4.0 worst performance

[alexzk]

However when we have a new moon on earth, yes down on the surface is dark, but the sky is then full of stars, which are not hidden by the brightness of the full moon. Ody doesn't work that way. The sky box is much darker and it should not be, all the stars should be shining brighter that far from any light source like the sun.

Not really. Shine of the stars is roughly constant value (lets skip 'variable stars" for now).
The difference near/away from the Sun we see because our tools (eye, camera) accept only best light.
We have helmet / glass which greatly decrease the light of the main star, because we can fuel scoop. Otherwise we would be blinded immediately. So feelings you got used to by naked eye is not correct here. Lets say cockpit lowers light from in-system stars and don't touch other lights.

 

[galahad2069]

Why everybody say 'dark-dark"? I don't get it. If you're 4000ls from the star - it must be dark there.
About planets - take a look on new moon next time it happens here from Earth. Can't see? Yes, because it is "too dark" and no reflected by Earth light.

That's just false. The reason why you cannot see the new moon is not the lack of illumination, it's simply because it's below the horizon at night.

New moon happens when the Moon is close to the general direction of the Sun in the sky, which means you can only see the thin crescent right after sunset or before sunrise, when the sky is not completely dark (because the Earth has an atmosphere), so it's just lost in the surrounding skyglow. But it"s not like the face of the new Moon is completely dark, actually it's illuminated by a giant mirror (the full Earth) reflecting sunlight onto it. If you could ever see the new Moon against a truly dark background, it would probably be the brightest object in the sky.

 

[galahad2069]

I do prefer the less realistic but the more astro-photographic style that we have in 3.8
So definitely (IMO) Horizons skybox looks better to me, but apparently there are lots of people that prefer the darker skybox in Odyssey

Anyway, the details that are killing our fps are in ships, stations, planets, not in the skybox
There are extra details in almost all Odyssey assets. However the lack of antialiasing kills a lot of those details - as is obvious in my carriers screenshots

The thing with the Horizons graphics mod is that it's merely a config file tweak, nothing more. No additional textures or anything like that is required, which means that the crazy astrophotography level of skybox details are already in the game files themselves, you only need to configure some image processing constants to make them visible.

I'm pretty sure that skybox information required for the same level of detail is in the Odyssey game files as well but, unlike Horizons, no amount of tweaking will help you bring them back because of some kind of bugs in Odyssey's image processing that destroys pixel brightness information close to the low end of the histogram, resulting in the general darkness and things like "scintillating" stars in space.

At least I could not bring back faint details in Odyssey no matter how I tried. I'd be more than happy if someone proved me wrong.

 

[Sakashiro]

Can't agree with that. It is simulation of things we will never see during our life in reality. So I want it to render as much realistic as possible.

It's a common misconception that space must be dark to be "realistic". Sure, space appears dark if you look up at night while being surrounded by street lamps and houses with illuminated windows, because those lights keep your eyes from adjusting.

But those who actually went to space describe it very differently. The Milky Way isn't dark at all.

The game should not require players to sit in a basement with all the lights off. Things should be visible on the screen even if you play in a room that's bright as day. Otherwise it will just ruin your eyes. Horizons 3.8 got this right, Odyssey did not. This has been frequently criticized, but Frontier so far hasn't managed to fix it.

 

[ebbrell]

It changed, accept it and move on
More important things to address, odyssey looks great

 

[galahad2069]

It changed is bugged, accept it and move on
More important things to address, odyssey looks could look great if they fixed it

FTFY

 

[Sakashiro]

It changed, accept it and move on
More important things to address, odyssey looks great

Things are now "great" if they are just low enough on the list of things to address. Talk about low expectations!

 

[zikolach]

It's a common misconception that space must be dark to be "realistic". Sure, space appears dark if you look up at night while being surrounded by street lamps and houses with illuminated windows, because those lights keep your eyes from adjusting.

But those who actually went to space describe it very differently. The Milky Way isn't dark at all.

The game should not require players to sit in a basement with all the lights off. Things should be visible on the screen even if you play in a room that's bright as day. Otherwise it will just ruin your eyes. Horizons 3.8 got this right, Odyssey did not. This has been frequently criticized, but Frontier so far hasn't managed to fix it.

Luckily for me I have eye-protection modes on my monitor. Otherwise I would not be able to play Odyssey at the same monitor settings (brightness/contrast/etc) I use for everything else. Unfortunately gamma control in game doesn't allow to make in game lights to look good everywhere at the same time. If I make it comfortable for space, it starts to kill my eyes in the concourses.

 

[alexzk]

It's a common misconception that space must be dark to be "realistic". Sure, space appears dark if you look up at night while being surrounded by street lamps and houses with illuminated windows, because those lights keep your eyes from adjusting.

But those who actually went to space describe it very differently. The Milky Way isn't dark at all.

The game should not require players to sit in a basement with all the lights off. Things should be visible on the screen even if you play in a room that's bright as day. Otherwise it will just ruin your eyes. Horizons 3.8 got this right, Odyssey did not. This has been frequently criticized, but Frontier so far hasn't managed to fix it.

I'm not buying this yet.
Proven fact that on the Moon, object in shadow is complete invisible because "too dark". That is what Ody do.

 

[Stealthie]

I've seen this behavior on low capability hardware. It takes a lot for all of the carrier interior textures to load. Usually its only an issue with the elevators. I haven't seen this behavior elsewhere...yet.

Just to update this...

I was getting this issue constantly, as I ran around my FC after the 4.0 update.
Headed off to a station (where I assumed it'd be an even tougher test) and... no issues.
Back to my FC and no issues there either.

I dunno.
I'm guessing that, perhaps, something to do with FC textures were updated for 4.0 and my original visit to my FC was struggling to deal with the changes until I left and returned.

 

[Stealthie]

I'm not buying this yet.
Proven fact that on the Moon, object in shadow is complete invisible because "too dark". That is what Ody do.

You're "not buying it", even though it's a real thing, which I'm sure we're all familiar with?

Our eyes have rods and cones.
We use cones the get a full colour view in good light and, once we've become accustomed to darkness, our rods allow us to see in almost complete darkness, albeit without colour definition.

The entire point of developing HDR in video games was to simulate this ability so that players would be comfortable in brightly lit areas and then, when they enter a dark area, they'd initially be disoriented and then the area around them would resolve as their "eyes" become accustomed to the darkness.

I'm all for making space as dark as possible in ED (you're inside an illuminated spaceship so your eyes should struggle to see with definition in darkness) but when you're acually IN a dark area, such as in an SRV or on foot, we should be able to make out detail as we become accustomed to the darkness.

Honestly, I'd be more impressed with the darkness if FDev had used it as a way to avoid having to render complex geometry and textures, thus improving performance.
As it is, it just seems like the game is wasting computing power by rendering a heap of stuff and then not allowing us to see it.


FWIW, I had exactly the same issue with games like Doom: Eternal and Alien: Isolation.
They have incredibly well defined environments and it was slightly frustrating that you couldn't really enjoy looking at them because the dev's decided to make everything so dark in order to create tension.

 

[alexzk]

I'm all for making space as dark as possible in ED (you're inside an illuminated spaceship so your eyes should struggle to see with definition in darkness) but when you're acually IN a dark area, such as in an SRV or on foot, we should be able to make out detail as we become accustomed to the darkness.

It works exactly this in low light. For example "day time" on 500ls planet around Y star. If you turn off all lights you see better then with lights. ANd you see 3 times better on foot.
However in very deep space light value is below eye sensevity.

 

[Northpin]

It works exactly this in low light. For example "day time" on 500ls planet around Y star. If you turn off all lights you see better then with lights. ANd you see 3 times better on foot.
However in very deep space light value is below eye sensevity.

Yeap.
When doing on-foot missions in dark settlements, i often turn off the torchlight.
After some seconds of "adaptation to darkness" this serves me better at doing my job in dark places.

But IMO they should have limited this effect to on-foot only.
In our ships we should not be affected as much by light/dark transitions - presumably the glass cockpit is smart enough to dim/amplify light as needed, else we'd be blind after the first hyperspace jump

 

[alexzk]

But IMO they should have limited this effect to on-foot only.
In our ships we should not be affected as much by light/dark transitions - presumably the glass cockpit is smart enough to dim/amplify light as needed, else we'd be blind after the first hyperspace jump

I may agree. But that needs detailed document of "how ship should work".
Also night vision in ship now looks like it is done by helmet (which is removed in ship) while in Horizons it was done by cockpit. I.e. I see "green" around my hands. That is some bug for sure.

They didn't pay too much attention on cockpit + helmet in Ody, that's true.

 

[Stealthie]

But IMO they should have limited this effect to on-foot only.
In our ships we should not be affected as much by light/dark transitions - presumably the glass cockpit is smart enough to dim/amplify light as needed, else we'd be blind after the first hyperspace jump

Well, that's the thing, innit?

For years we speculated on the idea that our ships used some kind of "smart glass" to explain things such as why we aren't blinded when we face-plant a star.
Then we got NV which, at least, confirms that our cockpit glass is actively enhancing/modifying our view of the galaxy... although why NV is so 20th-century-shonky when the glass manages to do other things so seamlessly is anybody's guess.

Point being, though, FDev are really free to do anything they want with our cockpit view of the galaxy.
They don't need to make it "realistic".
Hell, if they wanted to they could just put an "image enhancement" slider somewhere in the right-HUD which'd actually tweak the light levels as you adjust it.

Honestly, I'm not really fussed either way.
I like the darkness but I'm also kind of irritated to not be able to see some of the amazing graphics ED has because it's dark.

I DO recall that, after the last time FDev messed with the lighting (during Beyond, IIRC) I literally couldn't play ED for a couple of months because the difference between dark and light was so great that it was beyond the range of in-game adjustments for my PC/monitor.
At the time there were a few people complaining about this but most people just said "Stop moaning, it's not that bad".
Trouble was, for some people (possibly as a result of certain GFX/monitor combinations?) it really WAS that bad.

That's made me aware that other people might be experiencing different results to others.
For some people, the new lighting might have more extreme results than others.

 

[Episparh]

Spoiler

Source: https://youtu.be/QlEH8AESacU

Imagine how bright those two might be on their surface to be seen as this through Erath's atmosphere during a day.

One is roughly 2000-3000ls away the other is 4500-5500ls away.

EDO lighting is where you either get blind from intense light or or get blind from complete darkness. And the transition from overblown light to complete darkness some times occurs by just moving around the corner of a building.

 

[alexzk]

Imagine how bright those two might be on their surface to be seen as this through Erath's atmosphere during a day.

One is roughly 2000-3000ls away the other is 4500-5500ls away.

EDO lighting is where you either get blind from intense light or or get blind from complete darkness. And the transition from overblown light to complete darkness some times occurs by just moving around the corner of a building.

That is what you see when landing on day-side moon around giant.

 

[Northpin]

Spoiler

Source: https://youtu.be/QlEH8AESacU

Imagine how bright those two might be on their surface to be seen as this through Erath's atmosphere during a day.

One is roughly 2000-3000ls away the other is 4500-5500ls away.

EDO lighting is where you either get blind from intense light or or get blind from complete darkness. And the transition from overblown light to complete darkness some times occurs by just moving around the corner of a building.

looking at the full moon through a 200mm telescope is a truly blinding experience unless using a ND filter to reduce the light that reaches the eye.

 

[alexzk]

looking at the full moon through a 200mm telescope is a truly blinding experience unless using a ND filter to reduce the light that reaches the eye.

150 mm blinds too

 

[Old Duck]

I'd just like to say that I prefer black space (that's why I made a mod for that), but that's different than "dark" space. So for example, in "my" Horizons, being close to a star blinds me from seeing other stars or anything in shadow, which I feel is realistic (I see way fewer stars during a full moon than a new moon):


But as I get further from the star, this blinding light subsides, my eyes adjust, and I can see more (note - my Orca is painted midnight black):


I've also cranked up the number of stars you can see. IIRC, Odyssey has way fewer stars due to the new "everything is dark" filter (note that the planet to the left is quite bright, which it would be reflecting full sunlight at high albedo):


Now I have chosen a desaturated skybox, because I wanted something that looked more like the sky I see on a clear winter night. That said, it's a toggleable option that I can easily turn on and off with a press of a button, so when I'm visiting a nebula, I can enjoy Horizons' default colorful palette, as unrealistic as it may be:


It took a lot of work to customize all this to my personal liking, work that would be lost upgrading to Odyssey. And I'm not even sure I could replicate it in Odyssey. It's easy to desaturate an image or turn down the brightness, because your basically "throwing away" information that's available. If the image is lacks saturation and brightness to begin with, you can't just dial up what's not there, not without some sort of AI "zoom and enhance" magic.