Are FDev still optimizing Odyssey? Or is this it?

[EdzUp]

AI in a game is one of the most CPU intensive parts of any game, think of it if you will for graphics and textures you can push that onto the GPU. For AI its algorithms and code so its more CPU intensive and to be fair they havent majorly changed in the last decade yes we have more cores but not any significant changes like the early 2000's where speeds were going through the roof and we went through several iterations of processors every year or so with K5/K6 and the like.

Back to the original point if the AI code is written poorly there is no fixing bad code the best way in my experience is to use the state engine style where the NPC's look around and if they notice something they know shouldnt be there they investigate. Think of it as you will if you plan everything out for the NPC the game is running loads and loads of code to get them to move from x to y all the game needs to do is make sure they are moving in the chosen direction and then work out from y where to go next. Pathnoding could be as simple as a load of key points on a path. If the NPC is a security person and spots something they shouldnt (rather than having UBER sight and shooting you instantly) they could have a spot check depending on lighting levels and range so if your in the shadows there is a harder time spotting you but if your running around in light your fair game, this is how Thief done it back in the day to great effect.

There are loads of optimisations that can be done to make the AI more fun to play with but to do this sometimes as "Old duck" has said you need to rewrite the drawing board

 

[Viajero]

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

Not sure if I understood well. Unless I am mistaken the FY22 financial report says "Amortisation charges for the Elite Dangerous: Odyssey expansion accounted for £8.4 million in FY22". Also that does not mean the product was in the red for that amount. That figure is related to the costs of development but says nothing about the sales side.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Not sure if I understood what you mean. Unless I am mistaken the FY22 financial report says "Amortisation charges for the Elite Dangerous: Odyssey expansion accounted for £8.4 million in FY22". Also that does not mean the product was in the red for that amount. That figure is related to the costs of development but says nothing about the sales side.

Oops... That was a typo! Thanks for the correction, I'll sort it now!

(That'll teach me for doing 2 things at once!)

 

[Viajero]

Oops... That was a typo! Thanks for the correction, I'll sort it now!

(That'll teach me for doing 2 things at once!)

Actually, based on EDO´s price point it would "break even" at around 300-400K units sold. Which I suspect it probably got to. So, probably not in the red, but not a great money maker either.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Actually, based on EDO´s price point it would "break even" at around 300-400K units sold. Which I suspect it probably got to. So, probably not in the red, but not a great money maker either.

The amortisation happened at the end of Frontier's fiscal year, so the £8+ million written off would have been after the revenue earned to date, I'd have thought, leaving that sum as a shortfall.

Of course, console transfers and the release of H4.0 may give the sales of the expansion a nice boost - we just have to wait & see.

 

[Viajero]

The amortisation happened at the end of Frontier's fiscal year, so the £8+ million written off would have been after the revenue earned to date, I'd have thought, leaving that sum as a shortfall.

It is not a "write off" though. We have no information about the sales side, other than what we can gather from other public info. It is simply amortization for the developments costs all in the first year after release, instead of the usual practice of spreading it over several years.

 

[londonx]

I just jumped in the game after a longer while to have a look and decided to try out some on foot conflict zone.
I have Odyssey capped to 90 fps because even on my higher-than-average PC the game is not able to maintain 120 let alone 144 fps everywhere. Even a 90 is a challenge in concourses and settlements. And I'd rather have a (more or less) consistent 90 fps then having them jump from 144 to 80.

Nevertheless, my fps in conflict zones were regularly dropping to 45 with all kinds of stutters and lags. It was very unpleasant while trying to keep up a faster pace.
I tried two settlements in the Guuguyni system - Kobyliansky's Stockade and Collinson Dock. Both with horrible performance.

My setup is following:
ASUS ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING - AMD X570
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
Gigabyte RX 6800 XT
HyperX Predator 32GB DDR4 3200 CL16
game is installed on SSD Seagate BarraCuda, 2,5" - 2TB
playing at 1440p

My graphic settings is further down in screenshots if it matters.

My question is - is there something wrong with my PC or does Odyssey still need a serious work on optimization? I mean any other game runs great so I still suspect Odyssey being at fault here.
How is your performance in a high intensity conflict zone (which BTW you only find out once you land at the settlement, you cannot see the intensity in system map, unless I am missing something basic here)?

And is there any info from FDev about further optimization or are they done with this?

EDIT: One more question: When can I expect the cosmetics unlocks for ranks to be available in my loadout? Do I need to relog?


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A lot of unhelpful answers. Optimisation post Update 12 will no longer be specific points on the patch list instead it will be treated as a general development aim of each patch going forward. I doubt there will be any easy wins going forward though.

Combat Zones are CPU instensive triggered by the AI, to me that 45fps seems on the low side for your machine spec though (someone reported solid capped 60fps in combat zones with their old GTX 1080 gpu when upgrading to a 11th Gen Intel i7) but what concerns me is your description of noticeable "stutters and lags" impacting the gameplay there. That indicates an issue with your rig and something interrupting the CPU although you have a very multi-threaded CPU, maybe a misbehaving input or USB device, maybe it becomes more noticeable in that particular workload of the Combat Zone.

I would watch your device manager to see if anything is disconnecting (no need to be playing the game) or if you have a wireless gaming device while you play make sure the connection is good (ugh and avoid bluetooth, go to dedicate dongle connection instead). Could start to try things like Windows 10 GPU Hardware Scheduling, check CPU temperatures etc

I noticed your Shadow settings both set to high, I found that shadow flickering at Settlements at sunset was worse with Directional Shadow set to High, I found a good quality / performance compromise with Spot Shadow set to Med and Directional set to Ultra.

 

[ferus]

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.

Since when is a discussion about performance problems caused on FDev's end "moaning"? I will never understand why expressing concerns and trying to find out what is happening behind the scenes is considered "moaning" or "trolling".
Just because I don't like that Odyssey runs "good enough" and would like to have it a little better?

 

[Fizzatron]

Leading on from what I wrote, or from what you wrote?

It should have read:

Though I fail to see how pointing that out is relevant, leading on from what I wrote above, it's also clear that assets produced for Odyssey are well made and I highly doubt that onfoot Thargoids will not have been made to the same standard, being that they would have been exclusively made to exist in Odyssey, you can look at the SRV and ships to see that where they have put the effort to update Horizons era assets, they have come out looking perfectly fine.

I was not necessarily directly addressing the near discussion -- more spinning off from it. Nor did I restrict my musings to possible on-foot Thargoid content; I strongly suspect that if there are Titans coming (or whatever they may end up being called in-game), they were made Horizons era, but not released until now -- have they since been updated? -Who knows....

Who knows indeed.

Ship and SRV texturing was problematic at Odyssey launch, and there are still dashboards that are so shiny (...and the more aggressive tone mapping doesn't help either, I suppose), that it is difficult to read the holographic displays they go behind, but at least all the emissive textures in the cockpit and elsewhere, which launched diffuse, have now mostly been sorted out.

The lighting had to be adjusted in relation to the textures, but how does that relate to my point of discussion, which was the fidelity of textures?

As for on-foot Thargoid action: I am sure if it is coming, it will be strictly cordoned off to "blue icon" locations. Whether this only means current Odyssey settlements coming under attack, or the Thargoids establishing their own freshly designed ones: Who knows...

What I was imagining, was that if Thargoid stuff is to dominate the larger narrative for some time to come, Thargoid asset texturing might have been bumped up in the: "Whenever you've got a spare minute, fix some of the old stuff that broke with the update" queue, now that commanders are revisiting old locations to try new stuff, such as discovering the new property of transforming Guardian relics....

I can understand what you are trying to say but it's important to remember that Odyssey was developed during the Horizons era also, and if onfoot Thargoids were a part of Odyssey, it stands to good reason that they would have been coded during Odyssey's development, what reason do you have to believe that isn't the case?

We do have that old place where there are some parts of what may once have been a leggy Thargoid strewn about... A bit of cyclops-like carapace, and some blue pincers - all with very low resolution texturing; They seem to look nothing like the leathery fellow we've seen in concept art, which would make me a bit sad, because I think that one looks absolutely great (the other one, not so much); In any case, the apparent scale would seem to imply that if these gals are to enter settlement buildings, they are really going to have to crouch down to pass through the airlock.

It could be good or bad, we'll just have to wait and see..

 

[ferus]

A lot of unhelpful answers. Optimisation post Update 12 will no longer be specific points on the patch list instead it will be treated as a general development aim of each patch going forward. I doubt there will be any easy wins going forward though.

Combat Zones are CPU instensive triggered by the AI, to me that 45fps seems on the low side for your machine spec though (someone reported solid capped 60fps in combat zones with their old GTX 1080 gpu when upgrading to a 11th Gen Intel i7) but what concerns me is your description of noticeable "stutters and lags" impacting the gameplay there. That indicates an issue with your rig and something interrupting the CPU although you have a very multi-threaded CPU, maybe a misbehaving input or USB device, maybe it becomes more noticeable in that particular workload of the Combat Zone.

I would watch your device manager to see if anything is disconnecting (no need to be playing the game) or if you have a wireless gaming device while you play make sure the connection is good (ugh and avoid bluetooth, go to dedicate dongle connection instead). Could start to try things like Windows 10 GPU Hardware Scheduling, check CPU temperatures etc

I noticed your Shadow settings both set to high, I found that shadow flickering at Settlements at sunset was worse with Directional Shadow set to High, I found a good quality / performance compromise with Spot Shadow set to Med and Directional set to Ultra.

Thank you, I appreciate a direct answer.
I will try to play around with some of the settings but I doubt it would bring anything significant. I experimented with them so much lately that I would really like to play the game instead But I will give that another try.

Funny enough (as I said before) no other game has such issues and I can run them without any problems almost on the highest settings (RDR2, CP2077, MSF 2020)...
Unfortunately, I am not the only one with a high-end(ish) PC that has issues with Odyssey. But I am willing to accept it could also be something on my side.

 

[londonx]

Most 3D games don't tax the CPU though, whether the Odyssey AI is optimised or not its that stuttering that rings alarm bells sounds like your system is being distracted from powering the unoptimised game, if it was a general bug (there have been dramatic Stuttering type bugs before in Odyssey when the game had to load AI pathing when flying to a Settlement for example) it would be more widely flagged.

No idea how practical it is for you but I do prefer to just wipe my Windows 10 installs if I come across something weird that is impacting my system, I find the System File Restore option + reinstall all apps not too painful and usually helps with troubleshooting.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Most 3D games don't tax the CPU though, whether the Odyssey AI is optimised or not its that stuttering that rings alarm bells sounds like your system is being distracted from powering the unoptimised game, if it was a general bug (there have been dramatic Stuttering type bugs before in Odyssey when the game had to load AI pathing when flying to a Settlement for example) it would be more widely flagged.

No idea how practical it is for you but I do prefer to just wipe my Windows 10 installs if I come across something weird that is impacting my system, I find the System File Restore option + reinstall all apps not too painful and usually helps with troubleshooting.

Well the reason I bring up the CPU issue is that "in settlements" statement. You don't tend to get people saying "On my carrier" even though there's lots of complexities there, you just don't have interactive AI on the carrier.

Hence, the AI - CPU issue (which got poo pooed the moment I mentioned it - hence I responded with the moaning accusation. Excuse me, please, for being tetchy!) CPU is involved because you are calculating AI interaction. What happens when you enter a completely dead settlement with no AI?

And just because a system works well for one game, does not mean it works well for another. An RX 6800 XT will get 40+FPS better than an RTX 3060 ti on Overwatch, but 40 less FPS than the same card for CSGO and work the same for GTA V. Your processor though will tank PUBG FPS and Fortnite compared to an i7. That's on 1080p.

People don't get that CPU and GPU must work hand in hand and will differ per game. Get the wrong combination and it's like fighting the wind.

Odyssey jumped a few levels in graphical detail and there isn't a setup out there what will make it run like Grand Theft Auto as a result for completely procedural generated content.

 

[Schattenmacher]

The pot is empty, the game half done.
I expect nothing more than a few new paint jobs.

 

[jojon]

The lighting had to be adjusted in relation to the textures, but how does that relate to my point of discussion, which was the fidelity of textures?

The lighting, maybe, or the material properties, and like I said: I was not directly addressing ongoing discussion, but springing off on a minor side-track. Sorry for any confusion caused by this being inadequately demarkated.

I can understand what you are trying to say but it's important to remember that Odyssey was developed during the Horizons era also, and if onfoot Thargoids were a part of Odyssey, it stands to good reason that they would have been coded during Odyssey's development, what reason do you have to believe that isn't the case?

I was obviously not clear enough that I was making a distinction between upcoming in-space assets as possibly being "old", and on-foot Thargoids likely something more recently touched.

It could be good or bad, we'll just have to wait and see..

Yep, yep.

 

[Fizzatron]

The lighting, maybe, or the material properties, and like I said: I was not directly addressing ongoing discussion, but springing off on a minor side-track. Sorry for any confusion caused by this being inadequately demarkated.

That's fine, it's not like I am faultless of course. o7

 

[Tikanderoga]

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.

Well, NMS has shaped up really nicely, even I started to enjoy it lately. You are right with the caroonish style, but that's gone away.
SC is a lost cause for now. Been in Alpha for heaven knows how long, and I doubt that will change anytime soon.
Starfield is coming on the rather sooner than later side of things.

Elite is already in a tight spot, even though it dominates a rather unique niche, but with the other games, that niche is getting more and more populated.
I'm over 4500 hours deep in ED, but the ice is wearing very thin even for my taste. The lack of gameplay isn't helping, and some of the newly added features with EDO are just dreadful. Grind isn't Gameplay, even if that's what FDev thinks.
The fact that they haven't played their own game, isn't helping their cause. Else we'd have less grind and more engaging gameplay.

The community has been quite vocal about what they want, and Fdev has ignored it all. Fdev has lost a lot of players over the course of the last year and as long as people are buying Arx, everything is peachy. Bugs are being posted on the bug tracker and voted on. Top 10 gets fixed, the rest rots off. I haven't seen any other game studio do anything like this.
I reckon the "major overhaul" of some key feature will be the last update for ED to come. After that it's maintenance mode until the player base dips under a magic number, after which the plug gets pulled on the server.
Real pity EDO seems to be the last DLC from what it seems. The "Roadmap" we got 6 months ago doesn't tell anything else either.
So personally, I'm not holding my breath. Gave up on that when I saw EDO going from Alpha to "prod" without as much as a Beta. Now "prod" IS the beta.

 

[Dragsham]

90 fps on foot
90 fps in space
60 fps at bases in cockpit/srv
45 fps at a busy port
Now for me in 4k VR
That's lush

 

[RooksBailey]

Elite is already in a tight spot, even though it dominates a rather unique niche, but with the other games, that niche is getting more and more populated.

That's for sure! It's a great time to be a spacer! Fortunately for FDev, they have managed to carve out a pretty deep niche. I try lots of other space games - NMS, Eve Online, & Everspace 1/2 to name my most frequent of late - and none of them can fill the unique niche Elite has carved out for itself. Honestly, I don't know if it was by design or happenstance, but whatever the cause, Elite still manages to stand apart from other space games with its own take on the genre. That is what keeps players coming back despite more and more games jumping into the same space. Elite has been teflon when it comes to the competition trying to tackle it.

I'm over 4500 hours deep in ED, but the ice is wearing very thin even for my taste. The lack of gameplay isn't helping....

Agreed. Elite cries out for the type of depth that Eve Online has. For example, we have countless planets to find and can now explore on foot (if we so desire) but nothing we can do with them. No base building (NMS), no planetary mining (Eve)...nothing! It is stuff like this that really perplexes me. Frontier has built a fantastic 1:1 recreation of a galaxy, but the core gameplay loop still shuns player agency and remains rather shallow.

The community has been quite vocal about what they want, and Fdev has ignored it all.

Here, I disagree. The community wanted space legs and they got space legs. And now many of them have decided that they never wanted space legs for...reasons that are never quite clear to me. Now they are off chasing the next shiny bauble: ship interiors. FDev has given them fleet carrier interiors, but apparently that doesn't count. Yeah, I know most want regular ship interiors, but I am sure that if FDev did deliver that, the same complaints we got with space legs would be recycled again. FDev has made its share of mistakes, but they have never ignored what the community has wanted. Just the opposite for the most part.

Fdev has lost a lot of players over the course of the last year and as long as people are buying Arx, everything is peachy.

The amazing thing is that even after the self-inflicted wound that was the Odyssey launch debacle, Elite's population has remained remarkably stable. Right now it is averaging around ~3600 with a daily peak of over 5K. Those are numbers a lot of games would kill to have! Sure, it is off the huge numbers just prior to Odyssey's launch, but those numbers were never sustainable anyway (being driven by prerelease hype). The fact that the entire community didn't collapse but has rallied in the wake of the launch woes is a remarkable testament to the core strengths of Elite.

Bugs are being posted on the bug tracker and voted on. Top 10 gets fixed, the rest rots off. I haven't seen any other game studio do anything like this.

I agree. I find FDev's cherry-picking of which bugs to fix with every quarterly update to be a thoroughly odd approach to maintaining a supposedly live service game.

I reckon the "major overhaul" of some key feature will be the last update for ED to come. After that it's maintenance mode until the player base dips under a magic number, after which the plug gets pulled on the server.

That's too pessimistic for me. Again, Elite's pop has been remarkably stable. Even if FDev decided to stop all major updates after early next year, I suspect the game would remain profitable and operational for a long time to come as long as FDev continued with minor maintenance patches. As I wrote above, at least as of right now, no other game has managed to elbow Elite out of the niche it created for itself. That could change, but I really don't see anything on the horizons - Starfield included - that comes close to offering Elite's take on the genre. Elite is sort of like DCS World - it is buggy and could use with a lot of polishing at times, but it remains a popular niche game precisely because there is nothing else approaching space gameplay like it does. I think FDev realizes this. As long as this fortunate state of affairs continues, FDev will be in no rush to pull the plug on the servers as running them is pocket change taken from the sales the ARX store generates. And if November's major narrative update proves to be something truly spectacular like the long hoped for Thargoid foot combat, it is entirely possible that Elite will take off like a rocket again as people flood the servers clamoring for that Aliens experience.

Time will tell, but I am not pessimistic about the game any longer. FDev has finally stabilized Odyssey and now seems poised to get some dividends from the work put into it. Even the community team seems to be really enjoying themselves with the current narrative. My crystal ball isn't working today, but I have a hunch that we might be pleasantly surprised with what the future holds for the game.

 

[Dragsham]

I can't play anything else. I've built a rig from scratch to replace a prebuilt that was nonsense.
Elite is the best game in the world.

 

[metatheurgist]

There's nothing like it despite the fervent prayers of The Kult of Doom.