Hyperjump visuals need to be updated

[Mr. Torgue]

Hi everybody! I'm aallly sorry if this has been discussed before, I've searched for similar threads, but no luck. There's a lotta threads, it's tedious to scan them all manually.

Alright, those sprites coming right in your face while in hyperjump.. Oh, those are annoying because they're repetative. "Tunnel" ones are ok but look cheap aswell. I'm not participating in 2.4 open beta so I'm writing it here in general discussion, but I hope for improvements in 2.4. Visuals were updated in 2.2 iirc, but they're still not really good. Maybe it's time for more cool FX or more diverse sprites at least?

 

[FoxTwo]

Hi everybody! I'm aallly sorry if this has been discussed before, I've searched for similar threads, but no luck. There's a lotta threads, it's tedious to scan them all manually.

Alright, those sprites coming right in your face while in hyperjump.. Oh, those are annoying because they're repetative. "Tunnel" ones are ok but look cheap aswell. I'm not participating in 2.4 open beta so I'm writing it here in general discussion, but I hope for improvements in 2.4. Visuals were updated in 2.2 iirc, but they're still not really good. Maybe it's time for more cool FX or more diverse sprites at least?

Did you mean those white streaks of "space dust" coming at you?

Yeah people have been moaning about them for quite a while already. I believe there may be mods out there that removes these, though I personally don't mind those space dust particles

As for the whispy smokey things... they aren't sprites. They are real 3D objects (clearly visible if you're in VR mode or in 3D Vision mode).

 

[Dietger]

Agreeing with Mr. Torgue here.
While Frontier constantly works on the jump scene, I am still not convinced.
Can't help myself, but I think the STARWARS approach was more what one would expect to see leaping forward in spacetime. Ok, they have bigger Dinos to fry, granted.
Just saying.

 

[bisador]

I've always wondered why we see stars and nebulae whizzing past you when jumping to the next system? Surely its just the normal stars you can see moving slightly towards you, but not whizzing past like you were travelling much further. Don't get it.

 

[Mr. Torgue]

Did you mean those white streaks of "space dust" coming at you?

White particles are good. No, I mean those "smokey things". No matter if those are 3D objects, they look flat on a monitor, and they are the same for every hyperjump in the whole galaxy. I don't know what they are, maybe some interstellar plasma clouds, but anyway they shouldn't look the same, especially when you fly through them every time you travel to another star system. It looks so.. artificial, because naturally no two clouds are the same. Games usually use some blend techniques, or on-the-fly generation e.g. for clouds. So I'd rather have an option to disable those "smokey things" and fly through white particles only.

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

There is no such Thing as hyperjump (yet), so any implementation is based on artistic freedom and can be anything. Appreciation of artistic work is per se purely subjective.

Maybe you find it repetitive because the E: D galaxy is HUGE and therefore you Need to jump often?

To me it is quite well done.

Bare in mind that the hyperjump is like switching to another Dimension to shorten the path between two Points. Another Dimension means it can be anything. You could be seeing your ship travelling through someone's large intestine and exiting through a fecal orifice and it would still be as "realistic" as it can get.

 

[Mr. Torgue]

I've always wondered why we see stars and nebulae whizzing past you when jumping to the next system? Surely its just the normal stars you can see moving slightly towards you, but not whizzing past like you were travelling much further. Don't get it.

I guess those are not stars actually, it's just dust and meteoroids "living" in interstellar space. They reflect light so they're shiny. It's just my guess, I know nothing about how it works in real life. It's just a game, we can't observe hyperjumps with our eyes irl, so it's all about theories.

 

[SAB380]

We need to see Braben's smiling head in the center of the screen.

 

[Mr. Torgue]

There is no such Thing as hyperjump (yet), so any implementation is based on artistic freedom and can be anything. Appreciation of artistic work is per se purely subjective.

You may hyperjump twice and see all those "clouds" coming at ya. Okay, we can say that we don't know how this can look like. But here comes simple common sense: if someone depicts clouds of plasma and dust, will they be the same (not similar, exactly the same, like they're manmade) for every single jump between every two star systems? Nope. The only explanation of this is we travel through the same abstract pre-made "pipe", but we don't because those clouds are randomized and may repeat twice during one hyperjump.

And while in hyperjump you can see a star you jump to (and it's getting bigger as you getting closer), and your direction clearly indicates that you travel between two stars (exactly like it's pictured on the galaxy map), so your "another dimension" thing doesn't really work here.

 

[Stealthie]

Can't help myself, but I think the STARWARS approach was more what one would expect to see leaping forward in spacetime.

I've always wondered why we see stars and nebulae whizzing past you when jumping to the next system? Surely its just the normal stars you can see moving slightly towards you, but not whizzing past like you were travelling much further. Don't get it.

Trouble is, the same thing applies to the "Star Wars" visuals.
If you're jumping hundreds of Ly then you might expect to see the "white tunnel", just as you might expect to see systems and nebulas whizzing past, but not when you're jumping from one system to an adjacent one.

I guess the best explanation might be that frameshift creates some kind of non-linear pathway between places so you see a whole heap of other stuff on the way from A to B - kind of like walking along a corridor and seeing what's in all the rooms along the way.
Although the frameshift drive is primarily altering things in front of, and behind, your ship it is (presumably) encapsulating your ship in some kind of "bubble" which'd mean it might also have an effect on things peripheral to you - effectively compressing the galaxy all around you as you move forward through that compressed galaxy.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

I've always wondered why we see stars and nebulae whizzing past you when jumping to the next system? Surely its just the normal stars you can see moving slightly towards you, but not whizzing past like you were travelling much further. Don't get it.

Keep in mind that when you're in the Witchspace tunnel the space around you is not 'our' space at all, it's somewhere else where the speed of light doesn't apply. It's some other space/reality entirely.

Those aren't stars and nebulae that you're seeing. At least, not our stars and nebulae.

You can see the light from the star you're jumping to due to the exit interface allowing photons from 'our' space to bleed into Witchspace.

 

[Dietger]

I've always wondered why we see stars and nebulae whizzing past you when jumping to the next system? Surely its just the normal stars you can see moving slightly towards you, but not whizzing past like you were travelling much further. Don't get it.

Absolute. The nebula seem way out of place. Hopefully Frontier tries a more "scientific" approach one day, would love it.

 

[Stealthie]

Keep in mind that when you're in the Witchspace tunnel the space around you is not 'our' space at all, it's somewhere else where the speed of light doesn't apply. It's some other space/reality entirely.

I hate to ask but, are we actually in "Witchspace" these days?

I'm not sure where I got the idea but I thought the current "Frameshift" technology was supposed to be something that had superceded the "Witchspace drives" of previous games.

Or, are they supposed to be different technologies that both take advantage of the phenomena called "Witchspace"?

 

[Eros]

You might actually expect to see something akin to what was visualized by interstellar for their passage through the wormhole.

The best explanation for the frameshift drive is that in super-cruise it is acting as an Alcubierre drive, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

The process of hyperspace jump, for me always feels like they are going for a wormhole drive or Einstein-Rosen bridge generator. You would thus get some kind of tunnel effect with extremely hard to interpret visuals. A tunnel with what looks like dust and clouds and stars... yeah works i think

 

[GreyAreaUK]

I hate to ask but, are we actually in "Witchspace" these days?

I'm not sure where I got the idea but I thought the current "Frameshift" technology was supposed to be something that had superceded the "Witchspace drives" of previous games.

Or, are they supposed to be different technologies that both take advantage of the phenomena called "Witchspace"?

I tend towards the latter, mostly (I admit) because I love the name 'Witchspace'

 

[Mr. Torgue]

Okay, theories aside, I just think it would be better if those clouds in hyperjump could use some blend technique to look natural. Now it does not make much sense. I guess FD knows it already.

 

[bisador]

i think it would look better if it were a bit like the Google Maps street view method. try it. Go to street view then click the arrows to go forward on a street. It seems to blur the bits you pass in a sort of hyper jump kind-a-way

probably copy write or some such voodoo though

 

[Jukelo]

I hate to ask but, are we actually in "Witchspace" these days?

I'm not sure where I got the idea but I thought the current "Frameshift" technology was supposed to be something that had superceded the "Witchspace drives" of previous games.

Or, are they supposed to be different technologies that both take advantage of the phenomena called "Witchspace"?

Yes, our current hyperspace drives shove us into witch space like the old ones, they're just better at it.

 

[Drelthar]

Looks cool to me.

 

[Xious]

I have never liked the witch space sequence. It just doesn't convey any feeling of speed.

One time my game glitched just as the sequence initiated and it was stuck in a loop where there was this translucent blue tube that I was flying thru...

That actually looked much better.

Watching ships enter hyperspace from outside though, looks great.