Planetary landings

Well we are not against it, we just simply want sg else from this game FIRST(or atleast me). I would love if they implement some cool activites in the game, but what gta5 did, and now I am not talking about buildings just the meaning of the ALIVE city, It wont happen. And It's not because of how much money the rockstar spent on this, because most of the money went to the actors, just it would require an other expansion pack. I can wait for it, and all the sci-fi funs.

there is a demand for it, it will happen. i wouldn't underestimate the sheer want of that....

and remember it wasnt just english rockstar did. they did it in spanish, french, russian and i'm pretty sure other languages.......
 
i have to do what everyone else is doing? but eh whatever anyways

i don't think the outposts should be done like that. they should do outposts to a "few rooms" level. i'm only talking about two huge base cities that you can land and actually go inside of with detail and scale of gta 5, that is possible. and then procedural generation for settlements and towns. that is also possible. and move from there. now my question is if they sold two cities the size of two gta 5 maps for this game....would you not pay 120$ for it maybe even more?

Again, I'm not against it. And sure I'd pay $120 for it .... but I would pay $1000 to name a planet and space station and will be forever annoyed that option got removed earlier than I expected :D

But look around at the rage against $2 paint jobs....I don't think I represent the whole of the player base in payment expectations.
 
Again, I'm not against it. And sure I'd pay $120 for it .... but I would pay $1000 to name a planet and space station and will be forever annoyed that option got removed earlier than I expected :D

But look around at the rage against $2 paint jobs....I don't think I represent the whole of the player base in payment expectations.

truth be told, a 2 dollar paint job was strange. i was hoping they would be selling paint job AND interior for 5.... but eh. so that's not really a good comparison.


all i'm saying is i paid 60$ for gta and 60$ for watchdogs and 60$ for assassins creed 4......i know i will play Elite longer then three of them combined....so why not give them that money instead and have them make me experiences like 3 cities, and procedural settlements and towns........
and i don't know many people who wouldn't agree with that math.

but again the paint job is sorta silly price...they shoulda sold packs not indivdual paint jobs or the whole interior idea with the paint job.... hope they figure that out.

and they need to be selling ships(at a reasonable price of course, SC is off their rockers to be trying to sell me a ship for 300$ and i can possibly lose it if i dont pay my insurance) but still they need to sell ships.
 
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i don't think so at all.....
how many games do you purchase?
if something is worth two games why shouldn't they charge for it?
like if one of those two cities and not including the procedural expansion had as much stuff as gta 5 would'nt you buy it? that's two cities....two gta 5s
i bought watchdogs and gta5 that's two games that costed me 60$ each....
and i would spend more hours on this one game if they had that expansion.
and they said they will not charge for ships since it's not pay to win. so yes i think it's way fair.

p.s. those two huge cities would come with the procedural generation planets too...

Well Im just glad you're not in charge of the prices :p
 
That sounds very doable I could see that happening, also helping to keep the game running since this is not subscription based

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I think you still don't get it, or it's me who completly missunderstand this technology. The procedural kinda means that the algorythm decide where the "things" go and how. So they can make handcrafted "city parts" what the algorythm randomly, but still driven by a lots of rules, position on the planet. It means you will see huge futuristic cities what completly different from each other. Imagine that the developers create lots of different architectural styles in algorythm, they create a lot of rules like the buildings must be build up by available resources on the planet. This shortly means you are not going to see 1 or 2 huge city, but a thousands of them. All of the planet has different culture and different architectural styles. And these are just cities, you can think about wild life, canyones, montains, waterfall everything what the athmosphere and other conditions allow. And I MEAN EVERYTHING

Pls watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZO40WBNA60

This game is completly procedural, EVERYTHING what you can see there even the animals!
And I know that Frontier can do a much better work. And they will do it completly procedural, and if you dont like this dont worry. You just simply dont understand this technology, yet. But few years from now, possibly when Frontier implements this feature, you are going to love this technology and praise the developers.

Moreover if they do it proceduraly, it doesnt mean they cannot upgrade it from time to time.In my opinion it will be easier. As the technology improve as Elite will follow. That's why I love it:)

To the End: You guys still thinking in small, but dont worry E: D wont:cool:

As programmer I think there is a reality gap here between what you believe is a simple concept and what can actually be achieved.
Yes you can use building blocks to make buildings and cities and you could probably get a decent looking city though it would still likely look computer generated because it would need to follow tighter rules that you have not even considered so as not to look unrealistic and then it would still just be eye candy with no interactive elements or interiors.
Then there are the textures and FPS to worry about. Even flight sims such as X plane 10 are pretty demanding and the procedurally generated cities in that are fairly basic and you can't interact with them and they serve no purpose but eye candy.
They look fine until you get fairly close and they look very basic because the textures take up so much memory. If you haven't got a min of 3GB on your GPU then you have turn the number of objects down and this is for relatively simple building.
Even then it has taken a long time for enthusiasts to keep expanding the available library of buildings to get urban areas to look less computer generated and "samey"

Now consider how many different building types there are just in one city, in one location, in one country, on one planet (earth) Sure you don't need to replicate that complexity but as you simplify you quickly lose realism.
Now think of the differences between China and the US and Earth and Mars and then the millions of other planets.

It is fine to say create different architectural styles via an algorithm but it is another thing to write the algorithm that can achieve it let alone the added complexity and rules of making that fit with a planets building materials or some alien religious philosophy.

There is a reason that in all the videos posted here of amazing planets being procedurally generated there are no cities and no interaction with the environment.

Anything is possible with procedural generation and one day the things you and others are expecting in the next couple of years will be possible but not yet.
Whenever I have an idea for a game the idea is always bigger than what I can actually implement and Elite is attempting to be at least 3 games in one all seamlessly held together.
I think expectations are too high if people think Elite will populate a whole galaxy of planets with detailed cities that people can interact with.

I'm expecting high things myself but I understand the limitations of the technology and resources available.
 
As programmer I think there is a reality gap here between what you believe is a simple concept and what can actually be achieved.
Yes you can use building blocks to make buildings and cities and you could probably get a decent looking city though it would still likely look computer generated because it would need to follow tighter rules that you have not even considered so as not to look unrealistic and then it would still just be eye candy with no interactive elements or interiors.
Then there are the textures and FPS to worry about. Even flight sims such as X plane 10 are pretty demanding and the procedurally generated cities in that are fairly basic and you can't interact with them and they serve no purpose but eye candy.
They look fine until you get fairly close and they look very basic because the textures take up so much memory. If you haven't got a min of 3GB on your GPU then you have turn the number of objects down and this is for relatively simple building.
Even then it has taken a long time for enthusiasts to keep expanding the available library of buildings to get urban areas to look less computer generated and "samey"

Now consider how many different building types there are just in one city, in one location, in one country, on one planet (earth) Sure you don't need to replicate that complexity but as you simplify you quickly lose realism.
Now think of the differences between China and the US and Earth and Mars and then the millions of other planets.

It is fine to say create different architectural styles via an algorithm but it is another thing to write the algorithm that can achieve it let alone the added complexity and rules of making that fit with a planets building materials or some alien religious philosophy.

There is a reason that in all the videos posted here of amazing planets being procedurally generated there are no cities and no interaction with the environment.

Anything is possible with procedural generation and one day the things you and others are expecting in the next couple of years will be possible but not yet.
Whenever I have an idea for a game the idea is always bigger than what I can actually implement and Elite is attempting to be at least 3 games in one all seamlessly held together.
I think expectations are too high if people think Elite will populate a whole galaxy of planets with detailed cities that people can interact with.

I'm expecting high things myself but I understand the limitations of the technology and resources available.


well see but i wouldn't count your mind being blown out yet ;)
 
well see but i wouldn't count your mind being blown out yet ;)

I hope so!:D:cool:
Obviously there are much more talented folk than I with good funding working on it and there are always ingenious ways to get around some of the technical limitations but Vram will be a big one as will making procedurally generated buildings interactive and occupied with NPC's on any sort of large scale.

I still think it will be a mix of the two, hand crafted for limited interactive areas and procedurally generated for places you can't actually visit but just fly over and even that will be a massive job.
 
I hope so!:D:cool:
Obviously there are much more talented folk than I with good funding working on it and there are always ingenious ways to get around some of the technical limitations but Vram will be a big one as will making procedurally generated buildings interactive and occupied with NPC's on any sort of large scale.

I still think it will be a mix of the two, hand crafted for limited interactive areas and procedurally generated for places you can't actually visit but just fly over and even that will be a massive job.

yes but you have to keep this in mind. there is a demand for a space gta a big one. people really yearn for that. and now companies see how far people are going just get a tiny taste of it, so all i can say is it will happen. i know it for a fact.
 
Disclaimer. I haven't read all this thread.

However, I just wish those guys doing No Mans Sky would just sell their world creation system to Frontier and be done with it.

I'm not so fussed about cities. maybe the occasional one, but I'm playing Elite to explore a galaxy, not play an FPS.
 
Disclaimer. I haven't read all this thread.

However, I just wish those guys doing No Mans Sky would just sell their world creation system to Frontier and be done with it.

I'm not so fussed about cities. maybe the occasional one, but I'm playing Elite to explore a galaxy, not play an FPS.

well that's you. i want to explore a galaxy and the cities itself.. and the cities i'm talking about 2 of them size of gta maps that are hand crafted with little procedural generation in the city itself, where you can spend hours in. that would literally be a space gta. the whole point of the "gta" aspect is something for everyone not just you. some people bought gta 5 to fly, some bought it to race, other to shoot stuff and of course everyone bought it so they can do all that. that's why its the highest selling video game in history....it made a billion off of 150 million dollar development...... so obviously making a space gta is business worthy. and if ellite doesn't make it someone will. because there is a huge demand for it.
and they have been working on the planet part of it for some while now. and david braden is way better than no mans sky.....
 
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As programmer I think there is a reality gap here between what you believe is a simple concept and what can actually be achieved.
Yes you can use building blocks to make buildings and cities and you could probably get a decent looking city though it would still likely look computer generated because it would need to follow tighter rules that you have not even considered so as not to look unrealistic and then it would still just be eye candy with no interactive elements or interiors.
Then there are the textures and FPS to worry about. Even flight sims such as X plane 10 are pretty demanding and the procedurally generated cities in that are fairly basic and you can't interact with them and they serve no purpose but eye candy.
They look fine until you get fairly close and they look very basic because the textures take up so much memory. If you haven't got a min of 3GB on your GPU then you have turn the number of objects down and this is for relatively simple building.
Even then it has taken a long time for enthusiasts to keep expanding the available library of buildings to get urban areas to look less computer generated and "samey"

Now consider how many different building types there are just in one city, in one location, in one country, on one planet (earth) Sure you don't need to replicate that complexity but as you simplify you quickly lose realism.
Now think of the differences between China and the US and Earth and Mars and then the millions of other planets.

It is fine to say create different architectural styles via an algorithm but it is another thing to write the algorithm that can achieve it let alone the added complexity and rules of making that fit with a planets building materials or some alien religious philosophy.

There is a reason that in all the videos posted here of amazing planets being procedurally generated there are no cities and no interaction with the environment.

Anything is possible with procedural generation and one day the things you and others are expecting in the next couple of years will be possible but not yet.
Whenever I have an idea for a game the idea is always bigger than what I can actually implement and Elite is attempting to be at least 3 games in one all seamlessly held together.
I think expectations are too high if people think Elite will populate a whole galaxy of planets with detailed cities that people can interact with.

I'm expecting high things myself but I understand the limitations of the technology and resources available.

Well I guess you can understand this technology more deeply then me. I already signed that I am just speculating, but I cannot sign it to every single post:) However this expansion will only be available at least 3-4years from now. As we could read the plans about future expansions, they want to implement the ship interiors and lifeless planets first. There are reasons why they doing it, and I am shure that one of them will be what you just wrote down. I think we are going to land on an atmospheric planet at 2018, and I am shure it will be mindblowing and out of everybody expectations.
 
well that's you. i want to explore a galaxy and the cities itself.. and the cities i'm talking about 2 of them size of gta maps that are hand crafted with little procedural generation in the city itself, where you can spend hours in.


dude.. sorry to burst your bubble but I think your expectations are way.. way.. WAY out of proportion

GTA V cost 250+ $ million to make, don´t you think they would have been so smart to use the "magic wand tool procedural generation" to create the whole game with a snip of a finger?

I mean seriously, tone down your expectations or the disappointment will hit you like a 100 ton brick wall :rolleyes:
 
I'm a newbie to the Elite series, but one thing that has drawn me to purchase the game and Beta access was the perceived difficulty level - even on "normal" things like docking in a space station.

I would love for some planet locations to be seriously tricky to fly to - with either bad weather, tight spaces, tricky gravity or other issues to contend with. Basically rewarding the most skilled pilots!
 
I'm a newbie to the Elite series, but one thing that has drawn me to purchase the game and Beta access was the perceived difficulty level - even on "normal" things like docking in a space station.

I would love for some planet locations to be seriously tricky to fly to - with either bad weather, tight spaces, tricky gravity or other issues to contend with. Basically rewarding the most skilled pilots!

You totally nailed it: I'm less interested by the microcosm planetary interactions could bring (yet would love it to come in a good shape at the end) than by FD making atmospheric flight a fun and challenging experience - as docking, supercruise and scooping phases are. I hope mining, scavenging, exploration to follow the same trail too.

Same for first person expansion: hope they'll make it centered around gravity (or lack of), exploration (can't get Memories' "Magnetic Rose" movie out of my head while thinking of ED's first person) first, then the shooting aspect.
 
I'm a newbie to the Elite series, but one thing that has drawn me to purchase the game and Beta access was the perceived difficulty level - even on "normal" things like docking in a space station.

I would love for some planet locations to be seriously tricky to fly to - with either bad weather, tight spaces, tricky gravity or other issues to contend with. Basically rewarding the most skilled pilots!

Don't worry knowing Frontier they got all that in the bag. If you ever played Frontier Elite 2 you would know that different planets had different challenges to them... high vs low gravity for example. My first goal in that game was to land on this planet called Aster off of Ross 154 it just looked so darn cool. Well that sucker had a gravity so strong (despite looking like it shouldn't have) that I cratered every single time I attempted. Only managed it once or twice and both times my ship couldn't get back up and was stuck there.

If DB thought of all this in 1990 I wouldn't worry about his latest creation.
 
I seem to recall hearing about someone running through all combinations of 32-byte strings and attempting to execute them in order to find interesting tiny programs. I think that idea is a bit like algorithmic prospecting, kind of like approaching the replication of reality problem from the other end than what procedural generation does.

<stoner mode>

So why not combine the two, maaan?

Perhaps DBOBE could call up the HPC guys who take care of Darwin, and ask nicely to run the PG code though LOTS of seed values until a close enough match to Earth (in terms of topology) is found. Who knows? Perhaps the HPC nerds are old-school Elite fans and would look the other way whilst the Braben Bunch do some "planetary prospecting". Once they have one that is close enough that the differences can be explained away (by time/war/climate change/rabid giant space hamster attack), they can do the same for the rest of our solar system. Who knows? Perhaps over-riding a few seed values for known locations with PG "doppelgangers" (and optionally doing a bit of patching over the top to further increase the similarities) would end up a lot cheaper in terms of disk space and dev time than creating and storing giant DEMs.

</stoner mode>

Okay, probably not likely, but I like the idea of PG giving us all this free data, and big CPUs mining it for valuable stuff for the game. It would probably provide more value per CPU cycle than mining for Bitcoins or something, anyway!
 
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