Asteroids and Ring Systems. Is there any hope?

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Some shots from days gone by.

Altais from beta. Very similar to Wunjo and it was glorious back in the day.



72 Ophiuchi a few weeks after ED's official release.


In the old days devs use to push the graphical boundaries and if you had the machine to run it then fine, if not you dropped the settings in order to increase performance. Now instead of giving you that luxury Frontier just nerf the visual in general across the board for everyone. Also something is obviously not right when you see next to no difference between low and high settings.

It was simpler back then with PC being the primary platform. Now with an inferior platform in the drivers seat in general the waters have become much more murky. I was hoping Elite would be an exception, time has proven that sadly it's not.
 
I've noticed that Ring systems have more dust again that blends OKish with the expanding field. It's not like what the older pictures are showing, but maybe FDev is going the right direction again ?
 
It was simpler back then with PC being the primary platform. Now with an inferior platform in the drivers seat in general the waters have become much more murky. I was hoping Elite would be an exception, time has proven that sadly it's not.

Oh please. I assume by 'inferior platform in the drivers seat' you mean XB1?

We don't have Horizons. We don't have paint jobs. We don't have public access to betas like 1.5. We don't even have private groups yet.

'In the Driver's seat' my ass.

If there's a reason why the GFX have been downgraded on PC, then perhaps, just perhaps, its because FD are trying to get the game running on low-end PCs. The one's which don't have the fixed hardware of a console.

Technically, the only thing preventing FD from restoring the quality of the rings on PC are lack of resources to do so. Not XB1. You have the options for GFX quality settings, and PC hardware can handle better textures and has the power to do so - it did before.

Maybe its time for FD to switch the engine to DX12, you'll get more performance improvements from that on PC then would be the case on XB1.
 
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No. For low-end PCs there should be low settings, NOT the whole graphics brought down.
Don't get me wrong. I like that I can play Elite on my laptop with A10 with integrated graphics.
But when I then turn on my main PC and the game looks EXACTLY the same, only runs at 200FPS... well...
 
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""We're going through some wonderful effects internally that look truly beautiful, and we're saying, that slows the frame-rate a bit, doesn't it?" Braben said in an interview with Eurogamer. "And we say yes, but we don't mind, because it looks so beautiful. But what we're going to do is attach it to this part of the detail slider. Or we'll call it out as a tick box...Even if your PC of today can't run with all the features on, your PC of tomorrow might."

Braben said he loves the idea that this will future proof Elite: Dangerous. Theoretically, it could look great long after its initial release as players get better PC hardware. Of course, Elite: Dangerous graphics options will also scale to run and look great on a variety of current PC's when it launches."


See, you guys believed in functional options at one time. Where did that mind set go to?
 
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Oh please. I assume by 'inferior platform in the drivers seat' you mean XB1?

We don't have Horizons. We don't have paint jobs. We don't even have private groups yet.

'In the Driver's seat' my ass.

Should have stated i I was referring to gaming in general and not Elite specifically.
 
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It's more than a little bit sad to see ED going backwards in terms of graphical fidelity. I don't buy the 'we did it to improve poor performance on some systems' line; it's far more likely to be because of the XBone version. I mean, an advert before the new Star Wars movie has to be paid for somehow, doesn't it. :(

I especially don't get why, in order to improve performance on "SOME(!)" systems, graphics fidelity on ALL systems has to be diminished.

Why not make it more customizable instead? Why not allow High-End PC users to use Ultra Detailed Settings, and dial the details a bit down to medium-high settings for consoles?

Instead of reducing the draw distance to ridiculous levels and employ horrible LOD pop-in, why not let the player decide what draw distance and LOD-settings he wants to use?
 
Should have stated i I was referring to gaming in general and not Elite specifically.

OK. But most - all games - run better on PC. Including ED. And when MS release Xbox games like Forza 6 on PC I'm sure it will support 4K, as it should do on that platform. The reason I game on Xbox is because its more convenient for me in the lounge on the 40-inch TV than the PC in the bedroom.

I'm just wondering why XB1 is getting some of blame in this thread for crappy looking rings on PC. It can't be that hard for FD to restore the quality textures for PCs that can handle it. Nothing to do with XB1.
 
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I especially don't get why, in order to improve performance on "SOME(!)" systems, graphics fidelity on ALL systems has to be diminished.

Why not make it more customizable instead? Why not allow High-End PC users to use Ultra Detailed Settings, and dial the details a bit down to medium-high settings for consoles?

Instead of reducing the draw distance to ridiculous levels and employ horrible LOD pop-in, why not let the player decide what draw distance and LOD-settings he wants to use?


I completely second that! The draw distance is terrible. Did anybody succeed in adjusting the ini settings manually to improve that? Gosh if there are devs listening out there could they send to us (whingers ;) ) the adjusted ini so we can cook our GPUs???
 
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I especially don't get why, in order to improve performance on "SOME(!)" systems, graphics fidelity on ALL systems has to be diminished.

Why not make it more customizable instead? Why not allow High-End PC users to use Ultra Detailed Settings, and dial the details a bit down to medium-high settings for consoles?

Instead of reducing the draw distance to ridiculous levels and employ horrible LOD pop-in, why not let the player decide what draw distance and LOD-settings he wants to use?

Not to be the drama queen , but I get the feeling only low spec and consoles matter
 
Almost exactly one year ago, I need to go back and see what it looks like today.
UNKTO-1.jpg
Okay, I went back (only 200ly trip)
Hard to get the exact same angle again, but it really doesn't look that much worse from this distance.
UNKTO-1-2.jpg

And this random RES from March'15
Screenshot_0012.jpg
Here's an equally random shot from today, actually right there in UNKTO
Screenshot_0209.jpg
Doesn't look too bad here.
I will say that the 'pop-out' of all roids past maybe 20km is a little too obvious. Don't try to fly towards any of those pretty outcroppings, they're just mirages that disappear when you get closer.

Or how's this one, Jan'15
Screenshot_0263.jpg

Today. SELFIES!!!
Screenshot_0210.jpg


Again, looking at my own shots, I'm not sure. I feel there is something missing when I'm flying through it, but my personal shots don't seem to offer much proof it seems.
You can still make great Desktops.
 
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When a thread generates more than 200 posts, some from stalwart supporters of the game, unanimous in the opinion that graphics quality is a genuine issue then it deserves a response from the developers. Acknowledgement of our concern, at the very least.

What about it, FD?
 
OK. But most - all games - run better on PC. Including ED. And when MS release Xbox games like Forza 6 on PC I'm sure it will support 4K, as it should do on that platform. The reason I game on Xbox is because its more convenient for me in the lounge on the 40-inch TV than the PC in the bedroom.

I'm just wondering why XB1 is getting some of blame in this thread for crappy looking rings on PC. It can't be that hard for FD to restore the quality textures for PCs that can handle it. Nothing to do with XB1.

Because only stupid programmers would downgrade visual quality on open platform that would always receive hardware upgrades especially when they plan on 10 years of continuous development cycle.

Heck, even the average casual pc gamers who play ED on their office laptop usually know that they just can't expect to play ED in 2024 with that same laptop; by that time they would probably have 2 newer laptops with much more capable hardware to play the game.
 
Well, obviously, there is a serious flop somewhere, so serious they don't even have luxury to respond let alone give ETA for a fix. Let's see how bad it will become in the next patch.
 
There are other elements missing from asteroid fields (although I really think that they could use a display detail boost, especially when you are running on top display settings), such as asteroids crashing into each other and ebris from ships. or actual ships flying into them, impacting asteroid movement.

NPCs also used to make much better use of an asteroid field, flying behind asteroids and making it harder for you to get them (as evidenced from the single player training build before the game went live), instead of just flying in circles or stopping dead and spinning as they do now...

+rep to OA on bringing this up (not sure why you changed your name, but you'll always be OA to me ) ;)
 
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Almost exactly one year ago, I need to go back and see what it looks like today.
Okay, I went back (only 200ly trip)
Hard to get the exact same angle again, but it really doesn't look that much worse from this distance.

And this random RES from March'15
Here's an equally random shot from today, actually right there in UNKTO
Doesn't look too bad here.
I will say that the 'pop-out' of all roids past maybe 20km is a little too obvious. Don't try to fly towards any of those pretty outcroppings, they're just mirages that disappear when you get closer.

Or how's this one, Jan'15

Today. SELFIES!!!


Again, looking at my own shots, I'm not sure. I feel there is something missing when I'm flying through it, but my personal shots don't seem to offer much proof it seems.
You can still make great Desktops.

These are good screenshots. The thing is that ring systems like this one which you took a year ago, have always existed. However they were not all that common, but now almost all ring systems look like that.

I just put together a short video which shows one of the better current ring systems, along with some of the best previous ring systems. I also added in a few of the poor ring systems from a year+ ago.

[video=youtube;JgAEQbiFjOM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgAEQbiFjOM&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 
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