Horizons confirmed?

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

It appears that it isn't just folk with similar high-end PCs to myself (R9 5900X / Radeon 6900XT / etc.) who are able to play EDO on their less than optimal (allegedly) PCs.

It is strange that the performance of EDO varies quite so much on PC hardware, old & new. Perhaps, one day, Fronteir devs will be able to bring the expansion's optimisation to run acceptably on the published specs, until then it seems to be a bit of a lottery! Made even odder by some players with top-end hardware still claiming very low frame rates in EDO and others with the same specs claiming otherwise.

For science, i just gave odd a go again. I did do something different and achieved surprisingly good results... high textures low shadows low effects low fog high everything else... with AMD fsr ultra quality, with setting the skybox to 350000 stars.. was better than i've ever had it, and for a while there i was not distracted by anything else and was able to appreciate the new lighting.

But the jank.. just wow. How do you even come close to accepting this.. its not really civilised.

• As soon as you use ui its game over, 100% gpu. Noone mentions this. Both the ship ui and the new fps terminal ui.
• Pico is really misrepresenting in the other thread. The planet tech is horrible when you get to that certain distance and it turns into sandpaper dots.. really. The from a greater distance the one moon i saw did look pretty good though. Also once you're on the surface, the graphics are.. good... but they're not realistic at all. The rock ripples like a calm ocean go over too much surface and the texture bugs they're using for the height are pretty bad. Those spikes are not good.
• Unless you use orbit lines, you can't see planets at all until you're almost ontop of them. They're black nothing. In horizons there's always a dot that grows bigger. Planet popin. Noone cares? Why would you choose this?
• Of course the odd base that i chose at let me dock but was also a tresspass zone. Not enjoying that bug again i just pulled over to the side.
• Ground fps was passable with fsr but no chance of combat on my machine. Looked good too.
• There's no new content, fps invisible. The lighting is good. Like it alot. System map is so bad for using it but looks good with fsr,. Galaxy map is good. Am i supposed to bind everything to a keyboard shortcut?

Anyway, will definitely retest once the quarterly patches drop.

 

[Old Duck]

[...] low shadows [...]

 

[Rat Catcher]

Anyway, will definitely retest once the quarterly patches drop.

You've just illustrated, very well, the point I was making.

EDO is odd, rather than consistent, in performance, across a wide spectrum of PC Specs. This doesn't make sense to me.

I play in 4K and can have framerates vary from 60+ (bar on some loading sessions where it will momentarily drop even lower!) to over 300, but don't get a 4 times increase dropping to 1080.

I don't see 100% GPU in any UI (unless I am running framerate unlocked, where it is approaching that for most of the time) nor have I noticed it elsewhere, but that only serves to illustrate the 'oddness' yet again.

Galaxy map is good. Am i supposed to bind everything to a keyboard shortcut?

I use my HOTAS for navigating the GalMap (as I do in Horizons) and one of the throttle hats to navigate the EDO side icons, I don't know how KBM users work it, so have no sensible response to give!

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Yes, low, even medium is particularly bad for ground stuff. You really want high.. but i'll take the fps anyday. Since the dawn of time i've been turning down shadows for fps. Was it the tnt that first supported hardware shadows or maybe after that? Expensive and overrated The fact that current games like to boast sharper shadows when its not even realistic still bugs me. Anyway.

Something you should be aware of however that the antialiasing is so bad it makes straight lines look like 3 dimensional leather. Could even be a new fur shader if you squint. Not exaggerating in station entranceways entire parts of structure look like a huge jaggie more than being part of a wall. Odyssey Elephants have hair too.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I don't see 100% GPU in any UI (unless I am running framerate unlocked, where it is approaching that for most of the time) nor have I noticed it elsewhere, but that only serves to illustrate the 'oddness' yet again.

Really? Its guaranteed for me. Load ship ui, load fps mission board ui, as soon as im in.. gpu 100%.. which isn't the problem.. the problem is it STAYS at 100% even after you've exited it, and nothing is the same again until restart.

Also was able to reproduce my odd send back scenario quite well.. Get into the game, in odd content or not, everything's peachy. Go to hyperspace and enjoy your 60fps with a bugged skybox and nice lighting. As soon as you hit any odd fps geometry after that, yeah my machine can't handle it. Its the second time that gets you. The first time around, or away from foot building / stations, get a happy 30-60 fps, closer to 40+ even, so its quite good.

Also i don't use kbm.. yikes! x56

 

[DrinkyBird]

I don't know how KBM users work it, so have no sensible response to give!

As a KBM user I can confirm we work it using the keyboard and mouse.

 

[Rat Catcher]

As a KBM user I can confirm we work it using the keyboard and mouse.

I really must take care with my written word!

Do you navigate the GalMap using mouse for the little icons?

 

[DrinkyBird]

Do you navigate the GalMap using mouse for the little icons?

You click on systems to select them. Hold click to plot route.

To move around the galmap, you rotate the galmap by left-click dragging, or use Q/E for yaw and T/G for pitch on the keyboard. Move vertically (Y-axis) by right-click dragging, or R/F. Move on X/Z axes by dragging with both mouse buttons or WASD.

 

[Rat Catcher]

x56

Sensible enough!
(I have one of those as my backup stick (used on my laptop) and use the pinky button to 'shift' a hat for icon selection on the 2 maps.)

 

[Jack Winter]

Hmm...


It appears that it isn't just folk with similar high-end PCs to myself (R9 5900X / Radeon 6900XT / etc.) who are able to play EDO on their less than optimal (allegedly) PCs.

It is strange that the performance of EDO varies quite so much on PC hardware, old & new. Perhaps, one day, Fronteir devs will be able to bring the expansion's optimisation to run acceptably on the published specs, until then it seems to be a bit of a lottery! Made even odder by some players with top-end hardware still claiming very low frame rates in EDO and others with the same specs claiming otherwise.

I have an ok GPU but a bit older CPU and in space EDO is ok, on foot it can be ok or horrible.. What I can't figure out is why it runs ok sometimes and like crap other times (in the same location and circumstances).. Still I'm gonna upgrade CPU and ram first and then to see if my GPU needs replacing too. In the meantime I hope for FDev to get the game fixed, there is still work to do on performance, lighting, shadows, etc.

 

[Red Rocket]

For the life of me I don’t understand why anyone would hate Horizons, it’s the game most of us fell in love with.

It has full VR support with outstanding performance throughout, huge mountains deep crevasses.
Memorable planets that are GONE in Odyssey.

It’s Odyssey that still has problems, no full VR, dark spots with uneven lighting, mostly flat planets.
Performance not close to Horizons.

So i am glad that Horizons is going to be around, at least till Odyssey gets fixed up with full VR support.

 

[Darkfyre99]

For the life of me I don’t understand why anyone would hate Horizons, it’s the game most of us fell in love with.

It has full VR support with outstanding performance throughout, huge mountains deep crevasses.
Memorable planets that are GONE in Odyssey.

It’s Odyssey that still has problems, no full VR, dark spots with uneven lighting, mostly flat planets.
Performance not close to Horizons.

So i am glad that Horizons is going to be around, at least till Odyssey gets fixed up with full VR support.

For me, it isn’t that I hate Horizons. It’s more that I like what Odyssey brings to the table.

On-foot VR is never going to be an option for me unless Frontier is willing to invest in making it a Roomscale experience, which give David Braden’s changed views on VR isn’t likely to happen. So the “big screen TV” makes it possible for me to switch casually between on-foot and ship-based gameplay without having to switch off my VR headset to play on foot. I may not be a fan of shooters, but I do like stealth games, and there’s decent enough stealth-based gameplay to make it pursuing those missions worth my while… assuming I have enough time to actually complete a mission, which is a problem I’ve had since missions were introduced back in 2014.

When it comes to worlds, I personally think Odyssey’s worlds look better, and have yet to encounter any of the tiling that’s triggered some people. OTOH, I didn’t like the proc-gen failures I’d often see in Horizons, but which others consider a feature. The changes to Stellar Forge also increased the number of worlds I’ve encountered outside the bubble that I’d consider worth a closer look, and it helps that I much prefer the so-called “heat map” in Odyssey over Horizons geo/bio POIs.

Yes, there’s a performance hit in Odyssey. Frontier really should’ve opened up Odyssey to community testing, and kept it open long enough to have a stable release candidate. This is a problem Frontier has ignored since the game released in 2014, and they continue to sell access to their alphas, which exacerbates the problem further. Of course players also had a performance hit in Horizons, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable as what we saw, and continue to see, after Odyssey’s “release.”

When Horizons released, I instantly switched over to it, and never returned except under certain circumstances. It wasn’t that I hated the original ED, but Horizons could give me the same experience that ED, and so much more. The same has proven true for Odyssey, with the added bonus of fixing some of the faults I had with Horizons.

Of course, Frontier also doubled down on the credit reward inflation in Odyssey, and scaled Odyssey-specific prices to match. I swear, if an NPC offers me the price of a new ship to retrieve something that costs me a 200cr taxi ride one more time… and don’t even get me started on Pioneer Supplies ridiculous markups!

 

[Old Duck]

For the life of me I don’t understand why anyone would hate Horizons,

The only things I "hate" about Horizons are the bugs and half-baked content, something Odyssey only amplifies IMO.

It has full VR support with outstanding performance throughout

This is one of the few things that separates Elite from the other beloved space games in my library. Unfortunately I have zero wiggle room when it comes to required performance to enjoy VR, so until Odyssey has a ZERO impact on performance in the same environments, Horizons remains the best VR space game on my PC.

 

[HansAcker]

I just have one question: When the galaxy closes, where can I park my FC and all my ships?

At Rackham's Restaurant and Bar at The End of The Galaxy, of course. Let the valet handle the parking.
I will be informed that they were going to have been employing a rather cheerful robot for the job.