Atmospheric planets: Frontier's technology already here!

[Gortron]

I'd love atmo planets and Earth-likes in the game, but I'd also like to have gameplay to match. (For instance the 'big game hunting' that David mentioned waaaaay back in Kickstarter).

Anyway, yes - the Cobra engine can render nice vegetation and whatnot, but the other question is how well that can be implemented on a planetary scale within the stellar forge. There may be hurdles to doing that that FD are currently grappling with. Elite players are a discerning bunch, so I think just taking the island in JWE and scaling it up to a planet (even if it were easy to do) may not be desirable. Just look at the kerfuffle over begification! I think players would want planets with varied and believable terrain with seamless transitions and gameplay to boot.

So it's not just a question of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V of code from JWE to Elite.

This is my response to another similar thread I was about to post..... It seems to me from this and other posts the OP really likes ED and is a long term fan so I think people may be being a bit harsh.
Lord Braben is pretty quiet but I suppose that is to be expected. He is CEO of a company that, before ED ,was pretty small scale and has expanded rapidly ever since. The bigger a company gets the less time the person that founded it has time or possibly wants to spend time on the finer details. I’ve never owned a business, but I’m pretty sure if I came up with an idea that turned into a big business (that didn’t have Elon Musk type reasons behind it) that eventually I’d go more hands off and focus on other things (like buying a massive yacht and traveling the world) . On that basis I My gut feeling though is that Braben is more of a visionary than a ‘Sunseeker 80’ buyer and far from giving up on ED he and his team are working to turn the Cobra engine and Procedural generation into the go to technology.
don’t think what the OP is saying is unreasonable.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

The day Elite adds space dinosaurs will be the one I quit playing it - so I hope it won't happen.

Given the scope, I guess it is hard enough to make believable Mars-like worlds and gas giants in the first place, especially with the performance of today's gaming machines - some landable planets can represent quite a load with decent settings. Remember, in Jurassic Park you won't be able to fly over endless landscapes.
Those with weaker rigs or on consoles will probably need to compromise with the multiple light sources update in Q4 already...

 

[krylite]

Very nice, thanks for the links. Yes, it's the cobra engine, and certainly it can do atmospherics and character design competently. The issue is scaling to the astronomical scope of the ED galaxy. It's not just the engine, but the entire infrastructure, the cloud capacity, player & concurrent player experience among assets, to keep the framerates stable, etc. across billions of atmospheric worlds and thousands of populated worlds. They may have to use ideas from the Flight Simulator franchise where the entire globe is scaled out from high to lower elevations, with some populated areas obviously procedurally scaled down in detail similar to FSX's non-manually designed asset areas such as the old bare airport runaways with a few autogen hangars and buildings, as opposed to hundreds of third-party designed sceneries of locations for FSX over the past 13 years. (www.simmarket.com) ED has already done decent terrain mesh work with Horizons and improved texture with Beyond 3.0.x; Lots of challenges, but I have faith Frontier are committed along the next seven years to crack them.

 

[Chevy66]

Doesn't matter about there being Billions of planets if you use procgen, you just generate the planet the player is at, you don't need to know what's on any other planet. They already do this with the terrain

No Mans Sky proved the concept is doable, ED just needs to do it better

 

[Vasco Sapien]

I'd love atmo planets and Earth-likes in the game, but I'd also like to have gameplay to match. (For instance the 'big game hunting' that David mentioned waaaaay back in Kickstarter).

Anyway, yes - the Cobra engine can render nice vegetation and whatnot, but the other question is how well that can be implemented on a planetary scale within the stellar forge. There may be hurdles to doing that that FD are currently grappling with. Elite players are a discerning bunch, so I think just taking the island in JWE and scaling it up to a planet (even if it were easy to do) may not be desirable. Just look at the kerfuffle over begification! I think players would want planets with varied and believable terrain with seamless transitions and gameplay to boot.

So it's not just a question of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V of code from JWE to Elite.

I have zero expectations that Earth like worlds will ever be playable in Elite D.

But Mars or Titan like worlds... I have hopes and i have expectations.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I have zero expectations that Earth like worlds will ever be playable in Elite D.

But Mars or Titan like worlds... I have hopes and i have expectations.

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While I do think we will get earthlike planets sometime in the future, I am hoping that the new DLC stuff will be the basic atmospheric planets you are talking about.

The main reason why I think we will get them is that getting these basic ones done first will be 70% of the earthlikes done too. They will form the basis of those types of planets.

Mars has areas where oceons and seas used to be. These will all be reaslised in those types of planets. What will be next for frontier will be to design flora and fauna and water mechanics to go with those planets. Well they have versions of the flora with planet coaster and JWE. So using those as a basis to for other types of planets hopefully make it easier too. Not 100% sure on that as I don't know anything about the Cobra Framework.

As to Fauna though, that will be a very different scenario as will need to be generated depending on the planetary conditions, what gravity it has, what is the make up of air and so on. Obviously this will tie into flora, but as that is mostly non-moving scenery it shouldn't be as difficult to create.

Animals is going to be the main issue. It needs to be better then NMS.

I could potentially see them doing water worlds first instead of earthlikes, create a PG system for underwater life should be easier. Then that is another stepping stone to full on earth like planets.

 

[Chris Simon]

To be honest, I'm not interested in animals, plants and generally earth like planets at all.
But like Vasco, I would love to have lifeless atmospheric worlds and gas giants. The "ground stuff" wouldn't even have to be different from what we have now on airless planets, the main reason I look forward to atmospheres are, well... the atmosphere. Weather, clouds, wind, storms,... things that have direct effect on flying. Because that's what we do. We fly.

I don't care about space legs and hunting alien dinosaurs, I don't care about cities with people living in them, but I do care about flying. And flying through a gas giant upper layers, or landing on an outpost during a dust storm, those are the things I would like.

 

[Chevy66]

hunting alien dinosaurs

While I don't care about hunting alien dinosaurs, playing Metal Gear Solid V and rescuing animals in that made me think there's potential for a whole range of conservation based missions in a game like Elite. Basically stuff like tranquilize rare beasty on dangerous war torn planet -> transport to nature reserve on similar but safe planet etc.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'd love atmo planets and Earth-likes in the game, but I'd also like to have gameplay to match. (For instance the 'big game hunting' that David mentioned waaaaay back in Kickstarter).

I'd be happy for atmosphere planets without gameplay. I just know there is a vocal part of the playerbase that would rip FD to shreds if they did that.

 

[Jenner]

Oh, I'd certainly take having Mars like planets prior to Earth-likes (and hunting dinos)! Ideally we'd get both.
And blackjack.
And..
Oh you get picture.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Oh, I'd certainly take having Mars like planets prior to Earth-likes (and hunting dinos)! Ideally we'd get both.
And blackjack.
And..
Oh you get picture.

I actually spent a respectable amount of time in Red Dead Redemption playing blackjack and other stuff in pubs.
It's shame it never had a PC port, fantastic game.

 

[Chris Simon]

I actually spent a respectable amount of time in Red Dead Redemption playing blackjack and other stuff in pubs.
It's shame it never had a PC port, fantastic game.

Hey, we have gwent in Witcher 3

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Oh, I'd certainly take having Mars like planets prior to Earth-likes (and hunting dinos)! Ideally we'd get both.
And blackjack.
And..
Oh you get picture.

Ponies?

 

[Insomnia]

The technology has been available for some time for sure, but has nothing to do with Jurassic Park as JP and ED are two COMPLETELY different games.