Game Discussions Star Citizen Discussion Thread v12
- Thread starter Yaffle
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I recall similar scepticynicism back when CIG said they wanted to make procedural planets with their Crysis FPS engine, this was around the time we got the Horizons expansion, and remember to laugh at that idea. No way I thought. Well, they not only they delivered but surpassed the expectations.
They've modelled earth like planets with volumetric clouds while Frontier is still playing around with it's meatballs gamma values.
They've modelled earth like planets with volumetric clouds while Frontier is still playing around with it's meatballs gamma values.
You didn't think CIG could make scaled-down planets, after many other gaming companies already had? That was silly - you clearly don't understand game development.
I for one am very confident in Turbulent's abilities to create standard instancing & networking tech for Star Citizen - just as the CitCon presentation and Q&A described, and was explained in Space Tomato's Interview video that Golgot shared.
Why are you skeptical and doubt that they can do it?
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
"The Old Continent, and specifically the UK, will soon be blessed with Chris' presence, sometime in 2022.!"
Wasnt it confirmed recently that Chris and family have been in the UK already for several months? May be remembering wrong though.
The claim was procedurally generated planets with streaming from full macro scale to micro level surface detail, like a blade of grass, or a man's pupil. seamlessly in a single instance. IE without load screens.
I know games generated planet sized balls in space but i don't know if that ^^^^^ specifically was ever a thing before SC Alpha 3.0, this is what people said was impossible, what people laughed at.
Please don't say ED Horizons, its a disguised loadscreen, its very well done, but a loadscreen, sometimes you can catch it, sometimes that sequence of entering from orbit to surface hangs for a bit, i have seen it hang for 30 seconds before it comes out of "cruse mode" there was a delay or problem loading.
Either way CIG, specifically the Frankfurt studio cracked it in 2015 and put out this little video.
In 2016 this
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
It is not a load screen at all though. At least not in the sense of loading a new map area, if that is what you mean, no. The whole star system is streamed via proc gen, no loading screens at all. The micro pause you feel from orbital cruise to gliding mode is just an instancing/network severing of existing connections in OC and creating the new ones in gliding/normal flight. That includes IA spawning or other players instancing which are obviously distinct in each flying mode etc. Any delays you see there are precisely due to network issues or server connection issues. But a map loading it is not. This has been already discussed and proved ad nauseam by players playing at normal speeds from a planet to another nearby (taking many hours in the process) and similar experiments. Honestly surprised you are still not aware.
Also, many other games have achieved this, Kerbal, Space Engineers etc. Although ED is probably among the few ones (if not the only one) to do it at 1:1 scale including celestial motions.
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Right so its instancing, you're loading into a new instance, ok that's fair enough but what SC claimed they would do is instance the entire planet, that's what people found so funny, not only are they instancing and entire planet, they are instancing an entire star systemem about 70,000,000 KM in diamiter with about 20 celestial bodies in it along with a crap load of other stuffs.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I dont think anyone said CIG couldn´t do a star system. Many other games have achieved this before SC as mentioned above, so it is indeed feasible. And I dont recall any comments about instancing in particular (other than the usual doubts about "thousands" of players in the same place etc). And yet, SC´s current instancing system based on 50 players per server is nothing more than a glorified (literally) arena matchmaking server based game, like world of tanks or war thunder, with a 50 player limit. Well, Squad does 100 without breaking a sweat. Except that given the amount of biowaste CIG wants to cram into each one, things just break down by simply looking at them. By contrast, an actual proc gen star system map 1:1 scale like ED´s allows for the game to not need to pre load much, if at all, in memory.
I believe the actual doubts and critiques you refer to came from the CryEngine 64b conversion side of things. And which is still seriously crappy today, probably one of the culprits making all physics borked and wonky and prone to multiple kinds of hilarious bugs and issues including completely game breaking ones where players may lose assets worth several millions of UEC if this was a live and officially released game. The fact quantum drive is still limited to mainly straight lines between fixed points is another symptom of a weak and not too robust system. From those points of view CIG have not actually really achieved it yet at all. At least not in any minimally stable and reasonable working manner I am afraid. It is not even half arsed, it is simply broken as an actual game feature. CIG released the PU with the 64b conversion 6 years ago. How much more time do you think CIG needs to make it work? Can they make it work?
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Lol, the ED pause is a networking handshake. Exactly the type of thing CIG hope to introduce in 2022
(The fact that they currently run the alpha on unscaleable networking architecture - IE hosting everything on a single server - is not actually some great achievement Trep
)Have another vid from 2015 without load screens
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CIG's plan seems to be to achieve the server handover further out from the planet, and so have that hitching pause be hidden somewhat by the quantum travel. But expect your free motion about the ship to be somewhat compromised at that point
. (If not for it to get prohibited outright...)
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It's possible to fly in real time from Lorville up to Everus harbour in orbit. You can see the orbital station from the ground as well as locations on the surface of Hurston from the station...same as traveling without QT between planets and moons. I've flown up to Everus harbour at Hurston from the surface in real time then landed at the station a few times... same with Bajini point from ArcCorps and Port Tressler from Microtech. Not exactly a pupil to planet example, but as near as damnit. All those orbital stations and other moons you can physically see from the surface of any planet or moon...they're actually there in situ and not just a skybox
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What we have now is beyond that.
I can record myself flying from an orbital station to the surface.
There isn't a loading screen in Elite if you fly without Supercruise, the worlds are all on the same 64bit map, with surface assets streamed in:
Same goes for orbiting stations and Fleet Carriers - some sandbox-gameplay-playing CMDRs have been able to get their SRVs first into orbit and then out to orbiting stations/FCs.
The Pupil To Planet tech-demo video was very impressive, and deftly timed by CIG marketing to be published the day before Horizons launched, driving us backers to believe SC's landable planets would arrive a year later (end of 2016). Unfortunately as 2016 progressed, and then 2017, Alpha 3.0 (previously labelled 2.7) encountered delay after delay until its end-of-2017 arrival.
As we've seen with CIG's marketing videos occur many times now, features demonstrated at CitCon apparently in-game can often encounter considerable delays before arriving to us players. See: 2015's SATABall, 2016's sandworm, 2017's Hurston's fauna, 2019's stealth mission and jump gate.
Do that the other way round, from space to surface.
That video is literally from surface, to space, to surface. I thought you'd played Elite?
That video is literally from surface, to space, to surface. I thought you'd played Elite?
Ok, so how do i make it do that without the loadscreen?
Managed to get a crimestat doing a bunker mission tonight...shot one of the security guards who looked suspiciously like a bad guy. To save all the mucking about hacking terminals to clear my crimestat, I let my mate Badger claim my bad boi bounty and shoot me in the face...woke up in the nick for the first time ever.
Anyway...discovering I had a 4 hour 30 sentence, I decided to go mining for freedom only to find the terminals where I had to dump my little rocks didn't work
Anyway...discovering I had a 4 hour 30 sentence, I decided to go mining for freedom only to find the terminals where I had to dump my little rocks didn't work
I'm a bit of both, I kinda like it and really hate it all at the same time...I'll make a video after my impending release from prison...3 and a half hours to go
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Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Not sure what you mean. There are no load screens at all. The player in that vid simply takes off and flights straight to the nearby planet.