There's nothing...NOTHING more immersion breaking than dropping out of SUper/Orbital Cruise

[Boomer Kay]

I worked for a media company some time ago that also published games. We had to field 4 pcs for an expo with 128mb ram to run the unoptimized tech demo. Bout 10k$ each back in the days. High tech for professional dtp/cad use.
The game didn't even start on the 16-32mb that was the home user standard back then.

For the planetary landing, try a flat angle. It hides the freeze better. They could hide it better by forcing you into a corridor to make it look seamless, but true seamless is pretty much non-existent. It's getting better with SSDs and higher bandwidth, but ping and packet loss are still quite bad. I had better of both with my old isdn 64k line than the 25mbit dsl of today.

 

[VanQ]

even no man sky and star citizen will feature seamless transition. actually seamless transition has existed for a loooooong time. This is just very disappointing. Oh well its what it is i guess.

Yea, but neither of them have FULL SCALE starsystems! SC went to 64bit coordinates, but still the maps will be smaller than most of the ED systems. I think ED compensate for that by using a less accurate measurement in supercruise but the tradeoff is the non-seamless transitions.

 

[xondk]

I worked for a media company some time ago that also published games. We had to field 4 pcs for an expo with 128mb ram to run the unoptimized tech demo. Bout 10k$ each back in the days. High tech for professional dtp/cad use.
The game didn't even start on the 16-32mb that was the home user standard back then.

For the planetary landing, try a flat angle. It hides the freeze better. They could hide it better by forcing you into a corridor to make it look seamless, but true seamless is pretty much non-existent. It's getting better with SSDs and higher bandwidth, but ping and packet loss are still quite bad. I had better of both with my old isdn 64k line than the 25mbit dsl of today.

Seriously?.......wow, your ISP should, you know..fix that.

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Yea, but neither of them have FULL SCALE starsystems! SC went to 64bit coordinates, but still the maps will be smaller than most of the ED systems. I think ED compensate for that by using a less accurate measurement in supercruise but the tradeoff is the non-seamless transitions.

Again, the brief 'load' of which I practically don't experience it at all, one fluid motion to me, so to me it is seamless, but yes to anyone that has a connection issue it is not there will be a moment pause, however that doesn't change that it is still seamless, because seamless means there's loading away what is behind you, and loading where you are going by help of hiding the fact, this does not happen in Elite..just fyi.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Seriously?.......wow, your ISP should, you know..fix that.

Well, it used to be 10-15 ms on European (mostly Frankfurt/ Amsterdam ) servers, now it's more like 20-25. Not much to fix there.
Could fix part of it myself by using network cables instead of WiFi.. costs a few ms, but not that much .. 1-3 on a good day.
For ED it makes no difference... I only notice delay when I have real networking issues. But then the rest of the internet is laggy, too.

 

[Privata]

even no man sky and star citizen will feature seamless transition. actually seamless transition has existed for a loooooong time. This is just very disappointing. Oh well its what it is i guess.

SC has a lot of promise and I like it. however even it has transitions of sorts that can hurt immersion. and NMS may be good for its loading but thats the only thing its got going , the game is said by the devs to be simple and easy for all to use its more a toy than a real video game aimed at the players who hate space sims because of how deep or slow they are.

as for SC I reserve judgement until they put the system online however it is very important to note one MAJOR difference between SC NMS and elite. elite has real scale yet SC and NMS have tiny planets that make a marble look like a jovian.
and SC has one big instance per sector but elite does instances on ''levels''

 

[xondk]

Well, it used to be 10-15 ms on European (mostly Frankfurt/ Amsterdam ) servers, now it's more like 20-25. Not much to fix there.
Could fix part of it myself by using network cables instead of WiFi.. costs a few ms, but not that much .. 1-3 on a good day.
For ED it makes no difference... I only notice delay when I have real networking issues. But then the rest of the internet is laggy, too.

Well that's a routing issue, which if you knew your previous route to target and the new one, (if same destination), is one you can recommend to them, course one european server might have a different ping then another so that might also simply be the case.
But yeah, same here otherwise, I only notice the switch over when there's general internet issues.

 

[peteuplink]

I've never been a fan of the way the ship drops out of SC/OC. I've had the game since Beta and the more I;ve played of it the more I've noticed rather odd design decisions that make me wonder "Is that the best they could really do?"

 

[xondk]

I've never been a fan of the way the ship drops out of SC/OC. I've had the game since Beta and the more I;ve played of it the more I've noticed rather odd design decisions that make me wonder "Is that the best they could really do?"

Could you explain the dislike of it perhaps?, and would it help if there was a 'zoom' function, similar to the one Star Citizen users to cover up the same stuff?

go to 2:10 in this video, link didn't seem to play right
[video=youtube_share;gYyEVTU3U5I]https://youtu.be/gYyEVTU3U5I?t=132[/video]

though you will notice it still 'pops'

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

Wow. This really highlights how Elite feels like flying in different rooms in space thanks to the supercruise/hyperspace mechanic. Not sure I like the idea of the rest of that game, but ED sure could learn from the tech! Imagine actual seamless flight between stars, and seamless flight from a space station down to a planet. Would be epic.

https://youtu.be/dp8RTHR0HWQ

Welp... looks like I backed the wrong game

 

[Ignition]

... and NMS may be good for its loading but thats the only thing its got going , the game is said by the devs to be simple and easy for all to use its more a toy than a real video game aimed at the players who hate space sims because of how deep or slow they are.

Pretty much as Elite. The gameplay of Elite is no different from what you can see on youtube about NMS.

 

[Kubicide]

Could you explain the dislike of it perhaps?, and would it help if there was a 'zoom' function, similar to the one Star Citizen users to cover up the same stuff?

go to 2:10 in this video, link didn't seem to play right
https://youtu.be/gYyEVTU3U5I?t=132

though you will notice it still 'pops'

Actually, you've helped prove the point that Elite is pretty bad. Even in alpha SC does the instancing transitions far better. Elite is pretty bad for a released game.

 

[CoreHaven]

Yes I've noticed it. It's jarring. Kind of ridiculous.

I make up things in my head for crap like this. I think every time it's happened I imagine that something about the mass of the planet, and the cruise drive interact in a strange way causing nearly full stop for a few seconds above a planet while entering normal flight, and then the momentum is carried over when the effect dies causing what we call " Glide ". I know it's just a technical loading thing and not a lore thing. I just have to make it a lore thing in my head so it doesn't drive me crazy up the wall.

 

[xondk]

Actually, you've helped prove the point that Elite is pretty bad. Even in alpha SC does the instancing transitions far better. Elite is pretty bad for a released game.

Oh? far better? cool, well if you say so, that transition is EXACTLY the same as elites but with a zoom effect, you will notice the same kind of pop in and such after he is in, and as someone who has backed star citizen I can tell you that looks aren't everything, Elite is far far more solid functionally and looks great doing so, and a simple zoom effect like that, if that's all it takes for people to go "oooh pretty" is just sad.

 

[Ignition]

Oh? far better? cool, well if you say so, that transition is EXACTLY the same as elites but with a zoom effect, you will notice the same kind of pop in and such after he is in, and as someone who has backed star citizen I can tell you that looks aren't everything, Elite is far far more solid functionally and looks great doing so, and a simple zoom effect like that, if that's all it takes for people to go "oooh pretty" is just sad.

You drop from Supercruise at 900km, you need to wait until the instance is generated, station pop up in front of you at 10km and your speed is now 0m/s. Yeah "its solid and looks great".

 

[xondk]

You drop from Supercruise at 900km, you need to wait until the instance is generated, station pop up in front of you at 10km and your speed is now 0m/s. Yeah "its solid and looks great".

As said, there's no wait here, and we are talking about horizon, planets, NOT stations of which I've already agreed on it needs to be made smoother, so yeah.

As for "you drop from supercruise at 900km" if you are referring to a planet? no, no you do not, I just aim at planet fly all the way down, at 25km above surface is when the supercruise to glider exchange happens and at least to me it is very smooth, will gladly provide video evidence, and my computer is not even a top tier.

 

[Itaki]

My immersion is way more broken when a cat jumps on my lap while playing ED with a DK2.

Or when someone rings the doorbell and serves me a subpoena

 

[specialsymbol]

I think the glding part when approaching a planet is pretty neat.


Dropping out of SC behind a station and then being placed in front of it is not.

 

[Ignition]

As said, there's no wait here, and we are talking about horizon, planets, NOT stations of which I've already agreed on it needs to be made smoother, so yeah.

As for "you drop from supercruise at 900km" if you are referring to a planet? no, no you do not, I just aim at planet fly all the way down, at 25km above surface is when the supercruise to glider exchange happens and at least to me it is very smooth, will gladly provide video evidence, and my computer is not even a top tier.

Hey guys, to xondk works fine, FD don't need to fix anything.

 

[xondk]

Hey guys, to xondk works fine, FD don't need to fix anything.

Isn't that a nice little reply you made...

Here's the thing....maybe...just 'maybe' the problem is located outside Frontier's control, on the user side or said users ISP or general internet?.....just maybe?
Rather then going "It doesn't work! fix it fix it fix it!" maybe try to find the actual problem?

 

[dxm55]

This has very little to do with the network model, a full scale system with instancing which more or less every game has will always have a location where it needs to load a second, but yeah yours seems especially bad I've _never_ had that long instancing times except when server is having widespread issues, not once, so I would wonder if something is up between you and frontier's servers.

That said people blaming the networking, don't make sense in my book, should players instead just 'pop' in randomly while you, yourself continued smoothly? that would be even worse in my book, "blink" ok he just popped in randomly out of nowhere?
The transition itself is seamless there is no black loading zone where previous stuff is unloaded and new stuff is loaded, so the transition is seamless in that part, what would you do? because networking needs time to sync one way or another this cannot be avoided, even star citizen is going to have this, quantum travel is essentially a load tunnel right now of similar nature to this, they've just taken the approach to give it a speed limit of which you can get from a to b where it counts down and shows you how far you have travelled, but it is a glorified loading screen, and if interupted you'll see players pop in and geometry load slowly, so yeah.

Could the transition be made smoother still? yes, definitely, but there's always going to be a step where connection needs to do something.
They could extend the instance sizes and transition boarders, and extend some of the animations a bit by giving some of them arbitrary lengths of time it takes, and use said length of time to animate the entrance, like seeing an outpost as the dot in supercruise and basically zooming in until you are in the instance, so yeah could do with some tweaking, but yeah, in terms of planetary landings its very smooth in my book, would be nice if supercruise to normal would be similar smooth.

A transition is still a transition. We can only hope that FD works this part out because I see real seamless transitions even on alphas of SC and IB.

What they could consider perhaps would be to preload the nearest space station or planetary body to the player's ship location into memory, seeing as how being in proximity to such a location would simply mean that the possibility of dropping out of SC or entering orbit would be high.

It's always annoying how dropping out of SC could randomly take between a split second and 5 secs. Ditto dropping out of orbital cruise. Those blue rays around the edges of your cockpit view means nothing to me in terms of mitigating the transition. It is still a transition, black screen or a pretend-to-drop-out-of-jump animation non-withstanding....