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

[[VR] Merkir]

Regarding the download size going up by 20 GB for odyssey, I doubt that includes any terrain assets. I assume most is the new "feet" game play and associated media/assets.

With FDev's new terrain system, to do their "offline generation of terrain shapes" properly, I'd expect they would need to have pre-generated terabytes of stored terrain assets, if not hundreds of terabytes (or more). Those assets would be streamed in as required, which seems apparent from some of the LOD issues we're seeing.

Of course looking at what we got with the repeating terrain, my assumption may be completely wrong. Perhaps they've only pre-generated a measly few GB, and even possibly included those in the download? Surely not?

 

[Sakashiro]

Regarding the download size going up by 20 GB for odyssey, I doubt that includes any terrain assets. I assume most is the new "feet" game play and associated media/assets.

With FDev's new terrain system, to do their "offline generation of terrain shapes" properly, I'd expect they would need to have pre-generated terabytes of stored terrain assets, if not hundreds of terabytes (or more). Those assets would be streamed in as required, which seems apparent from some of the LOD issues we're seeing.

Of course looking at what we got with the repeating terrain, my assumption may be completely wrong. Perhaps they've only pre-generated a measly few GB, and even possibly included those in the download? Surely not?

Polygon meshes don't occupy much storage space, textures do. Terrain height maps are essentially greyscale textures. Of course Odyssey doesn't store pregenerated terrains for entire planets. Instead it uses procedural generation to select and apply premade height map fragments to the surface, like stamps to a sheet of paper. This way every planet is different, but since the number of premade fragments isn't infinite, you start recognizing repeating patterns: the same mountain range, the same canyon, the same rock formation, the same cracks in the surface, etc.

I've spent the past two weeks exploring, visiting Beagle Point and other places, and I'm now at a point where I don't bother looking at planets any more, because there seems to be no terrain feature left that I haven't seen before, and I know that there won't be any surprises if I keep looking. The new system operates within a narrow range of possible outcomes and completely eliminates the potential for extreme and unexpected results. Frankly, if they don't do a full 180 and bring back the old system, it'll be the end of exploration.

The prefab-based approach explains both the larger install size of Odyssey and the pixelation you see when textures get streamed into memory.

 

[Franc Kaos]

I've spent the past two weeks exploring, visiting Beagle Point and other places, and I'm now at a point where I don't bother looking at planets any more, because there seems to be no terrain feature left that I haven't seen before, and I know that there won't be any surprises if I keep looking. The new system operates within a narrow range of possible outcomes and completely eliminates the potential for extreme and unexpected results. Frankly, if they don't do a full 180 and bring back the old system, it'll be the end of exploration.

Now that is really sad 'cause there's no way they're back tracking on this new system (it took 'em over three years to get to this point and Dr Kay was really proud of their achievement).

Managed to get there, they're and their in one sentence go me!

 

[Erei]

I've spent the past two weeks exploring, visiting Beagle Point and other places, and I'm now at a point where I don't bother looking at planets any more, because there seems to be no terrain feature left that I haven't seen before, and I know that there won't be any surprises if I keep looking. The new system operates within a narrow range of possible outcomes and completely eliminates the potential for extreme and unexpected results. Frankly, if they don't do a full 180 and bring back the old system, it'll be the end of exploration.

The prefab-based approach explains both the larger install size of Odyssey and the pixelation you see when textures get streamed into memory.

Prefabs is OK when you have large quantity of it, and it's associated with random gen. The things we saw for pre alpha was good, lots of noises and variety, I'm sure there is repetition somewhere, but you can't see it. If the planet are complex enough, your brain can't see the patterns, which is perfectly OK.

The problem is not the underlying engine, it's how downgraded it was. We went from a 2020 engine, with all the good stuff, to a 2010 one. I sincerely feel like I'm looking at kerbal space program worlds most of the time. Kerbal graphics were good, in 2011.

Exploration is already dead to me. And probably for a while, since they have chosen not to bring back the "good" engine that we were shown, but instead to fix their low quality texturing and mesh we have now.

Reading the reddit thread on Odyssey release, you could feel people being surprised and mentioning it was bugged because the terrain was all crappy compared to the alpha and pre alpha footage. That what I thought to. But apparently, it was intended.

 

[Odi]

Off topic sorry...

I have started a new thread I am hoping to get support for.



Thread 'Quality of life and what commitment you would be satisfied with.' https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ommitment-you-would-be-satisfied-with.585016/



Thanks

Odi

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Polygon meshes don't occupy much storage space, textures do. Terrain height maps are essentially greyscale textures. Of course Odyssey doesn't store pregenerated terrains for entire planets. Instead it uses procedural generation to select and apply premade height map fragments to the surface, like stamps to a sheet of paper. This way every planet is different, but since the number of premade fragments isn't infinite, you start recognizing repeating patterns: the same mountain range, the same canyon, the same rock formation, the same cracks in the surface, etc.

I'll stick by my numbers, and I did the quick math. I was going to go into detail here, but it's boring. In short, the quick calc shows that, including the repeating "terrain shapes" (as FDev call them), which of course lowers the overall data required, a typical Earth sized planet might end up being around 500 MB of raster elevation data for the highest resolution LOD. And this seems reasonable given our experience with Odyssey. Fly across the face of a planet for minutes on end, letting the terrain stream in, watching the LOD expand in front of us. And that's just one planet. For variety across a galaxy, multiply the number of unique tiles (file storage) required accordingly, thousands or even millions if possible.

But far more importantly than that, with their new repeating terrain methodology, there's no algorithmic upper limit for the number of terrain shapes they're able to store and recall for later use. The more the merrier - as many as possible to avoid the perception of repetition. In short, FDev should have had their servers pre-generating unique "terrain shapes" for months prior to release. If they haven't bothered to generate many terabytes of terrain shapes to avoid this repetition, which let's face it is ridiculously cheap these days, they're really not executing their new technique properly. Which is quite evident.

I've spent the past two weeks exploring, visiting Beagle Point and other places, and I'm now at a point where I don't bother looking at planets any more, because there seems to be no terrain feature left that I haven't seen before, and I know that there won't be any surprises if I keep looking. The new system operates within a narrow range of possible outcomes and completely eliminates the potential for extreme and unexpected results. Frankly, if they don't do a full 180 and bring back the old system, it'll be the end of exploration.

I agree. All I see are the same terrain types (I wouldn't call them biomes) on each planet: those grey hills, the brown pimple hills, the very pointy hills, the "mosaics" divided by steep (but shallow) canyons, etc. I get that at first glance they look awesome. I get why many players think the new tech is fantastic. But... for those who see dozens/hundreds of these planets on a regular basis, explorers for example... enough said.

 

[Sakashiro]

I'll stick by my numbers, and I did the quick math. I was going to go into detail here, but it's boring. In short, the quick calc shows that, including the repeating "terrain shapes" (as FDev call them), which of course lowers the overall data required, a typical Earth sized planet might end up being around 500 MB of raster elevation data for the highest resolution LOD. And this seems reasonable given our experience with Odyssey. Fly across the face of a planet for minutes on end, letting the terrain stream in, watching the LOD expand in front of us. And that's just one planet. For variety across a galaxy, multiply the number of unique tiles (file storage) required accordingly, thousands or even millions if possible.

But far more importantly than that, with their new repeating terrain methodology, there's no algorithmic upper limit for the number of terrain shapes they're able to store and recall for later use. The more the merrier - as many as possible to avoid the perception of repetition. In short, FDev should have had their servers pre-generating unique "terrain shapes" for months prior to release. If they haven't bothered to generate many terabytes of terrain shapes to avoid this repetition, which let's face it is ridiculously cheap these days, they're really not executing their new technique properly. Which is quite evident.



I agree. All I see are the same terrain types (I wouldn't call them biomes) on each planet: those grey hills, the brown pimple hills, the very pointy hills, the "mosaics" divided by steep (but shallow) canyons, etc. I get that at first glance they look awesome. I get why many players think the new tech is fantastic. But... for those who see dozens/hundreds of these planets on a regular basis, explorers for example... enough said.

Are you suggesting they should store and stream terrain over the network instead of generating it locally? I don't think that would be cheap at all.

 

[FX2K]

Off topic sorry...

Just a little... Major concerns / issues vs some random QOL thread.
Thread you created is very confusing, the first page where you are trying to control the flow makes my brain hurt.

Anyway, back to talking about terrain and to ensure I am on-topic...look at this beautiful mountain and atmosphere

 

[[VR] Merkir]

Are you suggesting they should store and stream terrain over the network instead of generating it locally? I don't think that would be cheap at all.

I don't like the way they've implemented it or my suggestion, which only reduces the perception of repetition. If they're truly storing all the new pre-generated terrain assets in the game download itself, which means just a few GB of terrain, that was always going to fail from the point of view of repetition frequency. A few quick calcs shows that.

It's just really disappointing they didn't choose true procgen as the solution. FDev could have returned to the forefront of procgen again, extending their original terrain procgen to produce the more detailed terrain types entirely mathematically/algorithmically. Ofc this would result in extra cpu/gpu load, but it's been many years since the original terrain procgen. The extra processing power we have today could have been used by the new procgen to produce the more detailed terrain types. They may not have been quite as detailed as what we see in Ody, it's a trade-off after all, but I suggest it would have been very close to what we see now, with absolutely zero repetition. It would have been nice to have been present when they were deciding on their new terrain design process. I don't know the limitations of the cobra engine and why they chose the path they have.

But generally speaking, looking at all the new Odyssey terrain types (biomes if you like), I only see two or three that might give some trouble being created entirely by procgen - the ones with the very nice erosion detail. Normally, erosion simulation is a cpu-intensive iterative process - a good reason to pre-generate offline, as they have - but there are plenty of shortcuts that can be taken for game purposes to do it in real time or jit. It would be a fun exercise (and discussion) to give a critique on each of the new terrain types re procgen viability... maybe a later post.

 

[Sakashiro]

IMHO they should have listened to this guy. He knows a thing or two about terrain generation.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

IMHO they should have listened to this guy. He knows a thing or two about terrain generation.

Watching that video (again) makes me quite sad for ED. I feel bad saying it, but Sean and his team would have eaten the new Odyssey terrain for breakfast. As I mentioned above, the only part of Odyssey's new terrain that's a little more complex as pure procgen is the erosion. Sean mentions erosion many times in that vid, and in more detail here, for a few minutes. You'll note the slide titled Analytical Derivative with "Creates realistic erosion" and he starts that part of his talk saying "this is the good stuff". And it really is, to any procgen enthusiast.

 

[Erei]

IMHO they should have listened to this guy. He knows a thing or two about terrain generation.

People have been linking DB videos to, from a while ago, where he discussed terrain generation and the mistakes not to do. Which have been done for Odyssey.
The issue is not lack of knowledge or anything. ED people are very competent, Dr Kay Ross and DB amongst them.
And I'm sure the original tech was very good, the pre alpha and alpha pictures/videos are truly amazing. Even bland world would have looked very good. I mean, in their bland way, like the moon is both very bland and amazing looking.

The issue is how rushed and downgraded it was. Up to alpha, a mere weeks before release, we had a different planet generation engine. No matter the competence of the people involved, you can do a quality job in such a short amount of time, while downgrading an engine you worked years on.

The issue is the decision part of Fdev. The moment they decided to "pull the trigger no matter what". The moment they decided to massively downgrade what they had, I suspect for performance reasons (or perhaps because there was some big bug that wasn't detected until very late ?). This is the issue. It's then compounded by the fact they want to seemingly stick to this downgraded engine, and fix it, instead of fixing the "good" one and bring it to us when it's ready.

 

[Helvellyn]

Regarding the download size going up by 20 GB for odyssey, I doubt that includes any terrain assets. I assume most is the new "feet" game play and associated media/assets.

With FDev's new terrain system, to do their "offline generation of terrain shapes" properly, I'd expect they would need to have pre-generated terabytes of stored terrain assets, if not hundreds of terabytes (or more). Those assets would be streamed in as required, which seems apparent from some of the LOD issues we're seeing.

Of course looking at what we got with the repeating terrain, my assumption may be completely wrong. Perhaps they've only pre-generated a measly few GB, and even possibly included those in the download? Surely not?

I really doubt it's streamed, that would put a hell of a demand on the servers (and too much on many individual's connections too).

 

[CMDR Von Abrahart]

IMHO they should have listened to this guy. He knows a thing or two about terrain generation.

NMS terrain is great - but its .. ‘gamey’ and not at all realistic. I’m going to wait to see if FDEV fixes all the shenanigans its introduced in ODD - if they don‘t then …. I will post again

 

[roryclague]

I feel the biggest issue is how downgraded the planet tech was. Not even cherry picking can make the difference we have today, unless it's misleading on purpose.

This is one of the reason I bought this DLC. It makes me sad/angry/frustrated to see it now :

I want to play the game they are selling. Someone made an album of the video planets :

https://imgur.com/a/Z8yuimT

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/Z8yuimT



What's ridiculous, is that even during alpha we had better.
This was on reddit, a partially frozen world, during alpha.

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/mrkb1f

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/mrkb1f/the_new_terrain_generation_in_action_this_planet/

Look at that comparison between alpha and release, the quality difference is mind blowing. The alpha 3 textures are highly detailed, with rocks and snow at the same place as if the ground had frozen, but was not made of ice otherwise. There is a large amount of rock scattering, and texture variety.

Spoiler

Still alpha, frozen world, not ice world. Note the "ice fog" weather.

Same planet, video vs reality :

The planet is HD 10329 , B 5, if anybody want to make an horizon screenshot (I don't want to lose my keybinds^^). Curious to see it compared to horizon.

Anyway, the quality downgrade is ridiculous.
We can't see repetition on the video planets, they are way too detailed for that. Too much noise, even if there is repetition, you can't see it unless you really look for it.

I sincerely believe they are surprised by the repetition. Because the planet gen we have is not the one they worked on. We have the "low quality" one they apparently slapped in emergency before release. I assume for performance reason, but it could be something else.

Heck, even the skybox is different, it look like "better horizon" instead of "horizon but we dimmed everything drastically".

This is the elephant in the room no one is talking about. The alpha looked much, much better than the release build. It is as if the new planet tech was built with one set of parameters in mind, and then people had performance and gameplay issues with it, so they reparameterized the system without really testing it, hoping that the performance and SRV handling would improve but paying no mind to how the aesthetics would be affected. It is mind boggling that they didn’t do further testing before release.

 

[Rat Catcher]

NMS terrain is great - but its .. ‘gamey’ and not at all realistic.

Yes to both - but with a little 'tweaking', stuff like the image below, is quite impressive. (emphasis on tweaking )

 

[CMDR Von Abrahart]

This - from a screenshot in the screenshot thread - i didn't notice who’s it was - sorry - its not mine

 

[Drelthar]

View attachment 249105

This - from a screenshot in the screenshot thread - i didn't notice who’s it was - sorry - its not mine

Yeah.... there are a lot of these silly looking spikes.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

I really doubt it's streamed, that would put a hell of a demand on the servers (and too much on many individual's connections too).

Well, it would be CDNs and individual connections, but I agree. It looks like they've chosen an extremely limited number of pre-generated terrain shapes as part of the game download. I wouldn't have even contemplated that as a solution for ED's use case, but here we are, looking at the results - a ludicrous number of repeating tiles on every landable planet. Worse still, no way to fix. They've already said as much in their response to the repeating terrain issue.

So the only solution is to ditch their current method and start from scratch. It's more confirmation that pure procgen would have been so much better.

 

[Vale Grumby]

Hoonable Odyssey planets when?

(And no don't link me that flat, wide and predictable crevice crap that is an absolute snore to fly through thinking its some grand evidence EDO planet tech is fine)