If there were any doubts about inter-system supercuise

MechaRanger · Jul 22, 2015

Just in case anyone was still not sure about inter-system super-cruising, i.e. flying to another system without jumping via frame shift:

I started from about 2.7mil Ls (The Zeta Doradus System is about 2.7mil Ls from Benoit which is where I started.)

Skipping all the boring time between, here is me at the supposed "Zeta Doradus" proving that inter-system flight is not possible via super-cruise due to the instance method used by FD.

P.S. After that I jumped to Zeta Doradus from 4.79Ls away. I know the frame shift drive into witch space is just for giving your computer time to load the next system, but I just thought it was funny that it took about 8 seconds to frame shift for a total of 4.79Ls. xD

Sergio Smegolia · Jul 22, 2015

Good effort but it has been done before with similar results.

I dont know what you expect. 1. 400 billion star systems as a single piece of data? Or 2. each system held separately and loaded during hyperspace.

2 sounds far more likely to me

Kayweg · Jul 22, 2015

There were no doubts, it has been done.

Kudos for the effort though, many newer players may not have been aware of that

Ignition · Jul 22, 2015

Welcome to the not seamless game. Instances everywhere.

CMDR Alex Occasus · Jul 22, 2015

Sorry there wasn't a T-shirt!

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Sergio Smegolia said:
Good effort but it has been done before with similar results.

I dont know what you expect. 1. 400 billion star systems as a single piece of data? Or 2. each system held separately and loaded during hyperspace.

2 sounds far more likely to me

Data-wise, that makes sense on Frontier's budget. Your bubble is your bubble, It would be terrible overhead to try and scan for remote bubble interferences for surrounding systems for everyone playing everywhere.

Besides. Why wouldn't you just Hyperdrive?

As a game design, makes sense to me.

Cmdr. Numa · Jul 22, 2015

I hope one day they change that to an on the fly loading system. You only need two systems at any given time. If the player starts supercruising towards another system, the game could start and load the second system, while the player is cruising. The instance is expanded to span both systems during the transition. Once the player finally arrives, the system behind him is being unloaded and removed from the instance. Welcome to the seamless instance system. Things do get more complicated if several players within an instance start supercruising towards different systems. But why should that ever happen ? The only ones I can imagine who would want to supercruise to another system are explorers, and those are usually alone out there.

Voxoid · Jul 22, 2015

Cmdr derp did a similar thing recently and made a thread earlier today.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=168632

Bortas · Jul 22, 2015

Cmdr. Numa said:
I hope one day they change that to an on the fly loading system. You only need two systems at any given time. If the player starts supercruising towards another system, the game could start and load the second system, while the player is cruising. The instance is expanded to span both systems during the transition. Once the player finally arrives, the system behind him is being unloaded and removed from the instance. Welcome to the seamless instance system. Things do get more complicated if several players within an instance start supercruising towards different systems. But why should that ever happen ? The only ones I can imagine who would want to supercruise to another system are explorers, and those are usually alone out there.

TbH it's pretty much a non-issue. I wouldn't expect anyone to supercruise to another system for hours when they can just hyperjump there in a few seconds, except the few proof-of-concept cases.

Nobody will ever notice it in normal play so changing anything about it is a waste of ressources.

Tinman · Jul 22, 2015

Ignition said:
Welcome to the not seamless game. Instances everywhere.

Welcome to games...there is no thing as a truly seamless game. It all has to do with how you stream in the data and load things in a way the user doesn't see.

Making the game seamless between stars isn't really that big of a challenge. If you can load in a new system during the seconds it takes to jump there you can certainly load it in during a supercruise trip that take hours. The loading would have to be different though. That takes dev time and since there is no gameplay reason for doing this at the moment they haven't focused on it.

I say this because I asked about it more than a year ago and the answer was that they might make it possible at some point, but only if there was some interesting gameplay reason for it. Until then it's very low down on "the list".

Cmdr Eagleboy · Jul 22, 2015

Errr, FD said about more than year ago that it is something they can fix, but it is obviously very low on todo list.

Ignition · Jul 22, 2015

Tinman said:
Welcome to games...there is no thing as a truly seamless game. It all has to do with how you stream in the data and load things in a way the user doesn't see.

Making the game seamless between stars isn't really that big of a challenge. If you can load in a new system during the seconds it takes to jump there you can certainly load it in during a supercruise trip that take hours. The loading would have to be different though. That takes dev time and since there is no gameplay reason for doing this at the moment they haven't focused on it.

I say this because I asked about it more than a year ago and the answer was that they might make it possible at some point, but only if there was some interesting gameplay reason for it. Until then it's very low down on "the list".

They simply didnt try, they make it instanced to make the online easier. Its always because of the online requirement this game fails everytime. Look at when you drop to a station, something super simple and its IMO very disappointing the way its implemented.

Retu81 · Jul 22, 2015

I guess you mean 2.7 mil Ls (light *seconds*). 2.7 million light years would be somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy. A long way to supercruise.

Winterwalker · Jul 22, 2015

Garix said:
Why waste Dev resources on something that a tiny fraction of the population would do once?

Before reboot/repair there may of been a tiny chance of needing to SC to the next Star system. Now, not so much.

I think this is a little bit the same as "why render ice planets", few explorers scan them? Reason of course is because they're there. For me, even if it doesn't have explicit game use (though I can imagine a few, eg. what if your wing, with fuel support vessel, could sneak past a permit system. It's a Sagg*A trip on its own!) it's something that would be great to see developed. Naturally, resource dependent as to when, it may only have reasons of "completeness", but that's vaild.

Periodically someone tries this journey, and we get a post like this. To my mind you can explain the hyperspace exit as a pilot whiteout on rapid decelleration (if it's argued that you must have hyperspace / instance change between systems). But if exploring near galaxy centre, with stars in close proximity to each other, supercruising, only to find an empty system, when the clear statement has always been "you can travel to every star in the night sky" only serves to undermine the reality, of great work on the galaxy as a whole, and (as well as being an interesting computational problem to deliver you to a system's outskirt, for a change) this would knit the space together, my opinion, and will always get my plus one.

+1

AnnuverScotinExile · Jul 22, 2015

MechaRanger said:
Skipping all the boring time between, here is me at the supposed "Zeta Doradus" proving that inter-system flight is not possible via super-cruise due to the instance method used by FD.

It proves no such thing.

All it proves is that FD have chosen (quite rightly given all the other core stuff that is missing) not to put resources into writing such code yet. Yes, such code would be awkward to write, since there would not be a transition from one form of travel to another where they can do all the handshaking, and so on, that is necessary for a ship to join an existing instance. But they could do that, if they chose, in some form of 'look ahead' processing whilst the ship is supercruising along. Or they could simply keep the existing instance that the player is in, so a single player instance appears in the new system, which may already have another multiplayer instance active. Perfectly doable. Far more important things to do.

Cmdr Eagleboy · Jul 22, 2015

AnnuverScotinExile said:
It proves no such thing.

All it proves is that FD have chosen (quite rightly given all the other core stuff that is missing) not to put resources into writing such code yet. Yes, such code would be awkward to write, since there would not be a transition from one form of travel to another where they can do all the handshaking, and so on, that is necessary for a ship to join an existing instance. But they could do that, if they chose, in some form of 'look ahead' processing whilst the ship is supercruising along. Or they could simply keep the existing instance that the player is in, so a single player instance appears in the new system, which may already have another multiplayer instance active. Perfectly doable. Far more important things to do.

Well written technical explanation. Rep +1 from me

trollson · Jul 22, 2015

Was the final Jump only 4.79Ls range, or was it the "full" 2.7MLs distance between the two systems? (could you tell?)

Is would be interesting to determine, because it would mean that we could "stretch" our jump ranges by loading up fuel tanks and supercruising part of the way - possibly even staging "fuel dump" ships along the way.

Unfluffydave · Jul 22, 2015

Ignition said:
Welcome to the not seamless game. Instances everywhere.

You imply there IS a seamless game around. What makes one game better in that regard is how they handle the transitions, EVE and Elite do that the same way with jumping between systems being the "loading screen" so they appear to be seamless.

If/when planetary landings happen I expect they will be similar to jumping between systems, you will have a transition phase with your view outside obscured by plasma effects and your controls disabled before appearing in atmosphere. I have no proof of this or inside knowledge, just conjecture based on what the game currently does.

kapparomeo · Jul 22, 2015

Yeah, I tried the same thing myself a while back. I didn't have enough fuel for a jump, but I thought I could beat the system by staying in supercruise! Alas, the dodge missed.

Tinman · Jul 22, 2015

Ignition said:
They simply didnt try, they make it instanced to make the online easier. Its always because of the online requirement this game fails everytime. Look at when you drop to a station, something super simple and its IMO very disappointing the way its implemented.

Online has nothing to do with this (supercruising between systems). The original Frontier/FFE wasn't online and it had the same restrictions. Other programs like SpaceEngine has seamless movement between stars BUT, and this is a big but, being able to move freely and quickly around the galaxy/universe is the whole point of that program so there it made perfect sense to implement. Very few people will ever try to supercruise between systems simply because it will take too long. That's why they haven't put dev time into it for the moment.

The world in ED isn't really "instanced" either in a physical way. Try approaching a station without having it selected and then dropping out maybe 100km away from it. The station will appear correctly based on where you pressed the button. You can then "slow boat" in towards it and still see NPCs (and players if they are there) as normal. The "instance" has to do with what you can see around you in terms of NPCs and other players. The world itself is the same though. What you see in SC is the same thing you see in normal space. Certain 3D models might not be loaded though while in SC (asteroids, stations) because you pass by them so fast that that serves very little purpose. At least in regards to asteroids, stations could potentially be improved beyond the blue dot IMO.

I agree that the transition between SC and normal space could be improved though and there are some relatively simple fixes that would help a lot with the experience. None of which are restricted by the online component.

The biggest issue right now is that the moment you press the button you snap into the new position and then stay there shaking until everything has loaded. A better approach would be for your ship to start off the transition at the location you pressed the button (not where it will end up) and then automatically orient itself towards the target while gradually moving from the drop out location to the location you end up in when entering normal space. This would make the experience a lot more seamless.

Navigare Necesse Est · Jul 22, 2015

IT'S ALL MADE UP! Just an illusion! I saw the untextured walls! I've hit the skybox! I've seen the abyss when falling through the map. Games are all but a big lie. Just like theatre. And movies.