Development Update 2 - July

Currently, the features provided with the update are not enough. To make the game even better, ship interiors need to be done. We have the star citizen as an example of this, like climbing the stairs to get on the ship or going down the upper hangar door, like in sci-fi movies. this game should not be inferior to that game, the graphics are not important. As long as the feature I mentioned comes, the event of landing on earth-like planets is opened. OK, the world can stay closed. There are so many planets in the galaxy that have not been discovered. let's get down to them. Let's walk through the forests in them.
 
Good looking stuff, and THANK YOU for the additional detail. Even if it feels like you played it conservatively, giving us some idea of what to expect for incoming new features/content is very helpful.

New planets look great, hoping that translates well into the game itself when it goes live. Might finally be time to do a little exploring.

Thank you for all that you guys are doing, and don't take your foot off the gas.
 
Greetings Commanders,

With the end of July closing in on us faster than a getaway Mamba with illegal cargo, we wanted to share our second monthly developer update with you now.

As mentioned in David Braben’s recent post, we have adjusted our planning to retain our development focus on the PC version of Odyssey before revisiting our plans for console. This change in planning will mean we are able to deliver more bug fixes, performance improvements, as well as some new features and content.

Issue Tracker

Similar to last month, we would like to update you on key issues as voted for by our community on the Issue Tracker. You can visit the Issue Tracker and vote for your top issues or make a report.

1. Lighting and Illumination in Odyssey
  • Changes in Update 6 will address lighting issues, however we’ll continue to monitor any feedback and make adjustments if necessary.
2. Degraded terrain textures compared to Horizons
  • Update 6 will bring significant improvements in this area, however we’ll keep the issue open for further feedback and make adjustments if necessary.
3. FPS performance in Odyssey
  • Further improvements and optimisations have been made which will be deployed in Update 6. Significant work is underway to improve this further.
4. Cargo Canisters get stuck in the Megaship
  • Fixed for release in Update 6.
5.Hyford's Cache missing Scannable Data Point
  • Fixed – awaiting deployment (Update 6 / maintenance).
6. Retrieval from crash site mission POIs no longer appear
  • Fixed – awaiting deployment (Update 6 / maintenance).
7. Odyssey sticks at “Loading Game” when launch
  • Fixed for release in Update 6.

Upcoming Updates and Content

As promised, we also wanted to share with you work in progress content and improvements which will arrive in future updates.

While bug fixes and performance improvements remain a priority and activities such as narrative, events, and community goals will continue. However, our new approach allows us to add further content and features.

This month, we would like to share some of the content currently in development. Please note these are at varying stages of progress, and other content is also being considered. Please also note they are not final and are subject to change. We will keep you updated with news and details as they progress and we expect the content to release over the coming few updates.

Planned for later this week (Update 6)

Planetary Colour Improvements


Planetary bodies will see a number of improvements. Explorers will find new planetary colouration which will increase vibrancy and variety. These improvements will still be grounded with real science, but will offer a much richer experience for those looking to forge their own path through the black. Here are a few examples:

View attachment 252451View attachment 252452

There will also be further variation with the addition of earthy, gritty, and dirty ice worlds. These new textures will add even more variety. Here we can see a frozen CO2 and a tholin rich ice planet.

View attachment 252453View attachment 252454

Planetary Surface Improvements
Planet surfaces will also be getting an uplift with the following:

Improved surface texture detail, improved Ice materials, increased volcanism, improved lighting and the integration of new AMD technology FSR (which works on all GPUs) will bring a significant improvement to planetary surfaces visuals and allow for some improved performance.

View attachment 252455View attachment 252456

Camera Suite
Nothing would accompany all of these visual upgrades better than improvements to our camera suite. On the surface, we’ve reduced blackout intersections in the vast majority of scenarios. However, under the hood, we have actually implemented a whole new collision detection system which will allow you to move the camera freely around a settlement or social space and avoid bumping into those problem blackout spots.

Rocket Troops at Military Installations
AI rocket troops will be added to military bases providing a greater challenge for Commanders approaching in SRVs.

Please note these features will be accompanied by a vast number of other improvements, tweaks and fixes which will be detailed in a dedicated forum post ahead of release.

Future Updates

Here are other features currently in development, which are planned for future updates. As we get closer to their release, we will announce which of these will be included in each update with further details:

Four Player Multicrew
Four Commanders will be able to board ships together for the first time, with a number of ships set to be equipped with a fourth cockpit seat, including several Commander favourites.

New Odyssey Engineers in Colonia
This is a much requested community feature and we’re pleased to oblige. We’ll be revealing more detail around these engineers soon.

Air Defence Turrets in Conflict Zones
We recognise that further balancing is required between on foot commanders and ships entering Conflict Zones. As such, further defence turrets will be added to Conflict Zones with associated on foot gameplay.

Increased Stored Module Capacity and Bookmark Numbers
These are long requested community features which will arrive in the near future.

Mission Feature Extensions
We will be expanding mission features for Odyssey with the aim to increase mission diversity and also create stronger links between the in-cockpit and on foot game.

Apex Redirect
This will allow passengers to redirect their Apex shuttle mid-flight, to return to the port of departure, or divert their Apex shuttle to another location, fuel permitting.

As mentioned, this list is not exhaustive and we will be sharing more details on the content mentioned above and future, unannounced content in further monthly development updates and across our other channels.

Thank you as always for your continued feedback and support.

-Arf
This looks awesome. Thanks for the hardwork. Though have to say, it is quite enjoyable but this will certainly help LOTS. Also, as a VR commander who just switched to gamepad exclusively (HOTAS don't have the survivability that gamepads offer) the default gamepad configuration is really damn solid. I play via Steam VR with a Samsung Odyssey+ headset.
 
Excellent update.
Do this monthly but PLEASE update us on when updates will expand to include more long-term roadmap items?

It seems obvious FDev have struggled with the monetization approach to ED.
The Seasons didn't satisfy.
The full release Odyssey approach didn't satisfy.
It seems the "product season release" of locking content to specific planetary tech for 2+ years per release will mean no new planets to land on for at least 2 years and possibly longer. This is deliberately slow-walking the stellar forge and cool new planet types and needs to stop.

FD really needs to decide to invest more in their flagship game and legacy game of David Braben and the company by expanding the team and quickening the pace of certain features. Can we just get the game sold to play and cosmetics to fund agile releases that focus on Stellar Forge tech as rapidly as possible? Do you need some other funding mechanism? Why this specific product "Horizons" and "Odyssey" paid release with no new planet tech until the next paid DLC?

Why must we wait 3 more years for Gas Giants? Dev and Release them, add gameplay later. Diverge the gameplay LOCKs from development, or at least put in new planet types at $10 a pop or something, so we can get more new and cool environments faster.

There is no shortage of ideas to develop Elite and the dev team can't do it all. But what they can do is intro new planet type access a whole lot faster, to keep interest high.

Please do stop releasing new features that are half-developed, that's why Seasons didn't work. It wasn't to me the agile release cycle but more that everything sent out was MVP and abandoned on release. Like Power Play, and countless other examples. Release the planet tech as fast as you can. Update the game loops the players have been complaining about (as in the Beyond series of gameplay updates like Mining was fantastic), and add new gameplay as you can and get it fleshed out before moving on. But stop linking the monetization to planetary tech and cool stuff to fund releases. Update us on the long-term vision and high-level roadmap.

Final touch is frequent focused feedback forums on new gameplay features (not planet tech, not new ships, those are always cool and a given).

Then and only then do you have what players have been asking for literally for years, in FDev comms.
 

StefanOS

Volunteer Moderator
Hello Arthur, and all others.

The info in this post is promising. But they are some things I want to point out.

I. THE ISSUE TRACKER AND THE WAY IT'S HANDLED BY FD
Many players - including me did state that the the ISSUE TRACKER is FAR from optimal. For me it's a major part of the PROBLEM. The way its set up - it DISCOURAGES anyone to post there. Why?
1. An ISSUE needs 10 confirmations from different CMDR's to be marked as confirmed - 10 confirmations are FAR TO MUCH. Most dont know this fact at all! Its just stated in the FAQ. How many do read them ?
They drop by write their issues without searching if someone else posted it already. Someone at FD needs read and MERGE this IN A TIMELY manner.

Even if some confirm it, it expires after some time with the effect that ALL THE EFFORT done by the players is just WASTED.
Here one example 1. reported May 5th 2021 and marked EXPIRED https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/30725
So what should I do now? Open a new ticket with the the same info again hoping that 9 other commanders will confirm it this time?
Or will most commanders conclude that its wasted time?

The better way would be
A) even with only 1 report FD SUPPORT reads it and mark it as READ (so the player get the feedback that this is handled by someone and not wasted time)
B) if necessary asks further question and try to REPLICATE the problem in easy cases like THE ABOVE
C) set a visible priority value
D) if it can't be replicated asks other players to CONFIRM IT
E) when more then 5 CMDR. confirm it, it will be escalated as CONFIRMED BY PLAYERS
F) if it is internally replicated it gets marked it as CONFIRMED BY FD
E) Info is added on when this issue is planned to be fixed

II. About planets and planet tech
1. the color improvements look very good, but
2. What about the INVISIBLE ROCK problem - any news on this? Its a really annoying BUG that makes driving the SRV a unpredictable experience.
3. is there any plan to improve the way CANYONS are generated? We all miss the steep and NARROW canyons we have in HORIZONS.
4. What about the DSS heat maps? We had green/blue good defined heat maps for the different organics in BETA, and now its just blue and many times very unspecific and LOW RESOLUTION. Bacteria is shown all over the planet but effectively the hardest to spot...

III: On performance improvements
RIGHT now its nearly impossible to determine if an UPDATE did bring a performance improvement. without a repeatable TEST we can't be sure.
1. We need an internal game benchmark to be able to compare and report any problems or improvements
This must contain different locations and scenarios especially scenes on planets and with heavy AI usage like in planet base-CZ!
Only when we have a 100% repatable benchmark we can determine objective if changes are beneficial and at what level (1% 10% 100%)

Regards
 
Last edited:
I know its early and update 6 isn’t out, but i am concerned that i can still see some issues with height maps on near vertical slopes. I don’t know how devs can get around this without some sort of gross 3D noise introduced at mesh level. BUT if those polygons are ‘long’ then getting lateral detail is still difficult. I’ve stuck in a image from a custom Novalogic voxel height map to demonstrate more clearly whats happening.

Yes - previous post CANYONS

Now - I doubt the gross terrain mesh can have some ‘retopology‘ on the surface mesh to improve detail in vertical areas but - i will leave it here.

Proof I guess will be in the eating.

3AF186E6-2FB8-4742-AD04-8906C84B6DC5.jpeg


3C345A29-0C34-45CD-B38F-F525766D4BAA.jpeg
 
Last edited:
this seems like finally there is some very good news on the horizon! (pun not intended) thank you in advance to all the team who have been working so hard on this and to the staff that so patiently put up with our gripes...
 
nothing new under the sun. they are filling their game with emptiness hahaha. Not like the one we cannot write the name. But no disappointment as no expectation.
 
I know its early and update 6 isn’t out, but i am concerned that i can still see some issues with height maps on near vertical slopes. I don’t know how devs can get around this without some sort of gross 3D noise introduced at mesh level. BUT if those polygons are ‘long’ then getting lateral detail is still difficult. I’ve stuck in a image from a custom Novalogic voxel height map to demonstrate more clearly whats happening.

Yes - previous post CANYONS

Now - I doubt the gross terrain mesh can have some ‘retopology‘ on the surface mesh to improve detail in vertical areas but - i will leave it here.

Proof I guess will be in the eating.

View attachment 252513

View attachment 252514
lol ...welcome back to return to castle wolfenstein. And they wants us to be happy
 
Well from Zacs last post about it, its been nearly a month past and feedback has resulted in..........nothing. Again, twice.

Its kind of sad really FD can add engineers to Colonia almost instantly but not update (or even do some quick balancing) of a six year old feature.
+1
i feel you Rubbernuke. Of course this is my own take on it tho . . .
There are cool stellar forge updates that team could roll out continously.
There are good and needed bug-fixes to implement.
And then there are the MVP features and "disconnected" parts of the game that need to be updated and fleshed out.
Power Play is in that last category. Released as a meta-game MVP on top of the rest of the game.
I don't care a bit about the Open Only junk because that's garbage and won't happen due to physics and networking tech as it is.
But PP needs to be integrated to the BGS.
Minor Factions, player controlled, need to be able to clearly see their BGS manipulations taking hold and expanding their reach and integrated all the way up to the Powers losing ground and even getting wiped out. Everyone that takes a mission should be affecting PP as part of the BGS faction they are boosting and this needs as much visibility as the minor factions in system get.

Likewise some of the PP stuff can be migrated down to minor factions, like system influence views on the maps and ability of players to vote on direction of expansion, etc.

But... good luck. Not holding my breath.
 
Back
Top Bottom