Can the Cobra engine handle detailed populated planets with cities?

[Luniticisi]

OP asks "Can the Cobra engine handle detailed populated planets with cities?"

Answer (as has been pointed out numerous times) = Yes 'The Outsider' did it over 5 years ago.

question answered.

 

[Old Duck]

OP asks "Can the Cobra engine handle detailed populated planets with cities?"

Answer (as has been pointed out numerous times) = Yes 'The Outsider' did it over 5 years ago.

question answered.

It's not that simple, unless "The Outsider" allowed you to take a spaceship up into orbit and look back down on the cities. There are tricks that work when down in a city (like only rendering the block you're on and skyboxing the far away scenery) that might not work in a space / flight sim like ED, not to mention ED cities will be built on truly spherical worlds, not the flat and tiny (city-sized) "worlds" that most city simulators use.

 

[Robert Maynard]

It's not that simple, unless "The Outsider" allowed you to take a spaceship up into orbit and look back down on the cities. There are tricks that work when down in a city (like only rendering the block you're on and skyboxing the far away scenery) that might not work in a space / flight sim like ED, not to mention ED cities will be built on truly spherical worlds, not the flat and tiny (city-sized) "worlds" that most city simulators use.

I doubt that the atmosphere would be crystal clear on these worlds - allowing atmospheric haze to obscure fine detail when viewed from long range.

 

[Luniticisi]

It's not that simple, unless "The Outsider" allowed you to take a spaceship up into orbit and look back down on the cities. There are tricks that work when down in a city (like only rendering the block you're on and skyboxing the far away scenery) that might not work in a space / flight sim like ED, not to mention ED cities will be built on truly spherical worlds, not the flat and tiny (city-sized) "worlds" that most city simulators use.

I have a feeling that FD have full confidence that they will be able to pull it off, they probably already have a load of 'tricks' to make this happen. The 'Cobra' engine is extremely versatile .. just look at things like "Lost winds" or "Kinectimals" to show the diversity the engine can produce.

 

[Kaocraft]

OP asks "Can the Cobra engine handle detailed populated planets with cities?"

Answer (as has been pointed out numerous times) = Yes 'The Outsider' did it over 5 years ago.

question answered.

Try again. The Outsider never came out so it didn't do *anything* 5 years ago or ever. It's entirely possible that the game didn't work as intended *because* of the Cobra engine. We'll never know, because the game doesn't exist.

 

[xondk]

It's not that simple, unless "The Outsider" allowed you to take a spaceship up into orbit and look back down on the cities. There are tricks that work when down in a city (like only rendering the block you're on and skyboxing the far away scenery) that might not work in a space / flight sim like ED, not to mention ED cities will be built on truly spherical worlds, not the flat and tiny (city-sized) "worlds" that most city simulators use.

Actually it is that simple, once you are on the ground or in first person, the scale of which it needs to generate and control things is significantly reduced, it doesn't need to generate many different cities because you are flying over them in rapid succesion it doesn't need to generate tens, if not thousands of kilometers of stuff in high detail, because you aren't going to be travelling or moving that fast anymore.

First person if anything is going to give the engine a bit of breathing space, and it can instead focus on generating maybe say 1km x 1km of 'stuff' in high detail, only.

Edit: what I think we will see, might be that the current generation we have will be the default, and then when we are first person we will see it maybe keeping the previously generated stuff as 'background' storing it, and begining to work on adding details.

 

[lysan]

May not help!

I've got a brand new EVGA 1080ti FTW3 overclocked to 2070mhz boost clock and my game still stutters and drops frames when I drop into a station, or come out of glide over a planetary base. At 1080p 60hz no less!

This card is a total monster with all my other games. Games far more demanding than ED graphically. Yet, my 1080ti still gets worked hard by this game even when I am sitting at a station reading Galnet!

Most of this is down to poor optimization of the Cobra Engine, but perhaps that is baked into the code and no level of additional tweaking can get it to output it's largely pedestrian assets to a modern GPU at the level most modern games do as a matter of course in 2017. ??

I must say I was really shocked the first time I saw dropped frames in ED with this OCed 1080ti. Only game I own to have done so at 1080p 60hz.

maybe it's other parts of your system? CPU memory, SSD?

Got the same card, constant 60FPS. The only game I got a lower frame rate are in, is Arma due to my CPU, as arma is not using all cores. Arma is also heavily dependent on the CPU.

 

[Jools]

Just look up The Outsider and you'll see what can be done.

a failed project, with very dated even at the time PS2 era graphics, that promised revolutionary procedural things but has never achieved them and was so bad the publisher decided to cancel it at the very late stage of development...

yep definitely FD`s level of competence

So what can be done based on that game seems to be:
Over promise and underdeliver

 

[Old Duck]

Actually it is that simple, once you are on the ground or in first person, the scale of which it needs to generate and control things is significantly reduced, it doesn't need to generate many different cities because you are flying over them in rapid succesion it doesn't need to generate tens, if not thousands of kilometers of stuff in high detail, because you aren't going to be travelling or moving that fast anymore.

You're confusing my use of "simple." I was replying to the post that said, basically, "Yes Cobra can handle detailed populated planets with cities because they started a game called 'The Outsider' using Cobra." I'm saying, "Whether or not Cobra can handle detailed populated planets with cities" cannot be answered with such a simple comparison.

I don't agree with your use of 'simple' either, as if FDev can sit down with a pizza some afternoon and whip up detailed populated planets with cities. This is a much more complex problem than your post implies. Doable, perhaps, but not simple.

Ironically, the OP is a mute point / question because Cobra is not static. They can add to and optimize Cobra as necessary, introducing techniques and "tricks" to handle this. I suspect there is a team constantly tweaking and adding to the Cobra engine. So I go back to my original reply to the OP - can FDev handle detailed populated planets with cities?

 

[xondk]

a failed project, with very dated even at the time PS2 era graphics, that promised revolutionary procedural things but has never achieved them and was so bad the publisher decided to cancel it at the very late stage of development...

yep definitely FD`s level of competence

So what can be done based on that game seems to be:
Over promise and underdeliver

wow, really? have you SEEN the state of the Triple A games that come out of late? Elite has its flaws and problems, sure, but have you seen the high high budget games released in insane poor states and often not even worked to properly fixed? Elite started as a kickstarter game, and has earned good money, sure, but even compared to SC the budget and group working is relatively small/midsized company and staff.

So yeah....when you say that, maybe look at the other games and promises around the gaming world, and reconsider? compared to many promises Elite is maybe not a bulleye in promise, but it hit close enough.

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

Considering most buildings are relatively simple textured geometric shapes and that current rocks in ring systems will likely use more currently, I'd say procedural cities are well within COBRA's capabilities. There are well established equations available to use regarding settlement patterns and how they are altered given terrain and other factors. These can be used to determine settlement locations and then you have a branching set of algorithms to determine usage zones and on to building types. None of these require massive amounts of compute to work out or display.

Atmospherics planets are also doable, provided you use the right methods in code to describe various observable effects and phenomena e.g. you can reduce an entire cyclonic weather system to two curved lines based on say the golden ratio "spiral", plus half a dozen other parameters if you wanted - fairly easy to describe in simple equations and then you populate clouds, winds and fronts and temps from there. Its fairly easy stuff and I don'get why people think its so hard or hardware intensive.

Flight sims were rendering most of the things described above over a decade or two ago.

 

[bitstorm]

I'm not sure the issue is going to be Cobra.

More things like how to sync up many moving objects in a multiplayer environment.

Space is sparse NPC wise, this is a different proposition to a populated city where everything is moving.

If big cities happen I wouldn't be surprised if they're off limits and there for the visual effect only, I mean what are Frontier going to do with cities? Spend 10 million quid and develop GTA in there?

 

[[VR] Merkir]

When I returned to Medupe City in Cubio, the second I dropped out of SC, the fps dropped to 52-56fps and frame times rose to 19-21ms. This erratic behavior lasted for almost 40 seconds. I get nearly the same thing gliding into a Planetary base, just before and after the transition. (This didn't happen in 2.2.03 with my 980ti, so this particular bottleneck was introduced in 2.3 Beta and the release) My 980ti suffered with it, and now my 1080ti is suffering with it in exactly the same way. The FPS drops are more or less identical between the two cards, even though the 1080ti is almost 100% faster.

For the record, I get the stuttering at the same locations. Every time I drop out at a station or base, and it lasts for 10-20 seconds. But for me it's been happening since I started playing about 9 months ago. It happens in all modes - VR, monitor, full screen or windowed. My rig is 1070, i7-6700K 4GHz, 32GB, SSD.

If anyone wants to know what the stuttering looks like, I found a good example below (and plenty of bad examples). Easy to test... just roll your ship like this guy does, after dropping out at a station.

https://youtu.be/enZROPN7BWk

 

[dannysquid]

I don't see any obvious weaknesses in the Cobra engine compared to other game engines. And it's THEIR engine so they can modify to suit whatever new things come along. A lot easier than trying to fudge something in somebody else's engine.

 

[Franc Kaos]

I'm starting to think you do not realize that this enormous project is Work in Progress.
FD is forced to make choices what to do first.
They have stated from the start that creating everything they want would take at least 10 years.
You seem to be one of those who want every personal wish to get prioritized, because you say so..

Guilty as charged. I want 1) an orrery, 2) atmospheric planets & 3) gas giants in that order and preferably in the next few weeks (What? I'm impatient!).
The only reason I bought up UI colour change was because it's one of the most requested features, esp when Xbox came out as they have no hacks to change it like PC players at least can (certain colour blind people even have issues with the default orange). Fdev have countered it's too hard for various good sounding reasons but to me (admittedly not a programmer) that sounds like lack of being to make their inhouse built engine do what they want.

 

[Soon(TM)]

SC would give their left nut to have use of the Cobra Engine.

This is a joke right?

 

[GG7]

For the record, I get the stuttering at the same locations. Every time I drop out at a station or base, and it lasts for 10-20 seconds. But for me it's been happening since I started playing about 9 months ago. It happens in all modes - VR, monitor, full screen or windowed. My rig is 1070, i7-6700K 4GHz, 32GB, SSD.

If anyone wants to know what the stuttering looks like, I found a good example below (and plenty of bad examples). Easy to test... just roll your ship like this guy does, after dropping out at a station.

https://youtu.be/enZROPN7BWk

WOW! I thought I had it bad!

I don't see anything close to that much hitching and frame drops with even my 980ti, but this does clearly demonstrate precisely what the problem is in a very dramatic way.

And to all you arm chair PC experts out there advising me that these issues are related to my system...

PLEASE STOP!

You have NO IDEA what you are talking about, and if you actually took the time to READ my previous posts, I detailed ALL of my system components as well as my resolution.

For the reading challenged... Here is a brief recap:

1080p @ 60Hz
ASUS Z170 DLX Mobo (latest Bios)
512GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD (boot drive with ED installed on same)
32Gigs of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 Ram at 2800mhz
Intel Core i7 6700k @ 4.6 Ghz OC
EVGA FTW3 1080ti OCed to 2070mhz Boost clock
Windows 10 v1511 (latest version)
Nvidia Drivers (latest version)

Nvidia Control Panel: Performance preferred | DSR x 4 | All other usual performance modes enabled with SMAA enabled

ED settings: ULTRA/HIGH settings across the board with Supersampling set to 2.0

Monitoring software: EVGA Precision XOC (1080ti version)

And as I have mentioned dozens of times already...

NO OTHER GAME IN MY LIBRARY HAS ANY FPS ISSUES with the 1080ti... PERIOD!

Sheesh! You can cut the cluelessness with a knife in this thread.

 

[NW3]

For the record, I get the stuttering at the same locations. Every time I drop out at a station or base, and it lasts for 10-20 seconds. But for me it's been happening since I started playing about 9 months ago. It happens in all modes - VR, monitor, full screen or windowed. My rig is 1070, i7-6700K 4GHz, 32GB, SSD.

If anyone wants to know what the stuttering looks like, I found a good example below (and plenty of bad examples). Easy to test... just roll your ship like this guy does, after dropping out at a station.

https://youtu.be/enZROPN7BWk

Are you using Ultra settings? I have a 980 Ti (the rest of my settings are posted above) and I only saw minor hitching when dropping out of SC near a station. I switched to High yesterday and the hitching was completely gone. It may be that Ultra is too detailed for even high-end systems, especially with super-sampling > 1.0.

 

[GG7]

Are you using Ultra settings? I have a 980 Ti (the rest of my settings are posted above) and I only saw minor hitching when dropping out of SC near a station. I switched to High yesterday and the hitching was completely gone. It may be that Ultra is too detailed for even high-end systems, especially with super-sampling > 1.0.

If that is true (haven't tried it) I'm afraid that is a classic ENGINE optimization issue. Whether the apologists are willing to accept it or not.

I would suggest everyone in this thread try running the game with Supersampling set to 2.0 and ULTRA across the board. Try dropping into a station or base and come back and tell me it runs "Smooth as Silk".

 

[Robert Maynard]

Windows 10 v1511 (latest version)

It's not, actually.

Winver says Version 1703 for me....