Are FDev still optimizing Odyssey? Or is this it?

[zimms]

I'm afraid at this point the mountain of issues has become too big. Elite's lack of resources started LONG before Odyssey. The pace of development had become a crawl many years before.

In 2013/14 it looked like Frontier were dedicated to Elite and creating a space game milestone. All that stuff they talked about back then, I'm sure the developers meant it. But rather soon the focus changed from building the perfect space game to building a successful company.

Fair enough, probably the reasonable way to go. But it has crippled Elite and to be honest, I'm not very optimistic that things will ever improve. Better enjoy what we have now, as long as it lasts.

 

[vanFace]

Fair enough, probably the reasonable way to go. But it has crippled Elite and to be honest, I'm not very optimistic that things will ever improve. Better enjoy what we have now, as long as it lasts.

I think part of the problem is also the lack of a proper contestant. SC's eternal alpha, NMS's cartoon-style and Starfield's "users don't want seemless landing" (and the later still being kind of vaporware) makes it easy for FDev to slack around. I guess once there is a real alternative, Elite might get a little more love again. We'll see. Nothing lasts forever, anyway.

 

[Viajero]

And outsiders and investors will not make a difference between Horizons and Odyssey. If one of the two fail, they'll give up on the whole game.

Not necessarily. The base game seems to continue generating good Steam reviews (a number of those even mention EDO within the overall positive review), and if the amount of reviews serve as an indication (7-8 more reviews regularly than EDO) it would seem the game continues to sell and generate reasonable revenue. That alone may actually make FDEV consider the possibility of new DLC. Budget and resources for that would need to compete with the rest of FDEV portfolio of course, so it is not a given either way.

 

[metatheurgist]

Ah, we've hit Doom thread status. We can close it now.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

One thing people forget is that AI causing stutter (which is the problem most people have because it's in settlements) has nothing to do with your graphics card and everything to do with your processor. You could have a extra room added to your PC (sorry, RTX 4000 series card) and it won't make the blindest bit of difference if you are running on an i3.

 

[ferus]

One thing people forget is that AI causing stutter (which is the problem most people have because it's in settlements) has nothing to do with your graphics card and everything to do with your processor. You could have a extra room added to your PC (sorry, RTX 4000 series card) and it won't make the blindest bit of difference if you are running on an i3.

To be honest, I don't really care if it's AI or anything else. I would very much like for FDev to fix it so the game would run as it is supposed to run.
My CPU should be more than enough for this game to run smoothly.

 

[Old Duck]

If this was my company I would just abandon Elite. The poor reviews, the performance and the bugs just show that there is no point investing more time and money in it.

It would be a shame because I actually like Odyssey, have good performance and don't care about most bugs. But apparently I am alone with that view. So why should they put more effort on a product that is universally hated?

One could at least argue that they abandon the current codebase. The IP, on the other hand, still has incredible value. I once worked on a project long ago where we saw that we had hit a limit with our current engine (in this case it was a database, not a graphics engine), so instead of "kicking against the pricks", we scrapped the entire codebase and started from scratch. Of course we kept all our good ideas and algorithms, and the program itself maintained its identity, but the end product was way better than anything we could have done if we remained shackled to the old code. And while it was a lot of work to write a new engine from scratch, it actually saved us time and effort (and heartache) in the long-term. And "from scratch" is relative, because we were able to reuse all our assets, API definitions, etc, so the new build went a lot quicker because the "blueprint" (which is the hard part IMO) was already in place.

In other words, if it were my company, I'd start work on Elite Dangerous 2.0 - an entirely new game built from the ground-up that incorporates the best from ED while leaving the worst behind.

 

[zimms]

But isn't that partly what they tried to do with Odyssey?

 

[Old Duck]

But isn't that partly what they tried to do with Odyssey?

No, I don't think so. Odyssey is not a "from scratch rewrite" of the entire game, it's the equivalent of remodeling the kitchen in an old farmhouse. The uneven floors, the drafty windows, the faulty wiring and old plumbing still remains.

 

[Lyamecron]

But isn't that partly what they tried to do with Odyssey?

Yes and the problem is - in the alpha of Odyssey stuff looked so much more interesting and polished, it even ran better for me than it does now. The alpha of Odyssey was a real upgrade, now I am not so sure anymore. Means - there is still potential there, the engine is not bad, something went terribly wrong in the final stage of release and I am sure FDev could get the game to where it need to be... if they ever acknowledge that Elite is still one of their best (longtime) performing titles and that it should get the attention it deserves.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Yes and the problem is - in the alpha of Odyssey stuff looked so much more interesting and polished

And ran like a slideshow

 

[Lyamecron]

And ran like a slideshow

To be fair, it still does on certain systems. Even with FSR. It ran better for me in vanilla in the alpha than it did on release with the same settings.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I am sure FDev could get the game to where it need to be...

They won't, it lost too much money, they won't throw even more away.

if they ever acknowledge that Elite is still one of their best (longtime) performing titles and that it should get the attention it deserves.

It was, probably is, but the revenue generated is the thing that will determine any future it has, and it is something like £8 million in the red if their financials are to be believed, they amortised EDO development and ate the loss, which displays no confidence in the product generating significant revenue in the forseeable future.

EDO is very unlikely to improve significantly, it costs too much.

he alpha of Odyssey stuff looked so much more interesting and polished, it even ran better for me than it does now.

That is interesting, the alpha, for me, was a dog as far as performance goes, as was the released version (which managed to look worse than the alpha) - it performs significantly better now than it did - but is nowhere even close to how, allegedly, it should.

Fortunately I can throw a lot of grunt at it, so enjoy EDO immensely, even if it should perform better than it does.

Edit: error

 

[ferus]

And ran like a slideshow

But at least it looked better so there was some kind of reason for the weak performance.
The "full" release looked worse and didn't run all that better when it came out.

FDev did improve the performance later on but it's nowhere near ideal.

 

[Lyamecron]

They won't, it lost too much money, they won't throw even more away.

It was, probably is, but the revenue generated is the thing that will determine any future it has, and it is something like £18 million in the red if their financials are to be believed, they amortised EDO development and ate the loss, which displays no confidence in the product generating significant revenue in the forseeable future.

EDO is very unlikely to improve significantly, it costs too much.


That is interesting, the alpha, for me, was a dog as far as performance goes, as was the released version (which managed to look worse than the alpha) - it performs significantly better now than it did - but is nowhere even close to how, allegedly, it should.

Fortunately I can throw a lot of grunt at it, so enjoy EDO immensely, even if it should perform better than it does.

I love it for what it is, while simultaneously knowing that it still could be so much more.

As far as performance goes, the implementation of FSR helped a lot. I am essentially doubling the frames I would get otherwise. The performance without it is still worse than in the alpha, at least for me. I guess I really should upgrade my processor sometime soon.

 

[Old Duck]

But at least it looked better so there was some kind of reason for the weak performance.
The "full" release looked worse and didn't run all that better when it came out.

FDev did improve the performance later on but it's nowhere near ideal.

Did they though? If I have a poorly performing engine in my car, I can make it accelerate faster by removing all the extra seats, the air conditioning, spare tires, and other weight, but is that really improving performance?

FWIW, Odyssey is not the only game that "improves performance" by nerfing graphics quality. I've seen this in other games as well, including my beloved MSFS, though at least that game has brought back much of the quality over time. Personally I think ultra settings should never be nerfed in the name of performance - ultra should always be ultra, even if it is a slideshow on potatoes. Moving low and medium settings down the scale, on the other hand, is acceptable IMO, but ultimately optimizing means making code do the same thing faster, usually by using clever, efficient algorithms rather than brute-forcing hardware with inefficient code. A perfect example is Braben's own "clear the screen" algorithm in the original Elite, where instead of erasing the entire screen, he XORed the models to erase just the pixels that needed cleared - same result but way faster and more efficient.

 

[ferus]

Did they though? If I have a poorly performing engine in my car, I can make it accelerate faster by removing all the extra seats, the air conditioning, spare tires, and other weight, but is that really improving performance?

FWIW, Odyssey is not the only game that "improves performance" by nerfing graphics quality. I've seen this in other games as well, including my beloved MSFS, though at least that game has brought back much of the quality over time. Personally I think ultra settings should never be nerfed in the name of performance - ultra should always be ultra, even if it is a slideshow on potatoes. Moving low and medium settings down the scale, on the other hand, is acceptable IMO, but ultimately optimizing means making code do the same thing faster, usually by using clever, efficient algorithms rather than brute-forcing hardware with inefficient code. A perfect example is Braben's own "clear the screen" algorithm in the original Elite, where instead of erasing the entire screen, he XORed the models to erase just the pixels that needed cleared - same result but way faster and more efficient.

I'm sure they did some optimization. Upon release I used to have 50-60 fps on a barren planet (no kidding) with no settlement in sight on the PC that is described in OP.
Now I get 90+ on emply planets while not noticing any downgrade. I remember a lot of discussion about culling at that time. So I presume they must have done something. And then came a lot of downgrades too.

 

[Old Duck]

I'm sure they did some optimization.

That's the trick with writing efficient software - there's so many layers to it. I remember using the standard built-in REGEX for a project, and it was just too slow. I tried tweaking the expressions to optimize the search, but eventually I just wrote my own search routine from scratch and it was magnitudes faster, because it was written and optimized for a very specific task.

FDev probably has been doing the equivalent of "tweaking the expressions" they are feeding to the Cobra engine, which can improve performance, but this isn't the same as optimizing the low-level routines in the engine itself. And to be fair, Odyssey is likely pushing the boundaries of that (or any) engine. The same engine that is expected to render an entire solar system to scale is also now expected to render individual characters running around in that solar system. I can't even begin to comprehend the actual details of something of that scope - it's well beyond my pay grade and talents. Regardless, I think the fundamentals of optimization still apply. Sometimes it's better to have specific tools for specific jobs (like my custom search algorithm) than using a Swiss army knife (REGEX, the old Cobra engine, etc) to build an entire house.

TL;DR - I think Frontier may have hit the wall with how much they can optimize without a fundamental rewrite of the Cobra engine (which I don't think Odyssey is, despite changes in lighting, etc). But I'm just spitballing.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

To be honest, I don't really care if it's AI or anything else. I would very much like for FDev to fix it so the game would run as it is supposed to run.
My CPU should be more than enough for this game to run smoothly.

Caring is never a big thing for people with an axe to grind, I get it.

In any case, it's still true. People posting "it tanks in settlements" are likely facing that problem. People who say they can't run 4k at 200fps are asking hilariously asking for the moon and are simply trolling.

It works well enough to be played at 1080p 60fps and is a far better game that Horizons could ever be. I went back there this weekend for the first time in two years and I realise even more now why I'll never willingly go back.

It's now a choice of whether you want to continually moan like an old granny troll or find another game that meets your dreams. Good like finding that.

 

[zimms]

[...]
It works well enough [...]

You are moaning just as much as everybody else here.