All we need now is a release date ..
Planetary Tech with Dr Kay Ross: Recap
- Thread starter Zac Cocken
- Start date
Well, it's pretty Spring-like today in the UK, very like Early Spring indeedAll we need now is a release date ..
Well, it's pretty Spring-like today in the UK, very like Early Spring indeed
Sigh.... Are there plans to enhance the game engine's technology to take advantage of the massive advancements made in computing since the game came out nearly seven years ago? Or are we going to be stuck with the limitations of previous gen console specs until the game is abandoned?
I would love to see lighting from multiple suns in the game, but I dont think we will see it until the XSX and PS5 are well and truly mainstream.
There is no way they are going to do that kind of work if it leaves behind a large section of the playerbase.
But I do think we will see it ... eventually
Did this mentally derail anyone else's inner middle schooler?
What "tenuous" exactly means has been debated earlier on the forum (the word itself doesn't have a scientific definition*), but based on information of the trailers, Odyssey will feature planets that have considerably thicker atmosphere than Mars.
In real life existence of aurorae would of course have plenty of factors - atmospheric pressure, strength of planetary magnetic field and the activity of the parent star, for instance.
*) searching the forum, there seems to be some claims that there is a scientific definition for tenuous, but it doesn't stop Nature or ESA referring to Martian atmosphere as 'tenuous'.
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Oooh.
Odyssey has a different engine in it, which also has an impact on the visuals in the base game. But only if you buy Odyssey.
Interesting.
EDIT:: Presumably this means that Odyssey players cannot instance with Horizons players on the surface of the same planet?
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Boo. I just think a game where you're looking at, abstractly, a lot of spheres and a lot of different coloured lights, it's a big missed opportunity not to light those spheres correctly. I'm guessing it would massively slow down the shaders in ways I'm too ill-informed to understand.
But hooray for everything else! It's genuinely exciting.
All we need now is a release date ..
There will be an enormous amount of pressure to release Odyssey in this financial year. Which ends on 31 May.
Yeah, that's a very debated term. However, a similarity between all atmospheric planets showcased up until now is that they all only have one gas, unlike Mars which obviously has more than one, so Mars still has a more complex atmosphere. It looks like the atmospheres we're getting will be too basic for any form of aurora to occur.
Of course the only way to find out what exactly FDev's definition of "tenuous" is is to wait until the alpha.
I'm not convinced by this explanation.
Edit: Actually scratch my earlier notion: According to NASA newspiece, "Proton aurora form when solar wind protons (which are hydrogen atoms stripped of their lone electrons by intense heat) interact with the upper atmosphere on the dayside of Mars. As they approach Mars, the protons coming in with the solar wind transform into neutral atoms by stealing electrons from hydrogen atoms in the outer edge of the Martian hydrogen corona, a huge cloud of hydrogen surrounding the planet. When those high-speed incoming atoms hit the atmosphere, some of their energy is emitted as ultraviolet light."
I don't see anything in that would suggest that the complexity of atmosphere has anything to do with it, but even if it did, are we to believe that every single planet unlocked in the galaxy (probably hundreds of millions as a conservative estimate) is going to have "an atmosphere too simple"?
IMO it looks like FDev is just not going to have auroras in Odyssey at launch, I don't see the need to invent any other "in-game" reason for it. It fits the pattern considering that none of the Earth-likes with complex atmospheres have auroras visible in the game.
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As far as I'm aware there's no "thin hydrogen" words in Elite, so worlds with hydrogen where proton auroras can occur will not be landable anyway.
The in-game reason as to why they were not added is because auroras cannot occur in atmospheres that are being added.
Where is this stated?
Why not just say that auroras don't exist in ED universe. It's just as convincing as an explanation as pre-terraformed Mars being the sole thin atmosphere planet in the Milky Way that had auroras.
You're missing the point. You are using Mars as an example of a planet with a thin atmosphere where auroras can occur.
I'm saying that while we are getting planets with thin atmospheres, the difference between them and Mars is that they only have one gas, and none have hydrogen, which means no auroras.
All that that quote tells us is the console and pc platforms are being rolled out at different times. Which works because they are currently separate, on different servers, I believe? PC users are all on the same servers, horizons or base. Presumably EDO horizons and base will all be on the same servers.
What I'm getting at is the only thing that question answers is whether the consoles and pc are separate.