New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

jojon

J
dannysquid said:
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Things like rivers and lakes are going to be extremely hard whichever technique they use. The problem isn't so much simulating the paths of rivers and where water pools, it's simulating them from scratch pretty much instantaneously at 60fps alongside everything else that's going on in the game.
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Well, to be slightly pedantic, lest somebody takes that literally and propagates it that way, I am fairly sure we both agree no simulation is done from scratch each and every frame.

The list of modifiers and their parameters, such as type, location, orientation, scales, influence strength, and so on, that are used to produce the terrain, would reasonably be generated from seed either while one approach the body, or when opening the system map, and waiting for it to tick through all bodies in the system.

This is then used to generate patches of vertex displacement maps as needed, at progressively higher resolution as one get closer and the patches are subdivided into ones spanning smaller areas, separate from the frame rendering thread (which itself generates no terrain (EDIT: ...it just uses the patches it gets handed)), which we can see in the form of large squares of level of detail popping in and out with descent and ascent.
 
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Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Another obvious duplicated tile, in the central bubble if anyone wants to check it out for themselves. On a single planet, but hopefully distinctive enough to be noticed elsewhere if it appears on another world. I'll be keeping an eye out.

landmass_dupe.jpg
 

Vandal71

Vandal71
They probably made like 5 stamps, about the same amount of signal sources we have in space after 5 years. Bare minimum product.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
jojon said:
Well, to be slightly pedantic, lest somebody takes that literally and propagates it that way, I am fairly sure we both agree no simulation is done from scratch each and every frame.

The list of modifiers and their parameters, such as type, location, orientation, scales, influence strength, and so on, that are used to produce the terrain, would reasonably be generated from seed either while one approach the body, or when opening the system map, and waiting for it to tick through all bodies in the system.

This is then used to generate patches of vertex displacement maps as needed, at progressively higher resolution as one get closer and the patches are subdivided into ones spanning smaller areas, separate from the frame rendering thread (which itself generates no terrain (EDIT: ...it just uses the patches it gets handed)), which we can see in the form of large squares of level of detail popping in and out with descent and ascent.
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Doesn't this amount to doing it from scratch? It's maybe streaming more detail in over multiple frames (let's face it, that's far too obviously what it's doing! :oops:) but I think that's textures rather than mathematical topography stuff. I think it knows what's there at 60fps, it just doesn't catch up with the high-res textures for a while. And maybe because more of it is based on pre-existing textures than before, there are more performance issues.

Dunno. I'm making semi-educated guesses. And a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! My feeling is that most of the actual "thinking" is done in the shaders rather than on the CPU. And it won't be storing or precalculating much of anything. But I don't really know!
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
jojon said:
I can't tell from the picture, but when flying around the feature, could you make out the shape of the crater depression and its rim across the whole area where its outline intersected the mountain? 'Just wondering whether the blending of bumpmap layers is just a simple multiplicative or signed additive operation for everything (...in which case order shouldn't matter), or if there is anything slightly more complex going on (including some sort of roughly approximated "geological history").
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I flew straight over the top without stopping. I only took the screenshot because the two craters were side by side, with two very different geological formations crossing each. But if I had to bet, I'd say it's simple additive. While it would be nice for their algorithms to do something more than that, at least it doesn't kill my explorer-mojo. This specific limitation doesn't introduce repetition for example. If FDev are going to work on terrain, I much prefer they work on more pressing terrain issues.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
jojon said:
Well, to be slightly pedantic, lest somebody takes that literally and propagates it that way, I am fairly sure we both agree no simulation is done from scratch each and every frame.

The list of modifiers and their parameters, such as type, location, orientation, scales, influence strength, and so on, that are used to produce the terrain, would reasonably be generated from seed either while one approach the body, or when opening the system map, and waiting for it to tick through all bodies in the system.

This is then used to generate patches of vertex displacement maps as needed, at progressively higher resolution as one get closer and the patches are subdivided into ones spanning smaller areas, separate from the frame rendering thread (which itself generates no terrain (EDIT: ...it just uses the patches it gets handed)), which we can see in the form of large squares of level of detail popping in and out with descent and ascent.
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Nicely put. I was going to reply likewise. In simple terms, the gameplay is such that the software has many seconds, and in most cases minutes, to form the various heightmaps etc. for the planets. And those only have to be calculated coarsely to begin with, to satisfy the FSS for example. The long approach times to planets often means minutes of pre-procgen execution (and tile loading) before fine detail rendering is required.
 

MishaTX

MishaTX
Valorin said:
That's a similar approach as those direct comparisons between Horizons and Odyssey, where you pick a great planet in Horizons and land on the same in Odyssey and are disappointed that it's not great there.
Do this the other way around, and you might be disappointed of the Horizons one because the percentage of great planets isn't that great in both systems, which is absolutely fine in my opinion.
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Good points! And let's face it, at some point it all comes down to "no change at all, everything stays as the old tech (or "no new tech at all")" or "new tech, some places will inevitably look different from how we remembered them."

It can't be otherwise, and I'm generally speaking fine with it, because when the new tech really works, boy howdy does it work!

Still, the "old" POIs, the ones that have become iconic over the years, could do with some love at some point. (Dav's and Jameson's crash site, I'm looking at you!). They don't have to look the exact same if that's not possible, but from atmospheric, great setting to "oh dear, what IS this place?"

That being said, that bit is:

A) Not the highest priority right now and would require resources better spent elsewhere and
B) Wouldn't make any sense at this point anyway, since the New Tech doesn't seem to have been finalized. They'd just end up having to do everything twice.

Bigger fish to fry, in my ever so humble opinion :)
 

Erei

Erei
Valorin said:
That's a similar approach as those direct comparisons between Horizons and Odyssey, where you pick a great planet in Horizons and land on the same in Odyssey and are disappointed that it's not great there.
Do this the other way around, and you might be disappointed of the Horizons one because the percentage of great planets isn't that great in both systems, which is absolutely fine in my opinion.

I landed on two completely random planets in both clients to see what happens, and both times, the Odyssey one was much more interesting.
Also, and this is the important bit I guess: I didn't do that to prove a point, but because I wanted to see for myself and look at it unbiased and fair.
I posted the result in this thread, but I fear it's buried somewhere now.
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Yeah well, as I said before that, I went to that specific planet, the one from the last "mystery", and the first thing I saw upon arriving was the same copy pasted giant crater that is on a ridiculous amount of worlds.
Talk about a mood killer.

Then as I landed, I was welcomed by the lod bug, that made the land look like a bad camo, which started to stutter back into something more nice once I got close enough. Then the rocks loaded. Instantly, all of them.

Which is pretty much my experience with the planetary tech in Odyssey.
 

Valorin

Valorin
MishaTX said:
Good points! And let's face it, at some point it all comes down to "no change at all, everything stays as the old tech (or "no new tech at all")" or "new tech, some places will inevitably look different from how we remembered them."

It can't be otherwise, and I'm generally speaking fine with it, because when the new tech really works, boy howdy does it work!

Still, the "old" POIs, the ones that have become iconic over the years, could do with some love at some point. (Dav's and Jameson's crash site, I'm looking at you!). They don't have to look the exact same if that's not possible, but from atmospheric, great setting to "oh dear, what IS this place?"

That being said, that bit is:

A) Not the highest priority right now and would require resources better spent elsewhere and
B) Wouldn't make any sense at this point anyway, since the New Tech doesn't seem to have been finalized. They'd just end up having to do everything twice.

Bigger fish to fry, in my ever so humble opinion :)
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Jameson's crashsite is okay actually. I've been there recently and apart from things looking totally different and the debris not really fitting the rest of the scene in broad daylight, I don't find anything wrong with it.
Fog/dust is missing on all airless Odyssey planets, which doesn't help much with distant LoD and mood in many places, like Guardian ruins. Maybe they'll add that back? We'll see where they are when the graphical glitches are fixed, LoD stuff, invisible rocks, stuff popping in and so on. :)
 

Valorin

Valorin
hunvagy said:
1:56 - 2:00 nice how the whole landscape just morphs. Thank you for reaffirming the topics we are bringing up in this thread.
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The landscape morphing is there, as proven by evidence and footage and whatnot.
You really don't need to look for positive videos to point out the bad things.
In my opinion that's just bad form.
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Valorin said:
The landscape morphing is there, as proven by evidence and footage and whatnot.
You really don't need to look for positive videos to point out the bad things.
In my opinion that's just bad form.
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I wasn't looking for anything, video linked, video watched, that's what caught my attention. Because it looks horrible. And again, we know that atmospherics mostly look good, but showing them again and again does not make the problem go away, nor will convince people that EDO is so much better then Horizons.
 

Valorin

Valorin
hunvagy said:
I wasn't looking for anything, video linked, video watched, that's what caught my attention. Because it looks horrible. And again, we know that atmospherics mostly look good, but showing them again and again does not make the problem go away, nor will convince people that EDO is so much better then Horizons.
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It's the same with showing off the bad things again and again. It will not make the good thigns go away and it will not convince people that EDO is so much better than Horizons.
If you can't stand people pointing out the good things when showing off bad things, why do it the other way around then?

Also, my first thought when I saw this video, was thinking about visiting the place because it might be interesting for the hooning people. Doesn't really look deep enough, but well. Worth taking a look, and I'm randomly going from planet to planet anyway.
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Valorin said:
It's the same with showing off the bad things again and again. It will not make the good thigns go away and it will not convince people that EDO is so much better than Horizons.
If you can't stand people pointing out the good things when showing off bad things, why do it the other way around then?

Also, my first thought when I saw this video, was thinking about visiting the place because it might be interesting for the hooning people. Doesn't really look deep enough, but well. Worth taking a look, and I'm randomly going from planet to planet anyway.
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I don't have a problem with the good screenshots either, unless they are used in a context to diminish the existence of the problems, and vice versa, just posting tiling to say "Look, tiling! Bad Odyssey" Is also not productive. And reading the comment section on that video, there was no other purpose to that video from my point of view.
 

Valorin

Valorin
hunvagy said:
I don't have a problem with the good screenshots either, unless they are used in a context to diminish the existence of the problems, and vice versa, just posting tiling to say "Look, tiling! Bad Odyssey" Is also not productive. And reading the comment section on that video, there was no other purpose to that video from my point of view.
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Yeah, maybe. And that's okay.
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Valorin said:
Yeah, maybe. And that's okay.
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Maybe sometime this year the game will run acceptable enough for me to visit places like that. But I know the shifting horizon would irk me, sadly. I notice the same in other games, so ED is not the sole offender.
Right now watching the slight dumpster fire that is PSO2, because there's insane server lag during peak hours, and it is going down like EDO on steam, and I have to say, with good reason.
And their terrain engine also does the pop-in stuff, and it is just.. annoying when a mountain range changes shape.
 
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