Is the Stellar Forge and ED becoming Outdated?

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Cosmo said:
Yeah when it's out of focus it could be low quality, but when the camera is nearby such as in this picture it should be more detailed. There's not one single place in Star Citizen that has such 15 year old blocky flora.

It's not a high priority since we can't walk in stations yet, but it's below industry standards for a 5 year old game.
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Why should a piece of scenery detail resolve into a high poly count image? Today we fly ships, not stroll in the park with our Thermos flask and cucumber sandwiches...

I suppose a technical demo can be as detailed as it wishes, a complete, released game may not end up with such irrelevent detail, wouldn't you agree?
 

THECATISDEAD

T
Wayland Pentonville said:
Why should a piece of scenery detail resolve into a high poly count image? Today we fly ships, not stroll in the park with our Thermos flask and cucumber sandwiches...

I suppose a technical demo can be as detailed as it wishes, a complete, released game may not end up with such irrelevent detail, wouldn't you agree?
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You are officially White Knight Number One!
 

askavir

askavir
Cosmo said:
Can you show what this park in a starport looks like with 16k textures? I almost mistook it for a 15 year old game. :LOL: It'll require a major graphics update for ED to look like a proper current or next-gen game.

iNlgxCg.png
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Holy smokes that is indeed awful :D

However, we must keep in mind that all the objects currently in place are there to be seen from the ship, not like you were actually walking next to them. From the ship's perspective, graphics are ok. No need to render a tree with richly detailed 3d leaves if you're just going to see it from 800 meters away from the cockpit, it would be a waste of hardware resources. I'm pretty sure that when (if) you can actually walk in that park the trees and plants will look much better.
 

Ganogati

Ganogati
At the end of the day, assets like trees and whatnot can be replaced. Look at EVE Online: it came out in 2003 (or was it 2001?) and the graphics engine has been updated so often that it's one of, if not THE, best looking sci games out there.

If FDev decides to update the graphics they will, but if they don't then they won't be the first company to decide to keep the game as is to cover as wide of an audience as possible. Not everyone is going to buy the new ps5, not everyone has updated their gaming PC recently, etc. They will factor this in.

Truth is, graphics are extremely important to me but I've never once looked at the trees in this game and gone "man, that's some low poly count", because I'm looking at those trees from far away. And even if I wasn't? I'd rather them make my ship purty first.

The Unreal Engine tech demo is amazing, for sure, but unless someone uses it to make a replacement for ED then we don't have a lot to worry about. The specific poly count of some trees no one really looks at anyway won't make a lick of difference in the overall subscriber count.
 

Kelster87

Kelster87
A low poly count on assets intended only to be seen at a distance? Sounds about right. And, as has been mentioned, these were not assets you were currently meant to look at up close and I imagine that legs,should it happen, will improve all of these things. The engine is capable.

Here's a request in a similar vein.. Why can't I see station interiors with the free camera? I can travel through an open hatch and lose signal. I can't get the camera in to a docking bay other than my own, even if I attempt to follow the lift down. I want better responses to the slightly nonsensical activities I get up to.

As for the UE4 demo, looks nice but has enormous issues. Mostly a visual trick, leaving physics etc essentially nonfunctional. So while it looks fabulous, it's not terribly useful as a landable planet. Star Citizen is still no more than an expensive tech demo, it can't be used for honest comparisons. Is the tree pretty? No. But it's a perfectly adequate asset in it's current actual use case.

I recently built myself a new PC, held off on the monitor though - cheap Mexican beer-related stock issues. Radeon R7 290 to RX580 didn't seem like much of an improvement, until a few days ago when I did replace the screen.. Wow, that old monitor made Elite look crap. Same res and settings mostly, just better colour and refresh rate. The new onboard audio also seems to have given Elite a boost, not that the audio was ever shabby.
 

Linnunrata

Linnunrata
Ganogati said:
Look at EVE Online: it came out in 2003 (or was it 2001?) and the graphics engine has been updated so often that it's one of, if not THE, best looking sci games out there.
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Hmm, I guess it is a matter of taste, but I don't find it quite that impressive and they seem to get to cut a lot of corners by being permanently 3rd person with no real planet surfaces. Aesthetic design seems braver than in ED, but I guess that's easier when there's no necessity to make flyable ships.
 
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lemon407

L
Cosmo said:
(less polygons for ships, objects, lower resolution textures, no ray-tracing or volumetric clouds
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Hot take, in a game like ED, these are literally the most unimportant things in the game.

More features, more customization, more immersive game play, more activities > greater then everything you listed. You can have the best looking game in the world unless it's got good mechanics no one will care. ED needs more player activities then it does a pretty picture.
 

Linnunrata

Linnunrata
lemon407 said:
Hot take, in a game like ED, these are literally the most unimportant things in the game.
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I wouldn't say that's accurate. If ED would look like, say, Avorion, I probably wouldn't play it.

Graphics aren't the most important thing in games like ED, but they need to be sufficiently good to offer moments of "ooh!" and create an impetus to explore the worlds. People don't post those endless ring pictures in Reddit because they think the gameplay trumps graphics every time.

Currently ED has some places that look really neat, and others plain goofily ugly...
 

lemon407

L
I can agree to a point but where Ed is as for the kind of game it is? It's more then acceptable. We just need more things to do then we do prettier versions of what we have.
 

Ganogati

Ganogati
Linnunrata said:
Hmm, I guess it is a matter of taste, but I don't find it quite that impressive and they seem to get to cut a lot of corners by being permanently 3rd person with no real planet surfaces. Aesthetic design seems braver than in ED, but I guess that's easier when there's no necessity to make flyable ships.
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I meant a bit more than just aesthetic design. The ships themselves are probably some of the most detailed and realistic that I've seen in a sci-fi game to date. It just goes to show that assets can be updated over time.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPFII3ozSHI
 

Linnunrata

Linnunrata
Ganogati said:
The ships themselves are probably some of the most detailed and realistic that I've seen in a sci-fi game to date.
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Huh. Like I said, maybe it's a matter of taste, but IMO they look pretty goofy and not nearly as detailed as ED ones as you always seem to look them from that RTSlike 500m distance.

I haven't played Eve though, could be that also.
 

Ganogati

Ganogati
Linnunrata said:
Huh. Like I said, maybe it's a matter of taste, but IMO they look pretty goofy and not nearly as detailed as ED ones as you always seem to look them from that RTSlike 500m distance.

I haven't played Eve though, could be that also.
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lol yea the gameplay is so different that they practically aren't even in the same genre. EVE is like a spreadsheet simulator with a starship front end, while ED is more like a space flight sim. They each scratch a very different itch, but chances are whatever you are playing ED for you would not get out of EVE, and vice versa. EVE is more about commanding a ship, while ED is more about flying one.

But ship wise, I find that players stare at their ship exteriors in EVE a lot more than in ED. Sometimes there's not a lot else to do while you fly around lol. That's part of why they put so much effort into them, because it's a bit of a meme that even in the middle of combat you're gonna be randomly zooming in and just kinda panning around your ship going "ooo purty" =D

EVE taught me that I wouldn't actually want want to captain a big ship like little kid me always thought; that would have to be the most boring job there is lol.
 
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