Higher Polygon Models and Smooth Curves in Beyond?

[Cosmo]

Stations generally look good, but the parks in the Tourism stations are laughably low polygon. The trucks also have very low polygons and blurry textures. This is very noticeable with the camera suite. It looks like a video game from the year 2000!

The Generation Ships and Megaships are nice, but some curves are too angular, low polygon. Quake III Arena had beautiful smooth curves in 1999!

If this game is to age gracefully then Frontier must do a graphics update. Can we get that during the Beyond season? It could be an optional graphics setting.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Not that interested until we can get out of our seats and explore the stations. Prefer the work to go towards something else.

 

[Soothsayer]

Station interiors do look laughably bad on closer inspection. Everything about them looks awful, really -- almost none of it is designed to be looked at up close. The buildings, the interiors of buildings, the park areas, the trees, the stupid Tonka trucks that drive in circles for no reason, the shipping containers...

Everything looks jarringly heinous. But I guess that's one price to be paid for the game's immense scale, as well as its ability to be played comfortably in VR on midrange cards.

 

[DaveB]

FD certainly has artists with the skill to retopo those models although I do find myself wondering how many of the LOD levels are hand-made and how many are generated in code from the highest LOD. To use your example of the curved pipe, the second is indeed better visually but the first has better defined (or at least, more easily identifiable by logic rather than visual inspection) edge loops which is a major factor when you are depending on an algorithm to reduce tris for rendering at a lower LOD. Just looking at the geometry without that information is not likely to lead you to an optimum topology, even if what you arrive at "looks better" when rendered at full LOD.

 

[Cosmo]

Station interiors do look laughably bad on closer inspection. Everything about them looks awful, really -- almost none of it is designed to be looked at up close. The buildings, the interiors of buildings, the park areas, the trees, the stupid Tonka trucks that drive in circles for no reason, the shipping containers...

Everything looks jarringly heinous. But I guess that's one price to be paid for the game's immense scale, as well as its ability to be played comfortably in VR on midrange cards.

Well the station exteriors and interiors generally look good enough imo. The newer interiors are better (Refinery, Tech, Agriculture and Asteroid stations). The landing pads and hangars are pretty good too.

The most glaring examples of low polygon and low textures are some assets like the tonka trucks, buses, "nature" parks and angular pseudo-curves of the Megaships.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

None of that is for closer inspection, it is 'good enough' LOD level. Making it more detailed is just sunk dev hours for no good gain. I will take variety and characteristic over fidelity any day, thank you.

LOD is also increasingly tricky to do when you have almost free zoom range.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Sure, after they fix basic problems with ship skins that have been around since release.

 

[RexKraemer]

If this game is to age gracefully then Frontier must do a graphics update. Can we get that during the Beyond season? It could be an optional graphics setting.

Lowest priority in my opinion, maybe for VR people it is more important, I don't know.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I wouldnt be surprised if they upped the graphics in 2018 considering they upped the system requirements...

 

[GG7]

I've got plenty of GPU horsepower to burn with my overlocked EVGA 1080ti FTW3. (2035 Mhz Boost) And a De-lidded/Oced i7 7700k.


I say bring it on!

 

[Cmdr Aeries Hunter]

Not bothered by it at all. If gameplay good, minor details like this are unimportant.

 

[Kaocraft]

I'd like it if they added some higher end graphical detail options to make Elite look like a modern game. I wouldn't use them, because I play on a potato; but it'd be nice to know they're there.

 

[rrobes]

Players don't spend much time looking at those views as the interaction takes place on the selection screens.

Just isn't cost-effective.

Also, IMHO, one of the reasons walking around may not come real soon, if at all.

 

[GraXXoR]

Station interiors do look laughably bad on closer inspection. Everything about them looks awful, really -- almost none of it is designed to be looked at up close. The buildings, the interiors of buildings, the park areas, the trees, the stupid Tonka trucks that drive in circles for no reason, the shipping containers...

Everything looks jarringly heinous. But I guess that's one price to be paid for the game's immense scale, as well as its ability to be played comfortably in VR on midrange cards.

This game has to work on an Xbox. There is a limit to what they can achieve. If the Xbox players cannot experience the fame to the same level as PC players there will be calls of “unfair” and “where’s our discounts?” Etc.

I wouldnt be surprised if they upped the graphics in 2018 considering they upped the system requirements...

Upped the system requirements? So the Xbone can no longer play it?

 

[nosleepdemon]

FD certainly has artists with the skill to retopo those models although I do find myself wondering how many of the LOD levels are hand-made and how many are generated in code from the highest LOD. To use your example of the curved pipe, the second is indeed better visually but the first has better defined (or at least, more easily identifiable by logic rather than visual inspection) edge loops which is a major factor when you are depending on an algorithm to reduce tris for rendering at a lower LOD. Just looking at the geometry without that information is not likely to lead you to an optimum topology, even if what you arrive at "looks better" when rendered at full LOD.

Building on this, if I recall, Quake 3's curves were also limited in their application. For example I don't believe they could form the outer geometry (hull) of a level. When I played about with them in the level editor, I was pretty much just limited to curves about one axis as well. They were a smart idea, as was basically everything John Carmack did except copying Zenimax emails.

 

[Stealthie]

Couldn't really care less TBH.

Game was enjoyable on my Sinclair Spectrum and it's certainly enjoyable on my current PC.

It was never the graphics that made that happen, in either case.


Also, I can't help thinking that if FDev did make the effort to tart up the graphics, all they'd get from the OP is "They shudda spent the time improving the gameplay instead!!!111"

 

[Oopsie Daisy]

I'd rather see more graphics work on planet surfaces and celestial objects before worrying about station interiors.

 

[Serin Vickers]

Re-designing most of the game isn't commercially viable and as such not bound to happen. We'll be stuck with what we already got.

What I'd want most to fix visual quality woes is the option to override the overly aggressive LOD switching. Between the Beta and release Frontier introduced severe pop-in to shave off tiny bits of efficiency for weak systems but unlike most other graphics related matters there's no option modify LOD behaviour for meshes in the settings files.

 

[Cosmo]

Re-designing most of the game isn't commercially viable and as such not bound to happen. We'll be stuck with what we already got.

The same argument could be made about the lighting system, or planetary details that "it's not commercially viable" to update it, because what we have suffices.

It is commercially viable, because good visuals make the game more appealing thus sell more copies and cosmetics. It's not a lot of work to update the station parks and tonka trucks. It would make the game a lot more immersive. They probably have higher polygon models of the ships.

What I'd want most to fix visual quality woes is the option to override the overly aggressive LOD switching. Between the Beta and release Frontier introduced severe pop-in to shave off tiny bits of efficiency for weak systems but unlike most other graphics related matters there's no option modify LOD behaviour for meshes in the settings files.

That would be good, as well as smoothing out the transition between supercruise and normal, and make landing on planets appear seamless.

 

[amadeus1171]

I've got plenty of GPU horsepower to burn with my overlocked EVGA 1080ti FTW3. (2035 Mhz Boost) And a De-lidded/Oced i7 7700k.


I say bring it on!

You should be getting 2088 minimum, and > 2101 with the FTW. Are you water cooling it?