Desperately looking for faults!

[jamieboo]

Hello all

Been loving the various videos of Alpha - it really looks absolutely stunning!!
I've been desperately looking for things that I don't like so much - a difficult task!

However, I was thinking maybe the view should be as from a more wide angle lense - I don't mean simply FOV, but an actual wide angle perspective - effectively meaning there's a greater perceived difference in size between objects close and objects that are far. In action I think this would create a sense of greater and more dynamic speed as the 'small to large' transition of approaching objects would be quicker as there is a greater difference to cover.

This occurred to me while watching moments in the videos when a player speeds head to head with an approaching ship, and inevitably the other ship pitches in avoidance and floats out of view, the relative speed of the two vessels seems quite slow.
I think it would be great if at that last moment when a ship flies close by, it seemed exhilaratingly fast! And it could I think be achieved by a 'camera lense' effect without having to worry about troubling velocity tweaks.

What do you reckon gang!?

 

[X2Eliah]

Interesting idea. I fear that such a distortion style might make it tricky to aim with projectile weapons, esp. while twisting and turning.

Also, there's usually the case that with screen-edge distortions (as often seen in racing games that do 'turbo/nitrous boost' and X:Rebirth's boost (nearly all games that do boost have some kind of fake-fast-speed effect) the overall view becomes, er.. messy? There's usually a lot of motionblur applied, and the picture fidelity suffers a lot.. Maybe you have a slightly different way of achieving the speed-up effect; it's just that in all game's I've seen 'boost' effects at screen edges, I've never liked them.

 

[ATARI.]

The only thing that bothers me is the speed gauge is on the right, to me it feels like it should be on the left :S

 

[jamieboo]

Ooh! I'm certainly not suggesting anything that would seem like an obvious distortion! Playing Elite through a fish-eye lense might not be the way forward!
I just meant a standard wide angle lense. As used by people like Jean-Pierre Jeunet and a million other directors/photographers.

Prompted by a thread by someone else, I just thought of the Asteroid Field scene from Empire. There's a moment just after Han says he's going to go closer to one of the bigger ones - cut to an exterior shot following the Falcon as it spins and arcs under an asteroid. At the start of this shot the asteroid seems fairly small but very quickly it expands to a huge size as we get closer and it dwarfs the Falcon. It gives an incredibly dynamic sense of depth and velocity.

 

[Valkyrie]

The only thing that really bothers me is that top speed is not c.

I really love this so far, but Elite II was the game that really blew my mind. If they allow us to mod the game in future, perhaps we could see a Frontier mod to rectify this

edit: to be clear, I mean not in warp and as an engine or multiplayer limitation. Once the game comes together it will no doubt be absolutely mind blowing in scope

 

[jamieboo]

I know what you mean, but I'm ok with the 500m/s speed limit.
But that's just it - travelling head to head with another ship at hundreds of metres per second should feel and seem extremely fast, but in the videos the perceived relative velocity seems rather sedate.
The change in perceived velocity between objects that are distant and objects that are close doesn't seem quite big enough to me. And I reckon this could be easily remedied with more of a wide lense.

I should say again now, this is a willfully pedantic observation! I think the alpha looks beautiful!

 

[Memnoch]

I agree, a very beautiful looking game. Great texture work on the ships, great sound effects i.e. the engines spooling up to maximum speed sounds amazing!

The only fault I might find with it is a better way of bringing to my attention that my shields have been hit or even gone and my hull is being pounded. Other than that an amazing first release.

 

[Lorenzo]

I think the biggest problem atm in the first alpha are the key bindings, to many buttons with no clear descriptions.

 

[Sav112]

It’s hard to fault and I’m just watching it on Twich. Its as complex as I had hoped. The fear was the game would try catering for the largest possible market and water the game down. If it has a high learning curve that is rewarding fantastic. If it gets even more complex with damage control and ship mod’s the more the better.

This is very early Elite so you have to forgive it. If they had had this for the kickstarter they would have raised so much more thats for sure. This is just you getting the chance to batter about having a wee go at shooting stuff in a very confined space, dipping your toe in the ocean that will be Elite. It looks to run very well.

Massive pat on the back to the developers and David to get this out and lets hope they dont let up when they get back after the Holidays. I’m just sad I don’t have a machine yet to run it.

 

[Dalkeith]

Having experimented a bit with wide angle lens I would be careful with them. I sometimes see them used with windsurfing and they are so wide angle that everything even a small distance away is tiny. I must say I'm happy with the view settings at the moment. (from what I've seen not an alpha tester)

 

[Odeskypher]

I'm not in the alpha, I think it'd be cool though if we could see more of the cockpit toward the bottom, such as the joystick, pilots legs etc

 

[Bambi]

I think widening the FOV would make everything smaller and more difficult to see.

 

[Hellhawk666]

I don't think widening the FOV would work that well. There is already a slight degree of customization for this, but it not a huge difference.

What I would like to have is an external view - NOT a 3rd person view for combat, but an external camera so I could see the Sidewinder. Some people would call it immersion-breaking but I hope this will be in the release game.

Hmm, could be a good "vanity item" purchase - an external camera drone.

 

[Bambi]

I'd like a third person view for combat.

 

[Cody]

<snickers>

 

[Nagual]

<snickers>

<marathons>

 

[jamieboo]

Hehe!
Yes, interesting comments. And such a testament to the quality of alpha that we are really having to stretch to find fault!
As for the point I originally mentioned, I don't mean simply a wider FOV, but the use of a slightly wider angle lense (of the 'virtual camera' of the pov). And yes the effect could easily be pushed too far as Dalkeith said.
I'm just thinking of ways of addressing the (very minor) issue I mentioned. Does anyone get what I mean? I think I probably described it quite poorly.
I'm just watching someone flying forward eventually grazing quite close to an asteroid, and during that approach the perceived velocity of the asteroid doesn't change very much as it transits from being fairly distant to extremely close. I think if there was a greater difference - with objects when close really whooshing by - then it would create an even more dynamic sense of travel and speed.
No one else has mentioned this so I'm probably on my own here!

 

[PB-DK]

one thing i definetly do not like is the engineering disaster called the imperial cruiser, who ever designed and let that ship get through failed basic physics...