Horizons Is this Ultra quality, or is something up with my system?

[Drelthar]

At about 2:49, I look at a crater on a planet surface.

It looks utterly terrible to me, but I've seen other videos, and screenshots, that look way better, and I'm just wondering if people can tell me if this is actually the ultra graphics quality other people get, or if I'm missing out somehow, and if so, if anyone knows what I could do to make it better.

[video=youtube_share;GM-00skCFgc]https://youtu.be/GM-00skCFgc[/video]

So yeah, anyone confirm my planets are generating ok?

 

[bitstorm]

I cannot say whether it's right or not.

But I would say that that seems to be a lot of terrain that's being drawn.

There are no occluding objects to reduce draw distance, and there is no atmosphere which allows you to significantly cut the draw distance.

I am no graphics expert though.


There is the "terrain work" option in the graphics settings, I think ultra sets this right in the middle which might not be right for your setup. Maybe twiddling that might help.

 

[Pville_Piper]

It is a bit odd that when you select Ultra you still get the terrain pop in. Mess around with the model draw distance and terrain work sliders. Here are my settings and I don't see the terrain pop in with these and my setup (see signature) runs 60 fps locked

 

[Drelthar]

Thanks. I know I maxed terrain work as I noticed while super cruising over a planet, that it very suddenly upgraded the detail level. Thing is... This was after cruising round the entire planet... Wasn't a small planet either, so that is some seriously slow reactions.

Hadn't noticed model draw distance I don't.... Think, but I suspect that's for bases and ships and stations as opposed to planet surfaces. Can't hurt to crank it up if it isn't though! (well except my framerate, but that's over 100fps round planets so I can take a hit)

I'll report back, probably with screenshots though, as those have full resolution and no compression issues.

Maybe I can get a direct comparison from someone else once I have those.

I am mostly concerned about if I am getting max quality compared to others, more than what that quality actually looks like.

 

[MarikMonika]

I'm having your exact problem with my pc. I've tried doing the same things with a different one (more powerful than mine), and the planets actually loads immediatly, even with the same settings. I suspect the more performing pc do a better job even if the settings are set on ultra the same way.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Your PC specs would be helpful here!

 

[MrFailfactory]

Your PC specs would be helpful here!

I too, would like to know this, since he's able to both run VR, and record, at over 100fps.

OP -

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, because you are quite some distance from the ground for a large part of the video - almost 25km when you looked at the crater. I'm not sure what you are expecting it to draw on a barren world, at that altitude, but it should certainly be lacking in some detail because everything should blend together. Perhaps an example of one of these other videos that look a lot better?

One thing you could do is do a pair of runs that are as close to exactly the same as you can make them - one using the VR, and the other not. See if perhaps there is a difference, or any causality.

I confess, that I don't know how (or if) using VR changes how things are rendered - perhaps there is an issue rendering shadows using VR? Just tossing out an idea.

Riôt

 

[varonica]

At about 2:49, I look at a crater on a planet surface.

It looks utterly terrible to me, but I've seen other videos, and screenshots, that look way better, and I'm just wondering if people can tell me if this is actually the ultra graphics quality other people get, or if I'm missing out somehow, and if so, if anyone knows what I could do to make it better.

So yeah, anyone confirm my planets are generating ok?

Without seeing any of the screenshots etc you are referencing against it's hard to say, but you aren't looking at ultra hi-def 4k screenshots are you, because I believe the rift doesn't do 4k. As others say, it's very hard to judge based on the info we have. It looks fine compared to mine, but I am running on a laptop with lower resolution.

 

[Sanderson]

I'll have a guess at it. Astrological bodies in ED surfaces vary so much on the ground. Couple that with a texture stretching/glitching thing in that crater and I can see it looking like that. Especially with head tracking. ED doesn't seem to handle head tracking well in regards to textures, IMO. I get shadow and texture anomalies quite often.

 

[Drelthar]

I'll try find the thread that made me think this.

Above image is from this thread. - LINK

More images from the forums.

I'm not sure, sometimes it just seems like I'm missing some mid distance detail? So I'm trying to figure out if everything is indeed loading in fully. Similar to Obsidian Ants look at nebula representations, that seemed to only load into medium detail level after a certain point.



Also, I'm using an ED Tracker, not VR, don't have one of those cool devices, head tracking works real nice though. (except for the fact that somehow the "joystick" input is linked to frame rate... which is weird!)

Specs. Hmm...

Win7 64 bit

Intel Core I7-4790 CPU @ 4.00Ghz (8CPUs), ~4.0Ghz

16 gig RAM

TWO AMD Radeon R9 290X Graphics cards running in Crossfire.

Need any more info specifically?

Thanks again for taking a look at it folks.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I think some of these shots are used with a graphics enhancer such as reshade or edfx to sharpen the image.

 

[Drelthar]

I think some of these shots are used with a graphics enhancer such as reshade or edfx to sharpen the image.

Yeah, some probly are. The first one is specifically stated to be "vanilla" though, but it's probly not the exact right distance, AND the poster said it was from a particularly interesting planet.

I've seen quite a few other screenshots while looking for the ones I posted up, and it seems like either -

I'm not missing any detail.

Or,

A fair few other people have the same issue.

Not sure which!

 

[Командор]

It seems to me that just early versions of the horizons had more worked surface of planets. But frames per second became more (20-22 vs 40-60 in ultra)!

 

[Foxiol Eagle]

Ehem...there is a way to make 8K resolution screenshots with the game by pressing ALT+F10. I also play in Ultra and the game looks great at 1080p, but once you take one of those massive screenshots you can tell the massive difference in fidelity mostly.

Some pictures of my own:

Some planet:

Spoiler

Spoiler

My Clipper looks quite hot in 8K:

Spoiler

My Python at some planet:

Spoiler

Texture quality at same planet:

Spoiler

Merope 5C:

Spoiler

I always resize those 8K screens (97MB each) to 1080p (5MB) with Gimp (or Photoshop) so they won't loose visual quality (of course you'll loose a lot and won't be the same while zooming in). It will also loose some quality while being uploaded to Imgur for example.

If you are using programs such Fraps or Bandicam (I have both), don't take screenshots in JPG format, use PNG or BMP. But the best thing is to use the in-game one method for the best quality, it will get rid of anti-aliasing in the distance and some artifacts generated by the render distance even al Ultra settings.

 

[MrFailfactory]

Ehem...there is a way to make 8K resolution screenshots with the game by pressing ALT+F10. I also play in Ultra and the game looks great at 1080p, but once you take one of those massive screenshots you can tell the massive difference in fidelity mostly.

Some pictures of my own:

Snip.

I always resize those 8K screens (97MB each) to 1080p (5MB) with Gimp (or Photoshop) so they won't loose visual quality (of course you'll loose a lot and won't be the same while zooming in). It will also loose some quality while being uploaded to Imgur for example.

If you are using programs such Fraps or Bandicam (I have both), don't take screenshots in JPG format, use PNG or BMP. But the best thing is to use the in-game one method for the best quality, it will get rid of anti-aliasing in the distance and some artifacts generated by the render distance even al Ultra settings.

Does this still work? Alt+F10 hasn't worked for me since September. I purchased and run the game through Steam, if that makes a difference, though I have since the beginning.

Riôt

 

[shadragon]

It is a bit odd that when you select Ultra you still get the terrain pop in. Mess around with the model draw distance and terrain work sliders. Here are my settings

What are your pc specs? Ultra settings require a very fast hard drive or ssd preferably.

 

[Wylie28]

Also keep in mind that higher end GPUs actually produce better looking imaged even on the same settings. Remember these graphics are all approximations. A better GPU renders a frame with better color blending that is sharper and more accurate than a lower end GPU would. If you have experience using any sort of sprite editing find a cheap free program and scale a 100x100 circle down to 87x87 or some off number. You will notice a bunch of opaque pixels will be added. If your computer spends little time making a good estimate the sprite can end up looking very bad. However if you have a program that uses a better scaling method the image can look nearly as good as the original 100x100. It just depends on how well the image was scaled. Everything you see on ED is pretty much that. Nothing in the game is being rendered at its optimal viewing distance and the results can vary significantly. Turn on SS 2.0x the image looks drastically better overall. I also would bet a lot of these images you seeing are the higher resolution ones being downscaled.

 

[Thalion Solarstorm]

What are your pc specs? Ultra settings require a very fast hard drive or ssd preferably.

No they dont, just alot of Graphics Memory and more Shaderpower. On Ultra currently up to 6GB GPU Memory are used. Terrain & Textures are generated on the fly - not loaded from HDD.

Cheers!

- - - Updated - - -

Also keep in mind that higher end GPUs actually produce better looking imaged even on the same settings. Remember these graphics are all approximations. A better GPU renders a frame with better color blending that is sharper and more accurate than a lower end GPU would. If you have experience using any sort of sprite editing find a cheap free program and scale a 100x100 circle down to 87x87 or some off number. You will notice a bunch of opaque pixels will be added. If your computer spends little time making a good estimate the sprite can end up looking very bad. However if you have a program that uses a better scaling method the image can look nearly as good as the original 100x100. It just depends on how well the image was scaled. Everything you see on ED is pretty much that. Nothing in the game is being rendered at its optimal viewing distance and the results can vary significantly. Turn on SS 2.0x the image looks drastically better overall. I also would bet a lot of these images you seeing are the higher resolution ones being downscaled.

This is somewhat true. A Lowend GPU can produce the same Image Quality tho, provided it has enough Memory - ofc not while maintaining playable framerates.

Cheers!

 

[SpacialKatana]

Graphic quality has always been on the slide since release b/c of future release to consoles. This game has to run on the Potato Station 4 soon, don't expect it to stress your PC anytime soon.

[haha]

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

Does this still work? Alt+F10 hasn't worked for me since September. I purchased and run the game through Steam, if that makes a difference, though I have since the beginning.

Riôt

It doesn't work in open, only in solo and in private groups.