FSS improvement thread

[MadDogMurdock]

Not sure if I can follow your statement as long as you don't mention a reference point. When parallaxing, you start (more or less) in the middle of a system where it's unknown at first if the bodies you are looking for are behind, front, left or right of your ship (the reference point). For some bodies you will have to move a considerable distance to see the effect that you get from parallaxing. While in the FSS the only ship movement that is required is when your object is hidden by another object (usually the main star). Other than that is the whole system projected and unrolled to a single 2D map.

Or in other words, while you can target a body in the FSS you'll see that target then in SC as well but in most cases you will have to turn your ship into this direction. In the FSS itself the terms up, down, front or left are meaningless. Not so in SC.

Not sure if my words make any sense to you, as that even wouldn't be quite easy to describe in German.

When it comes to zooming, I often stay on a sub-level and move my pointer from there. As an example, all moons from a gas giant where you often get a whole bunch on the same level and so close to each other that zooming out wouldn't make much sense. Follow the arrows instead. In short: It's not always like moving on the top level, pick one single object, then move out and move on. So the way I'm using the FSS I'm effectively moving the pointer in lower levels as well. I have no idea about the situation in VR and if it's basically the same or not.

Isn’t your ship the reference point for both views?
It’s the same spherical space around the ship just with different renderings.
In the FSS case, the ship disappears but you are effectively in the same location as it.
If you fly somewhere in SC and then open the FSS, you current location is the viewpoint from where your ship now is.
The controls are different, but panning left is effectively the same as yawing left in terms of the view.

I get that you’d stay want to zoomed to resolve a planetary system and its moons.
The suggestion is that the zoomed camera effectively stays pointing towards the zoomed area even if your ship is still moving - basically it becomes a tracking camera that maintains its direction, allowing you to do the panning at that level without the parallax motion being amplified.

Kind of hard to describe but it would certainly not be disorienting at a distance.
Closer up might be more interesting but that’s where still having ship control to slow down would help us out.
I definitely think it’s doable, our drone camera implementations in VBS do similar things.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

The difference is that the cockpit view is a rendering of whatever passes for normal light in SC space. We can't see anything too far away to resolve with the naked eye. A zoom function would be nice to have, but might be disorientating.

So the blue blobs and the cockpit view are not the same, except that the location of whatever energy peaks the blue blobs represent (warp-space FTL radiowaves of some sort) should coincide with where the planetary objects are. One gripe I have with the FSS system is that there are simply not enough false positives. Add some of those (and maybe a golden banana reward for finding real signals, so those calling the FSS a mini-game actually gets a mini-game), and the FSA tool would seem even more realistic to me.

Yes, ultimately, the cockpit view and the FSA view is of the same objects. Just viewing them with different instruments and within different frequency bands. If they had equal opportunity to resolve the objects from a distance, there would be no need to have a second scanner. We do not work with visible light much in astronomy today, when resolving distant objects, and the FSA seems a nod to that.

S

I’m not suggesting a second scanner for this - I’d like the FSS in the cockpit as the Analysis Mode view in SC.
Same bodies, same locations, different rendering compared to the ‘real view’ in SC.
It’s mostly about retaining control of the ship while using the FSS, especially speed control.
The obvious problem to overcome is the parallax motion of the bodies as your ship moves and whether that makes scanning difficult.

I’m not convinced it would because the relative motion across the screen is only rapid for bodies that are close by, and the whole point is that we are retaining ship control and would be able to slow that relative motion by slowing down or by turning towards the target.

The zoom in the cockpit would be the FSS zoom, with some form of tracking lock to avoid amplifying any relative motion.

 

[Sysmon]

I’m not suggesting a second scanner for this - I’d like the FSS in the cockpit as the Analysis Mode view in SC.
Same bodies, same locations, different rendering compared to the ‘real view’ in SC.
It’s mostly about retaining control of the ship while using the FSS, especially speed control.
The obvious problem to overcome is the parallax motion of the bodies as your ship moves and whether that makes scanning difficult.

I’m not convinced it would because the relative motion across the screen is only rapid for bodies that are close by, and the whole point is that we are retaining ship control and would be able to slow that relative motion by slowing down or by turning towards the target.

The zoom in the cockpit would be the FSS zoom, with some form of tracking lock to avoid amplifying any relative motion.

Better use of the Analysis Mode is definitely needed. A radiofrequency (or whatever it is) overlay could be one such mode, activated similar to the night vision mode. Maybe then you'd only have to slow down for the pinpoint targeting of objects unless relative speed is very low. We could even add a targeting reticule similar to the driller's interface that the commander would have to keep centered while the analysis is completing: The faster the parallax motion, the more work it would require to keep the thing centered.

The analysis mode could become a bit too cluttered maybe. Also, ships with poor SC maneuverability would be frustrating to scan with. As would those with poor cockpit view.

The view could perhaps be made into a turret view, similar what we have for the SRV, giving us control of the ship as well of the instrument. That version might require use of a hard point or utility slot though.

S

 

[MadDogMurdock]

You mean, any zoomed view keeps static for us, until you get back to the top level plane? That could work, but also requires some re-coding of how the FSS works. Right now I guess the FSS doesn't know whether the ship is moving or in what zoom level it is. So from a point of the FSS their would be 2 different modes now: zoomed (static) and unzoomed (in movement).

It wouldn’t be entirely static because your relative angle would change.

Imagine doing a flyby of a Gas Giant and its moons - where you pass some considerable distance to its right.
At the start there’s a set of blobs in front of you, a bit to the left of centre of your screen.
In the unzoomed view, if you just continue flying in a straight line, they would slide to the left and off the screen as you passed by.

What I’m suggesting with the zoom view is that the camera tracks the target area.
So if you were zoomed, the camera would be turning to the left to track the planetary system, keeping it in view, as you keep flying past it in a straight line.

Within that zoomed view you can pan around as you do now.
What you would see as you fly by is some relative motion between the gas giant and its moons. Maybe one on the far side gets eclipsed by the gas giant as you pass by and you have to wait until you’ve flown far enough past to see it again.

It’d be a lot easier with a whiteboard but hopefully that gives you an idea of what I mean by a tracking camera and what the effects might be.

As far as the coding goes, I haven’t used the FSS for so long, I’m not sure whether the zoomed view is much different to the unzoomed one.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Not in principle, I had the acceleration effect in mind from the magnification. This interesting idea can get quite complex, sure you don't want to open an own thread for it? I think for the purpose of this thread it's probably enough to just say "we want scanning in movement".

There are a lot of details to take care of. Personally for instance I never cared about the actual axis in the FSS relative to the system orbits and whether it's in sync with the true position and orientation of my ship. Something that then would matter. Then there is the controller question. One of reasons for the stop requirement could be that with the 2 modes it's possible to use the same controllers for ship and FSS control. This bonus would be removed if you still want to control your ship independently from the FSS. I mean, who doesn't want to stem the ever growing bloat of controller assignments?

Feel free to start one.
While FSS improvements in of themselves would help, especially being able to use it on the move, my main issue with the FSS is still fundamentally related some form of ADS functionality.
I’ve deliberately tried not to cloud this thread with that can of worms though.
While that remains the case, I’m not that invested in whether the FSS improves or not.

 

[Thatchinho]

Once again...

How about respecting the OP and this thread, and not bringing all the nonsense from the other thread over to it.

 

[Burke]

Ill just say my bit and then let it drop.

Its unfortunate that its spilling over in here but the correct place for it was shut down. Now there are a few people in here, they are afraid to speak about things and are being told to stay on topic. But the people who want to prevent discussion have shut down the correct place for them to speak.... kinda seems like people who want to complain or discuss certain issues are being censored at this point. They arnt being banned but circumstances are conveniently conspring to prevent them having their little place to chat. Something about that just doesnt feel right. Imo.

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

I would improve the FSS by removing the ability for people to see what is in the system at a glance after the bang. Stars would maybe be revealed by the bang as they are now, maybe not. If anything was revealed it would be very ambiguous. All you could maybe tell at a glance is whether the system is very dense or not.

After that, you would tune to a part of the spectrum and this would amplify any signals in that region. You would then sweep around and have to locate the signals by ear or by eye on some kind of frequency response graph. Once you got very close, the little clock face signal indicator would show up on your reticle so as not to be too particular.

Perhaps the signals would overlap, and you'd have to set blockers on parts of the sky or spectrum to be able to filter the signals. So think a bit like Minesweeper. You would find things partly by process of elimination. These filters would help you isolate a single signal better but sometimes you'd guess wrong and have to adjust them. Basically, finding stuff would be more involved and it would be impossible to quickly scan for an ELW/WW/AW.

My main issue with the FSS has nothing to do with gameplay. It's that it has created a kind of scorched earth climate in exploration. It's made day-trips in the bubble more difficult or impossible. Wherever you go, if someone has been there, everything has been found. Whereas before it was possible to enter a system and find many names on it, and some things left undiscovered, post-FSSyou enter a system and it's blank or all discovered by one guy. This makes exploring previously-explored areas much less appealing.

Also, 40-60+ seconds to see that an icy body has 34 geological site is too much.

All that said, I think this would the ADS guys off even more, and might off some of the people who are fine with the FSS now.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Which in my eyes is an impossibility, an almost quixotic act of game design.

No, are you a star citizen fan? Insult redacted for the sake of debate.

Had they left in the option, like the other hand of development did in the same patch (mining), the only valid complaint ever would have lack of new things.

I hope this simple idea is not quixotic for you. In this fantasy land, had anyone received the exploration patch and started stomping around that they were upset because the ads was not removed, you can imagine how completely stupid and dismissable that idea would be. Ian Skippy and Stigbob would have had a field day destroying that a million times over.

 

[Sysmon]

I would improve the FSS by removing the ability for people to see what is in the system at a glance after the bang. Stars would maybe be revealed by the bang as they are now, maybe not. If anything was revealed it would be very ambiguous. All you could maybe tell at a glance is whether the system is very dense or not.

After that, you would tune to a part of the spectrum and this would amplify any signals in that region. You would then sweep around and have to locate the signals by ear or by eye on some kind of frequency response graph. Once you got very close, the little clock face signal indicator would show up on your reticle so as not to be too particular.

Perhaps the signals would overlap, and you'd have to set blockers on parts of the sky or spectrum to be able to filter the signals. So think a bit like Minesweeper. You would find things partly by process of elimination. These filters would help you isolate a single signal better but sometimes you'd guess wrong and have to adjust them. Basically, finding stuff would be more involved and it would be impossible to quickly scan for an ELW/WW/AW.

My main issue with the FSS has nothing to do with gameplay. It's that it has created a kind of scorched earth climate in exploration. It's made day-trips in the bubble more difficult or impossible. Wherever you go, if someone has been there, everything has been found. Whereas before it was possible to enter a system and find many names on it, and some things left undiscovered, post-FSSyou enter a system and it's blank or all discovered by one guy. This makes exploring previously-explored areas much less appealing.

Also, 40-60+ seconds to see that an icy body has 34 geological site is too much.

All that said, I think this would the ADS guys off even more, and might off some of the people who are fine with the FSS now.

Putting less info up front might irritate some. However, making it more accessible from there may help smooth out the experience. One could imagine running scans across different frequencies of the FSS spectrum, and thereby highlighting regions of higher energy in those bands. The user could then in an interface like the FSA (or even a little globe on the cockpit dashboard on top of the radar, sort of an inverted FSA) spin the view around and mark blobs of interest. These would then be populated in the Navigation Panel, although without any distance information at this point. To get the final bit of information, the user would have to use your little clock face signal indicator to do the final bit of tuning. Or use the FSA to tune in for the missing information. It would be great to have editable bookmarks for those blobs too; only the game needs to know you are in Eol Prue what-ever when you are checking out a system; you might want to mark a blob as "interesting CO2 and methane peaks" or "No atmosphere but high Polonium?" before the body is fully resolved. That should be stored locally, as the game shouldn't care overall about your notes.

I'm not sure it should be hard to scan for specific things, the whole idea of exploration is to eliminate noise from signal. It could be more involved though, so your signal idea is good: The user would quickly learn which peaks correspond to which type of atmosphere, for example, and then know what filters to apply to focus on the signals they want to see.

Also, I'm not sure the FSS created that scorched-earth situation: People were very keen on putting their fingerprints on the populated bubble, so scanning was probably pretty intense from the get-go. Even flying towards low-hanging fruit like the Coalsack, however, there are still unscanned bodies to be found (or there was a year ago when I set out on the current expedition). At least the DSS gives you PoIs to poke at.

S

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I would improve the FSS by removing the ability for people to see what is in the system at a glance after the bang. Stars would maybe be revealed by the bang as they are now, maybe not. If anything was revealed it would be very ambiguous. All you could maybe tell at a glance is whether the system is very dense or not.

After that, you would tune to a part of the spectrum and this would amplify any signals in that region. You would then sweep around and have to locate the signals by ear or by eye on some kind of frequency response graph. Once you got very close, the little clock face signal indicator would show up on your reticle so as not to be too particular.

Perhaps the signals would overlap, and you'd have to set blockers on parts of the sky or spectrum to be able to filter the signals. So think a bit like Minesweeper. You would find things partly by process of elimination. These filters would help you isolate a single signal better but sometimes you'd guess wrong and have to adjust them. Basically, finding stuff would be more involved and it would be impossible to quickly scan for an ELW/WW/AW.

My main issue with the FSS has nothing to do with gameplay. It's that it has created a kind of scorched earth climate in exploration. It's made day-trips in the bubble more difficult or impossible. Wherever you go, if someone has been there, everything has been found. Whereas before it was possible to enter a system and find many names on it, and some things left undiscovered, post-FSSyou enter a system and it's blank or all discovered by one guy. This makes exploring previously-explored areas much less appealing.

Also, 40-60+ seconds to see that an icy body has 34 geological site is too much.

All that said, I think this would the ADS guys off even more, and might off some of the people who are fine with the FSS now.

If the option to fly there was still in tact, making it more involved could actually work. There would be room to create a gameplay mechanic more than "click" and hopefully add some possibility to skill up to the same degree as the rest of the game. To be offered a choice to physically go there or nerd if out if you want to cheat makes alot of sense.

Right now, all we're offered is one thing.. twittle and click.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I would improve the FSS by removing the ability for people to see what is in the system at a glance after the bang. Stars would maybe be revealed by the bang as they are now, maybe not. If anything was revealed it would be very ambiguous. All you could maybe tell at a glance is whether the system is very dense or not.

After that, you would tune to a part of the spectrum and this would amplify any signals in that region. You would then sweep around and have to locate the signals by ear or by eye on some kind of frequency response graph. Once you got very close, the little clock face signal indicator would show up on your reticle so as not to be too particular.

Perhaps the signals would overlap, and you'd have to set blockers on parts of the sky or spectrum to be able to filter the signals. So think a bit like Minesweeper. You would find things partly by process of elimination. These filters would help you isolate a single signal better but sometimes you'd guess wrong and have to adjust them. Basically, finding stuff would be more involved and it would be impossible to quickly scan for an ELW/WW/AW.

My main issue with the FSS has nothing to do with gameplay. It's that it has created a kind of scorched earth climate in exploration. It's made day-trips in the bubble more difficult or impossible. Wherever you go, if someone has been there, everything has been found. Whereas before it was possible to enter a system and find many names on it, and some things left undiscovered, post-FSSyou enter a system and it's blank or all discovered by one guy. This makes exploring previously-explored areas much less appealing.

Also, 40-60+ seconds to see that an icy body has 34 geological site is too much.

All that said, I think this would the ADS guys off even more, and might off some of the people who are fine with the FSS now.

If the FSS hadn't already driven me to explore by parallax, your suggestion totally would.

I just want to drop into a system and know WHERE everything is, so I can FLY to it and find out WHAT it is.

I'm sitting in a goshdarn SPACESHIP! Stop trying to make me do terrestrial astronomy.

 

[Trotsky2112]

I stopped reading here. That's an insult, you know.

Star citizen has far more ships than Elite. Over 100 or something. And space legs. And multiple planetary vehicles. And friendly alien races.
Its just not finished nor will it ever be.

 

[Sysmon]

If the FSS hadn't already driven me to explore by parallax, your suggestion totally would.

I just want to drop into a system and know WHERE everything is, so I can FLY to it and find out WHAT it is.

I'm sitting in a goshdarn SPACESHIP! Stop trying to make me do terrestrial astronomy.

I don't understand why some people accept 34rd century transport technology, but reject any exploration technology from the 14th century and onwards...

S

 

[myothershipisacobraiv]

If the FSS hadn't already driven me to explore by parallax, your suggestion totally would.

I just want to drop into a system and know WHERE everything is, so I can FLY to it and find out WHAT it is.

I'm sitting in a goshdarn SPACESHIP! Stop trying to make me do terrestrial astronomy.

I'm not against spaceship. Nor I do view the ADS people as obstinate. But I'm also not opposed to having a Spock scope either. I just think that the FSS is more tool than anything else, and I don't think it achieves whatever gameplay it was going for in any meaningful way. I think this is why people that you hear bashing it don't like it. As a tool to clear a system in Elite, it's very effective, but it's not particularly fun or skilful to use and thus those who had a reason not to like it didn't find one to change their mind. Making it more substantive is a plus in my mind.

One other thing I want to say is about the talk about panning speed and controller. I put my mouse's highest dpi slot at 8600 and I use that for the FSS. I use a smaller mousepad and I don't want to be dragging my mouse across the desk just to use the FSS. Setting your mouse DPI high makes the FSS usable.

And I really liked the idea about the transition to it where you have a panel come up from behind the chair. I wouldn't even need a model for anything, just have the emitters on the cockpit get bright and then make it look like the holograms on the hud are filling the whole cockpit as you transition to the FSS. But the galaxy map is the same way and I don't see many complaints about that. I wouldn't mind if both were more like in star wars, but the galaxy map probably couldn't do it without a redesign for the smaller resolution of the in-cockpit nav map

Source: https://www.youtube.com/embed/8CRA_yE4D-s?start=97

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

I don't understand why some people accept 34rd century transport technology, but reject any exploration technology from the 14th century and onwards...

S

Because it's a game and we like flying spaceships?

Or maybe because the exploration technology we're being offered never actually makes it past the 1930s. All the manual twiddling and filtering of the FSS would, even in the late 20th century, be replaced by an automated process, which produces a fully populated System map. Something more like the ADS in fact.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Not needed anymore.

 

[Sysmon]

Because it's a game and we like flying spaceships?

Or maybe because the exploration technology we're being offered never actually makes it past the 1930s. All the manual twiddling and filtering of the FSS would, even in the late 20th century, be replaced by an automated process, which produces a fully populated System map. Something more like the ADS in fact.

I think that we eventually will get over all the automation and realise that humans need stuff to do. Flying spaceships can be automated too. In fact, MoM surely could script it so the game could play itself.

That being said, having ways to automate tasks or delegate them to, say, NPCs or multi-crew members, could help add flavour to the game. Then people could focus on what they like to do. So let's hope NPC crew come with the 2020 update!

S

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I don't understand why some people accept 34rd century transport technology, but reject any exploration technology from the 14th century and onwards...

S

Generally speaking, isn't the idea of technology to obsolete what came before it? By that logic something apart from the coffee machine would be powered by steam in your cutter.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Some good ideas there, I really would like if future FSS development goes into this direction. But as you said, the ADS guys...
Post like yours and the extreme opposite from the 'ADS guys' highlights what a massive task it was for FDev to find a golden middleway.
Which in my eyes is an impossibility, an almost quixotic act of game design.

It’s actually not the extreme opposite, I’d love to go into detail but apparently that’s the subject for another thread that is now locked
It’d be easier to stay on topic here if you didn’t keep bringing it up here.