Do you think there is a chance that elite in the new era will be completely seamless? Stations transitions, uss's, megaships, thargoids, combat zones, planet surface with atmosphere... Will ED ever get away from this closed boxes game style?
Seamless
- Thread starter VR SenseiMatty
- Start date
Well other games do it, so it must be possible. Do the routing when a player enter the system, is it really necessary to re-do it every single time one drops in a USS, or a station, or descends to a planet? There are no loading pauses on Evochron, NMS or Infinity Battlescape. Not sure about SC.
Descending into a planet is particularly annoying, that awful pause before entering glide. Given that in 99.999999999999% of places it's extremely rare to see someone else, makes the damn pauses particularly annoying.
What bothers me is not being able to see stuff from Supercruise. Having all exploration phenomena in such limited region is a limitation imho. Wouldn't be cool a star system with such things so big that can be seen from Supercruise and that could affect your supercruise travel too?
Imagine a thunderstorm happening in supercruise: if you fly through that the speed drops sub-light but you can scan things and have a cool experience, or if you're not interested you're engaged anyway by finding a route around it to reach your destination without speed drops.
Another thing I don't understand is why we see planetary starport transition much more seamless than orbital stations. On planets the speed slows down more smoothly and we can see the station approaching, while in space is just a "BANG" and then the station is there in front of you.
The downside of the smooth transition to a planetary port is, however, that it takes much longer to descend to a planetary port than to come into a starport. And the larger the world, the longer it takes. Next time you drop into a port, look at the numbers (for speed and distance, I just shut down and don't have them at hand) and compare the closing speed towards a starport with the closing speed towards a planetary port. I think that, within the game's description of FTL physics, these transitions actually make sense (or at the very least are not out of order - unlike the switch when approaching a station and the view through the toast rack is replaced by the actual station interior 
).
).Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Each full system map is seamless as it is generated procedurally. Many videos already out there showing it flying at standard speeds.
The pauses or breaks you see in between super cruise (or orbital cruise) and normal speed are network connection to other players and/or NPC entities being created and destroyed as appropriate for your location and change of flight type. That is why those pauses are more noticeable in open. Unless there is a worldwide breakthrough in bandwidth capacity and client/server computing capacity I don’t see network related pauses improving significantly.
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If you are that sure you never gonna see anyone, you might as well play in solo. Like said, in solo I find these pauses almost non-existing. In PG or open, the game simply has to check if there is someone there that should be added to your instance. If I'm in a wing with someone else I am 100% sure I should find my wing-mate, where you just said you don't expect anyone.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
What about, say, planets, stars, jet cones, asteroid ring or black holes, and their related gravitational effects? That would be cool hey?
I wonder if its even possible to see objects in 'normal' space-time from an Alcubierre bubble, but geek things aside, think about the scale of the theatre you're in. You are going at least 30km/s (100.000km/u) and you expect to see a 2 km wide station with the naked eye from where...?
You'd have to go through the same thing that happens when approaching a planet based station, all the while people already think SC is a chore and takes too long.
What I find still fascinating btw, is that I can go as fast as light, 1c. I can pass planets the same way as light does, and the first thing I learned from it is that light travels extremely slow.
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Stations are visible even from ~100km away, so the transition can be quite jarring in certain circumstances when you jump into supercruise facing a station and the 3d model just blinks out but the marker clearly stays in your field of view for a few seconds before you move past.
That's why I said that it's a limitation as it is now, because the phenomena are too small. Imagine a stellar phenomena as bis as the distance between Earth and Mars
I'm not talking about loading time. I'm talking about the existence of a scenario outside its box. If you don't drop correctly at a station but you intentionally drop far away from it, once you reach it you won`t see it because it's not phisically there... it's in its "box" instead
I have no problem with additional timing on planets, because I'm not AFK. I have to manage the speed and the pitch of the ship. My time issues are only when my presence is not required in front of the game.The downside of the smooth transition to a planetary port is, however, that it takes much longer to descend to a planetary port than to come into a starport. And the larger the world, the longer it takes. Next time you drop into a port, look at the numbers (for speed and distance, I just shut down and don't have them at hand) and compare the closing speed towards a starport with the closing speed towards a planetary port. I think that, within the game's description of FTL physics, these transitions actually make sense (or at the very least are not out of order - unlike the switch when approaching a station and the view through the toast rack is replaced by the actual station interior
I'd love to see it but I think even considering it as a possibility is just setting yourself up for disappointment. I'm keeping my expectations beyond low for the 'big' update sadly.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Not sure what stations you refer to but as far as I remember and if things have not changed regular space stations in orbit (orbis, coriolis etc) are part of the procedural generation engine so they are always there as much as planets are. What you may be referring to is the coordinates frame of reference whereby If you don’t actually enter physically the station’s then its speed while orbiting its corresponding body is so different to yours that is virtually impossible to match it.
And stations on surfaces are also always there aswell and you can reach them as you go around in ship or SRV irrespective of when or where you start your trip in the planet.
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It's a function of the design. The opposite of a certain other space title that started with bells & whistles, limited levels, and only then moved on to how to tie them together by trying to add additional systems, or even planets in the same system.
Frontier worked out how to build a galaxy using procedural generation, and the game fits in to that. The limits that result, like instancing and not having "seamless" (which is fake wherever you think you see it elsewhere) travel, they are necessary.
I seem to recall that Dav might have even stated it was purely down to multiplayer networking in one of his streams at some point.