Just out of curiosity what is preventing FD form introducing atmospheric landing on planets? I realize landing on earth like worlds with trees, animals, weather etc would be very difficult but what about landing on barren high metal content worlds with light atmospheres, such as pre/terraformed Mars? It seems to me like it would be similar to the mist that is already encountered. I'm not a programmer so I'm not going talk about something I know nothing about and claim doing this would be easy. However, I know there are a lot of people on this forum with programming experience so I was hoping you guys could provide some insights on the barriers FD faces here.
Atmospheric landing
- Thread starter Threeofseven
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At this point I assume it's just a testing and tweaking issue. I would just give it more time.
The official line is that they want to do it right, so they will take time. If you watch the Road to Horizons streams there is one where they go through the amount of work involved in generating planets without atmosphere, so I fully expect they're going full bore on the atmospheric planets as well.
Edit: This is the aforementioned stream.
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I think it's less of an programming issue, and more of raw artist time problem. (art assets)
Atmosphere means you need a variety of objects that can be procedurally placed — Even without humans walking inside buildings, they still need different trees, grass patches, rocks, plants, animals, external structures, etc.
Atmosphere means you need a variety of objects that can be procedurally placed — Even without humans walking inside buildings, they still need different trees, grass patches, rocks, plants, animals, external structures, etc.
The first thing is that as soon as you put in any kind of atmosphere you'll have to deal with some forms of weather, even Mars has weather. I suspect that a lot of players wouldn't put up with it always being a bright sunny day on Mars. After that we might have to think about aerodynamics. Some people seem to think it would have an effect on the flight model. All of this would probably be a lot of work and wouldn't necessarily bring much in the way of gameplay options and also brings the logical inconsistency that you can land on anything other than an earth like. My gut feeling though, I could be wrong, is that FD will lump it all in with landing on earth likes
Even for non life planets, you still have program a atmospheric flight model, a drive model for the SRV, developed software simulation weather systems and exotic weather systems for methane planets, dust storms on mars, giant waves on water worlds, simulate how different stars would look in atmospheres with different gas combinations how they refract and diffract light differently. They need to add wind and sea erosion effects to their procedural planet engine.
All this just for planets without life. There probably many many more things I haven't even mentioned.
All this just for planets without life. There probably many many more things I haven't even mentioned.
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AFAIK, the barriers are mainly design decisions. Not only do they have to generate the surface, but weather, plants, buildings and settlements (air, sea, land and underwater), vehicles, people, animals, birds and fish and more. In addition, they also have to create an atmospheric flight model...and if they were feeling very adventurous, adjust it to depend on weather, gravity and atmospheric composition and density. Then they'd have to handcraft any special features and POIs and ensure the terrain looks right. Which will be quite a feat for Earth
Time. That's really about it. Theres is nothing hard about adding atmospheric effects. It just takes time to create and polish the effects and modify the flight model to simulate in atmosphere flight accurately. If they were working soley on atmospheric planets it would only take a few months, however they are constantly Improving nearly every section of the game and are adding entirely new things with every patch.
You're forgetting the fact that the surface of a planet with an atmosphere would be COMPLETELY different than an airless planet. Look at the Moon and Mars side-by-side. You can't just lump an atmosphere on the existing planet styles and still have it be even remotely believable because real scientists like myself will be there to call FDev out on it. Given FDev's current commitment to some degree of scientific accuracy, I suspect they'll have to completely redo the planetary generation system in order to make atmospheric landings happen. There'd be sedimentary structures like sand dunes and cross-bedding, plus you have to factor in the possibility of surface water and how that would change things. Then you have to figure out how to make an SRV drive in such a way that it feels like your driving on sand or in mud. And what happens if you fly your ship into an ocean? Then you have to rework the ship flight dynamics to account for atmospheric drag. The list goes on and on. Frankly, I'm guessing it'll be 2-3 YEARS before we see even basic atmospheric entry.
I reckon you are being optimistic with the 2-3 year time scale.......more like 5 years minimum imo. As you say...its a massive undertaking.....almost an entire new game within a game.
I think a big part is the Business Side too. They can't just release Atmospheric Landings, it need to be a whole new Season to finance the development of it.
But they took almost one year to get the Planetary Landing on Horizons right. Performance, Texture, Rocks, Volcanic Stuff. I even don't think they are finished with it yet.
And Atmospheres have things like Lighting, Flight Models, Clouds, Water, Erosion, Vegetation and maybe even Lifeforms at some point.
Even if they release it step by step it will take up a long time, and this leads to the first point, it would be a separate Season for this reason.
Also they wouldn't just releasing it without some special Gameplay around it. If it's a good or a bad one. (I still don't consider the Horizons gameplay any good, but they at least tried.)
But they took almost one year to get the Planetary Landing on Horizons right. Performance, Texture, Rocks, Volcanic Stuff. I even don't think they are finished with it yet.
And Atmospheres have things like Lighting, Flight Models, Clouds, Water, Erosion, Vegetation and maybe even Lifeforms at some point.
Even if they release it step by step it will take up a long time, and this leads to the first point, it would be a separate Season for this reason.
Also they wouldn't just releasing it without some special Gameplay around it. If it's a good or a bad one. (I still don't consider the Horizons gameplay any good, but they at least tried.)
Don't forget that atmosphere composition, density and temperature have to be taken into account. Some will have lakes and rivers and precipitation of methane for example. The sky and cloud cover colours also needs to be somewhat accurate. Not only water forms clouds and not all clouds look like water clouds. For example a planet like today's Mars has a pinkish sky, because of the density of its atmosphere. Huge dust storms and electrical storms. Tornadoes and cyclones and many more weather features. Carbon dioxide snow which melts when the parent star rises, etc.
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Much work to bring the great diversity to the planets. Frontier must maximizes the profitability of its game in time. Needless to give everything immediately. Gavage is unproductive
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One other thing to consider, especially in regards to Earth in particular, as well as other worlds where humans have lived for any amount of time: cities.
If you are able to drive your SRV organically around the surface of any planet with the only restrictions being terrain, then what happens when you drive your SRV through 32nd century London? Are there people walking around? Other future-cars? Would that turn the game into some futuristic Euro Truck Simulator type thing?
Consider how long it's taken (and continues to take) to develop Kerbal Space Program's small number of atmospheric planets and how that interacts with the various spacecrafts... WITHOUT much in the way of varying weather conditions on a specific planet. Then consider how long it takes to develop any open world game that has cities, in a recreation that's scaled down from the real world. Combine both of those, and pretend that Euro Truck Simulator actually tried to recreate Europe 1:1, with every single accessible highway and street being designed as it is IRL.
The sheer amount of time that would take to develop and polish is pretty evident. And we haven't even left Sol, yet.
If you are able to drive your SRV organically around the surface of any planet with the only restrictions being terrain, then what happens when you drive your SRV through 32nd century London? Are there people walking around? Other future-cars? Would that turn the game into some futuristic Euro Truck Simulator type thing?
Consider how long it's taken (and continues to take) to develop Kerbal Space Program's small number of atmospheric planets and how that interacts with the various spacecrafts... WITHOUT much in the way of varying weather conditions on a specific planet. Then consider how long it takes to develop any open world game that has cities, in a recreation that's scaled down from the real world. Combine both of those, and pretend that Euro Truck Simulator actually tried to recreate Europe 1:1, with every single accessible highway and street being designed as it is IRL.
The sheer amount of time that would take to develop and polish is pretty evident. And we haven't even left Sol, yet.
I wouldn't go for earthlike planets in the start!
I hope we will soon land on a mars like planets, desert planets or sea planets since earthlike planets with settlements, population and other details(vegetation) demands time and work to do!
Guys with comments up know what are they talking but maybe they could be suprised as well! How?
This how; maybe they are working on it already for longer time period and that's why all these delays so far.....
One more thing, they keep 2.4 a secret and that's smelling on something big and suprising.....after all they need to attract new players, announce season 3 properly, follow game trends and make it glamorous on game market once again, all that means money which i will gladly give for the right things!
Yeah i know how bad my english is!
I hope we will soon land on a mars like planets, desert planets or sea planets since earthlike planets with settlements, population and other details(vegetation) demands time and work to do!
Guys with comments up know what are they talking but maybe they could be suprised as well! How?
This how; maybe they are working on it already for longer time period and that's why all these delays so far.....
One more thing, they keep 2.4 a secret and that's smelling on something big and suprising.....after all they need to attract new players, announce season 3 properly, follow game trends and make it glamorous on game market once again, all that means money which i will gladly give for the right things!
Yeah i know how bad my english is!
Except they're part-way there. Look at the clouds and skybox in Planet Coaster. Procedural generated. That's the basis of the tool that will be used in Elite.
I don't see any logical inconsistencies, any atmosphere is dependent upon the gravity of the planet, Mars has a very thin atmosphere and low gravity, but as you go up the gravity curve, the atmosphere gets thicker and deeper until you are up around planets like Jupiter... Are you saying that FDev won't release until we can fly in Jupiter's atmosphere? I doubt it. There will inevitably be a gravitational limit that any ship can fly within an atmospheric environment... Maybe 2g? There may also be a limit to the wind shear stress that your ship can withstand, ie your ship could get torn to pieces during the atmospheric landing...
