Hand Crafted Planets post Odyssey?

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi All

I'm out Exploring at the moment, I am just mapping a few undiscovered Systems and found 4 Outdoor Worlds, plus numerous water giants and ammonia worlds, so I'm feeling rather chuffed!
It can be a long old job sometimes mapping, my mind wanders a bit doing this (anybody else have similar experiences?).

Anyway, I digress. One thought did occur to me, as the topic title states. Hand crafted Planets was one of my thoughts. Would the Frontier developers be considering this do you think in the near future?
Just the other day I was thinking about a few System planets. particularly Ross 154, and the planet Merlin. Or to be a little more precise, Sirocco Starport.
Now back in the days of Frontier Elite 2 the main export of Sirocco Starport was fish. Fish obviously need water to live in, so this could be in seas, rivers or lakes.
Lakes I would think would be easier to craft than the other two, so on a basic level the planet would have the main Starport, we have in the game planet based Starports so this is already archivable, we have ice, thin atmospheres, plants, and sometimes small 'eddies' of wind (those small 'dust devils' we sometimes see on some planets), plus some relevant wind 'sound' effects.

Seems to me this (planet Merlin) would be a very basic way to start expanding on some of these planet's Topography, Geology and Biology, and perhaps 'active' Meteorology.
Merlin (at the moment) has no Starport and the planet is not 'landable'. I wonder why
I remember landing at Sirocco Starport in FE2 to the sound of howling winds, and maybe also in a Panther Clipper....I think.. ....

Jack

 

[Fizzatron]

Anything like that will be part of an expansion that contains full atmospheric worlds with earthlike features. There is no news on whether this is forthcoming at this point but there is every reason to believe that some development work has been done on them as the new planetary tech that came with Odyssey was built with those types of planets in mind for the future.

I don't know how much they will be handcrafted, if any, apart from maybe some superpower capitals possibly. Procedural generation would provide enough to make it all work in general. See this presentation for more details:

Frontier aren't using Unreal 5 for Elite, but are using it for a different game so I imagine that is giving the dev team a good opportunity to research what might be necessary for Cobra to create something like it, if it wasn't already, at least from the procedural side of things - in my mind the actual tech that makes the Matrix city work is more to do with Nanite, which again, I'm sure is something that the Frontier dev team are getting experience with at the same time.

Anyway, to answer your question, unless there is a major development plot twist there will not be atmospheric worlds with any handcrafted cities/terrain as part of Odyssey.

 

[Ydiss]

Forgive the pessimism but I very much doubt FD have invested any significant development time on earth like worlds yet, despite the relatively recent emergence of technologies that might suggest such a thing could be done in other game engines.

Even with those, the sheer scale and scope of an expansion to introduce these types of worlds would dwarf EDO and I think the ambition of that expansion, as much as I enjoy it and think they did a good job with it in the end, was probably enough to kill off any further major expansion plans of a similar scale for this game. At best, we could hope for an earth like expansion that gives us mostly empty worlds with the odd settlement, like we have in EDO but just with atmosphere and other life. I doubt we'd ever get Earth. It's not as though they could even use the MS Bing maps world generator for that (unless we're to assume that Earth in 3008+ is exactly the same as it is now). And hand-crafting Earth is...

Just not going to be possible for this game. That said, if they can somehow create a generator for Earth likes that we can all be happy are largely empty except for some POIs and so on, and we're happy that they permanently lock off Earth (and wherever else is supposed to contain billions of people living there), then it might be possible they'll do this in an expansion. I just doubt it's even on their wish list right now, let alone their radar. I'd personally be happier if they just continued to add new stuff to the worlds we can access now. It'd be great if settlements actually had some form of connectivity infrastructure (i.e., roads) for example. And other permanent locations that contain things to do and NPCs but are not settlements necessarily. This is all to say, I'd like it if they added more life to the worlds we can access.

 

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi

Forgive the pessimism but I very much doubt FD have invested any significant development time on earth like worlds yet, despite the relatively recent emergence of technologies that might suggest such a thing could be done in other game engines.

Even with those, the sheer scale and scope of an expansion to introduce these types of worlds would dwarf EDO and I think the ambition of that expansion, as much as I enjoy it and think they did a good job with it in the end, was probably enough to kill off any further major expansion plans of a similar scale for this game. At best, we could hope for an earth like expansion that gives us mostly empty worlds with the odd settlement, like we have in EDO but just with atmosphere and other life. I doubt we'd ever get Earth. It's not as though they could even use the MS Bing maps world generator for that (unless we're to assume that Earth in 3008+ is exactly the same as it is now). And hand-crafting Earth is...

(Abbreviated)

Pessimism forgiven
I also tend to have a touch of that with aspects of the game sometimes.
I agree, expecting suddenly in some near future 'upgrades or new download content', that systems like Sol and it's major planets and some moons would miraculously contain all the stuff that was hinted roundabout the launch of Elite Dangerous, would now it seems be unrealistic (In the sense of the graphical (out of game) pictures we saw and are still seeing from time to time in some of the Galnet articles.

That's why I specifically mentioned Ross 154 and the planet 'Merlin', as an example of perhaps a 'simpler' means of introducing a 'liquid' in various states of movement.

Ross 154, It's probably been put aside, with all the other major core planets in other well know 'Bubble' systems (as well as some permit locked systems, Col 70 etc.) Put aside for further development ....I know as much about this as any other players not privy to Frontier's future plans for this game's development. But....

Fleshing out this one planet (Merlin for example) with some means of visible water I would have thought would be one of the more easier 'base' elements to develop for further planet content?
Ahh! ..Just a thought on this for a moment, are there any stations in space or on planets that have visible water in movement anywhere in the game? (fountains, ponds or representations of water in any amount). I personally haven't seen any?
Geysers are about the only thing I can think of at the moment that visibly show a graphical representation of 'liquid' in a volatile state of movement, (and to be fair, which personally I think has been done rather well Developers. ). Okay, and we also have liquids in a 'solid' state too, ice.

So, to round it up, 'liquids' mainly thinking of H2O here, are in the game now, either as solid ice or as steam. Water in a visible liquid state?...is this more difficult to graphically represent in the sense of still water?...perhaps.
I can see the complexity's of water represented as 'seas' or rivers / streams etc. perhaps even as lakes / ponds that are being affected by atmospheric events. Wind and exterior events should cause a rippling effect, as would underwater disturbances in the form of geological or biological movement (fish for example, and water based vertebrates or invertebrates) . Geology of the land will also dictate generally the state water if present reacts within that landscape too.

No, I'm thinking on a 'base' level for water being represented as almost virtually 'still' (as in large lakes) on Merlin. Perhaps partially frozen seas with virtually no water / liquid movement at all.
Fish Farms, fish processing plants and perhaps individual fish markets with many diverse species of fish for sale. These are 'just' contained in and around buildings, again, we have planet based buildings already in the game, that we can enter, have star ship ports, and we can converse albeit on a basic level, with the inhabitants.

I suppose Merlin, Sol's moon, Earth as well as a thousand more other Terraformed planets that we can't land on (at the moment) are under the umbrella of, 'Still in Development'.

I was just trying to point out that Some planets, with past game histories (that might still be valid today), could well be graphically, and purely from a game play aspect, might be easier to expand upon than other 'permit locked' or non landable 'Green' planets in game.

I just picture in my mind Sirocco Starport, as I slowly descend to the docking port, seeing large bio dome's, and vast lakes (or frozen seas). I can hear the strong winds howling around my ship. It's nearly always cold strong winds on Merlin in the Northern hemisphere (Where most commercial fishing is done). In the Southern Hemisphere it's usually a lot calmer, and unlike the cold winds in the north, pleasantly warm and dry. As I land on one of the ports outer (open to the atmosphere) landing pads. I generally use the SRV to drive along one of the 'roads' to the Fish Warehouse, or perhaps park up the SRV and do the short walk to the bars Concourses and fish markets.

Jack

 

[TheJebblue]

I like RNG worlds, the issue with hand crafted is familiarity. After you become familiar with the surroundings, it's the same dull thing, never changes. Who wants that? I don't. It's like ARK Survival, The Island is always the island. RNG planets in ED are great, I don't understand why there aren't planets with earth like atmospheres but many other games achieve this no issues, Empyrion and NMS to name a couple. In fact the non-atmosphere planets in those games are great too. Maybe Frontier needs to improve their planet RNG instead of entertaining [what about hand crafted] views. Actually the planet RNG in ED is great too now that I'm getting into this new Odyssey DLC come to think of it so I still don't understand why would we want the same dull thing with hand crafted stuff? I don't.

 

[Ydiss]

I don't understand why there aren't planets with earth like atmospheres but many other games achieve this no issues, Empyrion and NMS to name a couple.

Can't speak for Empyrion as I've never seen it but there's a huge difference between the tiny procedural rocks in NMS and the 1:1 scale planets in Elite, not least the fact that the latter is actually based on actual known data about how planets can be formed. The fantasy design of NMS isn't enough for what Elite would require to emulate actual, to-scale Earth likes using procedural generation.

I think not enough people realise quite how much mathematics goes into planetary generation in Elite. Also, NMS may do stunning visuals for its planets but it doesn't create believable inhabited planets. Imagine how worlds in Elite might actually be when populated by millions or billions of humans. Imagine NMS attempting to emulate that with its fantasy worlds filled with dinosaurs and bugs.

I agree that "hand crafted" worlds aren't necessary and procedural is how Elite would likely handle earth likes if we ever get them but the amount of effort that would be required for Elite to do this would be more than any of its releases to date, I am certain of it. And that isn't impacted in any way just because "NMS does it". It doesn't. It does its own thing.

 

[jojon]

Pretty sure there is little random about the terrain procgen in ED - planets that looked entirely different every time you visited, and for every visitor, would be kind of annoying.

..but while we have no fully handcrafted planets, they are of course made up out of handcrafted elements -- prefabricated heightmaps that are blended in various ways; Many tiled; Many stamped down as one-shots, especially where they shape the ground for a plopped-down point of interest; Scatter objects; All man-made stuff...

I am kind of curious just how much of terrain features was fully algorithmic in Horizons, and how much was hand-made, already back then; The smoothing of ground under buildings and other things, obviously (...with the whole area around engineer sites being noteably large ones); I could easily imagine Craters having been a brush (Btw: every crater back then had a central peak, which was more than a little excessive; Now none do... -Overcorrection? :7); There was that funny picture where a developer's face was used as a terrain brush. :7

I would expect fish would come out of industrial fish farms, but for coming steps toward landable earth-like worlds -- there was that one piece of concept art, amongst hand-drawn ones, which looked a game screenshot, and whose clear ice with volumetric-looking air bubbles in it, I am yet to see in Odyssey; Maybe one could imagine that shader being held back for a future opening up of frozen-over water planets... :7

 

[Jack Winter]

FWIW, I saw a crater with a central peak in Odyssey the other day.

 

[jojon]

FWIW, I saw a crater with a central peak in Odyssey the other day.

Hmm, got to keep my eye out, then... I have previously seen one or two cases of a crater that by sheer happenstance have had one of the "regular" mountain brushes somewhere in the rough vicinity of the centre, but never an actual peak.

 

[Jack Winter]

Then maybe I'm misunderstanding, it was so long ago the I played Horizons. But it was a crater with some kind of mountain / peak in the middle. Just saw it in the distance and didn't investigate nor note the location.

 

[Fizzatron]

Forgive the pessimism but I very much doubt FD have invested any significant development time on earth like worlds yet, despite the relatively recent emergence of technologies that might suggest such a thing could be done in other game engines.

That's why I didn't use the word significant I would agree, but when it comes to figuring these things out, I'm sure there's been 'investigative' steps taken to see how it can be done.

Even with those, the sheer scale and scope of an expansion to introduce these types of worlds would dwarf EDO and I think the ambition of that expansion, as much as I enjoy it and think they did a good job with it in the end, was probably enough to kill off any further major expansion plans of a similar scale for this game. At best, we could hope for an earth like expansion that gives us mostly empty worlds with the odd settlement, like we have in EDO but just with atmosphere and other life. I doubt we'd ever get Earth. It's not as though they could even use the MS Bing maps world generator for that (unless we're to assume that Earth in 3008+ is exactly the same as it is now). And hand-crafting Earth is...

Just not going to be possible for this game. That said, if they can somehow create a generator for Earth likes that we can all be happy are largely empty except for some POIs and so on, and we're happy that they permanently lock off Earth (and wherever else is supposed to contain billions of people living there), then it might be possible they'll do this in an expansion. I just doubt it's even on their wish list right now, let alone their radar. I'd personally be happier if they just continued to add new stuff to the worlds we can access now. It'd be great if settlements actually had some form of connectivity infrastructure (i.e., roads) for example. And other permanent locations that contain things to do and NPCs but are not settlements necessarily. This is all to say, I'd like it if they added more life to the worlds we can access.

I understand, but I disagree that it isn't possible, and I'm purely talking technical here, not financially viable.

If you watch that video, and I know that this is in Unreal 5, but the way they create a workflow to generate the city, it actually takes two hours to generate something as dense as the Matrix city - with traffic flow, sidewalks, NPC pedestrians and traffic.

In other words, the workflow lends itself to being used via automated procgen to actually seed cities just like the same way that settlements & planetary stations were already placed in the game - so it might be said that this has already been done multiple times. If the procgen algorithm is weighted to take into account the population density of any given planet, I think it could be done pretty effectively. This also would be done for more spare outposts and towns etc., and also for flora/fauna.

Earth would be more specific, as would some particular locations elsewhere, but I think using the above techniques it would technically be the same but demarcating some areas for individually generated city models for, say, 20-50 major cities around the world to include some distinctive architecture/landmarks to show that it's London, Cambridge, NY etc.. keeping in mind that there was an all out nuclear war in the history of the game, so some of those landmarks might be rebuilt versions, allowing for some freedom to say yay or nay to a particular landmark being included.

But, given that one city can be generated in 2 hours in total, all potential cities/towns/outposts/flora/fauna, and you're looking at a major amount of procgen generation time, even calculated in parallel, but I'd imagine that is a similar scenario to the reroll of the galaxy itself, which could explain why Frontier declined to redo it for Odyssey when called to?

The key would be to do it right, until now I think I would agree that it would be too monumental of a task to do correctly, however, at this point I see the potential. Maybe if Frontier used this technique to bring interiors to orbital stations it might be a good first step towards it, maybe make it an intermediary expansion for like $15-20? I'd totally be down for that.

The will of Frontier to do it would be dependent on the playerbase being receptive to paying for the expansion, just like Horizons & Odyssey.

 

[Fizzatron]

Pretty sure there is little random about the terrain procgen in ED - planets that looked entirely different every time you visited, and for every visitor, would be kind of annoying.

..but while we have no fully handcrafted planets, they are of course made up out of handcrafted elements -- prefabricated heightmaps that are blended in various ways; Many tiled; Many stamped down as one-shots, especially where they shape the ground for a plopped-down point of interest; Scatter objects; All man-made stuff...

I am kind of curious just how much of terrain features was fully algorithmic in Horizons, and how much was hand-made, already back then; The smoothing of ground under buildings and other things, obviously (...with the whole area around engineer sites being noteably large ones); I could easily imagine Craters having been a brush (Btw: every crater back then had a central peak, which was more than a little excessive; Now none do... -Overcorrection? :7); There was that funny picture where a developer's face was used as a terrain brush. :7

I would expect fish would come out of industrial fish farms, but for coming steps toward landable earth-like worlds -- there was that one piece of concept art, amongst hand-drawn ones, which looked a game screenshot, and whose clear ice with volumetric-looking air bubbles in it, I am yet to see in Odyssey; Maybe one could imagine that shader being held back for a future opening up of frozen-over water planets... :7

There's so much to consider when thinking about atmospheric planets. The density of the gases and also the temperature would have to be modeled in a semi-believable way. It's not as easy as saying we can have frozen planets, as 'frozen' is not a meaningful description, frozen water? nitrogen? A planet with temps where water would be frozen, maybe methane would be liquid, so from the perspective of reducing the technical load on atmospheric planets it isn't going to work. Lava behaves like a liquid, so basically I can't see even non-earthlike planets being doable without having to figure out liquid oceans/lakes/rivers on a global scale. Would we expect to see high-tides? rivers that flow into oceans? etc.. If Frontier could actually make tidal forces work, it would have to be calculated using the properties of the bodies that are in orbit around it etc.. All of these are systems that have been modeled scientifically, but in a game?

Either way, be prepared for another jump in baseline specs for the game.

 

[Ydiss]

I understand, but I disagree that it isn't possible

As I said, for this game, it's not possible. I mean, if they change the engine entirely so that it's an Unreal 5 tech demo, capable of generating a largely useless copy of a city that has nothing for us to do in it, then sure.

But I did actually mean they're not going to hand-craft Earth in this game because it's way too technically ambitious. We can toss up the idea that they could do it if -insert extremely improbable scenario here- happens (where improbable scenario still isn't actually a game that simulates a working Galaxy and is currently still just a tech demo) but we're just arguing the semantics of the words I said. And I would stand by those words unless something dramatic changes with the Cobra engine. Like, an entire rewrite.

Of course it's theoretically possible that FD could somehow entirely redesign their engine or somehow just "do Unreal 5" and magically make it so Cobra uses that tech (and consider that no game has actually used that tech to actually build a game that uses it - there's a reason for that) but is that really a discussion we need to have?

Proc-gen creation of somewhat content-filled and convincing Earth-likes is enough ambition to hope for, let alone them also replicating... an entire planet and somehow making it work in the way Elite needs it to work. We're so far from that being possible with Elite, I don't know what to tell you It isn't possible right now with the game's engine and I doubt the engine is capable of ever being able to do that. It's extremely improbable that will change.

But, sure. It's possible. In the least meaningful way you could use that word.

 

[jojon]

It's not as easy as saying we can have frozen planets, as 'frozen' is not a meaningful description, frozen water? nitrogen? A planet with temps where water would be frozen, maybe methane would be liquid, so from the perspective of reducing the technical load on atmospheric planets it isn't going to work.

Oh, it is certainly not easy, nor completely isolating the task at hand to just one extremely limited scope aspect, but it does isolate one set of things to consider, and would enable a subset of not yet unlocked planets for landing, as well as new things to do once down there, which I'll persist is a sight less than all the components it takes to generate a full earthlike. :7 ...and diving can come later, too...

For a hypothetical next stage, I might imagine gas giants, before planets with liquids/thicker atmospheres/greater sublimation, which will need their cloud stuff, but I already figured them before the ones we got with Odyssey, so... :7

Whatever is done, if anything is being done, it will have to be something that can be generated just-in-time, in patches, like current terrain -- nothing that needs two hours of pregeneration will cut it.

 

[Ceres_O7]

I honestly wouldn't complain if inhabited ELWs are pretty much restricted to a procgen city district or just another concourse - I like to think of it like, we are citizens of space and don't have valid immigration documentation to visit anything other than the "international" areas of spaceports, hence why we can't walk the residential corridors of stations now, and are limited to the concourse.

Unexplored worlds, well that's a whole other complexity. Simulating fluids alone is a massive job, and that would have to be done first.

I actually think Elite needs to stop handcrafting civilisation assets and work on procgen - all the 36-ish settlement layouts are handcrafted, only procedurally placed. I suppose kind of makes sense in the idea that maybe they were built by prefab parts manufactured by a corporation, but still.

I'd like to see missions taken from a starport concourse that give you elevator access to a procedurally generated linear interior mission space within the station, a-la Warframe, and things like that rather than a few handcrafted locations repeated thousands of times.

I think Elite has everything to gain by fleshing out the smaller scale concepts like interiors and mechanical depth and careers and activities (like EVA or salvaging) rather than just adding new planet types until we can walk around an ELW.

 

[Jack Winter]

IMO, the scope of Cobra is very different to the Unreal engine.

I'd imagine it a lot more likely that we might get on foot Thargoids, or maybe EVA with bordable megaships or some such.

Earthlike planets are probably still on the roadmap (the kick starter proposal), but will we get there..?

 

[Fizzatron]

As I said, for this game, it's not possible. I mean, if they change the engine entirely so that it's an Unreal 5 tech demo, capable of generating a largely useless copy of a city that has nothing for us to do in it, then sure.

But I did actually mean they're not going to hand-craft Earth in this game because it's way too technically ambitious. We can toss up the idea that they could do it if -insert extremely improbable scenario here- happens (where improbable scenario still isn't actually a game that simulates a working Galaxy and is currently still just a tech demo) but we're just arguing the semantics of the words I said. And I would stand by those words unless something dramatic changes with the Cobra engine. Like, an entire rewrite.

Of course it's theoretically possible that FD could somehow entirely redesign their engine or somehow just "do Unreal 5" and magically make it so Cobra uses that tech (and consider that no game has actually used that tech to actually build a game that uses it - there's a reason for that) but is that really a discussion we need to have?

I used Unreal 5 as the practical example of how they construct a procgen pipeline to generate a system. This isn't something that can be surely stated to be out of bounds for the Cobra engine as the present galaxy with the things in it prove that it is capable of working with procgen content. I did say that I think Nanite is the technical hurdle that was overcome to create such a densely detailed city, and for sure, that is something I would agree that isn't a Cobra feature, though again, Frontier's decision to continue developing Cobra would have to lead them to creating a similar tech for it, just as Unity etc. would as well.

I'm not suggesting any of the above is simple, but we are discussing a company that, despite armchair dev criticism, has built and maintained their own 3D engine capable of generating and running a game on the scale and scope of Elite Dangerous, something that CIG and many other companies do not have the technical level to accomplish, it is also to be noted that Unreal 5 is open source so the potential to reverse engineer or use parts of it for Frontier's own ends is there, so there are paths to make this happen.

Proc-gen creation of somewhat content-filled and convincing Earth-likes is enough ambition to hope for, let alone them also replicating... an entire planet and somehow making it work in the way Elite needs it to work. We're so far from that being possible with Elite, I don't know what to tell you It isn't possible right now with the game's engine and I doubt the engine is capable of ever being able to do that. It's extremely improbable that will change.

How are you so sure?

 

[Fizzatron]

For a hypothetical next stage, I might imagine gas giants, before planets with liquids/thicker atmospheres/greater sublimation, which will need their cloud stuff, but I already figured them before the ones we got with Odyssey, so... :7

I agree that gas giants would be good candidates. I think the Titan is a 'small' proof of concept in regards to how a gas giant would look in the game.

Whatever is done, if anything is being done, it will have to be something that can be generated just-in-time, in patches, like current terrain -- nothing that needs two hours of pregeneration will cut it.

The 2 hours is to generate the map from nothing, not what we would see as we play the game. Once generated the assets would stream in like anything else does ingame.

 

[Ceres_O7]

I believe the Maelstrom clouds are volumetric gas clouds and the old Lagrange clouds were also secretly updated to use the maelstrom tech when it was introduced as well (I don't have the source for this tho).

So frontier have definitely been doing behind-the-scenes work on cloud rendering technology of some sort. Whether or not it means anything for potential future expansions, eh that steps a little too far into tinfoil world for my tastes.

 

[Jumpin' Jack Flash]

Hi All

(Abbreviated)
Either way, be prepared for another jump in baseline specs for the game.

How much does a GTX 88800 Ti 40Gb retail at these days?

Jack