Abandoned Sneak Peek - Surface Navigation

[Tryst]

I can only hope the reason for stopping this is that they actually have plans (fairly soon) to do their own version in game, otherwise it's a bit sad

According to the Community Manager in the suggestions forum, there are no plans by FD to implement it themselves.

IMO, they are being petty.

 

[avow555]

According to the Community Manager in the suggestions forum, there are no plans by FD to implement it themselves.

IMO, they are being petty.

They bring petty to a whole new level!

 

[Moncada]

They bring petty to a whole new level!

A problem with FDev could be that the author has stated that its planned to be a paid app.

 

[Khelder]

According to the Community Manager in the suggestions forum, there are no plans by FD to implement it themselves.

IMO, they are being petty.

They bring petty to a whole new level!

While I am frustrated that I am unable to release this, I don't believe their decision has anything to do with the navigation component itself or their intention (or lack thereof) to provide this functionality themselves. At least, I hope that's not the case. I would be disappointed if that were part of it.

The problem is the data requirements for this feature... and the method I use to acheive that.

A problem with FDev could be that the author has stated that its planned to be a paid app.

I haven't had any indication that this would be the case and I don't see why it would be a problem. VoiceAttack is an officially licensed commercial application.

 

[ArchEmperor]

While I am frustrated that I am unable to release this, I don't believe their decision has anything to do with the navigation component itself or their intention (or lack thereof) to provide this functionality themselves. At least, I hope that's not the case. I would be disappointed if that were part of it.

The problem is the data requirements for this feature... and the method I use to acheive that.



I haven't had any indication that this would be the case and I don't see why it would be a problem. VoiceAttack is an officially licensed commercial application.

I think the reason is because they want us to "search" the surfaces while going to these locations. Instead of watching some indikator, we HAVE TO VISUALLY STUDY THE SURFACE... and in this way we will find their hidden alien sites which is not mapped.

I am not 100% with them on this approach, but I understand why.

 

[Khelder]

I think the reason is because they want us to "search" the surfaces while going to these locations. Instead of watching some indikator, we HAVE TO VISUALLY STUDY THE SURFACE... and in this way we will find their hidden alien sites which is not mapped.

I am not 100% with them on this approach, but I understand why.

Well, I've had no official indication of such. While part of me wouldn't be overly surprised, I'd be very disappointed if it was a factor. Frontier, despite their EULA, have chosen to support third-party tools. I am extremely grateful for this because I'm a firm believer that these tools have a lot to offer the game. If, however, they don't want players to receive any kind of external assistance... they have to realise that that ship has now well and truly sailed.

Aside from that, my surface navigation tool will not magically make "secret" sites appear. Yes, it would aid in search coordination. But it won't help you find anything if you don't already know where it is. It's similar to current day car navigation, not an advanced sensor array. Given that there are no other in-game tools available to explorers, they'll still have to spend hours on end flying upside down with graphic settings set to mud hoping they find a pixel speck before they go blind, mad, or both.

 

[Codger]

I still think this is an awesome feature, one that many players would appreciate access to.

And you've definitely accomplished one very important thing -- you've shown that it is technically feasible to provide navigation to planetary coordinates. Thus, the only reason we don't have such a feature in the game is that FD hasn't added it. It's not impossible.

Which means we can keep asking, and they can't double-talk us about how difficult it would be to add.

Anyway, thanks very much for the effort. I do hope your app gets approval.

 

[robbyp]

Well done on the technical aspects.

 

[ArchEmperor]

I need to add that I very much fancy the technical interface. I just LOOOOOVE this kind of things. Too bad we do not have it.

 

[CMDR Boozeman]

Hi,

I am still dreaming this tool! The lack of this kind of surface navigation is just.. perseestä! (Some Finnish swearing..)

If FDev can't make it by itself, please offer do this for them at the "proper" way and show them where the chicken pees from

 

[Osbo89]

The fact the ED must know that a lot of people don't bother search for things with the backward and out dated co-ordinance and that includes myself but with this system a lot more people would..

 

[Tryst]

The fact the ED must know that a lot of people don't bother search for things with the backward and out dated co-ordinance and that includes myself but with this system a lot more people would..

When the post about the other relic sites came up, I went off to scan a few planets and search for them. After flying over just one planet and realising I'd gone over the same spot several times because I couldn't create a proper search pattern overlay to follow and search properly, I stopped and went back to what I was doing before. At least I was making money doing what I was doing before that and not just wasting my time flying over planets that all look identical.

Kudos to those who did find the sites but there was no way I was going to waste my time like that.

 

[jgm]

I have no argument about how good EDDI is, I have used it myself. However, they allowed memory scraping to be used there but refuse it for another mod. Seems that FD's EULA is not as hard and fast as they say and you can break the rules in some cases but not others.

As someone pointed out previously, allowing one program to scrape data while disallowing others is a dodgy road. The problem is that road has already been taken and the precedent has already been set by EDDI.

Others have responded to this, but to be entirely clear: EDDI does not do any memory scraping. All data that EDDI obtains from Elite comes from either the companion API or the in-game journal and netlog files.

 

[ethexia]

Must say, any sort of surface navigation tool is welcome, yours looks like the perfect solution for what is lacking now in Elite. I am so frustrated now, it's beyond belief. I personally play this game, as any other games, for my escapism, i do not want to play a "real life, work, tiring, monotonous activities simulator " - and i like exploration more than any part of the game, but - this current implementation of planetary surface location landing is - soooooo frustrating. ( I have crashed my ship on purpose multiple times, just to let it vent ) I do have learned the the lat and long - system, but it is not helping me in any way ( except for already known locations or coordinates ). Today for example I located a planetoid and a spot to land, it took me more than 1 hour to try and locate ( which i still haven't ) the point of interest where i wanted to land. If Frontier doesn't have plans to address this frustration ( which I'm sure, I am not the only one, based on posts around internet ), at least let community players "solve this" with tools, such as demonstrated in this video. I do understand that some might enjoy the "Needle in haystacks approach", and that frontier is focusing on combat based stuff - i just hope that they do something about it soon'ish. Maybe i am missing something, which doesnt allow me to enjoy current state of planetary location navigation, if so any help would be appreciated. Other than that - I love the game, but there are times ....

 

[Exigeous]

It really is insane that at this point we still don't have a good tool to find a point on a planet. I mean are you really telling me that in 1100 years we've mastered faster than light travel yet our ship's computer can't take us directly to a set of coordinates on a planet? How can our ship know where we are and what heading we're flying without being able to calculate the heading based on current location and a destination? Haven't commercial airplanes done nearly exactly that for the last 40+ years?

I'm also terrible at finding a location on a planet, sometimes it'll take me more than 10 minutes and at that point I usually just give up. The best way I've used to find a location is to fly sideways to the planet, on either a 90/180/270/360 heading so I can stay on a specific latitude/longitude. When one of the two hits the right number I'll change heading to another of those 4 to try to find the second number. I fly sideways as that way I can see the planet on my left/right and use yaw to make sure I stay above 0 degrees so I won't drop into orbital cruise. As we know the trouble is you're flying so fast making it that much harder as when you turn to get lined up with the second one you've completely overshot the first.

I understand that Frontier doesn't want any app to read/modify memory as that could be used for exploits - but until they have a solution for this it's exceedingly frustrating that they wouldn't let the community "fix" this in the meantime. Especially when so much time and effort has been volunteered to that solution.

 

[Hydrino]

It really is insane that at this point we still don't have a good tool to find a point on a planet. I mean are you really telling me that in 1100 years we've mastered faster than light travel yet our ship's computer can't take us directly to a set of coordinates on a planet? How can our ship know where we are and what heading we're flying without being able to calculate the heading based on current location and a destination? Haven't commercial airplanes done nearly exactly that for the last 40+ years?

I'm also terrible at finding a location on a planet, sometimes it'll take me more than 10 minutes and at that point I usually just give up. The best way I've used to find a location is to fly sideways to the planet, on either a 90/180/270/360 heading so I can stay on a specific latitude/longitude. When one of the two hits the right number I'll change heading to another of those 4 to try to find the second number. I fly sideways as that way I can see the planet on my left/right and use yaw to make sure I stay above 0 degrees so I won't drop into orbital cruise. As we know the trouble is you're flying so fast making it that much harder as when you turn to get lined up with the second one you've completely overshot the first.

I understand that Frontier doesn't want any app to read/modify memory as that could be used for exploits - but until they have a solution for this it's exceedingly frustrating that they wouldn't let the community "fix" this in the meantime. Especially when so much time and effort has been volunteered to that solution.

I agree 100%. But don't let the "immersion" crowd find this or they will label it as from "instant gratification cry babies".

Perhaps FD, from their confined point of view, haven't realized just how hard it is to find stuff in their game. Thus, neglected to put tools to do so earlier in the feature coding list. Or as seems their wonky way, think it is "fun" to spend hours and hours flying around looking for stuff with only the naked eye; like interpreting the wonky bleeps and bloops on the wave scanner.

I am not saying it is simple or trivial, but efforts like the OP have put in this show it is well within achievable.

Finding something on a single planet or moon is incredibly difficult without sophisticated tools. And we have trillions of planetary bodies in the galaxy. Searching at low altitude flight by eyes only looking for ruins is "fun". The fact that so many players have done this and we have found multiple sites that FD "hid" may re-enforce the perception at FD and over-shadow what seems to me clear forum feedback about frustration.

FD need a season devoted to core game-play mechanics and updates. They probably think players would not go for it and want the atmospheric landings and such first. But I think they are mistaken in that. The forums seem to clearly and consistently call out for such.

Players are customers. Players are funding the company. Would be nice if FD found some positive way to collaborate on the upcoming priority list with the players. Maybe a survey from within the launcher so that folks that don't play Forum bingo were aware and got clear notice to give input.

Oh well. I gave OP rep some time ago for this code. Hopefully FD come to their senses or up the priority of things like this.

Good grief:
ADDED DISCLAIMER: Frontier Developments currently hold that the method used to acquire data for this navigation component violates the EULA. I very much hope that Frontier change their stance on this matter. Until that time, though, I am unable to release this functionality. ~ Khelder

 

[Hoodathunk]

It tells you that you've dropped to normal space from cruise and also what landing pad to go to. Both can not be found in files, they can only be gained from scraping data.

Tryst, look no further than the top stickied post in this sub on a FDev programmer presenting the Journal Log feature (added in 2.2) to understand how EDDI and other 3rd party apps work.

you may want to do your research before you impugn an independent developer who graciously enriches our playing experience.

 

[Tryst]

Tryst, look no further than the top stickied post in this sub on a FDev programmer presenting the Journal Log feature (added in 2.2) to understand how EDDI and other 3rd party apps work.

you may want to do your research before you impugn an independent developer who graciously enriches our playing experience.

So FD can allow this data to help a developer make a marginally useful tool for immersion, but refuse to allow the planetary coordinates to be saved to allow another independent developer to make an extremely useful tool for gameplay.

That's like saying the government will allow you to paint your car any colour you want but won't allow a manufacturer to make a steering wheel so you can actually drive it.

 

[Khelder]

So FD can allow this data to help a developer make a marginally useful tool for immersion, but refuse to allow the planetary coordinates to be saved to allow another independent developer to make an extremely useful tool for gameplay.

Hey Tryst. There's a little bit of a difference in what's going on here.

Frontier have recently added the Journal Log functionality which dumps data from a number of game events to a text log file. This isn't exactly optimal but it's a huge step forward from what was before it. It's fantastic that Frontier have provided this.

However, for this Surface Navigation module, the type of information and the performance required, preclude the use of text logs. My application acquires that data directly from the Game client, not from log files.

It's not so much that Frontier have refused to save coordinates (they do to a limited extent in the netLog file). That kind of data doesn't really fit the method they have used. What they have currently disallowed is acquiring data from the Game client.

 

[Tryst]

It's not so much that Frontier have refused to save coordinates (they do to a limited extent in the netLog file). That kind of data doesn't really fit the method they have used. What they have currently disallowed is acquiring data from the Game client.

Hold on here. You don't need data from the game client to pinpoint a location on a planet, all you really need is the coordinates of that location. Therefore, the coordinates of the ship when you land is all you'd need to place a marker that is no different to the way the planetary stations are marked. I understand that you can't record the current coordinates while you're flying since the numbers can change by hundreds every second. In this manner, you would have to physically visit a specific spot in order to mark it. If the coordinates of the ship when it is parked on the ground were stored in the netlog file, we wouldn't be having this conversation and we would be enjoying a very useful addon.