Another reason Legs might not be as great as you think

[Amanojaku]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5pzjAUv19Y



I started watching these vids just a few days ago, and although I wasn't too surprised by all the graphical shortcuts and low resolution textures hidden in spots you couldn't really see in game, it quickly occurred to me that if we do indeed get space legs, we may not be walking around admiring the interiors of our ships. Instead, Legs will probably implemented in new station interiors or on planetary surfaces. Yes, FDev could do a massive re-haul on the way the ships are built inside the cockpits/interiors, but.... seems like it would be a lot of work to me, and the kind of changes that come with bug infestations and more instance lag (due to more things being loaded in inside ship interiors) .

Would Space Legs still be cool without the ability to walk around inside our ship? Probably... if we get some content to do with out legs along with the ability to use them. But I have a feeling that we won't get the ability to walk around in our ships after watching those videos.

 

[Amanojaku]

EDIT: Fixed the original vid.

 

[VR Golgot]

If there's one thing FDev have said repeatedly about Legs it's that they're aiming to allow walking around inside the ship:

• Braben on a damaged Anaconda prototype: "I mean eventually you'll be able to see from inside this, you'll be able to walk around this, you'll see this being unloaded. This is designed so that all of the cargo tessellate, so they touch each other well, but there's also room for them to be offloaded, which will happen automatically" ](Jan 2013)
• Braben on ship design: "It still makes sense for there to be some sort of general orientation to the ship where people walk around inside and you need to have a concept of up. But also we design it in mind the fact that it will spend some of its time in zero-g, so there are some interesting design philosophies that come from that, and you'll see that over the period of development" (Feb 2013)
• Newsletter: "We also plan to allow you to get up out of your seat and walk around your ship. You can see the level of attention and thought that has already been given to the ship interiors from these ship cockpit views in this video" (July 2014)
• Jo Taylor - Cockpit Artist: "One of the things that we've implemented on some of the larger ships is based on a grid system of meter squares so the cockpit is of a certain size and within that there's a lift shaft and that shaft will then channel down and be the same position throughout the ship on all the lower decks" (Nov 2014)
• Braben: We do have rough layouts of how the ships work. (May 2015)

The DLC might not hit all of their Legs aims in one go. (The old roadmap opted for splitting it into 2 major PDLCs). But I suspect ship walking would be part of 'Stage 1' even then, rather than just teleporting us outside with a blackscreen or whatever.

EDIT: If it helps, they seem to have been prepared all textures, and possibly assets, to 16k, to some degree. This may not indicate a totally painless transition to high quality locales, but it does suggest there are various degrees of prep going on behind the scenes with an eye on future content etc.

 

[SlouchMonster]

You know its entirely possible the low res textures are there because we dont have leggos yet and will be upgraded to high res when and if leggos becomes a thing.

Yeah, no point loading the high quality textures if you're not walking around. I suspect that we'd hit the 'legs button' and a small animation would play of the command chair folding down and us getting up (like the srv deploy now) and while that is happening the nicer textures are loaded.

 

[zimms]

I assume they already thought of that.

David Braben himself said in May 2016 that they have already ongoing work atmospherics, planetary life and space legs.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Because of crappy textures that can be kinda easily updated? Not that fidelity would be that important for gameplay in the first place.

 

[Alien]

Arvey Jay's videos are great videos, but I can't help but do the infamous Picard facepalm at the amount of bodge that went into the game (for all the reasons you might have to criticise Star Citizen, take a look into how much work and detail has gone into the ships and their interiors).
IF ... big IF ... the "Next Era" of Elite Dangerous is walking around, I hope Frontier have completely re-worked the interiors on ALL the ships, because to be honest, the way they are at the moment, you couldn't fit feasible interiors in them at all (in my irrelevant opinion)

 

[Old Duck]

If a player can take Skyrim from this:

To this:

with a "simple" mod, then hopefully Frontier's professional staff can "mod" ED to have improved interiors. My only worry is what effect this might have on performance. I have plenty of headroom in 2D, but in VR I'm right up against the limits of my GPU.

 

[Alien]

If a player can take Skyrim from this:

To this:

with a "simple" mod, then hopefully Frontier's professional staff can "mod" ED to have improved interiors. My only worry is what effect this might have on performance. I have plenty of headroom in 2D, but in VR I'm right up against the limits of my GPU.

Oh Lydia Oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia, Lydia the tattoo'd lady ....

 

[zimms]

But have you seen the NPCs' faces in Elite?

 

[Retropolitan]

Oh Lydia Oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia, Lydia the tattoo'd lady ....

Why, yes. Yes, I have:

 

[VR Golgot]

Arvey Jay's videos are great videos, but I can't help but do the infamous Picard facepalm at the amount of bodge that went into the game (for all the reasons you might have to criticise Star Citizen, take a look into how much work and detail has gone into the ships and their interiors).
IF ... big IF ... the "Next Era" of Elite Dangerous is walking around, I hope Frontier have completely re-worked the interiors on ALL the ships, because to be honest, the way they are at the moment, you couldn't fit feasible interiors in them at all (in my irrelevant opinion)

Well in fairness the cockpit interiors in ED are currently just backdrop, and only really explorable via VR. (It's almost wilful that they've taken them to their current level in that sense. I think I'd be almost annoyed if each ship came with polished out corridors etc that we couldn't actually use )

I guess we'll find out on interiors, but the ships seems to have the sheer volume and contiguous regions to house a ton of interior to me. I guess it will depend in part on whether they go the whole hog and try and have 1:1 exact interiors, or just opt for rendering bits and pieces of it (which would be the more flexible / easier approach etc).

It's amusing that you cite SC here though, given they've slowly morphed the Carrack into a lumpier form to fit all its internals, and now the damn thing won't fit properly into lots of landing bays. ($500 dollars well spent )

I'm sure ED will have its own T7 moments along the way when it comes to internals. But be careful when casting stones and that

 

[Leadfoot]

If a player can take Skyrim from this:

To this:

with a "simple" mod, then hopefully Frontier's professional staff can "mod" ED to have improved interiors. My only worry is what effect this might have on performance. I have plenty of headroom in 2D, but in VR I'm right up against the limits of my GPU.

Believe me, if you can get your NPC crew to look like this, you'll do the upgrades and kiss your real-life girlfriend/wife goodbye.
They have bikini outfits in the store already, right? Just asking for a friend.

 

[askavir]

I honestly doubt making interiors for a couple dozen ships is a showtopper.

There are RPGs with hundreds of handcrafted interiors (and exteriors), some absolutely gigantic.

 

[Vandaahl]

They have bikini outfits in the store already, right? Just asking for a friend.

Yes.

Or at least I asked a friend and he said yes.

 

[CMDR Big Mike]

You know its entirely possible the low res textures are there because we dont have leggos yet and will be upgraded to high res when and if leggos becomes a thing.

Yeah but there’s no button bind for “enter elite feet mode” so CLEARLY the game was never built for it

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5pzjAUv19Y



I started watching these vids just a few days ago, and although I wasn't too surprised by all the graphical shortcuts and low resolution textures hidden in spots you couldn't really see in game, it quickly occurred to me that if we do indeed get space legs, we may not be walking around admiring the interiors of our ships. Instead, Legs will probably implemented in new station interiors or on planetary surfaces. Yes, FDev could do a massive re-haul on the way the ships are built inside the cockpits/interiors, but.... seems like it would be a lot of work to me, and the kind of changes that come with bug infestations and more instance lag (due to more things being loaded in inside ship interiors) .

Would Space Legs still be cool without the ability to walk around inside our ship? Probably... if we get some content to do with out legs along with the ability to use them. But I have a feeling that we won't get the ability to walk around in our ships after watching those videos.

I will hasten to add that Frontier did change the placeholder planetary textures when introducing landings in Horizons. No reason they wouldn't do the same for the cockpit interiors.

Actually, come to think of it, they already had to fix the geometry of the cockpits for multicrew as well.

And then back to the planetary side, they updated textures and colours at the start of Beyond to fix the Beige Plague.

So there's three instances of precedent where Frontier did the work to redo stuff, and two specifically to accommodate new gameplay. So I'd be confident in saying that while spacelegs might require interiors to have a major rework, Frontier are likely to do it.

 

[Nasc]

Another reason Legs might not be as great as you think

Leg wax will add too much mass and socks are in short supply.

 

[Gortron]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5pzjAUv19Y



I started watching these vids just a few days ago, and although I wasn't too surprised by all the graphical shortcuts and low resolution textures hidden in spots you couldn't really see in game, it quickly occurred to me that if we do indeed get space legs, we may not be walking around admiring the interiors of our ships. Instead, Legs will probably implemented in new station interiors or on planetary surfaces. Yes, FDev could do a massive re-haul on the way the ships are built inside the cockpits/interiors, but.... seems like it would be a lot of work to me, and the kind of changes that come with bug infestations and more instance lag (due to more things being loaded in inside ship interiors) .

Would Space Legs still be cool without the ability to walk around inside our ship? Probably... if we get some content to do with out legs along with the ability to use them. But I have a feeling that we won't get the ability to walk around in our ships after watching those videos.

I still don't get why people are so interested in 'Space legs' especially when the conditions suggested turn the current game into something completely different. Elite is a 'spaceship game'. If you can't walk around your ship but can get out of it and walk around everything else what is the point? 'Call of duty' is surely the better game if you want to run around shooting people; which is the ultimate end-game for getting out of a spaceship.

 

[photomankc]

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