Camera Suite Improvements: Update Notes

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Greetings Commanders!


Once again, thank you to all involved in the brainstorming of issues and quality of life requests to help improve the Camera Suite for Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.
With so many areas of Odyssey to cover right now, we haven't been able to implement all of the top requested tweaks as part of our forthcoming Update 6, but we are excited to have taken this healthy step in what we hope is the right direction for a more optimal experience.
We will naturally continue to listen to feedback further as time goes on...I'm just glad we got to tackle the 'Signal Lost' issue for you, at the very least right now!

I tell you what, let's do this in the style of my favourite things in the whole wide world (second to Commanders) - Update Notes.​

Update 6: Camera Suite Improvements.
  • Fixed several issues that could cause occlusion by another vessel or certain parts of the player's own ship/SRV to cause the vanity camera to black out.
    • This should return the vanity camera collision behaviour in space and on planets away from any settlements to it's Horizons behaviour.
  • Implemented a brand new collision detection approach for the "Free Camera" mode of the Camera Suite:
    • Instead of trying to detect when the camera is inside geometry and blacking out the camera (Tech speak: This was an unsolvable problem for non-sealed/manifold trimesh hitcheck, which led to many false-positives in our current implementation), we now use collision detection to prevent the camera from entering any hitcheck in the first place.
  • This allows Commanders to fly the camera freely around a settlement, social space, or other location, without the camera blacking out whenever the line of sight to the player's vessel is occluded.
  • Added better collision detection for the Camera Suite in and around hangars.
    • This fixes the camera blacking out or being prevented from entering the lobby area.
  • Disabled the AABB collision detection vs non-moving (docked or landed) ships.
    • This allows Commanders to get closer to their ships for screenshots.
  • Disabled environmental collision detection when ships are moving between the hangar and the surface or back again.
    • This fixes the camera blacking out momentarily during this transition.
The max distance ranges on the free cam are:
  • 3km for ships in space
  • 250m for ships on planets and SRVs
  • 125m for on foot (This is now raised as of Update 6 from the previous 100m)

The only situations where the free camera will still black out are "between a rock and a hard place" sitations, where the camera is stuck between two vessels, or a vessel and the environment.​

As Arthur said recently on Supercruise News, we would LOVE to do a deep dive stream with developer guests to talk through the Camera Suite in greater detail as part of future community plans, but for now I hope the above notes satisfy you a little bit, with showing what tweaks have gone on behind the scenes and the expected results you'll hopefully enjoy more as part of the changes.

Let's keep talking!

Again, I do understand that a lot of feedback and amazing ideas for future updates to the Camera Suite were submitted in our previous brainstorm session, which I have entirely kept and still check in on, but let's go one step at a time in line with all of the other really promising and massively beneficial updates coming for Odyssey moving forward.

Thank you so much again, Commanders! o7
 
Last edited:

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Has the impact (or benefit) to the on foot first person combat been considered? With this you can now peek around a lot more (although I assume you are still vulnerable).
 

sallymorganmoore

Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
Rubbernuke said:
Has the impact (or benefit) to the on foot first person combat been considered? With this you can now peek around a lot more (although I assume you are still vulnerable).
Click to expand...

You'll still remain vilnerable of course, so if you start snooping around too far it's not going to work out too well for you. All I can say is it'll be great to just fully test this with 100s of Commanders following out initial implementation and passes. We've tried to cover all instances of things that might happen with these changes but the real test lies in the wild with some things :)
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Deserted-crib3 said:
I sometimes use the camera as a recon camera.
It would be cool to actually have a recon camera that can be shoot at by enemy.
Click to expand...
Well it will go all Metal Gear if you can zoom up and have an overview. It might make stealth easier, or change the character of the on foot sections because the in helmet view being restrictive.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
sallymorganmoore said:
Greetings Commanders!


Once again, thank you to all involved in the brainstorming of issues and quality of life requests to help improve the Camera Suite for Elite Dangerous: Odyssey.
With so many areas of Odyssey to cover right now, we haven't been able to implement all of the top requested tweaks as part of our forthcoming Update 6, but we are excited to have taken this healthy step in what we hope is the right direction for a more optimal experience.
We will naturally continue to listen to feedback further as time goes on...I'm just glad we got to tackle the 'Signal Lost' issue for you, at the very least right now!

I tell you what, let's do this in the style of my favourite things in the whole wide world (second to Commanders) - Update Notes.​

Update 6: Camera Suite Improvements.
  • Fixed several issues that could cause occlusion by another vessel or certain parts of the player's own ship/SRV to cause the vanity camera to black out.
    • This should return the vanity camera collision behaviour in space and on planets away from any settlements to it's Horizons behaviour.
  • Implemented a brand new collision detection approach for the "Free Camera" mode of the Camera Suite:
    • Instead of trying to detect when the camera is inside geometry and blacking out the camera (Tech speak: This was an unsolvable problem for non-sealed/manifold trimesh hitcheck, which led to many false-positives in our current implementation), we now use collision detection to prevent the camera from entering any hitcheck in the first place.
  • This allows Commanders to fly the camera freely around a settlement, social space, or other location, without the camera blacking out whenever the line of sight to the player's vessel is occluded.
  • Added better collision detection for the Camera Suite in and around hangars.
    • This fixes the camera blacking out or being prevented from entering the lobby area.
  • Disabled the AABB collision detection vs non-moving (docked or landed) ships.
    • This allows Commanders to get closer to their ships for screenshots.
  • Disabled environmental collision detection when ships are moving between the hangar and the surface or back again.
    • This fixes the camera blacking out momentarily during this transition.
The only situations where the free camera will still black out are "between a rock and a hard place" sitations, where the camera is stuck between two vessels, or a vessel and the environment.​

As Arthur said recently on Supercruise News, we would LOVE to do a deep dive stream with developer guests to talk through the Camera Suite in greater detail as part of future community plans, but for now I hope the above notes satisfy you a little bit, with showing what tweaks have gone on behind the scenes and the expected results you'll hopefully enjoy more as part of the changes.

Let's keep talking!

Again, I do understand that a lot of feedback and amazing ideas for future updates to the Camera Suite were submitted in our previous brainstorm session, which I have entirely kept and still check in on, but let's go one step at a time in line with all of the other really promising and massively beneficial updates coming for Odyssey moving forward.

Thank you so much again, Commanders! o7
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for the update style update Sally :D

This has made me far happier, because it clearly shows that it's not just a case of putting the camera suite back to how it works in Odyssey, which is what the initial update sounded/looked like, but actually changes the way it works.

It's interesting that the only thing that used to have collision detection (your ship) is now the only thing that doesn't have it. I look forward to having a play around, and finding some more Osseus Pumice so I can take the screenshot I wanted to take the first time I found some :)
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Also, I'm sure they do but, can I just double check please that these updates to the Camera Suite only affect Odyssey and not Horizons too?
 

Pigletslastand

Pigletslastand
This is brilliant stuff, I like it when you give us an insight into what and where and how and why.. hearing about why someting works or doesn't is the answer many crave. Really excited that you guys have brought this and it's really nice to be listened to. You and your team and all the developers are doing great work in restoring faith and trust. The more this game improves the more people will return and hopefully you can snag a few new players too!
 
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