As title suggests - Is this something we can anticipate at some point in Elite dangerous? Presently on Odyssey we can land on planets that have very thin/light atmosphere. Almost majority of planets I have visited since purchase of Odyssey look almost similar (rocky worlds). Could we get planets with thicker atmosphere in near future? For example planets like our home Earth, (even Mars/Venus/Titan types) or perhaps planet that is covered in ice or even ocean worlds. Typically my main path in elite is exploration - discovering new objects...etc.
Explorable Planets with thicker atmosphere/icy planets
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I'm doubting it. There isn't even standing water either. Or clouds.
The new Mandalay gives me pause, with it's big wing span and ability to deal with atmospheres, a comment alluded to during a live stream.
But I wonder if frontier can technically implement any of these into elite dangerous.
Flimley
The new Mandalay gives me pause, with it's big wing span and ability to deal with atmospheres, a comment alluded to during a live stream.
But I wonder if frontier can technically implement any of these into elite dangerous.
Flimley
Lots of games have clouds, rain, water, seas, lakes. Few games simulate this for whole planets, but it's not cutting-edge anymore. We know the Cobra Engine can do it, because of Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, Jurassic World Evolution.
they can do it on player-generated maps of limited size based on certain templates.
not for planets generated on the fly - well actually on the hyperspace jump
Yes, but there are a bunch of games that can do it for whole planets. So it's not a stretch to believe that Cobra could as well.
Weather on planets is a matter of whether Fdev invests development resources to make it happen.
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I’d be surprised if performance was an issue compared to what we already have at settlements. I don’t think there could be ELWs, but there is still plenty of scope for thicker atmospheres with extra stuff to explore. Most of the heavy processing is done while you are on or near the planet surface.
I must have missed an announcement. May I ask what is the new Mandalay?
I've got to say that having a walk around outside Scirocco Station on Merlin in Ross 154 would make me very happy.
Even back before Odyssey stations with steam or other vapour in abundance could be a performance hit, I suspect that noticeable dynamics over a wider area than just a geyser are going to be fairly hard work for our processors.
The third early access/pre-build SCO compliant ship, an explorer, due for early access release on the 22nd of October.
Medium pad but looks to have a small footprint, said to be the ship with the highest jump range.
My worry is they're thinking about full flight and aerodynamics models, and honestly... with the power of ships in ED, I don't think that is required, or even adds any gameplay.
For lakes/oceans, it feels like it should be a temperature+pressure check, assess the possible liquid elements, set an altitude maybe 25% the way between lowest and highest, and put a liquid surface there as a global radius. Swimming action would be fun, but not required. There doesn't need to be any life in these lakes early on for them to still be a cool feature.
Clouds and rain are kind of basic features that again don't need to change anything.
As cool as streams leading to rivers leading to lakes would be, I would lose them in a heartbeat if we got at least the basics of a sunset over an ocean!
No it's not, however doing it for a whole galaxy of trillions of planets with unique features and life forms, that is doing it realistically for that many planets may well be far more difficult. No-one wants a galaxy full of identical ELW with identical flora and fauna across the entire galaxy, or WW or anything like that, people want it done properly, hopefully FDEV is working towards that aim, I don't expect it this update, I mean it may even be hardware limited, maybe when everyone has 4090 level GPU's as a minimum, but to have ti done properly and not bodged in to make a couple of people happy is the best thing to do.
It depends what they do I think.
I don’t think ELWs are a possibility now, but an expansion of the atmospheric effects with current (still relatively barren) terrain but with some extra flora ecc? Could be a possibility.
Basically riproduce the effects used for the spire sites but using a non thargoid theme for example.
All I want is the need for atmospheric shielding and to land at Merlin spaceport again!. Nothing fancy.
Ah... memories of Elite II Frontier
)
Just want to fly down into one of these storms, that would be nice
Honestly, even if it's purely visual - which other games manage with mods and shaders.
ED's ships are so powerful by any conventional standard that it is hard to believe that weather could affect the ones that were built for atmospheric flight, unless it's a full on hurricane. Maybe do some wind buffeting below 100m altitude, but that can be a random direction paired with a strength of local weather conditions. At higher altitudes, it doesn't matter. Shake the ship a bit during high speeds sure. Make us have to get a bit higher before we can use the friendship drive, sure - because we can vertically ascend at 300m/s and it doesn't really matter if the escape altitude is 30km in dense atmospheres.
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