New Era in Unreal Engine or Cobra Engine?

[Kathryn Kando]

Honk if Cobra is great!

Two things that work well in ED are lthe GFX Cobra delivers and aside from that the sound design - the latter being unmatched by any other space game.

 

[lenna]

I'm not sure. Sensei seems willing to learn and acknowledge he understands little about it. I doubt people like kubicide really think they know much about anything, they just enjoy the 'let me explain that whatever the topic of the day is shows FD so poopypants!'. Kinda reminds me of debate class, where you would get a pointless opinion assigned and had to defend it anyway("demonstrate that bananas are inferior fruit.").

It's kinda fun, though ultimately devoid of any real meaning or value.

Sensei is possibly one of the exceptions that prove the general rule, but this is not the first time a thread along the lines of "why don't FD move ED to engine X" - there have been similar pointless discussions for other games with custom/in-house engines.

Overall, I find it gets tiresome and un-fun after reading the umpteenth thread of this ilk - but agreed that they are devoid of any real meaning or value

 

[Ian Skippy]

You're conducting some sort of market survey for Epic?
What is the point of that question?

All you're going to get is how customers "feel" about Unreal Engine compared to their experience with Elite and a lot of pointless discussion conducted by people who know nothing about technical side of things.

Also I'm not sure what "New Era" is supposed to mean - I'm guessing something like Elite Dangerous 2, because if you ment upcoming 2020 expansion, then this question is even more pointless.

The upcoming dlc is nicknamed 'Next Era' for now, as that is how FD described it.

 

[lenna]

The upcoming dlc is nicknamed 'Next Era' for now, as that is how FD described it.

Since the last one was technically called "Horizons" that would kind of fit.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

I just want FDev to upgrade the Cobra engine to use a more modern thread friendly graphic API like Vulkan. It's an open standard graphic API, so it could be used for lots of platforms including Linux.

 

[Kelster87]

UE is a good engine, it's just not the engine for Elite. Bohemia Interactive use an in-house engine for the ArmA series. Why? Because there is nothing else around that will do what it does - allow large scale combined arms combat. Sure, UE will do pretty landscapes at large scales, almost out of the box.. But add to that infantry, land, sea and air vehicles, and suddenly you are wrting all new code - the default stuff just doesn't cut it.. When you are having to write custom code for a "new" engine, you may as well have not bothered with the licensed engine at all.

The OP clearly has little idea about game development and has made it clear the game they want is not Elite as the Devs are creating it - maybe they need to find something else to play, Freelancer kinda sound like what they are looking for. I was in a similar thread to this a few weeks back, I challeged the OP there to let me know when they had the basics running in a single system. I'm still waiting...

 

[Ian Skippy]

Sensei is possibly one of the exceptions that prove the general rule, but this is not the first time a thread along the lines of "why don't FD move ED to engine X" - there have been similar pointless discussions for other games with custom/in-house engines.

Overall, I find it gets tiresome and un-fun after reading the umpteenth thread of this ilk - but agreed that they are devoid of any real meaning or value

It's in part because gamers in a 'nerd niche' are above-average succeptible to what I call 'nerd bait'. The realities of game design, like most aspects of reality, are quite dreary and, well, boring. But we love to hear 'tech-talk'. It's very obvious with things like Star Citizen, where the outrage over any failure is easily placated using such 'tech-talk'. It speaks in FDs favor they haven't reached that level of cynicism yet.

David Braben:"Good news everyone! Next era has been delayed to 2021, because our proprietary Core Atmospheric Modulator pipeline is waiting for Cloud Vortex 2.0 tech. It's extremely ground breaking and part of our own StarWonderUberEngine. I am so excited to share the news with you! Feel welcome to celebrate with us by purchasing the Golden SRV for only €320: be among the first to be prepared to roam the plains of our atmo planets in style!"

 

[Robert Maynard]

I just want FDev to upgrade the Cobra engine to use a more modern thread friendly graphic API like Vulkan. It's an open standard graphic API, so it could be used for lots of platforms including Linux.

I've long hoped that COBRA would be developed to include Vulkan compatibility.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I'm not sure. Sensei seems willing to learn and acknowledge he understands little about it. I doubt people like kubicide really think they know much about anything, they just enjoy the 'let me explain that whatever the topic of the day is shows FD so poopypants!'. Kinda reminds me of debate class, where you would get a pointless opinion assigned and had to defend it anyway("demonstrate that bananas are inferior fruit.").

It's kinda fun, though ultimately devoid of any real meaning or value.

Sensei is possibly one of the exceptions that prove the general rule, but this is not the first time a thread along the lines of "why don't FD move ED to engine X" - there have been similar pointless discussions for other games with custom/in-house engines.

Overall, I find it gets tiresome and un-fun after reading the umpteenth thread of this ilk - but agreed that they are devoid of any real meaning or value

I was actually investigating few scenarios where FDEV could:

(1) migrate to a new engine [DONE, don't need to discuss on this anymore]
(2) make a new game based on Unreal Engine to avoid to "reinvent the wheel" considering that the Cobra engine still lacks of core features that are instead already present in the other one.

Now in life I met a lot of time people that are completely ignorant in my technical field and I always tried my best to teach them the basic of my arguments. Unfortunately I don't see the same respect here, instead I see vague answers like "your question is pointless because you are not a developer" (this explains why I made the question but it doesn't say why it's pointless), or "you don't understand..." followed by no explanation to finally conlcuded with a bad judgement of the person (I'm quite sure here you're also breaking some forum rule).

ANYWAY, since I'm not an angry teeneger and I don't care so much of these manners:

Would you mind to argue and elaborate more the reasons why a new space sim like a theoretical "Elite Dangerous 2" would not take advantage of being developed on an existing engine like Unreal or anyone else, rather than on an unfinished and propertary engine (that no other developer knows outside their company).
Which are the pros and cons for this choice? Is there any "real" expert here that could explain?

 

[Seizewell Warrior]

Dovetail games used Unreal for their new Train Sim World programme and it is pretty ghastly. Rubber banding and graphic artefacts galore and requires masses of computing power to run. While some of that is probably carpy DTG programming, if it can't handle the visuals from the cab of a train moving at 60 MPH, it's going to struggle with a fast paced space game.

 

[Robert Maynard]

(2) make a new game based on Unreal Engine to avoid to "reinvent the wheel" considering that the Cobra engine still lacks of core features that are instead already present in the other one.

Just because this game does not yet use these features does not confirm whether, or not, they are present in COBRA (or possibly in development).

 

[Drelthar]

considering that the Cobra engine still lacks of core features that are instead already present in the other one.

Massive assumption based on nothing, or based on likely not knowing what an engine really is/does.

This entire thread is hilarious

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Dovetail games used Unreal for their new Train Sim World programme and it is pretty ghastly. Rubber banding and graphic artefacts galore and requires masses of computing power to run. While some of that is probably carpy DTG programming, if it can't handle the visuals from the cab of a train moving at 60 MPH, it's going to struggle with a fast paced space game.

I've seen many games able to smoothly reduce the level of details and texture resolution the faster and the higher you fly. I'm quite sure in TSW is dev fault if the game is not smooth enough.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Just because this game does not yet use these features does not confirm whether, or not, they are present in COBRA (or possibly in development).

Since you are also not 100% sure that these are in development, would you mind to explain pro and cons considering these are not there yet?

 

[Kelster87]

(2) make a new game based on Unreal Engine to avoid to "reinvent the wheel" considering that the Cobra engine still lacks of core features that are instead already present in the other one.

Would you mind to argue and elaborate more the reasons why a new space sim like a theoretical "Elite Dangerous 2" would not take advantage of being developed on an existing engine like Unreal or anyone else, rather than on an unfinished and propertary engine (that no other developer knows outside their company).
Which are the pros and cons for this choice? Is there any "real" expert here that could explain?

I kinda answered that in my previous post. All of the other existing engines would require serious work to acheive what Cobra does now - yes, I've seen the videos you posted earlier. As with the ArmA example, UE just won't do it all out of the box and the work required to make it all work is enough that you may as well just roll your own - or modify the engine you already have. FDevs other products show what Cobra is capable of graphically, it's now a matter of incorporating that in to the existing Elite codebase.

I can think of no Pro's for FDev to move Eliie2 to another engine.. As for Cons, the list is long, I've just touched the tip of the iceberg.

Now, I'm not a game dev, just a hobbyist who has done some CGI stuff as well as making content for games since Build was a funky engine. Hell, converting maps between FPS games in the same engine isn't always straightforward, let alone changing engines.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

I kinda answered that in my previous post. All of the other existing engines would require serious work to acheive what Cobra does now - yes, I've seen the videos you posted earlier. As with the ArmA example, UE just won't do it all out of the box and the work required to make it all work is enough that you may as well just roll your own - or modify the engine you already have.

I still don't understand what is Cobra doing now that other engines can't do yet. Why is that so "special"? And where do you get the info that UE can't do such things (genuine question) ?

 

[M00ka]

I've long hoped that COBRA would be developed to include Vulkan compatibility.

That would be the umm LOGICAL approach to the situation

 

[Robert Maynard]

Since you are also not 100% sure that these are in development, would you mind to explain pro and cons considering these are not there yet?

Not being 100% sure that these are in development is quite different from stating as fact, without basis (as the full capabilities of the COBRA engine are "unknown" to most), that "the Cobra engine still lacks of core features that are instead already present in the other one".

We'll see, in time, what functionality Frontier adds to COBRA.

 

[MaxG10]

Would you mind to argue and elaborate more the reasons why a new space sim like a theoretical "Elite Dangerous 2" would not take advantage of being developed on an existing engine like Unreal or anyone else, rather than on an unfinished and propertary engine (that no other developer knows outside their company).
Which are the pros and cons for this choice? Is there any "real" expert here that could explain?

Part of such a decision is about competitive advantage in a cut throat business environment.

Shifting to xyz engine is very likely similar to starting from scratch, hence you have to consider the cost of parallel developments, enormous cost and risk - orphaned software development for example - before return on investment, and such move will cause additional stress, unpleasant HR turmoils, turnarounds in the 30%-40% region are standard!

Licensing another engine also means you create dependencies that you avoided with proprietary solutions. If stuff doesn't work as it is supposed to, you can handle it in-house, if you are a license holder your company relies heaviliy on external service .... well, I can tell you, I know how THAT feels if stuff goes wrong over a prolonged period.

Proprietary lacks the option of external code reviews, on the other hand, there are no compliance issues to worry about.

Biggest draw back of proprietary I can pull out of my head, some fixes may never happen, hence using constant workarounds, which in the worst case can cause "bloatware" and more.

All in all, currently I think, this is a very easy business decision for FD: Cobra it is!

P.S.
Can someone please hack the global dictionaries and scratch the term "Expert", please? It is as useful as a tick under your armpit.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I've seen many games able to smoothly reduce the level of details and texture resolution the faster and the higher you fly. I'm quite sure in TSW is dev fault if the game is not smooth enough.

So when a game running UE does something not-so-well it is the devs fault, and if it is a game running Cobra it is the engine's fault? And when people explain some of the benefits of Cobra you yell "But I dont care about that, here is the game I want!", and then turn around and claim nobody explained what the advantage of Cobra was.

You seem very invested in your idea that UE is awesome and Cobra is not, while also aware you dont quite know much about any of this. Wouldn't it make sense to just drop this narrative of yours, and if you are really interested start learning about this stuff before starting these discussions?