Change the "Scanning" for locations in FSS

[Han Zulu]

When you use the FSS and zoom into a planet and get the ' "scanning" text, it takes forever. Today, I had a system where most planets had some geological formations, and most of the planets had over 10 locations, so it took quite a while to go through all of them. One planet took over 40 seconds to finish the scan. Now, the issue is that I only care to see if there are geological or biological formations on a planet, I really don't care if there are 1, 2, 5, 10, 47, ... number of them. So my suggestion is as follows:

1) don't scan the number, only show if there is any geological or biological locations on the planet, and speed up the scan to 1 second or less.
2) if I want to know where those locations are on the planet, I have to fly there and drop the probe drones

It would speed up the discovery process quite a bit. Today, it probably would have saved me 30 minutes of my life. I basically had to stop playing because I felt I was sitting waiting more than actually doing anything in the game.

 

[Factabulous]

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[Han Zulu]

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Nice. Thank you. I'll try to change the FPS (if even possible on this machine) to see if it changes anything. Still, I rather see just a quick thing about geological or biological sites found. There's no need to get the count.

Also, the count seems to have affect on the wait time as well. Planets with few sites are faster than the ones with a large number. 47 site locations takes about 40 seconds to scan.

 

[Dutchman141]

Changing the fps shouldn't be the fix and definitely not implemented by the player.
I'm on console and have no control over fps whatsoever.

 

[Han Zulu]

FPS won't go over 60, so I can't really see how to fix it. The computer probably can't do better. My gaming computer is in storage until construction is done, so I'm stuck with the laptop that I have.

 

[Han Zulu]

Changing the fps shouldn't be the fix and definitely not implemented by the player.
I'm on console and have no control over fps whatsoever.

Do you have the same problem on console?

 

[Dutchman141]

Do you have the same problem on console?

Very much so.
I'm no longer exploring because of it.
It takes ages to scan a planet with geological locations, when there are only biologicals it goes pretty fast though, it's the geologicals.

Oh and I'm on Xbox One X, it doesn't get any faster at the moment regarding consoles.

 

[Han Zulu]

Very much so.
I'm no longer exploring because of it.
It takes ages to scan a planet with geological locations, when there are only biologicals it goes pretty fast though, it's the geologicals.

How do you find the biological? I've scanned a couple hundred planets and the best I get is geological. Haven't found a single biological so far.

And yeah, I'm about to retire exploration too. As soon as I get my ship back to base I might park the game again. I can't play it this way. Love the game, but right now I can't spend hours pretending to play the game while just waiting, drinking coffee, browsing, watching TV instead of actually playing. I rather do those other things and focus on them. Bleh. Or play another game.

Frontier, fix this, please. In the name of QoL.

 

[Para Handy]

FPS won't go over 60, so I can't really see how to fix it. The computer probably can't do better. My gaming computer is in storage until construction is done, so I'm stuck with the laptop that I have.

You can turn off v-sync in your Options\Graphics settings in the game - that releases your fps limitation and lets the scanning complete quicker (plus warms your feet as the GPU temp goes up with the massively increased FPS generally in game).

 

[whothe]

How do you find the biological? I've scanned a couple hundred planets and the best I get is geological. Haven't found a single biological so far.

It's just a matter of bio sites being present. They will show the same way as the geo does in the FSS.

 

[Dutchman141]

How do you find the biological? I've scanned a couple hundred planets and the best I get is geological. Haven't found a single biological so far.

And yeah, I'm about to retire exploration too. As soon as I get my ship back to base I might park the game again. I can't play it this way. Love the game, but right now I can't spend hours pretending to play the game while just waiting, drinking coffee, browsing, watching TV instead of actually playing. I rather do those other things and focus on them. Bleh. Or play another game.

Frontier, fix this, please. In the name of QoL.

Biologicals show up just as geologicals just not as often, they're pretty rare actually but I did discover some new brain trees and some other glowing bulb thingy.

I'm mainly an explorer but this long scanning issue takes the fun out of the fss, so now I run a lot of missions, whitch are borked on the Xbox as of the latest update too, not much to do now.

 

[Han Zulu]

You can turn off v-sync in your Options\Graphics settings in the game - that releases your fps limitation and lets the scanning complete quicker (plus warms your feet as the GPU temp goes up with the massively increased FPS generally in game).

Ok. Tried it. Still too slow. Took 18 seconds to scan a planet with 5 sites. Things seems a little smother overall in FSS, but the scan really needs to be fixed.

-- edit

23 seconds for a 20 sites. FPS is about 90-100.

 

[varonica]

One planet took over 40 seconds to finish the scan.

While it's an issue that needs addressing there are ways to mitigate the problem. It's not increasing the FPS that speeds things up, removing the fps limitation on your vid card stops fast vidcards bottle necking while waiting to send the next frame, so it appears the vidcard is being used to do some processing related to geo sites, I suspect they are sending the seed and the vidcard is doing the processing to show the locations, so a faster vid card and uncapped frame rate will make a difference, but it won't help slower vid cards because the are already working hard.

So we have to mitigate this issue as best as possible unless and until FDEV fix the issue. The one thing that will vastly increase your scanning rate and decrease frustration is simply not sitting there waiting for 40 seconds watching the spinning circle. Once you have focused on the body in the FSS it will continue to process the sites in the background if you zoom out. The vast majority of sites are found on moons of gas giants, so simply zoom out and scan the rest of the moons as the sites process in the background, then quickly zoom in on each one to see the results.

Really in the end you don't even have to zoom back in, once you have scanned the systems the bodies with geo will show up on the system map.

Ideally what they need to do is simply show the presence of bio and geo when you focus with the FSS and leave the calculating of locations to when you actually decide to map the body, that would make more sense both time wise and procedurally.

 

[Para Handy]

...........
Really in the end you don't even have to zoom back in, once you have scanned the systems the bodies with geo will show up on the system map.

Ideally what they need to do is simply show the presence of bio and geo when you focus with the FSS and leave the calculating of locations to when you actually decide to map the body, that would make more sense both time wise and procedurally.

Isn't there a new journal log entry for bio signals?

 

[Han Zulu]

So we have to mitigate this issue as best as possible unless and until FDEV fix the issue. The one thing that will vastly increase your scanning rate and decrease frustration is simply not sitting there waiting for 40 seconds watching the spinning circle. Once you have focused on the body in the FSS it will continue to process the sites in the background if you zoom out. The vast majority of sites are found on moons of gas giants, so simply zoom out and scan the rest of the moons as the sites process in the background, then quickly zoom in on each one to see the results.

The problem with that is that the FSS becomes jittery and harder to focus on objects. Basically, the only way to keep somewhat smooth process is to wait them out. Besides, I want to know the answer and going in and out and back and in and out and back again to the same objects over and over just makes it confusing.

Really in the end you don't even have to zoom back in, once you have scanned the systems the bodies with geo will show up on the system map.

They do? I haven't seen that the geo/bio sites show in the system map, but I will check. Even so, then you have make the extra step to go in there and to focus on each and every object in there too. Too much work. I rather have FDev make some fix on this.

Ideally what they need to do is simply show the presence of bio and geo when you focus with the FSS and leave the calculating of locations to when you actually decide to map the body, that would make more sense both time wise and procedurally.

That's basically my OP. It would make a lot more sense. Just tell me if there's an "anomaly" essentially in the FSS, and the go there and shoot some probes/drones to actually map out where they are. Not sure why they had to put the map of geo/bio-sites in the FSS when the probes are there for the purpose of actually mapping. It's like FSS does mapping for detail, but not for the map. Very awkward.

 

[varonica]

The problem with that is that the FSS becomes jittery and harder to focus on objects. Basically, the only way to keep somewhat smooth process is to wait them out. Besides, I want to know the answer and going in and out and back and in and out and back again to the same objects over and over just makes it confusing.

It does indeed, but it's a lot more of a problem with slower computers with lower powered vid cards, that behaviour almost dissapeared when I upgraded my laptop.

They do? I haven't seen that the geo/bio sites show in the system map, but I will check. Even so, then you have make the extra step to go in there and to focus on each and every object in there too. Too much work. I rather have FDev make some fix on this.

Bottom of the detailed list for bodies, it shows the geo sites but not the bio, unless that has changed, I haven't checked since last patch.

That's basically my OP. It would make a lot more sense. Just tell me if there's an "anomaly" essentially in the FSS, and the go there and shoot some probes/drones to actually map out where they are. Not sure why they had to put the map of geo/bio-sites in the FSS when the probes are there for the purpose of actually mapping. It's like FSS does mapping for detail, but not for the map. Very awkward.

Agreed, that would be an ideal solution.

 

[Han Zulu]

It does indeed, but it's a lot more of a problem with slower computers with lower powered vid cards, that behaviour almost dissapeared when I upgraded my laptop.

Sure. I just like the laptop I have.

Bottom of the detailed list for bodies, it shows the geo sites but not the bio, unless that has changed, I haven't checked since last patch.

Ah. Will check tomorrow.

 

[varonica]

Sure. I just like the laptop I have.


Ah. Will check tomorrow.

Fortunately I had the money and inclination to upgrade, we all aren't so lucky.

 

[Han Zulu]

Fortunately I had the money and inclination to upgrade, we all aren't so lucky.

Lol. I do have a better computer but it's in storage because of huge construction in the house. Been stuck with laptop for a couple of monts.

 

[JustJon]

Generally once you have done the initial FSS scan just go into the system map and most planets with geological activity will have geo sites - not always but mostly so if you must tag the planet in the system map then orient on it in space and go back into FSS - assuming enough time has passed the number of geo or bio sites will be shown - so yeah once you have scanned the planet once in the FSS it will continue 'scanning' for want of a better world while you do something else.

I do feel it is annoying though the amount of time it takes if you watch it - as you all say just show me that it has something and if I am interested I will investigate further.