"Discovery Scanner: Planetary Tech ft. Dr Kay Ross"
Source: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/919162538
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2AJS_-bTg0
Dr Kay Ross will be talking about and answering questions on the Stellar Forge, how planets are generated, land formations etc.
Notes incoming... (copy pasta'd from my post here on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/lmts2p/dr_kay_ross_talking_about_odyssey_planetary_tech/)
- Any questions that aren't answered tonight they'll try to answer them in a post tomorrow
- Dr Kay Ross: I've been working at Frontier on Elite Dangerous for 8 years, I do a lot of the codey codeys, co-lead of the render programming team. We have a special render team on the Elite Dangerous project, not only is this looking after rendering, shaders, nice effects, but also with my physics background we look after parts of Stellar Forge, i.e. the in-game galaxy.
- How's that journey been from Elite Dangerous' day-one concept to now? Originally it was a kickstarter for a rebirth of Elite, with now it's can we keep pushing it, can we keep adding to it, and we can! To see how far the game has come, and what's coming.
- Also on Render Team are (name typos likely!): Arkus Lokakus, Tom Wiggans, Lucy Bugby, Matt Roe, Mark Vince, Hazel Quantock.
- I wasn't always a game programmer, started out as a researcher in particle physics, undergrad masters in astrophysics and cosmology before the swap to particle physics. I did some work at Fermi lab in USA, like what CERN is. Looking into the differences in Matter and Anti-Matter. But then the Kickstarter for Elite Dangerous began and I tried my luck, and they took me on, working on a system to generate the Milky Way.
- Stellar Forge is the framework where they input the raw data of mass distribution, age regions of sectors, equations of stellar lifetimes, etc, which then procedurally and deterministically generates the Milky Way galaxy
- The best way to generate the galaxy is start big, then get smaller and smaller.
- Within a sector define how many of the largest bodies there are, then through 8 layers of concentric cubes generate down the different stellar bodies, orbits, planet classifications, each of which are child objects of the parent cubes
- With the 1:1 galaxy representation can you change one "simple" thing? It's like the butterfly effect, one small change will affect many surrounding areas
- Referencing the Hairy Ball Theorem, things can be sensitive to input data - tiny spikes on planetary surfaces can happen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem
- Planets begin not as spheres but as cubes, everything gets spherisised (?), and offsets are applied
- For Odyssey the method and offsets are changed.
- Lots of data inputs: depth, magma, crust, core; tidally locked; ice caps.
- Generate formations, terrain POIs, flats,
- 30km-60km-120km sections of terrain resources used in sampling the surfaces, blending in the right direction, giving wide variance
- Images from Dev Diaries being shown as examples of planet surfaces
- How accurate are the planets, as hand-crafting isn't feasible? Detail all the way down from 120km to 1km to eye level.
- As good as Horizons was, it did its job and was very enjoyable to see and play.
- But with Odyssey and whatever comes next, wanted to get a new system in place that was robust and expandable enough, with cascading detail
- This new tech goes into all landable planets, ones from before (Horizons) and new ones (Odyssey). Larger variety.
- The change is night and day. While existing screenshots are incredible, they cannot wait to see the new Odyssey screenshots that will come. It looks like a new game.
- You cannot see snapshots as they happen in development, as you see the gradual changes; how do you feel about the improvements? There are a wide range of emotions. We dont see big changes happen in one go, all gradual. I do spend a lot of time looking at the lovely screenshots on Reddit, Twitter, and gaming footage on players' streams.
- Are the changes coming more considerable than with Horizons? Same but different. The second half is lighting changes coming with Odyssey.
- Quantifying the change? Horizons was a vast undertaking because full-scale planets are hard. When it comes to Odyssey we have the framework there, the handling of resources, stream in stream out, how they're combined, it's a large undertaking - it hasn't been a weekend or two. We saw it as a great opportunity to see what the different teams could achieve when working together to create these new wonderful visuals.
- Now we have per-pixel hardcalls (?), more shadow spotlights working together; physically-based-rendering materials; lighting from atmosphere, star, personal, all working together consistently. We're able to see that all now.
- Roughly how many landable planets in Odyssey? Billions. 20% more landables than in Horizons.
- Range of planet/surface classifications that are landable is wider.
- In Horizons: rocky, metal rich, high-metal, ice, and rocky ice; but because they somewhat used each others' resource/material graphs they often looked similar. With Odyssey that has now changed: more distinct look, terrain and materials on them, warms my heart a little. They'll look more like what they actually are.
- What's the best part of your job? Who else gets to play on something of this scale, like a big tub of lego or mechano, and build something at the leisure of math, building planets.
- Will large worlds feature tall mountains, deep craters? There's a reason why larger planets have flatter, shallower features because of gravitational strain. That's how the maths work out.
- Crustal action (ha!), tectonics become less likely to occur on larger worlds too.
- Rock scatter, how will that be different in Odyssey? It has changed quite a bit. In Horizons/Beyond that was random. For Odyssey there is the scatter system, sending data through a noise graph and collection of nodes to decide what goes where.
- A wider range of things being put down in different patterns, densities, depending on the materials and resources for each world/surface.
- Will atmospheric worlds will we see weather effects, dust patterns? The first ones, coming in Odyssey, we'll see dust effects visible on the surface.
- How will the new planetary tech effect volcanism and volcanic formations? Fumeroles and similar will now placed using the scatter system on tectonic areas.
- Planetary bases and installations, how does Stellar Forge place them? Various ways larger and smaller ones are placed on the surface. For larger ones a simple radial flattening of the surface. For Thargoid and Guardian they are stamped using an authored resource tailoring what goes where. Studio anecdotes of Dr Kay putting her face on the surface of worlds during development.
- Have you hidden something like that in-game, because I would?! That would be telling.
- In Odyssey, the stamp is improved to make placement much more interesting for the artists and CMDRs.
- Do bases on ridges come about randomly or are they hand picked? There are various sites in Elite where buildings have been hand-placed. The majority of sites are found procedurally, places that are flat enough. The designers do like to put in some excitement.
- Will atmospheric planets have different biomes at polar caps? Yes, but more accurately these are called geomes, and planets will have different geomes on them, especially at the polar caps.
- Do you feel more fear about space as you come to learn about it, or less? When at university, as you learn about planets and universe you use more and larger scales and measurements, one can start disassociating with the models, tactile interactions - less scary... indescribable is a bad word to describe something, but that.
- Can you give us an idea of how many variables determine a planet? Dozens to hundreds.
- Will rings cast shadows on planets that they encircle? I genuinely don't remember. We were looking at that recently.
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