Atmospheric landings, life?

revofire

R
So I searched a little and didn't see any recent discussions on this so I figured I'd ask you guys to see what you've found out!

As we're all aware, there are planets with oceans and green on it, which can only mean trees... life..... So my question is, will Frontier ever let us go down on a planet filled with life and nature and endless landscapes, oceans, etc...?

This would cause me to go crazy over this game no doubt. I don't mind if Frontier takes 5 years to release that, I can wait and play in the meantime. I just want to KNOW that they mean to make this happen in the near future, that's all that matters to me. Some sort of hope.

Why do I believe that it's possible? Because the fact that there are already so many planets with full blown landscapes that are saved after they are discovered and rendered (right?) so if you add in the capability to have water plus trees as well as animals then there you go! Of course it'll take a lot more resources from the server to simulate all that but let's be honest here, there are VERY FEW life-filled planets. Therefore a couple of servers dedicated to one planet wouldn't hurt. After all, so many players will flock there to build their homes and cities there.

I think we have a real shot at making the first and the best in the gaming industry. I am being very optimistic, so don't worry and get on my case. I just want to know what Frontier is doing. This is truly my dream and I think that it would send this game to the stars (lol) if they did this. No one would be able to compete. No one.
 

trollson

trollson
Also - probably not until mainstream graphics cards can do it justice. Compare to what you need to render airless worlds with reasonable performance now, then add the additional detail of atmosphere and foliage.

You may want to compare to current games set in that environ - Skyrim say. The big difference there is that those environments are precomputed/designed. Elite will have to do it on the fly...
 
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Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Atmospheric landings themselves most likely will arrive in Season 3 - relatively soon, but not on Earth like planets. Full blown life however will take at least 2 years to complete - at the level FD wants to do it - so don't expect it to come any time soon. It is not that it is not possible, but FD are perfectionists in that sense. So far my prediction is - Season 2 - planetary landings, avatars; Season 3 - planetary landings with atmosphere planets (but not with life or clouds), walking around in ships; Season 4 - planets with clouds, EVA on planet and in space...Season 5 - Earth like planets.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Pecisk said:
Atmospheric landings themselves most likely will arrive in Season 3 - relatively soon, but not on Earth like planets. Full blown life however will take at least 2 years to complete - at the level FD wants to do it - so don't expect it to come any time soon. It is not that it is not possible, but FD are perfectionists in that sense. So far my prediction is - Season 2 - planetary landings, avatars; Season 3 - planetary landings with atmosphere planets (but not with life or clouds), walking around in ships; Season 4 - planets with clouds, EVA on planet and in space...Season 5 - Earth like planets.
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Your predictions sound pretty reasonable, except that I think walking around ships and walking around planets (on which we can already land) will not be split over two separate seasons. The reason is that when they already facilitated landing - and therefore driving - on any kind of planet (be it the current rocks without atmosphere, volcano planets, planets with atmosphere or even earth-likes), they already have the most difficult part behind them. If walking around ships and stations is available already at the same time, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't include walking around planet surfaces as soon as they open them for landing, too.
 

Kirth

Kirth
Pecisk said:
Atmospheric landings themselves most likely will arrive in Season 3 - relatively soon, but not on Earth like planets. Full blown life however will take at least 2 years to complete - at the level FD wants to do it - so don't expect it to come any time soon. It is not that it is not possible, but FD are perfectionists in that sense. So far my prediction is - Season 2 - planetary landings, avatars; Season 3 - planetary landings with atmosphere planets (but not with life or clouds), walking around in ships; Season 4 - planets with clouds, EVA on planet and in space...Season 5 - Earth like planets.
Click to expand...

I think Cloud tech will be in Season 3, you see some of it in Horizons with the deep canyons and craters - I think we will see some of that tech in this season with the volcanism which is likely to contain clouds of ash in the sky which is possible to fly through. Add to that some adjustment to the flight model as you fly through them, I don't think its that much of an issue, rather optimisation will be.

I think in Season 3 we might see some water worlds to land on and gas giants - vegetation will require some thinking on how they decide to do it procedurally especially with alien fauna and so this will come around season 4 or 5
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Kirth said:
I think Cloud tech will be in Season 3, you see some of it in Horizons with the deep canyons and craters - I think we will see some of that tech in this season with the volcanism which is likely to contain clouds of ash in the sky which is possible to fly through. Add to that some adjustment to the flight model as you fly through them, I don't think its that much of an issue, rather optimisation will be.

I think in Season 3 we might see some water worlds to land on and gas giants - vegetation will require some thinking on how they decide to do it procedurally especially with alien fauna and so this will come around season 4 or 5
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That's good point actually. We might see some clouds next season, but I wanted to be cautious. I guess we will know till the end of the year.
 

Insomnia

Insomnia
Season 3 I think will have walk around ships and EVA in space. :)

But about life on other planets... We already have animal meat in the commodities markets right? So in a way we've found alien life already. They need to model all of the alien flora and fauna which could take "a while". :p
But whenever I'm flying past an earth like world or any other atmospheric world I always wonder what's down there. :) Kinda screws with my brain.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Rubbernuke said:
Planet Coaster has the tech in it- the clouds in that look fantastic.
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Yeah, but they are backdrops there. They need to have volumetric clouds, which ar PGed and consistent across clients. Plus weather changes. Etc. I know FD can totally do it - just look how designed surfaces, I expect same layer logic following atmospheres, with compute shaders involved - but that's some huge task. However, it might be they are already on it.
 

Huros

Huros
PLanet coaster also has crowd behaviours and emotional responses of people in the crowd. I bet that most of that will be transferable to human and animal populations.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Insomnia said:
https://youtu.be/iTBvpd3_Vqk

Go to 04:40 to see procedural generated clouds. :)
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Rewatching that video I am just amazed what a long way ED has come in terms of asteroids! If you compare those low poly chunks flying behind David in the video and compare them to what we got in ED today (and what will apparently even be further improved in 2.1!), one really has to commend FD on the awesome work they have done! :)
 

shreddog

shreddog
trollson said:
Also - probably not until mainstream graphics cards can do it justice. Compair to what you need to render airless worlds with reasonable performance now, then add the additional deai of atmosphere and foliage.

You may want to compare to current games set in that environ - Skyrim say. The big difference there is that those environments are precomputed/designed. Elite will have to do it on the fly...
Click to expand...

This is captured on a Intel I3 (3.40GHz), AMD Radeon R9 200 (2048mb of Vram), 4 Gb of ram. So it's definitely possible with todays tech. Just takes alllot of dev time.
[video=youtube_share;UVnjT-15UAQ]https://youtu.be/UVnjT-15UAQ[/video]
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Kirth said:
This video has been posted so many times I've lost count. Everytime I click a link to something relating to clouds in elite, I hope to see something new, but... its that same video [mad]
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Yeah, but it is inspiring nevertheless.
I must have watched it at least a dozen times.
One more time won't hurt :).

Imagine, FD was already busy 3 years ago with creating that cloud scape technology, or whatever they call it.
There is so much going on behind the screens we have no idea of.


Arubeto said:
Rewatching that video I am just amazed what a long way ED has come in terms of asteroids! If you compare those low poly chunks flying behind David in the video and compare them to what we got in ED today (and what will apparently even be further improved in 2.1!), one really has to commend FD on the awesome work they have done! :)
Click to expand...


Completely agree.
And I already was impressed with the asteroids they showed then.
It is so easy to forget all the progress that has been made.
 
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Wotthe Dickens

Wotthe Dickens
I really hope that life isn't limited to what we see on earth (or resembling!).
It's going to be challenging creatively, as it's pretty hard to imagine how other types of life might look or behave like.
We live in a pretty big galaxy, for all we know there's a planet with rather lively cloud creatures that hum in the key of f#
 

eqinox

E
Pecisk said:
That's good point actually. We might see some clouds next season, but I wanted to be cautious. I guess we will know till the end of the year.
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Planet coaster has some nice clouds and beautiful sunsets, though the clouds are quite sparse. Doubt the clouds will be the biggest problem technology wise, although it will be a performance issue especially if combined with complex terrain features. But if confined to gas giants you'd only need to render the clouds, so that's what I'm hoping for in season 3. And why not just rip the code off this guy:

[video=youtube;hnyR0Bfx01c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnyR0Bfx01c[/video]

With code available in github: https://github.com/GameTechDev/CloudsGPUPro6

Personally I hope season 3 has lifeless planets with atmosphere, limited cloud cover and weather features, and gas giants with epic clouds and atmosphere scattering due to thick atmospheres!
 

Ophion

Ophion
I must mention No Man's Sky. If their team of couple of people can do it and achieve proceedural generation by creatig mathematical rules and algoritams for everithig from planets, to ships, rocks, clouds, animal life and vegetatiin why FD would need so much time to do the same thing is beyond me.

Here's a very interesting video abot that process:
https://youtu.be/ueBCC1PCf84

I hope we won't have to wait so long for FD and it's large development team to implement all features NMS already has.
 
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