Asteroids and Ring Systems. Is there any hope?

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You're all missing the point there, as you obviously have no experience with software development. You *cannot* release some piece of code you *know* will cause crashes on some of your clients machines. It's completely unprofessional to do so, and it's guaranteed to bite you in the butt in support requests, refunds, a reputation for shoddy software and whatnot.

You can be frustrated at how long it takes to solve this issue, but you cannot seriously blame FDev for withholding unstable code in a retail product.

Totally agree. It might be reasonable to expect an option like this in a Beta release, but definitely not in a production release. It doesn't matter if you put huge flashing red warning text next to it. There will always be folk who ignore it and, aside from that, it just doesn't look professional. FD would simply not do it, and I'm sure no other developer in their right mind would either. And I don't blame them.
 
I really think they should be brought back as ultra high options.

Also developers do, do this quite often nearly every high end game has options not everyone can use. There were no crashes for most people, if they get crashes turn the settings down.

I don't see how the majority should get punished for the minority.

I have made videos tutorials for this game, and a lot of people bought the game on my recommendation, sadly at the moment I'm recommending people jot to get the game because of various reasons primarily lack of blunt communication and downgrading the game visually with no regard to community feedback.

We're not stupid or blind, we know when things change.
 
Let's be clear, I have a high end rig, I want those options back; self shadowing and deep volumetric fog looks AWESOME!

I too would love a check-box to re-enable them but this takes considerable development work.
It's not a case of adding a UI element and persisting the flag to the settings file.
You would need a separate render path setup in the engine and continue to support it etc...
Would everyone here be happy if you had this option to enable, but it made your game crash frequently and FDev wouldn't support you?

FDev have to prioritize work best on the biggest benefit to the largest audience.
On the grand scheme of things, losing these FX aren't stopping the majority of people enjoying the game.

Just to be clear, in my earlier posts I was trying to offer a simple explanation for the reason behind the change; not any kind of excuse. Chill :D
 
I think the problem boils down to stability not frame-rate. If your expecting Frontier to add dozens of options that "might cause the game to crash, add stutter or unknown things" it becomes a support nightmare.

That isn't how you make professional sophisticated modern PC games.
 
I think the problem boils down to stability not frame-rate. If your expecting Frontier to add dozens of options that "might cause the game to crash, add stutter or unknown things" it becomes a support nightmare.

From my point of view its not a matter of "what" so much as "when". There are plenty of PC games which allow pushing the rendering stack via configuration files. Frontier even ask us to do/did this when we experience networking issues, turning on more verbose logging.

There are a spectrum of approaches to this kind of problem:

1. Do nothing
2. Allow the partially unstable system to be exposed via manual configuration. This takes time, adds complexity, and migration of config file settings is a pain for future updates
3. Spend time understanding the instability, and making the more taxing render pipeline unavailable to those systems where it does not work reliably
4. Rework and improve the render pipeline to fix the bug on an acceptable number of cards

So far, so good, but I think at least some of the tension people feel around these issues is around the priority. How does this stack up against new feature development like additional planetary surface types? This is a simplistic example, but which is more important, good looking asteroid belts or good looking (and new) lava planets?

If the fix isn't some extremely low hanging fruit, we have no real pattern to look at. My impression of Frontier's development process is that sparse point releases add features, and a flurry of maintenance patches fixing what's been added. I don't really have a good feel for the moments where the dev team squash long-standing issues. The changelogs are very difficult to interpret in that respect.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
Greetings all,

Some areas of the game, as mentioned previously, have been removed for optimisation. As an example, asteroid shadows were removed because they caused significant frame rate and stability issues.

Thanks,

Zac

I know you can't answer this but it leaves more questions than it answers. Who's PC's were having issues because mine was fine. The only issue I ever had on my naff laptop was the bug where you were stuck coming out of SC. Other than that. ED worked fine.

If graphics had to be changed, why is it not reflected in the graphics options. Every game I play has options for FSAA, lighting, shadows, textures, etc so what do FDEV have to say to everyone that could run ED just fine without any "stability issues"?

Considering the claim that ED wouldn't run on today's PC's because the graphics would be so advanced only future PC's would handle it, it seems that now we've got the opposite to the point where it's immersion breaking.

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The question is, how many more players DID have problems?

Yes, how many? Ask someone and come back to us with the answer? Then compare that to how many people are having issues with broken missions and BGS which I would assume is higher and ask why that isn't a priority when graphics are, not forgetting that people have an option to turn down graphics so things like shadows aren't processed and thus cause no issues.
 
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Well here is my experience opinion, original ed 1.0 looked amazing, overlooked any problems because of the incredible visual experience i was getting, Now ed-h 2.03 it just does not seem to have the impact anymore i don,t know why just seems a bit run of the mill lost its edge so to speak, is it been scaled down for XB or low end PC or just for stability (i never had any stability problems myself) i don,t know, now i,m running 64bit DX11 i assumed it would be even better than before but no amount of tweaking seems to get it back to the way it was, I,m very disappointed, I wish that frontier would play to there strengths, my PC is hightish end cost me 2500.00 AUD so i prefer games that can use it to its max ability, now don't get me wrong i,m a huge fan of this game and am a little worried that NMS and SC are going to look better, please frontier give us something to cheer about and you will have me for life, on the other hand i can,t ignore the obvious, to put it another way i really hope I have backed the right horse here. for now i,m still a dedicated groupie.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
THIS, just this
leave options for us, don't ever pratice parity. Please

The excuses being raised for this, if taken to the extreme, would lead to all games looking like xbox games because "it's better everyone can play it rather than some people not being able to play it."

Might as well throw away your PC's and those expansive graphics cards we all bought as we're now arguing to make sure compatibility is paramount and that means we all just need to buy xboxs then we won't have a problem.

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There is a possible gameplay connection to this. The forum has spoken of LOD models in the past. As a crude example, think of having a fight with someone and you are outside and at either ends of a tube, like Rama. If you have your settings on Ultra, and your game loads the highest level of model, you may well see a very round end to the tube.....where as your opponent with his settings on Low may see more of a 50p shape to the tube....this may also affect the collision/hit detection objects and allow some people to fire on others who can't hit back..........or they may shoot at you, and see their shot blocked by an invisible wall......in multiplayer games you really don't want people to be able to get an advantage with graphics settings.....like turning off shadows etc.....(I know people do it but my point stands)


Why are you making a case of special pleading for FD? Every game ever made for PC has graphics options and they seem to work out just fine and have done for decades.
 
It's nice to know at last, which aspects of the ring systems were changed and for what reason. It also gives us some indication as to what improvements we are likely to see, along with which parts may possibly remain as they are. This update from Frontier, was much clearer and far more specific than we have had previously, and I appreciate that.

I don't really care about improvements to asteroids, I simply want them BACK to the quality they were in when the game released a year ago. They had all of the assets and effects in place, they just need to get them working again the way it used to.


I used to love flying around asteroid belts, they were the most amazing environments in the game, and now with mining in the awesome state it is after the drone implementation I wish the belts were looking like they used to now more than ever. It's a shame really, but I hope they can fix it sooner rather than later. Something in my gut tells me we won't be seeing the asteroids of old for years though, if ever again.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
I for one welcome what Frontier have done to optimize the experience in rings.

No matter what settings I'd tweak in the past there would be a graphical stutter every few seconds or so which made bounty hunting in rings quite obnoxious. There is no such stuttering now and the experience is much more enjoyable.

FYI I typically run 4k at Ultra with a 980 Ti, 16GB RAM and a 4770k.

Did u ever try running it at the lowest settings to see if your stuttering would go away?
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
You're all missing the point there, as you obviously have no experience with software development. You *cannot* release some piece of code you *know* will cause crashes on some of your clients machines. It's completely unprofessional to do so, and it's guaranteed to bite you in the butt in support requests, refunds, a reputation for shoddy software and whatnot.

You can be frustrated at how long it takes to solve this issue, but you cannot seriously blame FDev for withholding unstable code in a retail product.

Name one game that's worked on every single PC out there.

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I do not work for Frontier. I am a volunteer from the community.

Well out of the two of us, you're in a far better position to find out than I am ;)
 
I have seen more than a few gorgeous ring on the Xbox game. Misty rings, various atmospheres etc. It depends where you visit. So despite also playing the PC and seeing changes I wouldn't say it has been totally downgraded.
 
...Well out of the two of us, you're in a far better position to find out than I am ;)

I really don't think Frontier are going to publicly offer up that kind of information, nor need to.
How they choose to prioritize their work is entirely up to them and I don't feel that any of us have the right to question that.

Regardless of how important any of us believe any one issue to be, I stand by this quote:
"The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few"
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
I really don't think Frontier are going to publicly offer up that kind of information, nor need to.
How they choose to prioritize their work is entirely up to them and I don't feel that any of us have the right to question that.

Regardless of how important any of us believe any one issue to be, I stand by this quote:

Excuse me? I paid for my game, I don't know where you got yours from and they keep breaking it and making it worse every patch. How about the game I paid for, why is that now different to the game I bought?

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Name one game that's worked on every single PC out there.

Space invaders.


LOL.... maybe Asteroids as well!
 
Every now an then a topic pops up showing pictures/videos of the alpha/beta client. I really regret not getting into the game at that time, because it looked stunning.

Exploring back then must have been an unrivalled experience....

I like how someone made the comparison of "Inferior platform in the driver's seat" to which someone else replied that they have many features missing, so they are not in the driver's seat.
My two cents:
It's more like an annoying mother-in-law sitting on the passenger seat, telling you when to turn, break, signal, etc....She doesn't really do anything meaningful, but just enough to screw up the car ride for everyone..expecially the driver :)


I've seen the same kind of visual decay first-hand in the case of Mechwarrior Online, at least in that case I can say I was there when the game looked like it should.
 
Excuse me? I paid for my game, I don't know where you got yours from and they keep breaking it and making it worse every patch. How about the game I paid for, why is that now different to the game I bought?
In contrast.. It's getting better and better for me. I'm one of those people who has a mediocre computer and I happen to enjoy RES combat. My FPS got better by the patch, which allowed me to increase the overall graphical detail. In my opinion this has more influence on my experience in-game than better looking asteroids.

They did look amazing back then though...
 
"The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few"

Good one dude i like that, but what if Mid to high end PC,s are the many.
 
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