Greetings Commanders,
We would like to share with you our first monthly development update since the launch of Elite Dangerous Odyssey. The purpose of these monthly news articles is to give a regular, moment in time, updates on how development within Elite Dangerous is progressing. The aim is to a provide a factual look at community requested features, issues, and a look forward at what the team are working on next.
Please note: the nature of these updates will be ‘warts-and-all’; you will likely see work in progress screenshots and content taken from WIP builds. That means that all information and assets shared are subject to change.
We will be looking to share more information on development challenges as well as talking about progress that has been made in other areas. Making games requires a large number of people working closely and in sync. There will always be a need to prioritise and focus development efforts on specific features and content for the biggest benefit of our wider community. Despite an incredible team, we simply wouldn’t ever have enough time to add all the awesome things that are requested by the community. As such, we hope that by being open about these requests, we can avoid giving the wrong expectations and everyone can be informed and up to date with where development is at that time.
So let’s get started…
June Update
Since this launch we have had to adjust our focus and the development team have been working incredibly hard to review and address as many reports and issues as possible. We have done this through a number of early hotfixes and a subsequent series of five game updates, including the one that will be deployed tomorrow.
Throughout these five updates we have made over a thousand changes, fixes, and additions to Odyssey based on your feedback, including in key areas such as:
- Lighting, brightness and gamma
- Character and Outfitting UI
- Galaxy Map navigation and found organic data tracking
- Performance – We know there is more to do here, but we are pleased to see some players reporting notable improvements for particular configurations
So, what is next for Odyssey?
As previously stated, Update Five will be deployed tomorrow and will deliver on more key areas of focus and feedback that we have received. These include:
- Shared missions – allowing you to work together with other Commanders on the ground and share mission rewards
- Overhauled cockpit lighting
- Visual improvements for neutron stars
- Redesign of ship outfitting interface
- Rebalanced drop rates for rare items
Issue Tracker
Another area we like to keep an eye on is our Issue Tracker. This allows us to see and measure the key issues within the community, as voted for by you. We know that many of you are keen to have an update on the top issues. So we’ve listed out the top five items below and given some direct thoughts and feedback on each one of them.
Current Top Five:
- Improvements to lighting (https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/33174)
- Many of the lighting issues have been improved across previous updates, the last major set relate to the update of ship cockpits which will be in Update 5. We will continue to monitor your feedback.
- Degraded terrain textures compared to Horizons (https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/32854)
- Pathways have been identified to improve this and a team is actively working on this area.
- Planetary features that appear to repeat (https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/34834)
- We understand this is an important topic within the community. As mentioned at the start of the article, we want to share the challenges as well as the positives. Investigations are still ongoing, however, it must be said that this is proving to be a very significant technical challenge. At the current time we do not have a workable solution. BUT, investigations will continue and we will keep you updated.
- Anarchy factions and the BGS (https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/35479)
- After extensive investigation we found that missions against anarchy factions were too impactful and this has been addressed. We are making further tweaks with Update 5 and will continue to monitor this issue closely to see if further action is required.
- FPS performance in Odyssey
- Pathways have also been identified with performance and the team are actively working on this area.
Future Progress: The Longer Roadmap
As mentioned in our
previous post, our aim was to focus on the initial set of updates and then turn our attention back onto console. There’s no doubt that the additional development work on these updates and community requests pose a challenge on our previous plans and timelines. We are actively investigating, reviewing, and remeasuring the further roadmap but these things will take a little time. We understand that this may not be as much information as people may have wished for, but we hope that the open and transparent nature of this update means that you’ll bear with us while we pull those together. What we can say, is that through these monthly updates, we will be able to share and keep you informed every step of the way.
Livestream
As you may have seen from the weekly schedule, I will be jumping into Elite Dangerous tomorrow and playing through the most recent update with Bruce. Please come along and join us where we can discuss today’s update.
o7
