Do they? A big accusation to make just by reading posts that do not verify their authenticity... Wanna buy a bridge?
New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)
- Thread starter BlackMaze
- Start date
Have you ever used Glassdoor? I am a software developer and have used it to check the water at prospective companies AND current companies. I have always found it generally representative and accurate.
When you notice a trend in multiple reviews over time, you know there's some truth to it. No smoke without fire.
Regardless, the current iteration planet tech is decent, but definitely released too early and needs a revisit to fix the fundamental issues.
No need, but I have read a heap of posts for fun, it seems nearly as factual as facebook...
You could have pointed out that Kay had been working on Elite at Frontier for at least 8 years, possibly even longer. That's a long time to be in one place and one one game.
Fair enough, that is true, it's a long time to spend at any company. And maybe she felt like the planet tech is at a place where someone else can easily pick up the baton.
It would just be nice to hear something from Frontier, it's the area of the game we all care about most, it's the ticket with easily the most votes in the Issue Tracker, by a long long way. And we've had no updates in ages, and Frontier promised better communication.
The game was released too early, but so was Horizons when it was released and that turned out fine. Terrain generation is an iterative process that's seen many changes to the way it works and looks. It gets better but at the same time takes steps back until it's refined and sorted out. The only solution is not to buy the game and wait for it to reach a state whereby you want to buy it.
IIRC she did speak about leaving during the pandemic, but ended up staying another 12 months or so. Again, no idea why or what the reasons were but she did post about it on her Twitter at the time.
From what theye've said the tiling issue is a big issue that was not going to be sorted quickly, as such Im sure they know what needs to be done to fix it, but whether they do is dependent on other factors like what else teams are doing and trying to fit it into the schedule. As such im not sure there's much to say.
The tiling is a bit of a disappointment and im sure they aren't happy it made it in to the finished game, whether they knew it was there or not. I havent notived it much until today when I visited the planet Shubar in the Bolg system, and it was very apparent. I cant imagine they'd want that remaining as it is. But who knows.....
We had an update in the most recent bug tracker post in mid-November - paraphrasing: it's still being looked at but it's complicated so don't expect changes soon. The December bug tracker post hasn't happened due to the holidays. There'll be another update in January's bug tracker post (which probably won't be much different to November's update, though you never know).
If you're not happy with that, that's not a communication problem. Frontier promised that they'd communicate more (which they are), not that the news would be good. Monthly updates on something that they're expecting to take a considerably longer timescale to solve (and may not even be sure is solvable at this stage) doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I think Frontier have actually made a reasonable reply on this one, and I wouldn't even classify it as a 'bug' in this case, but that may be because I find other aspects to be more important, such as inconsistent colours as you move down through the layers, blocky terrain at certain heights, 'ice-cream' style mountains, general performance. The color pallete is also too strong for my taste - maybe that was done to try to mask the repeating patterns, which for me is lower priority than the other points.
If they ever do revise it, it will almost certainly cause them to regenerate the height maps and therefore have to remap all the surface assets.
As for Dr Ross, she may well have cause to be unhappy with the management at Frontier, as are many of us, but I doubt she will ever clarify. Till then we can only assume that it is a normal decision to try a new environment/experience.
Same, my greatest concern is the homogenisation of the mountain ranges - mountain ranges all look the same on every planet, with no standout features. But I can't see an upvoted issue being tracked for that, I'm hoping all planetary terrain generation issues like canyons, mountains etc can be looked at simultaneously with the tiling issue.
Do they?
I've visited a couple of hundred since EDO launched (with sufficient variety to not be disappointed), but haven't had time to visit EVERY planet - how did you manage it, and can you now share where Raxxla is?
They might not have worked out how supercruise works and still be at the same planet? Might explain a lot
That's not how 'having a job' works in my experience. Unless you literally burn the building down when you leave so nobody can replace you, the company projects and work carries on.
I've never left a job where there wasn't still "work to do".
So still in the industry, then, rather than switching tracks entirely? I did kind of wonder about that.
At this point, after this much time, I kind of wonder (no matter what I may feel about that) if the decision may not have been made to avoid a second ground upheaval, by leaving current planets as-is, and saving added diversity for future planet types being elaborated on...
On the other hand: It is not out of the question that maybe manual correction of bespoke sites could at the moment be deferred, in anticipation of such a change taking place (because why waste effort on a temporary state?), and there is no lack of things that look odd - the last engineer base I flew by did not blend with the surrounding terrain and area texturing at all; Big distinct hand-crafted rocks that were strewn like colourful toys over a plain gray felt playroom mat. (...and then there is the old Mic Turner Base over in the California Nebula, which was built specifically next to a field of space basket balls, to study them, back in the early days of such things beginning to appear in the game, and has been given a tourist beacon telling as much, only the automated part of the settlement placement "baking" process can of course not comprehend lore, so now the base, and the field with its tourist beacon, are on opposite sides of the planet (EDIT: ...and the field is a canyon).
...meanwhile the planet has gained some Thargoid Barnacle sites, one of which is inside one of the hangars of the base. ).
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Just replying to a few posts above (can't be bothered quoting them all)...
Repeating terrain tiles is not a bug. It was done this way by design. Unlike Horizons, in Odyssey some of the terrain is pre-generated offline and is repeated across landable planets. FDev described the new tech in Q&As prior to Odyssey launch.
Here's the Q&A post from FDev:
forums.frontier.co.uk
And relevant excerpts:
"we're talking up 100km worth of terrain for example, which are now generated offline into terrain shapes that we know are formed."
"Q: What type of planet is this new tech going to be applied to?
Every planet you could land on before, and the new ones opening up, will be using this approach. The old surfaces can't be represented in this new approach and you're going to get a larger variety using this new tech.
Q: Are non-landable planets seeing changes too?
No, the planetary tech is focused on the planets you can land on to see the detail up close."
Repeating terrain tiles is not a bug. It was done this way by design. Unlike Horizons, in Odyssey some of the terrain is pre-generated offline and is repeated across landable planets. FDev described the new tech in Q&As prior to Odyssey launch.
Here's the Q&A post from FDev:
Planetary Tech with Dr Kay Ross: Recap
Greetings Commanders! Last week, we were joined on stream by the fantastic Dr Kay Ross to answer some of your questions regarding planetary tech and the changes coming in Elite Dangerous: Odyssey! If you missed it, you can watch the entire stream on YouTube - but we're also going to give you a...
And relevant excerpts:
"we're talking up 100km worth of terrain for example, which are now generated offline into terrain shapes that we know are formed."
"Q: What type of planet is this new tech going to be applied to?
Every planet you could land on before, and the new ones opening up, will be using this approach. The old surfaces can't be represented in this new approach and you're going to get a larger variety using this new tech.
Q: Are non-landable planets seeing changes too?
No, the planetary tech is focused on the planets you can land on to see the detail up close."
That's why it's called an issue report. The way they've designed the new planetary tech is an issue to many players.
I would hope so...
Not to disregard the planets that are working correctly (as in, any tiling or repetition aren't as noticeable), but things like that example are a clear oversight. It's why the entire generation system will probably need to be updated (planetary tech statement still pending, so we can't know for sure what they will do). It will probably require a re-roll of all planets again, and a reseating of all surface sites. No small undertaking, but it's the price of correcting an issue that they have acknowledged.
Unfortunately there has been no word on that statement on planet tech, like the updated anti aliasing. I'd say both will come well after performance is addressed, but before any console launch.
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UE5 would help with lag and random generation. I'm no expert on game engines, but I do know how computers work and from what I've seen and heard about UE5, there are basically no limits to what you can do. So it would require far less GPU power to render much more realistic graphics and they also have random generator. I think it would fix a lot.
As about disconnects, i have few ideas, I'll PM you.
The direction and progress of the game is a clear indication of how ineffective Frontier management is.