Asteroids and Ring Systems. Is there any hope?

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Day 1 KickStarter backer. Not that the time or the quantity of money spent has anything to do with anyone's degree of entitlement over the product.
Personally I see a game with limitless potential that is continuing to grow, not sure why your interpretation of what the game should be is any more relevant than anyone else's?

We aren't talking about what the game SHOULD be...we're talking about how it was. From beta, till several versions after release. We are asking to get something BACK. We aren't asking for it to affect anyone else if they are on any other setting other then ultra. Hell make it a tick box as David suggested and it won't need to affect Ultra either.
 
Couldn't agree more, as is often the case, the capability of the team is ultimately constrained by the hardware of the current day.

We've already seen that Horizons couldn't have things such as caves and overhangs because it would require too much horse power; even though the engine could do it. see:

Games development has always been a balancing act between what you want to do and what the hardware can deliver.

Uh....that is a terrible example. That is not generated proceduraly. We are literally watching the modeler sculpt the landscape. Not even close to the process used in ED, and the process is the limiting factor to caves and overhangs....for now.
 
My take on this is that Frontier have basically just admitted that they had design flaws/problems with the initial shadow and fog code. This is mirrored by what Ben Parry said quite a few months ago on these forums, that the fog was removed because it was to much of a resource hog. At the time, I assumed that meant Frontier wanted the fog to run on low spec PC's. But now, reading between the lines - my understanding is that the effects themselves are not the problem, but rather the underlying code / implementation is the problem.

This would give a single logical explanation to three issues:

1) Why don't we have graphical options to enable the old shadows / fog?
2) Was the PC version downgraded because of the XBox?
3) Couldn't high end PC's still run the better version of the graphics?

The single answer to this, which actually answers all three questions is; No, because the original code was "broken"!

The review process is looking at ways of bringing those things back with working code.

Just my opinion of course, but in corporate-speak that is what Frontier essentially have just told us (and I can kinda understand why Frontier haven't outright admitted that in direct-speak). I am actually very ok with that...


So....which one is it then...a case of " This was optimised due to a pathological case of overdraw", or was it due to broken code causing poor performance(never had performance issues in roids)? Was it a performance hog for that guy running a dual core with 2 gigs of ram on ultra who wasn't happy getting 20 fps? Should I note that some people are still getting freezing and suttering? Fog lasted through Alpha, Beta, Release and six months after to 1.3 before it was removed. I mean, all that time no discussion from them on how they felt the fog was overdrawn? I don't know about that Ant.....really don't.
 
Fog lasted through Alpha, Beta, Release and six months after to 1.3 before it was removed. I mean, all that time no discussion from them on how they felt the fog was overdrawn? I don't know about that Ant.....really don't.

That is also valid point. Fog does not seem that broken cause it lasted so long but who knows.
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
So....which one is it then...a case of " This was optimised due to a pathological case of overdraw", or was it due to broken code causing poor performance(never had performance issues in roids)? Was it a performance hog for that guy running a dual core with 2 gigs of ram on ultra who wasn't happy getting 20 fps? Should I note that some people are still getting freezing and suttering? Fog lasted through Alpha, Beta, Release and six months after to 1.3 before it was removed. I mean, all that time no discussion from them on how they felt the fog was overdrawn? I don't know about that Ant.....really don't.

It seems strange to allow something so fundamentally broken to have remained for so long even though the training mission is fine with it in. So if this was so bad, why did it take so long to fix it? I also wonder at what FPS people were getting that was so terrible. AFAIC, anything above 16 is pretty playable. I know because I had to put up with that on my laptop for a lot of games before my new PC. Some games ran at 5-8fps (Mech warrior online) and that was unplayable. 18 FPS really seems to be where things smooth out so I dunno what people are complaining about when they say FPS - do they mean they're not getting 60FPS?

On a plus note for ED, which is what makes this "reason" seem more like obfuscation, is that I played ED on my laptop and was surprised to see how smooth it was (but then there's not much going on in space). I only had stutter when I got into SC and got close to stations but I never dreamed of raising it as an issue because I knew how bad my laptop was and the issue was my laptop. I fixed that issue by spending out and building a new PC.

I just came from gamer hell so I'm not sure what these issues are that people are having problems with. Once again, let's remind everyone about the bragging claims of FD about needing a PC of the future to run it. Well you don't and never did and high end PC's seemingly handle the game no problem at all. HP laptops with 4 gb of ram, intel integrated graphics and an i5 laptop processor with a 5400 rpm HD handle the game ok so how low do we need to go - a pentium 486?
 
So....which one is it then...a case of " This was optimised due to a pathological case of overdraw", or was it due to broken code causing poor performance(never had performance issues in roids)? Was it a performance hog for that guy running a dual core with 2 gigs of ram on ultra who wasn't happy getting 20 fps? Should I note that some people are still getting freezing and suttering? Fog lasted through Alpha, Beta, Release and six months after to 1.3 before it was removed. I mean, all that time no discussion from them on how they felt the fog was overdrawn? I don't know about that Ant.....really don't.

That's just how I read their statement. Anything is possible after all.

Broken code could also account for all the things you mention (with the exception of the guy with a dual core). At the end of the day, all we have to go on is what Frontier tell us. I'm happy that at least they have acknowledged the issue and confirmed things have been removed. Will we get it all back? I guess only time will tell.
 
That's just how I read their statement. Anything is possible after all.

Broken code could also account for all the things you mention (with the exception of the guy with a dual core). At the end of the day, all we have to go on is what Frontier tell us. I'm happy that at least they have acknowledged the issue and confirmed things have been removed. Will we get it all back? I guess only time will tell.

Well, remember you kinda ended with the same sentiment in your last thread on this subject....and you eventually had to make another one.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
They had to make a deal with M$ to get their game on their platform, afaik?

As far as you know, but are not sure, given their history with Microsoft I imagine there was no deal to be made.

Even if there was I've never heard of an exclusivity deal where a company was made to reduce the quality of a game that was already released, thought there obviously may be some...
 
As far as you know, but are not sure, given their history with Microsoft I imagine there was no deal to be made.

Even if there was I've never heard of an exclusivity deal where a company was made to reduce the quality of a game that was already released, thought there obviously may be some...

Watch dogs was downgraded to match console version...its weird, i remember i did not buy because of that, and it was one of my must have before they downgraded it.

I really hope its not the case with Elite Dangerous, i love space and inmersion...I can only expect it to look better.
 
As far as you know, but are not sure, given their history with Microsoft I imagine there was no deal to be made.

Even if there was I've never heard of an exclusivity deal where a company was made to reduce the quality of a game that was already released, thought there obviously may be some...

"OK you can be on the early access program but you need to compromise your existing PC title and tell all your developers to ensure that the graphical quality is reduced in extremely subjective yet specific ways...Does your game have asteroid fields in? Good then ensure you remove any fog effect. Our research has shown that our eighth generation video games console inexplicably can't match run-of-the-mill Windows PC's when it comes to rendering fog specifically in asteroid fields. Fog in any other situation is fine, just not asteroid fields. Also, we've discovered that customers will buy PC games specifically for fog in asteroid fields, they'll almost certainly choose the XBox version over the PC version as long as there isn't any FOG in asteroid fields. Here is a bag of money to silence you all for life. Just remember no FOG ok?"
 
...
The single answer to this, which actually answers all three questions is; No, because the original code was "broken"!
...

So to answer the original question of the OP. Yes, there is hope, it's just going to take some time.
It took some time to identify the root cause of the issues and it will take some time to implement a better solution.

So now that logic and rational thought has prevailed, can we close the thread now? :) :p
 
Last edited:
So to answer the original question of the OP. Yes, there is hope, it's just going to take some time.
It took some time to identify the root cause of the issues and it will take some time to implement a better solution.

End of. Can we close the thread now? :) :p

Why close it?
 
So to answer the original question of the OP. Yes, there is hope, it's just going to take some time.
It took some time to identify the root cause of the issues and it will take some time to implement a better solution.

So now that logic and rational thought has prevailed, can we close the thread now? :) :p

Only if I can open another one if the ring systems get worse before they get better... :p
 
Only if I can open another one if the ring systems get worse before they get better... :p

I see no reason to censor this thread through closing it. I say keep it open if people want to further discuss the subject. It has been done civilly up to this point, though Kerrash kinda put in a dig towards those with issues within the rings by stating "So now that logic and rational have prevailed, can we close this thread now"....
 
I shall laugh if the April 1 2.1 Beta 1 update replaces all the asteroids with perfectly pixelated, shader-scanlined, wireframe, monochrome BBC Elite rocks.
Well to be honest maybe 2D sprite astroids would be better sins then the lods might actualy work
 
Just....wow......
.
I wonder how you are feeling now, Granite? See, you were not using logic and reason......you were using your eyes instead.......that'll teach you. Next time you see something else change for the worse, just realise you are not being logical, and are being unreasonable......no way could it ever be the game.......
.
This is turning in to a sad joke.......good luck FD, you are going to need it.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom