Asteroids and Ring Systems. Is there any hope?

[Parmo]

The blunt truth is, the man runs a business......

Edit added......I do have a lot of faith in Sir David. His plan is for 10 years, and if he is playing things really clever, this may be a great way to make it happen......the next 10 years aint gonna be paid for by kickstarters who paid 30 quid and get every new release "for free"........

[]
The business would not be doing as well if no kickstarters (PC players) came forward to give the man £30 each and the game ED would probably not have been developed to release.
I don't recall that the Xbox was in the plan at the time of Kickstarter phase.
I have not seen a 10 year plan from FD. Have you?
Obviously the initial gifting from the PC player kickstarters is not going to pay for the next few years of ongoing development and not many kickstarters expect free new releases in perpetuity.
The point was that kickstarters and early players were all PCers and they got good quality graphics but over time the quality has been downgraded due to ongoing development issues; as you pointed out earlier it could be 'visual consistency across platforms. And some of these PC players have paid for the Horizons new release as well, leaving them with the situation that the ED beta and version 1.0 has better graphic quality than the later 1.5 and Horizon releases. That's what Granite has detailed in this post of his - the degradation in graphic quality on the PC platform.
One would not expect this. On the contrary one would expect the graphic quality to improve with new, and paid, for releases.

 

[n4p0l3on]

Hello Granite, we have spoken a few times before. Great new video by the way.....
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As you may recall, I have been in the games/graphics business for nearly 20 years now so have a rough idea about how these things go together.........there is a very important two words that need to be understood on this topic.......I forget who said them, it was a Higher Up at FD......but they mentioned "visual consistency" across the platforms.....and that, is it.....game over.
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The translation of which is, they don't want the PC version looking too different to the Xbox version, so If the Xbox can't do it, I'm afraid that gets passed on to the PC. People might think I am suggesting conspiracy between FD and Microsoft to make the brick look good.....but it is more simple than that, I believe........It is a nightmare for a developer to maintain multiple versions of the same assets. If you want the "best" out of all platforms then the graphics need to be set up to the strengths of those systems. And the abilities of the XBone vs a modern high end graphics card, are large.........so it is a lot easier to knock everything back to a more basic level so that you can practically send the same assets to both systems...........
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When I saw the phrase "visual consistency" mentioned by one of the lead developers, I knew this wasn't going to get better any time soon......maybe when the Xbtwo comes out.
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I am still a touch baffled as to why we don't have detail sliders that can load in higher LOD models for high end PCs. As we have seen before, there is no major graphical difference between low and ultra settings.....(not played for a while maybe that has changed).......so the reason why they have not added this feature maybe does lend weight to a "not make the Xbone look bad" argument.......A clear statement from the Devs would soon clear this up.
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Maybe we should all be thankful they didn't cut it to the core so that Horizons would run on the Mac.

this, I said it a few days ago in the other thread

console makers DEMAND PARITY!

so yes, xbone is the cause of this.

and I also said it before, it's precisely why some have no problem with spending stupid money for SC and CIG, at least there's no ms or sony demanding parity for SC.

 

[OnePercent]

we should all start documenting planet surfaces and then compare that if FD manage to release horizons on xbox. judging from the info in this thread the PC horizons will take a noticeable hit just like rings and LOD did.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

Isn't it ironic that FD's plan for ED's graphics was stated to be "improve them over time", but the opposite has happened to planetary ring systems?

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Although I'm speaking as a Miner with many trips into Asteroid Belts just as a functional tool... I have to say although they work as a Mining location, their visuals currently absolutely suck.

I've gotten used to it, but it still occasionally strikes me as possibly the worst-looking spots in the entire game.
Maybe it's indeed because they used to be amongst the best-looking spots in the game.

Kinda sad they're now limited to "Low Detail" like they are. Mining would be more fun if I didn't have to look at some 10 year old Graphics quality.

Maybe MicroSoft releases a new console sometime soon. Then we'd be looking at only 5 year old Graphics after they ran the XBOX optimizer tools

 

[killborn]

Also, is it just me or the gas giants got downgraded as well? I remember the cloud effects looked much better when they first introduced them. Don't remember which patch that was...

 

[Cmdr Cheese Wedge]

Hello Granite, we have spoken a few times before. Great new video by the way.....
.
As you may recall, I have been in the games/graphics business for nearly 20 years now so have a rough idea about how these things go together.........there is a very important two words that need to be understood on this topic.......I forget who said them, it was a Higher Up at FD......but they mentioned "visual consistency" across the platforms.....and that, is it.....game over.
.
The translation of which is, they don't want the PC version looking too different to the Xbox version, so If the Xbox can't do it, I'm afraid that gets passed on to the PC. People might think I am suggesting conspiracy between FD and Microsoft to make the brick look good.....but it is more simple than that, I believe........It is a nightmare for a developer to maintain multiple versions of the same assets. If you want the "best" out of all platforms then the graphics need to be set up to the strengths of those systems. And the abilities of the XBone vs a modern high end graphics card, are large.........so it is a lot easier to knock everything back to a more basic level so that you can practically send the same assets to both systems...........
.
When I saw the phrase "visual consistency" mentioned by one of the lead developers, I knew this wasn't going to get better any time soon......maybe when the Xbtwo comes out.
.
I am still a touch baffled as to why we don't have detail sliders that can load in higher LOD models for high end PCs. As we have seen before, there is no major graphical difference between low and ultra settings.....(not played for a while maybe that has changed).......so the reason why they have not added this feature maybe does lend weight to a "not make the Xbone look bad" argument.......A clear statement from the Devs would soon clear this up.
.
Maybe we should all be thankful they didn't cut it to the core so that Horizons would run on the Mac.

Excuse my bluntness.
So we are stuck with these turds from here on out.

System rings used to be densely packed have self shadowing plus dust and looked visually spectacular.

 

[DentRed]

Isn't it ironic that FD's plan for ED's graphics was stated to be "improve them over time", but the opposite has happened to planetary ring systems?

The Sad truth of many games, The Pre horizons specs for Elite were very low. My old PC from 2007-2008 could run it well. And considering the majority of PC Gamers have budget builds. The market is forced to cater to that.
I would love to see a video game company for once cater to the high end PC community then just scale everything down for the budget builds. But the reality is High End PC users make up a relatively small amount of PC gaming community so their is no real incentive to put in the extra work for a relatively small profit margin.

Then Again this game is far from being done so who know's what's to come. ( though the lack of willingness to comment on this age old topic by the Devs does not bode well for the future)

 

[Varrag]

Rings are just a drop in the ocean...

 

[cmdr sandman]

Totally agree with OP - I've been mining exclusively for the past couple of weeks and it's a real shame that the asteroid belts don't look as nice as they used to.

 

[777Driver]

1 000 000 XBox's will implode the world over if the graphics fidelity is improved.

FD cannot and will not have that.

Have to say it bugs the hell outa me when I read these silly Xbox comments. Dumbing down of graphics is due to low end PC users, the bulk of Frontiers customers. Willing to bet a large chunk of those complaining about xbox dumbing down are the ones running crap hardware filling out bug reports on CTD's etc etc..

 

[EddyRockSteady]

Have to say it bugs the hell outa me when I read these silly Xbox comments.

OK the pls tell me what you understand by the following comment of Frontier Developments:

"Visual consistency across the platforms"

 

[Ian Phillips]

OK the pls tell me what you understand by the following comment of Frontier Developments:

"Visual consistency across the platforms"

Can you give the context?

 

[Sim Maker]

Can you give the context?

Hello Ian, I have been trying to find the exact quote but my search skills are weak.....I think it was Mr Brooks who made the comment, and it was soon after the time of the Xbox announcement or release......when a lot of people were afraid this would happen, one of the devs came out with this comment and it stuck....it was a single line as part of a larger quote.....but it was the important bit as far as I was concerned......Visual Consistency.

 

[n4p0l3on]

Can you give the context?

you wouldn't need to ask for context if you are familiar with the disparity of performance between today consoles and gaming pc, simply put the consoles have such weak ass processors that are crucial for games like ED, notice that console's best looking games are linear corridor action games with heavy emphasis on scripted events? such games do not demand much cpu power compared to games like ED, and before you ask, processors, especially such weak ass processors do matter and very potentially hampering for graphics quality.

 

[Sim Maker]

I can't find the original quote, or my memory is down the toilet....I remember the original coming from a Dev.......
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I did find this from Zac, one of their community managers......"There’s definitely no downgrade due to our Mac and Xbox One versions, but there have been some changes. Performance and visual consistency should be improved in the general case"
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Still, how do you make things "Visually consistent" when one of your platforms is a lot weaker than the other?

 

[Starlanced]

What is up with planets jumping along their orbit, no smooth motion, which I am positive use to exist? Talk about immersion killing

 

[killborn]

What is up with planets jumping along their orbit, no smooth motion, which I am positive use to exist? Talk about immersion killing

+1 can confirm the same thing

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

When I saw the phrase "visual consistency" mentioned by one of the lead developers, I knew this wasn't going to get better any time soon......maybe when the Xbtwo comes out.

I think you might refer to the quote here: https://www.vg247.com/2015/07/02/elite-dangerous-dev-comments-on-graphics-downgrade-complaints/

 

[Sim Maker]

What is up with planets jumping along their orbit, no smooth motion, which I am positive use to exist? Talk about immersion killing

That almost sounds like a floating point error.......very big and very small are hard to do "to scale" in a video game.....so some cheats are needed.......What happens in a lot of games is that when you get too far away from XYZ0...then the maths cant quite resolve themselves accurately, so you end up with the camera jumping all over the place, or other items start skipping around...........Surprised though, as it had seemed to be working fine before....????