loving the game so far, but lets get real about the PL promises

Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro
Dont get me wrong Im loving the game, but with only 20h or so played, I can see that the game has a very limited amount of variety on the stations and systems, all almost look the same: the clouds in the planets, the stars, all the hangars are exactly the same in all the outposts and stations, the same. And after you fly into the widescreen, for example, you cant tell the difference between one station to another.

So... reality hit me like a big icy moon... frontier wont be able to do this, ever (from the wiki):

"Will it be possible to manually land on planets?

Yes, just like the last two Elite games you will be able to seamlessly freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) enter and fly through entire 1:1 scale populated planet atmospheres with living cities and wildlife enabling extra-vehicular activities as part of expansions."

Reality check: I dont think so.

How in this galaxy they can promise that if in the core space realm you dont have almost any variety? (in stations/outposts for example)

How?
 

fademist

F
Dorohedoro said:
Dont get me wrong Im loving the game, but with only 20h or so played, I can see that the game has a very limited amount of variety on the stations and systems, all almost look the same: the clouds in the planets, the stars, all the hangars are exactly the same in all the outposts and stations, the same. And after you fly into the widescreen, for example, you cant tell the difference between one station to another.

So... reality hit me like a big icy moon... frontier wont be able to do this, ever (from the wiki):

"Will it be possible to manually land on planets?

Yes, just like the last two Elite games you will be able to seamlessly freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) enter and fly through entire 1:1 scale populated planet atmospheres with living cities and wildlife enabling extra-vehicular activities as part of expansions."

Reality check: I dont think so.

How in this galaxy they can promise that if in the core space realm you dont have almost any variety? (in stations/outposts for example)

How?
Click to expand...

would be paid expansion ......
 

vjek

V
It is technically possible to procedurally generate everything, including stations, to be unique per system, faction, etc. Colors, decorations, shapes, textures, lighting, everything.

The surface of planets is the same. They can all be unique, via a unique seed per solar system.

FDEV has chosen not to do this with stations. It was their decision, not what's technically possible or not, that made this feature what it is today.
 

The_Pinder

T
Dorohedoro said:
Dont get me wrong Im loving the game, but with only 20h or so played, I can see that the game has a very limited amount of variety on the stations and systems, all almost look the same: the clouds in the planets, the stars, all the hangars are exactly the same in all the outposts and stations, the same. And after you fly into the widescreen, for example, you cant tell the difference between one station to another.

So... reality hit me like a big icy moon... frontier wont be able to do this, ever (from the wiki):

"Will it be possible to manually land on planets?

Yes, just like the last two Elite games you will be able to seamlessly freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) enter and fly through entire 1:1 scale populated planet atmospheres with living cities and wildlife enabling extra-vehicular activities as part of expansions."

Reality check: I dont think so.

How in this galaxy they can promise that if in the core space realm you dont have almost any variety? (in stations/outposts for example)

How?
Click to expand...
The same way the galaxy is populated with stars and planets, or did you think those were all individually crafted?
 

Hap

H
Procedural generation is easier (not easy just easier) to do for planets as planets are always changing and so they don't have to be exactly the same every time someone visits and could be done in an instance just for that person, whereas stations have to be more static and the same for everyone sharing the universe. So I can see how they could use some sort of procedural thing to create atmosphere, land masses etc for planets and not have to store billions of bits of data to make sure it's exactly the same for everyone, whereas if they had loads of variety on stations that are fixed things it would mean much more data to be sent back and forth or larger game installs.
 
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Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro
Yeah, I can see that done with airless moons or planets like that, but with cities with npcs? My god, thats crazy, just crazy.
 

Mesolithic

M
I did occur to me that on populated planets, perhaps you will not be allowed to land just anywhere as they will have some kind of regulation.

Just imagine big spaceships descending from the sky to land anywhere they wanted on Earth! It would be a bit inconvenient for the ground dwellers.

Meso
 

Twelvefield

Twelvefield
It will be a challenge for them. Frontier isn't known for large-scale procedural generation, (atmospheric) flight sim, or games that allow you to walk around. The closest would be Roller Coaster Tycoon III.
 

Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro
I mean, can you guys see the amount of problems that the game have right now? For example, those big lags and frame rate drops to almost a slide show in high populated supercruise zones? And we are talking about a totally empty space, with some lights flying around and a big wallpaper of the galaxy as background.

Do you really think they can pull of a big futuristic city like... lets say... new york?, crowded with npcs and cmdrs?

There have to be some kind of limitations of the places you can visit, if not, this is hard to believe.
 

mossfoot

mossfoot
Someone clearly hasn't seen how No Man's Sky works...

[video=youtube;nmwG6Sj1Yfg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwG6Sj1Yfg[/video]

Not that Frontier will do it THAT way, but that's proof of concept that it's far from impossible.
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
The stations are a lot easier to generate procedurally than pretty much anything else. I'm not sure why it's so limited, particularly on the interiors. Probably because they're prioritising other things over aesthetics.

I think the landing on planets thing will be fairly easy for the rocky worlds, but nightmarishly difficult for the inhabited ones. It's a top-down thing, so you have to know there's a city before you know there's a nice little road hugging the coast. I don't think there's any computationally sensible way to do this beyond "kit" cities that are made up of pretty huge building blocks (possibly trimmed to fit the continents). I think we'll get outposts and bases and that's all we need. Cities might be another thing altogether.
I also suspect that networking/instancing will be more of an obstacle to seamless landings than procedural generation.
 

jcrg99

Banned
J
Dorohedoro said:
Dont get me wrong Im loving the game, but with only 20h or so played, I can see that the game has a very limited amount of variety on the stations and systems, all almost look the same: the clouds in the planets, the stars, all the hangars are exactly the same in all the outposts and stations, the same. And after you fly into the widescreen, for example, you cant tell the difference between one station to another.

So... reality hit me like a big icy moon... frontier wont be able to do this, ever (from the wiki):

"Will it be possible to manually land on planets?

Yes, just like the last two Elite games you will be able to seamlessly freeform (manual pitch/yaw/roll) enter and fly through entire 1:1 scale populated planet atmospheres with living cities and wildlife enabling extra-vehicular activities as part of expansions."

Reality check: I dont think so.

How in this galaxy they can promise that if in the core space realm you dont have almost any variety? (in stations/outposts for example)

How?
Click to expand...

Made a trip. Seriously. Do it. With car or airplane, and just look to the window or more than just the road... It's not like there is a party of different things all the time... It's a similar level of repetition of terrains, mountains, weather, rivers, oceans, even cities, that we see all the time in our planet. They kind of varies too few in style/appearance in the majority of the countries. Yes... There are unique places, but in fact they are just a different combination of the same terrain, rivers, mountains, etc... or even some rare city formats.

Obviously, they won't make you walk in the cities all the time, entirely. You probably will have some, with some points to visit and more freedom in the terrains itself, where you can actually land and go with your "ground vehicle" for a long long trip if you want, just as we do in space when we just let the ship going.

So, yes... procedural generation in a level of fidelity "good enough" will be a thing possible for Frontier to deliver. But do not expect that coming soon.

Absolutely perfect is impossible but I believe that they will deliver an awesome experience, with a great level of fidelity and those that will , is just talking non-sense, because that's kind of how our world is. You do not find the 7th wonderful places of the world all the time. You see repetitive stuff, and just different combinations of the same thing, all the time.
 
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Dorohedoro

Dorohedoro
Yeah, I know it can be done, but you guys are missing my point. As far we can tell, the game right now (and is a full price 1.2 released game) have a little variety in structures and have huge lag problems in high populated areas.

How can you release or promise features for a expansion that you dont have in the main game?, how can they will release a dlc with amazing planets with cities and oceans and forest? and in space we only have a bunch of same looking outposts and stations? And those hangars.... Come on... All the same with a different name. I love the game, but I fail see those promises real right now, please frontier, make me a beliver...
 
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jcrg99

Banned
J
Dorohedoro said:
Yeah, I know it can be done, but you guys are missing my point. As far we can tell, the game right now (and is a full price 1.2 released game) have a little variety in structures and have huge lag problems in high populated areas.

How can you release or promise features for a expansion that you dont have in the main game?, how can they will release a dlc with amazing planets with cities and oceans and forest? and in space we only have a bunch of same looking outposts and stations? And those hangars.... Come on... All the same with a different name. I love the game, but I fail see those promises real right now, please frontier, make me a beliver...
Click to expand...

You mean. Do you think that they are doing absolutely nothing else, and will release then, DLC's? Only then, what you just said would make sense. You seem very uninformed about things that they have been doing. Until the point that PL DLC's came, I can bet that much more variety will be already in place. You can see for example, many ships been added since they released.
 
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beelbeebub

beelbeebub
Hang on, the stations are different. They use the same modules but the configurations are different, e.g. one, two or three wheels, different 'cores', some have solar panels, some have industrial modules. Some 'classic' stations have extended arms etc. The same goes for outposts.
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You could argue that the number of base modules is too low or that there should be greater variety between Imperial and Federation assets, but not that there is no variety.
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Regarding planetary landings. I can very well see FD pulling it off. Here's how they might do it.
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When you get close to a planet at the moment you 'drop' into normal space. With PL you will 'drop' into 'planetary space'. From a code point of view this is similar to SC but instead of a solar system with planets, moons, stars etc you have a planetary atmosphere with land, water, ice forest etc. Instead of USS, stations etc you have cities, PoI, landing fields.
 

Dante80

Dante80
Dorohedoro said:
Yeah, I know it can be done, but you guys are missing my point. As far we can tell, the game right now (and is a full price 1.2 released game) have a little variety in structures and have huge lag problems in high populated areas.

How can you release or promise features for a expansion that you dont have in the main game?, how can they will release a dlc with amazing planets with cities and oceans and forest? and in space we only have a bunch of same looking outposts and stations? And those hangars.... Come on... All the same with a different name. I love the game, but I fail see those promises real right now, please frontier, make me a beliver...
Click to expand...

But that was the game plan from the start man. The game is actually designed to be developed like this.

Also, I think you are confusing assets with capabilities. FDEV being able to make planetary content is a given, since they have made a game engine to do exactly that, and it is one of their primary goals for the game post launch (the other one is first person gameplay).

Assets, like more ships, stations, variation in stations etc is just a matter of resources, money and time, something completely different. This game is going to be worked for many years, at least that was the plan at inception. If you are expecting full fledged and explorable cities in the game, you will have to wait. 2017-2018 sounds possible. I'm willing to guess we are going to have landing in airless moons much sooner though (2016).

Which is the reason that FDEV have more people working now on ED than while the game was in development before launch.
 
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