ANNOUNCEMENT January Update - Beta Announcement

[Thatchinho]

Just FYI, from what we've been told, not only are there no POIs, but non-landable planets don't currently have a real surface. They only get a generated texture - terrain generation is not run at all.

The aspect of this that really puzzles me is that FSS results for planets with only bio sites can apparently be generated quite quickly. It seems like those would also depend on terrain generation for placement. I wonder if, for bio sites, there is a short circuit whereby their existence and approximate position is determined while the terrain generation is still at a coarse level. That would explain why the sites sometimes jump around on final approach - perhaps the exact placement is only determined when the fine terrain mesh is generated.

Well the thing with the planets with just Bio sites is that they’re all landables without volcanism.

I’d always wondered similarly if the issue was just with geo sites, but from what Stephen said it’s both geo and bio, which means it’s the volcanism part where the issue is. That actually makes a lot of sense as simming up a planet with active geology would presumably be quite a bit more involved than simming up an inactive planet.

Also, some bio sites definitely have a location dependency on specific surface features. Ejecta craters in the case I know of, but that’s quite a large scale feature. However, similar and more fine scale dependencies may well be there as well.

 

[Soron Silin]

5 days is not long enough for beta testing ..... if FD are serious about the tests. It would take a couple of days to get out into the black , let alone test the FSS seriously out there

There will be people out in the black. In fact there's a good chance I'm 1,600 ly out. (I don't fly far; plenty of fun stuff close in.)
Unscanned systems start about 800ly out and by 1,500 ly they're almost all unscanned unless you're on a line to a nebula, Sag A* etc.

 

[Oldviboy]

Ok, firstly there is a genuine issue. Perhaps it doesn't particularly effect you.

To explain.

• If a body is non-landable the scan results return instantly.
  
  
• If a body is landable but doesn't have volcanism, then scan results return in a few seconds.
  
  
• If a body is landable and has volcanism, then scan results return take a lot longer to return. It can run up to nearly a minute for me personally.

Also, while a landable with volcanism is being processed, that causes a bottleneck / block in processing, and if other landable bodies are scanned while that is still going on then they will also be effected and will slow down resulting in a long processing backlog if a system has multiple landables with volcanism.

It's also worth noting that the delays effect scan results for all types of POI, Human, Thargoid, Guardian, Other, and not just the Geo and Bio POIs.

Does that explain the problem, and why it can have significant impact?

being realistic , there is not so much variety of bio / geos / vulcanism to consider important until they add something else, if they ever do.
Personally,If I go alone to explore, I take it easy, scan and then look at the system map in case it is worth going down, honestly only go to the planet to see a different type of topography than I have seen, or if it has a beautiful landscape in the background for a photograph, I know the kind of things I can find in poi´s and where to look for them
, I do not have much interest in seeing a tree or a geiser that I already saw on other planet or for the money.
If I see them it is much better, besides that once you have been interested in that planet and have approached / descended to the planet, they appear on your left panel.

I don't know, i´m sorry if i sound like I want everyone to play like me, but it's not true,what I mean is that I don't see it as important as to spend time and resources to "fix it." That is really my thought about this.

 

[Soron Silin]

And we get...
Yeah that's real game breaking stuff right there.....

Maybe it's not game-breaking. But it's pretty <expletive> annoying

That's not cropped or enhanced; it's exactly what came out of the screen capture, scaled down to fit the forum.

I believe it's somewhat better after the September fix, but it's still there and still makes it impossible to take shots with high contract.

 

[Han Zulu]

Maybe it's not game-breaking. But it's pretty <expletive> annoying

And considering that some players play this game for the views and experience. It might be game breaking for them. We should never downplay the importance of a negative experience for some players. After all, I'm sure Frontier want as many as possible players to like the game and pay for paint jobs to support further development.

 

[Thatchinho]

being realistic , there is not so much variety of bio / geos / vulcanism to consider important until they add something else, if they ever do.

Ok, so then logically the masking of other types of POI because of the delay in the geo / bios represents a problem. Yes/no?

Personally,If I go alone to explore, I take it easy, scan and then look at the system map in case it is worth going down, honestly only go to the planet to see a different type of topography than I have seen, or if it has a beautiful landscape in the background for a photograph, I know the kind of things I can find in poi´s and where to look for them

Lots of things aren't shown in the System Map. Prior to 3.3, the only way to find some things was fully searching planets using the MK 1 eyeball, (i.e. flying over the entire surface at a couple of km height) as they did not show on any scanners whatsoever. Do you know where to find all of those things?

Maybe you're not interested in those things and are only interested in the particular set of things you know how to find?

, I do not have much interest in seeing a tree or a geiser that I already saw on other planet or for the money.
If I see them it is much better, besides that once you have been interested in that planet and have approached / descended to the planet, they appear on your left panel.

I don't think I correctly understand what you're saying here. The first bit seems to say you're not interested in seeing some things, whereas the second bit seems to say that it's better if you do see them. I guess that's not what you mean, but I'm not sure what you do mean.

I don't know, i´m sorry if i sound like I want everyone to play like me, but it's not true,what I mean is that I don't see it as important as to spend time and resources to "fix it." That is really my thought about this.

Ok, so it's not something you see as an issue for you. That's fine. However that's a pretty poor criteria for determining whether time and resources should be spent on the issue.

 

[Six6VI]

Given the way it works already:

• Some bodies scan instantly with no POIs
• Some bodies scan in 2-3 seconds with no POIs
• Some bodies take 20-30 seconds with POIs

I would think there is the possibility of a three-stage notification. First you get a "Likely", then you get "Present" and then "24 Geological".

That would mean getting information from the running GPU process though, and I think that would be a problem. It might be possible to do it based on run-time, just as we do now, but we wouldn't know if the extra time was because of Geo sites or Bio sites -- it couldn't differentiate them.

All in all, I'd prefer the proposed system with additions to report on the number of sites on the System Map.

Having the surface generation wait until DSS makes logical sense, but it's a big change to the game-play and it's unnecessary. FD have always prioritised game-play over simulation veracity. Look at multi-crew for example; you don't have to be in the same place to join a ship. Holo-presence is the only interstellar FTL information transfer that exists in the game.

Additionally, it makes no sense that the number of POIs is only reported in the FSS. It should always have been in the System Map.

Based on the feedback in this thread, some bodies with volcanism take a while to scan with no POIs.

Agreed the POIs should show up in the system map data panels in a more accessible way so there's no need to scroll down on every landable to show the results at the bottom of the list, and they really should show up on the surface level map of each planet, and that feature should show in the orrery.

I was actually thinking a step ahead, to when we get access to gas giants and landable atmospherics.

 

[Six6VI]

Or having an extra "deep scan" button in the FSS when a planet is focused. Let's say the FSS reports the basic information, but to get the scan you have to press another button. Granted, it adds one extra click-step to get the info, but then you have a choice to wait the 5, 10, 30 seconds or whatever. And you can actually make the choice based on the volcanic activity. Currently, I'm only interested if there are POIs on specific geysers/magmas, and don't care about the other. Perhaps this extra button could be something you can turn on or off (automation, i.e. works the way it works now, auto-scan without pressing button), giving people who want to scan everything at all times the chance to turn on the auto-scan.

That solution doesn't require any changes to how Frontier is resolving the map and POIs at all. It's only an extra "auto-scan" option in the system panel for the FSS, and add one button in the controls that you can assign. People who wants to keep the current system: turn on auto-deep-scan. People like me who only want to scan specific planets: turn off auto-deep-scan and assign a button to "deep-scan" giving me the control in the FSS when to do it or not.


And yes, if you do a deep-scan the count should be put in the sysmap. DSS not needed.


Also, after making the FSS assigning the locations, I think they can scrap the DSS. Only purpose is to make extra credits. Unless they could add more things that could be discovered with the DSS that actually would be fun to find.

Scrapping the DSS may not be possible, depending on how FD plan to integrate gas giants and atmos.

 

[Six6VI]

Well the thing with the planets with just Bio sites is that they’re all landables without volcanism.

I’d always wondered similarly if the issue was just with geo sites, but from what Stephen said it’s both geo and bio, which means it’s the volcanism part where the issue is. That actually makes a lot of sense as simming up a planet with active geology would presumably be quite a bit more involved than simming up an inactive planet.

Also, some bio sites definitely have a location dependency on specific surface features. Ejecta craters in the case I know of, but that’s quite a large scale feature. However, similar and more fine scale dependencies may well be there as well.

Way out possibility: Is the delay linked to sub-surface features eg. caves or resource fissures we can't currently access pending legs / EVA or some kind of mining machinery placement mini-game in future?

 

[Six6VI]

There will be people out in the black. In fact there's a good chance I'm 1,600 ly out. (I don't fly far; plenty of fun stuff close in.)
Unscanned systems start about 800ly out and by 1,500 ly they're almost all unscanned unless you're on a line to a nebula, Sag A* etc.

Was near Barnards Loop recently and was surprised how few Col 69 Sector systems weren't mapped.

 

[Burke]

How does the old saying go, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."
(Not to be confused with the far more recent, "Twitter is not reality.")

We squabbled on here for best part of a year and nobody cared.

I saw ST voyager tonight... they used the full spectrum scanner. Word for word.

 

[Thatchinho]

Way out possibility: Is the delay linked to sub-surface features eg. caves or resource fissures we can't currently access pending legs / EVA or some kind of mining machinery placement mini-game in future?

As I understand it, yes and no. It's linked to the simulation of sub-surface activity but only to the extent that that sub-surface activity determines the surface. I don't think that the simulation of sub-surface activity results in sub-surface features though.

For reference, here's some of the things that the system and planet generation takes into account / works through:

Source: FD stream - Discovery Scanner - Creating a Galaxy with Dr Anthony Ross (time for that particular shot is 57:25 if the link doesn't go through to the correct time.)

There's more detailed info about it all around, but I don't have links to it and it'd take quite a bit of searching to find. Maybe someone else has some links they can provide.

 

[Han Zulu]

Scrapping the DSS may not be possible, depending on how FD plan to integrate gas giants and atmos.

True. The DSS would make sense if it actually gave more information that the FSS can't give, so they need to step up the functionality of it. Perhaps they could be useful for gas and atmos.

 

[Riverside]

We squabbled on here for best part of a year and nobody cared.

I saw ST voyager tonight... they used the full spectrum scanner. Word for word.

FSS stands for Full Spectrum System

So it's the Full Spectrum System Scanner, and you use the Full Spectrum System Scanner Screen to Scan the System

 

[Han Zulu]

Here's an option I'd like to see added at some point, the ability to open the FSS while in supercruise (any speed) and see the graph. Not zooming to planets and such, but at least having a way to quickly see what the system holds in a quick look without having to stop. (I know, I know, it's been brought up many times before... I'm squeaking the wheels here.)

 

[varonica]

Given the way it works already:

• Some bodies scan instantly with no POIs
• Some bodies scan in 2-3 seconds with no POIs
• Some bodies take 20-30 seconds with POIs

I think that's all down to performance of your vid card. I am visiting a friend at the moment and plugged into his spare monitor to run from my laptop, the laptop detected the monitor and set the FPS at 60 rather than 144 which I normally use, making scanning with POI's take around 40 seconds and some bodies with no POI's take a second or so. When I realised this I changed turned vsync off giving me around 300 FPS in the FSS, now all bodies with no POI finish instantly, so I think they all take time, even the ones without POI's, and how long it takes depends on the complexity of the body in question, it's just if your vid card is high enough performance we simply don't notice the time for the ones with no POI because it is so short.

 

[Thatchinho]

I think that's all down to performance of your vid card. I am visiting a friend at the moment and plugged into his spare monitor to run from my laptop, the laptop detected the monitor and set the FPS at 60 rather than 144 which I normally use, making scanning with POI's take around 40 seconds and some bodies with no POI's take a second or so. When I realised this I changed turned vsync off giving me around 300 FPS in the FSS, now all bodies with no POI finish instantly, so I think they all take time, even the ones without POI's, and how long it takes depends on the complexity of the body in question, it's just if your vid card is high enough performance we simply don't notice the time for the ones with no POI because it is so short.

Yep. A good while back now, I did timings (as in actually using the stopwatch function on my phone ) of how long things took for good amount of different planets. The gift of onboard graphics means longer times and made it very easy to differentiate between what's going on with different types of bodies and work out roughly what's going on overall.

 

[varonica]

Yep. A good while back now, I did timings (as in actually using the stopwatch function on my phone ) of how long things took for good amount of different planets. The gift of onboard graphics means longer times and made it very easy to differentiate between what's going on with different types of bodies and work out roughly what's going on overall.

I suspect not having vulcanism makes the calculations a lot simpler. FDEV did comment a while back that planet surfaces weren't just contiguous planes but actually had faults and areas of different mineral content calculated by the stellar forge. We can assume I think that for most bodies without vulcanism that means a solid core of rock, no need to calculate fractures and areas of thin crust to decide where vulcanism should go so calculations are much shorter.

Now all this does lead me to think of the future, what happens when more types of bodies come available to land on, what extra calculation for an ELW with a variety of bio life. What happens with hell planets half covered in molten lava or ice moons with subsurface lakes etc. If we have all this controversy over a few simple geo and bio sites what does the future hold for much more complex bodies, indeed bodies that are a many thousands of times more complex than the ones we are currently dealing with?

 

[Soron Silin]

Now all this does lead me to think of the future, what happens when more types of bodies come available to land on, what extra calculation for an ELW with a variety of bio life. What happens with hell planets half covered in molten lava or ice moons with subsurface lakes etc. If we have all this controversy over a few simple geo and bio sites what does the future hold for much more complex bodies, indeed bodies that are a many thousands of times more complex than the ones we are currently dealing with?

Secret Frontier Plan: delay Space Legs until the video cards can handle it.
Secret Frontier Alternative Plan: Buy shares in a manufacturer of GPU accelerator cards.

 

[aRJay]

I suspect not having vulcanism makes the calculations a lot simpler. FDEV did comment a while back that planet surfaces weren't just contiguous planes but actually had faults and areas of different mineral content calculated by the stellar forge. We can assume I think that for most bodies without vulcanism that means a solid core of rock, no need to calculate fractures and areas of thin crust to decide where vulcanism should go so calculations are much shorter.

Now all this does lead me to think of the future, what happens when more types of bodies come available to land on, what extra calculation for an ELW with a variety of bio life. What happens with hell planets half covered in molten lava or ice moons with subsurface lakes etc. If we have all this controversy over a few simple geo and bio sites what does the future hold for much more complex bodies, indeed bodies that are a many thousands of times more complex than the ones we are currently dealing with?

First thought is that future might hold a big increase in the minimum recommended hardware to run the game.