Dense rectangular patches of stars (on way to Colonia).

[bnrgator]

I just completed my first trip to Colonia. A little over half way there, I started seeing rectangular patches of stars (very dense mostly blue stars) in the background. As I passed through these (a few jumps) more would appear in the distance. This was very immersion breaking.

Is this a rendering bug? Is this a known issue? Any fix?

Thanks.

 

[yah-ta-hey]

Don't worry about it... there are also very large patches of brown dwarfs scattered throughout the region.... Take them for what they are: hazards to avoid and to plan around. On your way, did you encounter the "dead zone" that is devoid of anything except empty space?

 

[bnrgator]

I didn't encounter a dead zone and filtered brown dwarfs from my path so didn't see those issues. I was making 47+ LY jumps. These patches aren't even hazards to avoid. They are simply distracting since such arrangements of stars can't exist in nature.

 

[Arthur Shappey]

I didn't encounter a dead zone and filtered brown dwarfs from my path so didn't see those issues. I was making 47+ LY jumps. These patches aren't even hazards to avoid. They are simply distracting since such arrangements of stars can't exist in nature.

Surely you just mean - "highly improbable"?

Do you have any screen caps?

 

[evoelise]

It's a known artefact of the procedural generation of the Elite galaxy. It's been reported several times before.

Report it as a bug (again) and hopefully FD will get around to "smoothing out the edges" as it does look pretty terrible.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

B-class stars (mostly) get generated in cubes with 160 LY sides, and can be seen from a long way away. As you get closer to the core, these cubes start getting enough stars in them to be very visible, and the density differences between adjacent cubes can sometimes be extremely visible.

You get the same issue with dimmer stars in smaller cubes, but because you can't see them from as far away, it's not noticeable. You also get the same issue with even brighter stars but they're rarer and the cubes they appear in are much bigger, so again it's not visible.

Entirely unfixable, I suspect, without either completely regenerating the galaxy to a completely different pattern and destroying all existing procedural systems, or dropping the draw distance on B-class stars so much that familiar constellations won't be visible from Sol system.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Report it as a bug (again) and hopefully FD will get around to "smoothing out the edges" as it does look pretty terrible.

Don't report it, it wastes both your and support's time. It can't be fixed without regenerating the entire galaxy, as has been stated by QA staff time and again.

 

[Jools]

broken PG is broken, at this point - like many other things that were promised to work better but worked out as they did - its unfixable

Personally, despite the fact it is a yet another lame underdeveloped buggy feature in this supposedly AAA game from a supposedly AAA studio, I could live with the star clusters being totally lame squares but the "smudged" misshaped textures on planets visible from certain angles, and the "jumping" star texture issues that were supposed to be fixed in original beta are so jarring that I have simply quit playing, probably forever

Btw. Fumaroles and geysers suffer from the same kind of "cheapest solutions programming" as visible in galaxy generation. Its slightly less visible due to lower contrast and lower density of objects but you can still see they are generated in square shaped areas where straight cut lines are clearly visible under some inspection...

poor PG is poor, B tier team is B tier. No ways around it.

Basic art concepts are great, top tier stuff, but its let down by an old bloated unoptimised engine, the sound team is amazing as well, but the rest... below average unfortunately... add to that the price and cheap nickel and diming for content and... you have made a fan into a disgusted hater (with some hope left - but it mostly serves to fuel up the anger)

 

[Hadarmil]

If I understand OP point correctly I remember in one of Scott Manleys' videos he mentioned these - FDevs manually put the 150000 or so known stars on the map and the star forge had a tough time filling the area around them, so you sometimes get weird shapes or "words".

Could be because stars around are obscured by other ones or just the astronomers plotting had to concentrate on certain patches of sky. Telscope time isn't free.

 

[tafkabb]

broken PG is broken, at this point - like many other things that were promised to work better but worked out as they did - its unfixable

Personally, despite the fact it is a yet another lame underdeveloped buggy feature in this supposedly AAA game from a supposedly AAA studio, I could live with the star clusters being totally lame squares but the "smudged" misshaped textures on planets visible from certain angles, and the "jumping" star texture issues that were supposed to be fixed in original beta are so jarring that I have simply quit playing, probably forever

Btw. Fumaroles and geysers suffer from the same kind of "cheapest solutions programming" as visible in galaxy generation. Its slightly less visible due to lower contrast and lower density of objects but you can still see they are generated in square shaped areas where straight cut lines are clearly visible under some inspection...

poor PG is poor, B tier team is B tier. No ways around it.

Basic art concepts are great, top tier stuff, but its let down by an old bloated unoptimised engine, the sound team is amazing as well, but the rest... below average unfortunately... add to that the price and cheap nickel and diming for content and... you have made a fan into a disgusted hater (with some hope left - but it mostly serves to fuel up the anger)

People have even stopped playing because shadows aren't dark enough. Elite is unique because nobody else has managed to do it. Cutting edges are rarely smooth.

 

[Shadowdancer]

People have even stopped playing because shadows aren't dark enough.

And I'd pay extra if those stopped visiting the forums too

 

[Crank Larson]

since such arrangements of stars can't exist in nature.

Why? In an infinite universe, anything is possible.

 

[Crank Larson]

It's a known artefact of the procedural generation of the Elite galaxy. It's been reported several times before.

Report it as a bug (again) and hopefully FD will get around to "smoothing out the edges" as it does look pretty terrible.

Actually, some of these bugs that people have reported turn out to be stars that have been taken from our star catalogue (i.e. people are raising bugs to complain about the arrangement of real stars).

Incidentally, if you deal with random numbers and chaos quite a lot, you'll discover that many parts look like patterns - and yet they are not.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Actually, some of these bugs that people have reported turn out to be stars that have been taken from our star catalogue (i.e. people are raising bugs to complain about the arrangement of real stars).

We don't have catalogue data anywhere near reliable or encompassing enough that close to the core. The issue is to my understanding that the galaxy generation has filled in stars according to density in chunks of 1000 Ly³ or thereabouts, and as you approach the core, you eventually get to a region where you have huge jumps in density, so you see a "wall of stars" to one side where the next block is a lot more dense.

It can't be changed without rebuilding the entire galaxy (which won't be happening), so any reports are just a wast of time for everyone involved.

 

[Catweedle]

broken PG is broken, at this point - like many other things that were promised to work better but worked out as they did - its unfixable

Personally, despite the fact it is a yet another lame underdeveloped buggy feature in this supposedly AAA game from a supposedly AAA studio, I could live with the star clusters being totally lame squares but the "smudged" misshaped textures on planets visible from certain angles, and the "jumping" star texture issues that were supposed to be fixed in original beta are so jarring that I have simply quit playing, probably forever

Btw. Fumaroles and geysers suffer from the same kind of "cheapest solutions programming" as visible in galaxy generation. Its slightly less visible due to lower contrast and lower density of objects but you can still see they are generated in square shaped areas where straight cut lines are clearly visible under some inspection...

poor PG is poor, B tier team is B tier. No ways around it.

Basic art concepts are great, top tier stuff, but its let down by an old bloated unoptimised engine, the sound team is amazing as well, but the rest... below average unfortunately... add to that the price and cheap nickel and diming for content and... you have made a fan into a disgusted hater (with some hope left - but it mostly serves to fuel up the anger)

Amen++ for each paragraph.

 

[Jools]

People have even stopped playing because shadows aren't dark enough. Elite is unique because nobody else has managed to do it. Cutting edges are rarely smooth.

a straw that broke camels back

the real issue here is that YOU CAN`T HAVE A 2 hour SESSION in this game WITHOUT encountering A MAJOR ol d BUG/glitch/massive framedrop/stutter

there is no other released game on the market with that many awful bugs, so yeah elite is unique in that particular area

unique =/= good though

And I'd pay extra if those stopped visiting the forums too

there is an ignore function you know... but who would you troll then right? Mr. "I`m better than anybody else because i take it all without lube no matter what" comes.

 

[tafkabb]

a straw that broke camels back

the real issue here is that YOU CAN`T HAVE A 2 hour SESSION in this game WITHOUT encountering A MAJOR ol d BUG/glitch/massive framedrop/stutter

Yeah I can. I almost always do. Concerning the OP: it's an artefact of how the 1:1 simulation of the galaxy is rendered. It's not a bug. I'm sure other space games on PC/Mac/XBox/PS4 have more accurate and flowing simulations of entire galaxies, but I haven't played those yet

 

[Shadowdancer]

the real issue here is that YOU CAN`T HAVE A 2 hour SESSION in this game WITHOUT encountering A MAJOR ol d BUG/glitch/massive framedrop/stutter

(garish abuse of colour removed, terrible spacing and typo left in place for your vewing pleasure)

Frequently did, frequently do. It helps if you don't wantonly rub your face against the one thing you know is wrong and waiting for a fix over and over again in hopes of it magically vanishing.

there is an ignore function you know... but who would you troll then right? Mr. "I`m better than anybody else because i take it all without lube no matter what" comes.

Target confirmed good hit amidships

 

[bnrgator]

Yeah I can. I almost always do. Concerning the OP: it's an artefact of how the 1:1 simulation of the galaxy is rendered. It's not a bug. I'm sure other space games on PC/Mac/XBox/PS4 have more accurate and flowing simulations of entire galaxies, but I haven't played those yet

While not a game (yet) you should check out Space Engine. It has a flowing simulation of not only the entire galaxy but the known Universe (including atmospheric planets). It is amazing by comparison.

To the people saying that in an "infinite" universe that these types of artifacts would appear. One, the Milky Way is not infinite and there are no patches like this. In an infinite universe you still wouldn't see this many perfectly rectangular patches of blue stars close together. Infinite monkeys banging on infinite typewriters will never write Hamlet even given infinite time. Why? Because the amount of random texts monkeys can type that aren't Hamlet are also infinite.

I will accept that it is an artifact of the generated universe. I don't accept that it isn't fixable. The X,Y,Z of these stars could be perturbed to remove the hard edges. The underlying data could remain the same.

Will it be fixed? Probably not. I was mainly just checking to see if it was unique to my computer. If it continues to bother me I'll head back to the bubble. It doesn't appear there.

I still love this game. I complain because I play it so much and want it to be better.

 

[xondk]

I just completed my first trip to Colonia. A little over half way there, I started seeing rectangular patches of stars (very dense mostly blue stars) in the background. As I passed through these (a few jumps) more would appear in the distance. This was very immersion breaking.

Is this a rendering bug? Is this a known issue? Any fix?

Thanks.

My best guess is that it depends on how it loads in distance stars, doing it in cubes, and once it reaches a max number is stops loading in, causing this issue.