Is the Stellar Forge and ED becoming Outdated?

[PS4 Pro - PC] earthtone99

[PS4 Pro - PC] earthtone99
SenseiMatty said:
It's actually a shame that a space game that simulates star systems with multiple stars was not designed from start to be capable of generating multiple light sources (2 stars at least).

But Stellar Forge got another very big weak point:

The light source comes only from the star that is considered as such in the system map:
for example "Collection of Wonders" (Skaude AA-A h294) got a lot of stars, but these are defined as planets in the system map.
The only two stars considered as such are the 2 black holes. The result is that the complete system is dark, even the rings around the red dwarf are pitch dark. This is a huge "bug" and it clearly shows the limitation of the graphical engine.

View attachment 172758

DARK RING around a star???
View attachment 172761
Click to expand...

Wow, that system is insane, thanks for sharing!
But as you say, illustrates a very significant issue with ELITE. Light sources are a huge problem as they currently stand.

The whole lighting engine would need a rework to fix this, if it were ever possible.

o7
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
The title is misleading - I thought this was about how Stellar Forge isn't keeping up with the star catalogs and discoveries like IRL black holes.

To the topic of graphics, ED is both the best of games and the worst of games. Sometimes when the lighting is right, in the right setting (location), this game looks photorealistic to me. I follow both ED CMDRs and NASA stuff on Twitter, and there have been times when I've mistaken ED screenshots for NASA photos and vice-versa. But there are other parts of the game that are just ridiculously dated, like the parks in the posh stations that use FS 2000 graphics.

There is even a difference between ships using the same graphics engine. Compare the cockpit of the newer Krait to the older Python, for example. This is especially noticeable in VR, where the Krait and Mamba feel "real" to me, but many other ships feel more like being inside a video game.

Speaking of VR, while everyone else worries about whether New Era will support VR, I worry if my PC will support NE VR. Things like core mining already kill my framerate in VR, so I'm guessing that realistic atmospheric planets that the OP wants will force me to play ED in 2D regardless if VR is officially supported or not, at least until I can someday upgrade to a $10,000 gaming rig. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
Old Duck said:
The title is misleading - I thought this was about how Stellar Forge isn't keeping up with the star catalogs and discoveries like IRL black holes.

To the topic of graphics, ED is both the best of games and the worst of games. Sometimes when the lighting is right, in the right setting (location), this game looks photorealistic to me. I follow both ED CMDRs and NASA stuff on Twitter, and there have been times when I've mistaken ED screenshots for NASA photos and vice-versa. But there are other parts of the game that are just ridiculously dated, like the parks in the posh stations that use FS 2000 graphics.

There is even a difference between ships using the same graphics engine. Compare the cockpit of the newer Krait to the older Python, for example. This is especially noticeable in VR, where the Krait and Mamba feel "real" to me, but many other ships feel more like being inside a video game.

Speaking of VR, while everyone else worries about whether New Era will support VR, I worry if my PC will support NE VR. Things like core mining already kill my framerate in VR, so I'm guessing that realistic atmospheric planets that the OP wants will force me to play ED in 2D regardless if VR is officially supported or not, at least until I can someday upgrade to a $10,000 gaming rig. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
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I would pay money for refurbished Lakon cockpits...
 
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THECATISDEAD

T
Bigmaec said:
Coinsi

I would pay money for refurbished Lakon cockpits...
Click to expand...

Don't worry, for 10k ARGHS you will be able to get updated cockpit views. That's the base DLC though. If you want to see outside your window, you will have to pay an additional 2k ARGHS to upgrade the metal panels to single glazed windows. You can then apply G1-5 glazing engineering once you've unlocked Roland Everest engineer.
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
earthtone99 said:
Wow, that system is insane, thanks for sharing!
But as you say, illustrates a very significant issue with ELITE. Light sources are a huge problem as they currently stand.

The whole lighting engine would need a rework to fix this, if it were ever possible.

o7
Click to expand...
TBH I expected this fix in 2018 when they promised a lot of graphical updates for Beyond 3.3, but apart from some color filter and the dark side of planets there wasn't anything else very noticeable.
 
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Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
SenseiMatty said:
TBH I expected this fix in 2018 when they promised a lot of graphical updates for Beyond 3.3, but apart from some color filter and the dark side of planets there wasn't nothing else very noticeable.
Click to expand...
May I suggest removing nothing and replacing it with anything?
The double negative, in English, makes it overall positive - so you are effectively saying there was very noticable things :)
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
Old Duck said:
The title is misleading - I thought this was about how Stellar Forge isn't keeping up with the star catalogs and discoveries like IRL black holes.

To the topic of graphics, ED is both the best of games and the worst of games. Sometimes when the lighting is right, in the right setting (location), this game looks photorealistic to me. I follow both ED CMDRs and NASA stuff on Twitter, and there have been times when I've mistaken ED screenshots for NASA photos and vice-versa. But there are other parts of the game that are just ridiculously dated, like the parks in the posh stations that use FS 2000 graphics.

There is even a difference between ships using the same graphics engine. Compare the cockpit of the newer Krait to the older Python, for example. This is especially noticeable in VR, where the Krait and Mamba feel "real" to me, but many other ships feel more like being inside a video game.

Speaking of VR, while everyone else worries about whether New Era will support VR, I worry if my PC will support NE VR. Things like core mining already kill my framerate in VR, so I'm guessing that realistic atmospheric planets that the OP wants will force me to play ED in 2D regardless if VR is officially supported or not, at least until I can someday upgrade to a $10,000 gaming rig. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Click to expand...
The imperial cutter interiors are terrible from this point of view. You can clearly see the polygons in what is supposed to be a round objects.


Wayland Pentonville said:
May I suggest removing nothing and replacing it with anything?
The double negative, in English, makes it overall positive - so you are effectively saying there was very noticable things :)
Click to expand...
Oops... thanks :oops:
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
Crank Larson said:
E: D supports textures up to at least 16k (though likely much higher). Low resolution textures are due to your settings and hardware.
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Can you show what this park in a starport looks like with 16k textures? I almost mistook it for a 15 year old game. :LOL: It'll require a major graphics update for ED to look like a proper current or next-gen game.

iNlgxCg.png
 

VR SenseiMatty

VR SenseiMatty
Cosmo said:
Can you show what this park in a starport looks like with 16k textures? I almost mistook it for a 15 year old game. :LOL: It'll require a major graphics update for ED to look like a proper current or next-gen game.

iNlgxCg.png
Click to expand...
If FDEV does things properly there will be a transition (hopefully almost seamless) between flying and walking.
So these parks remain light in terms of polygons count during flight, and become more accurate during walking.
If they just make it more complex always it will be a disaster too in terms of system performance.
 

govny

govny
unreal engine didn't introduce planet scale environment.
What you see in that video is misleading.
I post one replay to that video from tow Unreal Engine users:
"it’s the spherical shader the mentioned in the beginning. It’s applied to the landscape material and it warps the vertices the higher you go. It’s purely visual so collision and physics still happen on a plane but the planet underneath you wraps into a sphere"
"Yeah but there's also the downside that only the renderer treats the terrain as a sphere. Raycasts and collisions are still using the flat landscape, which is actually larger than what is looks like when you are high up. All actors that are on the landscape and need to be seen from space also have to be using the same vertex shader, otherwise they'll remain floating in space where their actual locations are. Games like No Man's Sky convert the terrain to an actual sphere when leaving the planets so this shader trick is only useful when you are relatively close to the planet."
"Yes Dr Steak is entirely correct. Within an actual gameplay/production scenario what I did would only work if (just like I did) the actual playable area is restricted to the top center of the planet only. It would not be possible to build gameplay content anywhere on the surface of the planet without large scale engine changes. What you see here avoids that, so there is no plugin used or anything special. It are all just material tricks in combination with the awesome new atmosphere rendering. "
 

govny

govny
Cosmo said:
Can you show what this park in a starport looks like with 16k textures? I almost mistook it for a 15 year old game. :LOL: It'll require a major graphics update for ED to look like a proper current or next-gen game.

iNlgxCg.png
Click to expand...

it is not an engine limitation as you can see looking at Planet Zoo scenes from the same engine. It is a low poli low tex simply because they try to reduce resource cost since that scene it is not usually seen during game play.
 

CaptainPugwash

CaptainPugwash
Cosmo said:
Can you show what this park in a starport looks like with 16k textures? I almost mistook it for a 15 year old game. :LOL: It'll require a major graphics update for ED to look like a proper current or next-gen game.

iNlgxCg.png
Click to expand...
This is the sort of scenario in which space-legs would require a big improvement to be sure, but it still looks fine when flying past in your ship. The other consideration is VR: a lot of games that demonstrate cutting edge graphics don't support VR.
 
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