very big but in game terms you see the same 'screens' all the time. This adds a lot more to the experience of flying around.

All that said, we are now in Beta and bugs are both rife and to be expected. In the short time I have played with it I have found that the buggy controls need to be looked at. Not because they are wrong or anything like that but that I have found that a lot of of the time when you map buttons and sticks from the joypad they do not seem to work.

The throttle in particular needs a 'thrust' type set up similar to the ships. At the moment you can engage the throtle forward or reverse like an automatic car but aswell as this function it would benefit greatly if you could simply nudge the buggy along and when the button is released the throttle falls back again.

If you think of the Mars rover and the guys controlling that, every movement is controlled since one error could end the whole expedition. This is a little bit like that since these worlds you have created have very dangerous ravines and jagged surfaces (especially the metal planets!) The currrent throttle is a bit all or nothing and makes traversing difficult terrain very difficult. The pitch forward and back seems to be stuck in one format. It cannot be reversed even though you can set the sticks the way you want. There is also a 'invert' function for the axis but neither of these methods work and seems to be bugged.

The other issue I would mention and again am aware this is Beta and optimisation is sure to come in the future. I just bought a new high end laptop two days ago. I won't go into the specs but it is a good machine and the game itself chose high settings for Horizons. I am running at 60FPS in space and abot 30-40 FPS down on the planets. The game runs very smoooth and looks fantastic on my new machine. However, when cruising the planet surfaces I do still see quite a bit of pop up detail which is a little jarring.

I have also noticed a bug where the actual throttle display on the buggy disappears.

Other than that it all looks fantastic!


Nice write up orfeboy, i am desperately trying to avoid reading these write up's as i want it so much, but found myself reading them all....Roll on release date?
 
Have you tried landing on the planets in SOL? I didn't have any popups in the PG systems, but when entering the hand crafted SOL system the loading of textures isn't that good and the ground doesn't look as detailed as in other systems....
I went from 'WOW' moment in the PG systems to slightly dissapointed when I got too SOL and landed on Mercury....

No, I haven't looked around SOL, I will head there next. Is that one of the areas they haven't textured yet. I found one on my travels and it looked like a planet of bread dough....lol.
 
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