FAO FRONTIER: List of Graphical Changes / Issues for since Patch 1.3

[Yodafone]

In circles we go indeed Granite!!

I would say this apparent and almost removal of dust has clearly had such a profound effect, simply because of this fog being reduced dramatically - as a consequence the draw distance has had to be reduced also to compensate. Of course we used to have an abundance of "fog" in the old days (can you remember Turok for instance? ) and had no choice, I honestly didn't think we'd be complaining about a return to fog, but it's obvious the game doesn't look and function with these graphical cues missing or as soon (again I point out it's harder to dock now at speed with fa off with the reduced draw distance).

Let's hope in the end Frontier find a solution to suit all and their hardware, because the game just doesn't look and play as good (from my perspective) as it did before with these quite dramatic changes. [just as I got my new rig together as well ]

 

[MahdDogg]

No, it would be ending until we don't get advanced graphics options so we can't set up our game for your play style and PC rig ...

and your act on twitter is that we ask some nonsense things from FD...

my "act" on twitter, wherein I addressed your point that my analysis of the imagery as being used for comparative purposes (as someone who works with the interplay of light on objects for as part of my living) was "not honest" was no act, and also has no relevance here. You want to continue that discussion and address my points? Do it in the venue it started in, or address the points I made on this forum.

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

my "act" on twitter, wherein I addressed your point that my analysis of the imagery as being used for comparative purposes (as someone who works with the interplay of light on objects for as part of my living) was "not honest" was no act, and also has no relevance here. You want to continue that discussion and address my points? Do it in the venue it started in, or address the points I made on this forum.

Here we go, the good old "It's my job I'm the authority" part. You could just debate without throwing this in the field, you know.

 

[MahdDogg]

Here we go, the good old "It's my job I'm the authority" part. You could just debate without throwing this in the field, you know.

As I presented an analysis of the images, maybe explaining why I can actually make that analysis has some relevance.

However your comment and the one made about me and what I put on twitter has no relevance other than to ignore my points about whether these screenshots can be used as accurate comparative "evidence" of anything beyond how positioning of lighting can change the appearance of a scene.

My inferences on twitter were that people are holding this triptych up as "incontrovertible proof" that the Xbox development has lead to the degrading of the graphics for nefarious reasons.

Possessed seems to have a bee in his bonnet about me pointing out this is disingenuous, engaging me on twitter and then coming here to have a dig, where I suppose more people will then attack me with irrelevancies and lo, you obliged.

 

[Gédéon_Lecanard]

Don't take it the wrong way, I was just pointing out (maybe not so well) that you're likely to find a lot of people working in a field that make them authority too, on these type of forums, and this will not help the debate at hand at all. I've been a CG artist for more than 12 years (animator and renderer, in VFX and animation industry) and one thing I found was that it does not make me much more proficient when it comes to that kind of debate. For instance, I could go on about how lighting works in Vray, but I don't know a thing about Cobra.

I get your point about lighting and the way the images compare is not relevant for that matter. but what the images show is an undeniable loss in quality overall. And appart from the fog, this includes lighting quality. Is it the amount of lights used? Their types? The sampling? I don't know, since I don't work there and I have no clue about Cobra. A trait we both share.

Have you actually tried the 1.00 version, for the sake of it?

 

[Cosmos]

I'd rather wait for better graphics and let them work on BETTER NETWORKING.

I could be wrong here but I suspect many a performance problem in ED is related to the networking, including the stutter people have experienced. The rendering pipeline shouldn't be affected by just having ten players in the same instance of an asteroid field regardless of what gfx settings we are using. It suggests there is a bottleneck somewhere or some of the rendering is going on on the CPU when it should be given to the GPU.

Game has definitely seen a gfx downgrade and its hard at this stage to not suspect its linked in someway to delivering on console. If it turns out I need to buy a better card or SLI my existing one to see ED in its full glory I'm happy with that and look forward to see what happens on this topic.

 

[Vasea Azure]

I dont need "proof", I actually played hell out of Elite in beta, and in 1.3 - it looks little worst in some departments. I don't need screen-shots to be absolutely sure about this.

 

[Paralyysi]

http://storage2.static.itmages.ru/i/15/0702/s_1435827602_1660876_28be9c83f4.jpg

If this is with ultra settings and there is no bug, I'm... well, speechless. Jeez...

 

[AdriánGuth]

That's a very nice shot! This was taken two months ago...

http://i.imgur.com/N4tiCKc.jpg

It's possible to go in circles on this, because it is unlikely we will ever get the exact same conditions and planet for two comparison shots - especially when you factor in the planets orbit cycles and that it may well be years before it gets back to the same position the original screenshot was taken it.

However that said, we can see what effect the fog change as had. We can also see that the asteroids appear to be more washed out now, and with less shadows. Lighting is from a very similar angle in these two images. But there are no doubt other factors at play. But you know what - I can show a hundred shots from dozens of different rings all from different light angles and the asteroids always looked vibrant with dark shadows. And now they don't. It's really that simple.

We know they have changed, Frontier have admitted that. Opinions on quality will vary - personally I prefer the old style. But yeah it still does look good when we get to the right locations, that's for sure.

OH MY FRACKING GOD!!

 

[possessed]

I dont need "proof", I actually played hell out of Elite in beta, and in 1.3 - it looks little worst in some departments. I don't need screen-shots to be absolutely sure about this.

amen...
+1 rep

 

[Vasea Azure]

thank you commander - we can look at those screen-shots and talk about lighting and so on, but most of us actually saw the difference IN GAME. If this is not good enough than what is...
btw, thanks to the devs for replying in this thread.

 

[possessed]

and look at this https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/215

did I read that right, optimisations from xbox coming over to the PC?

 

[Obsidian Ant]

I dont need "proof", I actually played hell out of Elite in beta, and in 1.3 - it looks little worst in some departments. I don't need screen-shots to be absolutely sure about this.

We can all see it by going into the game. If we regularly play in an area, and then one day it looks different - we all know it looks different. Asking for 'proof' for that seems very, very odd. I'm totally with you on that...but that just seems to be how things go unfortunately.

 

[ZeeWolf]

and look at this https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/215

did I read that right, optimisations from xbox coming over to the PC?

When I read that, I pictured Michael Brookes running away from a fire with a can of petrol

 

[Obsidian Ant]

When I read that, I pictured Michael Brookes running away from a fire with a can of petrol

I'm really starting to suspect the guy loves doing exactly that!

 

[CMDR Alonso]

View attachment 48293

Two days ago..

In XONE it looks way better, I can asure you.

 

[JeffRyan]

I thought 'things being a little worse' was less to do with XBox and more to do with optimising. Optimising doesn't always mean better. It means balancing framerate with effect and trying to get the balance right. Sometimes framerate will take a hit, sometimes it will be a costly (gpu or cpu or ram) optical effect that takes the hit.

Whilst I'm willing to say perhaps graphics have taken a hit (not by much) it has nothing to do with XBox and everything to do with optimising the game to get the best framerate/visual effect balance we can.

 

[Eldur]

Dust / Fog: This was optimised due to a pathological case of overdraw (which looked very broken in a number of cases). There’s definitely no downgrade due to our Mac and Xbox One versions, but there have been some changes. Performance and visual consistency should be improved in the general case, however it does seem that some systems are not looking as good as they did. As ever there is no perfect solution. For a fair comparison, the exact same position and lighting conditions are needed (some viewing angles will always looks more awesome!), but we could have entire threads dedicated to discussions on how to light rings (and we’ve had many long discussions internally). I have a number of open issues in our system on the look of the rings, though currently no ETA for when we’ll be addressing them.”

TLDR version of this can be seen here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=157860
And it is utter darkness, which it wasn't before Power Play.

Not to mention the stuttery "improvement" of the game's performance and the largely increased server responce latencies... I'd suggest to get these issues fixed ASAP, please. I know that you're ar least trying to do so at the moment, which I appreciate.

 

[Arjin]

I thought 'things being a little worse' was less to do with XBox and more to do with optimising. Optimising doesn't always mean better. It means balancing framerate with effect and trying to get the balance right. Sometimes framerate will take a hit, sometimes it will be a costly (gpu or cpu or ram) optical effect that takes the hit.

Whilst I'm willing to say perhaps graphics have taken a hit (not by much) it has nothing to do with XBox and everything to do with optimising the game to get the best framerate/visual effect balance we can.

Sorry Jeff, much respect to you, but the game FPS wise was fantastic in 1.2, the so called optimizations aren't helping anything except make the game look worse. I don't have a powerhouse rig, but I get damn near solid 60fps everywhere except in RES zones. Since 1.3 and the optimizations things have only gotten worse, can't tell me they are optimizing the game to make it worse?... makes no sense.

 

[ralf_maeder]

OK, I am no programmer, so I don't know the problems involved in adressing the presented graphical shortcoming illustrated in this post. But to be honest, what is the most important part in a spacesim like Elite Dangerous related to graphics? In my opinion it should be all about impressive vistas, planets, stellar objects. We see a lot of impressive graphics engines that are capable of rendering pretty much fotorealistic sceneries. So what is the problem to render one bitmap galaxy in the background, a few hundred stars and some gorgeous planets, rings, asteroid fields with nice volumetric fog effects!? Is the engine up to the task that uses Frontier? I am dissappointed about the answer from the devs, apparently.