New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

[Sic Mundus]

And I don't feel betrayed. I feel sad and frustrated. Because I'd like to have what I saw in video and I'd like to go and explore to scan plant and stuff, but the quality it not good enough for me to do that.
I can't say how other people feel though.

I don't play much nowadays, and changing to horizon reset the bindings, so it's very annoying. Otherwise I'd jump in horizon. Also I'm a bit more busy this days, and will be until mid august.

Me too bro. Me too . But I do feel somewhat betrayed. I don't believe for a second that they didn't know the tech was broken when it was launched. There is no way something this bugged would have made it out the door without someone catching it. It was your biggest feature of a DLC. Come on y'all.

I know exploration is boring. There isn't much to do but stare at dirt and skies and some mountains. I'm okay with that. I was just looking forward to having something visually appealing to look at. The rest is moot. As a commander, you make your own narrative. But it's so deflating to see slightly worse planets in some cases and nothing like the alpha screenshots everywhere else.

Also, you gotta make copies of your binds man! Building up your keybinds is a whole mini-game in itself and not a very fun one. Especially if you have a HOTAS. I even have a few copies on EDRefCard just in case!

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Frontier can't find a solution - but the solution is obvious, it would just take a LOT of work, and require "re rolling" the planets.

Make a few hundred thousand (not exaggerating) new assets to use for the proc gen - then create a system that can procedurally modify those assets here and there, then block the same asset from appearing the same -system- (preferably galactic region but that would require more than a few hundred thousand more assets)

This would reduce the starkness of the rabbit inside the wizards hat and be a more convincing illusion.

Alternately work REALLY REALLY HARD on the system that can modify assets to make it exceedingly good at mdifying the assets, so they keep most of the details, but change it enough for humans to struggle to see the similarity (this probably requires a deep learning AI though....) to avoid having to make so many new assets.

If you think it's that easy - you do it first and show Frontier how it's done! Oh - and you have to make that work on a 2015 PC running minimum specs at 60fps and not allow the HDD usage to go above 100Gb, or you'll have half the community complaining you've filled up their hard-drive - and it has to work all the way from orbit to the dirt you stand on!

Oh, and it has to work with the Cobra engine...

Go for it!

 

[M_72]

I feel the biggest issue is how downgraded the planet tech was. Not even cherry picking can make the difference we have today, unless it's misleading on purpose.

This is one of the reason I bought this DLC. It makes me sad/angry/frustrated to see it now :

I want to play the game they are selling. Someone made an album of the video planets :

https://imgur.com/a/Z8yuimT

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/Z8yuimT



What's ridiculous, is that even during alpha we had better.
This was on reddit, a partially frozen world, during alpha.

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/mrkb1f

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/mrkb1f/the_new_terrain_generation_in_action_this_planet/

Look at that comparison between alpha and release, the quality difference is mind blowing. The alpha 3 textures are highly detailed, with rocks and snow at the same place as if the ground had frozen, but was not made of ice otherwise. There is a large amount of rock scattering, and texture variety.

Spoiler

Still alpha, frozen world, not ice world. Note the "ice fog" weather.

Same planet, video vs reality :

The planet is HD 10329 , B 5, if anybody want to make an horizon screenshot (I don't want to lose my keybinds^^). Curious to see it compared to horizon.

Anyway, the quality downgrade is ridiculous.
We can't see repetition on the video planets, they are way too detailed for that. Too much noise, even if there is repetition, you can't see it unless you really look for it.

I sincerely believe they are surprised by the repetition. Because the planet gen we have is not the one they worked on. We have the "low quality" one they apparently slapped in emergency before release. I assume for performance reason, but it could be something else.

Heck, even the skybox is different, it look like "better horizon" instead of "horizon but we dimmed everything drastically".

Bait and switch. That's all it was.

I hope people remember it the next time Frontier Developments launch their next game or DLC.

 

[FX2K]

<snip>


Same planet, video vs reality :

The planet is HD 10329 , B 5, if anybody want to make an horizon screenshot (I don't want to lose my keybinds^^). Curious to see it compared to horizon.

Anyway, the quality downgrade is ridiculous.
We can't see repetition on the video planets, they are way too detailed for that. Too much noise, even if there is repetition, you can't see it unless you really look for it.

I sincerely believe they are surprised by the repetition. Because the planet gen we have is not the one they worked on. We have the "low quality" one they apparently slapped in emergency before release. I assume for performance reason, but it could be something else.

Heck, even the skybox is different, it look like "better horizon" instead of "horizon but we dimmed everything drastically".

The draw distance, for sure, seems to have been massively decreased (or in FD's eyes, optimised), to the point of things drawing / changing shape 50m in front of you...
I will have to take a look at HD 10329, but will say some planets that somewhat resemble the first image do exist.

There's just lots of iffyness going on too.
This is one of my favourites for the borked rendering:

 

[Erei]

The draw distance, for sure, seems to have been massively decreased (or in FD's eyes, optimised), to the point of things drawing / changing shape 50m in front of you...
I will have to take a look at HD 10329, but will say some planets that somewhat resemble the first image do exist.

There's just lots of iffyness going on too.
This is one of my favourites for the borked rendering:

View attachment 248261

The first picture is from current Odyssey I assume ? Because it look similar in quality to the video.
I've been wondering if the "new" planets from odyssey are not better than the "old" one from horizon. A lot of the "pretty" screenshot have atmo in them, and I've seen mostly broken/ugly planet for "horizon" ones.

The other picture is seemingly another "broken lod" issue we have. Sadly.

 

[FX2K]

The first picture is from current Odyssey I assume ? Because it look similar in quality to the video.
I've been wondering if the "new" planets from odyssey are not better than the "old" one from horizon. A lot of the "pretty" screenshot have atmo in them, and I've seen mostly broken/ugly planet for "horizon" ones.

The other picture is seemingly another "broken lod" issue we have. Sadly.

It was taken on 14th of June. There are some gems out there, but there are more flat, dull, tiled, camo, soft & rounded than anything else

 

[Drelthar]

People are definitely mixing up level of detail bugs, with "bad looking planets"

There has to not be a bug happening to make a judgement on the planet tech, there's zero point judging the tech when there a graphical error occuring.

That's a separate issue.

 

[FX2K]

Yeah. Personally, I'm not judging the tech on the 'render' issues, (that's not why I posted above) but rather the tiling and repetition.
That is obvious regardless of close up rendering / related bugs and its very common.

If there's enough variety and clever mixing / blending then it likely wouldn't have been an issue or as noticeable, but when its repeating the identical thing 10-15 times across a huge planetary surface, well needless to say, it stands out massively.

 

[Drelthar]

If you think it's that easy - you do it first and show Frontier how it's done! Oh - and you have to make that work on a 2015 PC running minimum specs at 60fps and not allow the HDD usage to go above 100Gb, or you'll have half the community complaining you've filled up their hard-drive - and it has to work all the way from orbit to the dirt you stand on!

Oh, and it has to work with the Cobra engine...

Go for it!

Lol ok.

I said it would be a lot of work, for a professional game studio, I didn't say at any point it would be easy. I even said REALLY REALLY HARD at one point.

 

[Sic Mundus]

Lol ok.

I said it would be a lot of work, for a professional game studio, I didn't say at any point it would be easy. I even said REALLY REALLY HARD at one point.

I don't know man. You're supposed to be a qualified professional if you're gonna criticize something. Where's your degree in games and stuffs man!?

 

[Drelthar]

I don't know man. You're supposed to be a qualified professional if you're gonna criticize something. Where's your degree in games and stuffs man!?

I know, I feel bad now.

 

[jojon]

Speaking of implementation complexity, I am kind of curious about just what I am seeing in the shot below (sorry - didn't think to disable the HUD).

It kind of looks like the terrain gen may possibly have used the heights and normals of the fractured landscape above, in either some sort of mimicked sudden deposition of the white dust billowing in from below (...or alternatively, the former feature simply overlaying the latter, with its alpha channel matching its bumpmap value), with the canyon floors receiving coverage quite a-ways in (and the immediate south-western-facing slopes, too), whilst the mesa tops are "clean".
...may be overthinking it...

 

[fourrunes]

It was your biggest feature of a DLC. Come on y'all.

One line = the whole thread

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Lol ok.

I said it would be a lot of work, for a professional game studio, I didn't say at any point it would be easy. I even said REALLY REALLY HARD at one point.

Hehe.

Development is hard as it is. Once, when very young, I quickly put down a design and said to my friend who had obtained a C64, "can you put this on your computer?" His reply shamed me, so I went to the Library and began to learn how to code. Consider this my challenge!

A fact I am bringing your attention to is that they can barely keep the frame rates up now with the current 'quality' and you want PCs that are currently struggling to do that, do extra work on top of that to mask the very needed repetition, that actually, if you are not looking for it, is only 'sometimes' in your face. Extra assets use up extra space on your hard-drive, which may be okay for you! You are upping the specs which mean a good chunk of players will be unable to play the game! We've already had that

At some point you have to give up the idea of having the moon for something that can run on your PC that has a semi-realistic look but with obvious flaws. If you love a game, you sometimes have to look the other way when the curtain is revealed. It happens will all games. Elite '84, Frontier, First Encounters, even Elite Dangerous... now Odyssey.

I'd much rather they concentrate on getting rid of invisible assets than spend months looking for a way to do the impossible!

Either that or the real reason people are here in this thread is that they loved the dullness of Horizons and hate change, so any criticism of Odyssey is a vent... Some people just wanna see the world burn. Meh!

 

[hunvagy]

If you think it's that easy - you do it first and show Frontier how it's done! Oh - and you have to make that work on a 2015 PC running minimum specs at 60fps and not allow the HDD usage to go above 100Gb, or you'll have half the community complaining you've filled up their hard-drive - and it has to work all the way from orbit to the dirt you stand on!

Oh, and it has to work with the Cobra engine...

Go for it!

Well here's the thing. It's not the end user who said it would run on a 2015 PC, it is FDev. So if they can't make it run on it, then they should man up, admit defeat, and take the pitchforks and whatnot they will get for raising the hardware requirements and alienating part of their user base.

Also, it runs like crap on machines from 2019-2020, not just old ones.

And the HDD requirements, it already doubled compared to Horizons, yet nobody complained.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

Well here's the thing. It's not the end user who said it would run on a 2015 PC, it is FDev. So if they can't make it run on it, then they should man up, admit defeat, and take the pitchforks and whatnot they will get for raising the hardware requirements and alienating part of their user base.

Also, it runs like crap on machines from 2019-2020, not just old ones.

And the HDD requirements, it already doubled compared to Horizons, yet nobody complained.

I thought you were the one that read all the Alpha posts. You never saw when people moaned about going up from 50Gb to 70Gb... which is hardly double. Selective memory it must be, along with skewing of facts.

I have a 2020 machine, it runs slick as a whistle for me.

I have noted that your statements are constantly overstated/exaggerated/assumptive without the backup of data. You're arguments in this matter hold no water.

20Gb of extra assets and the changes to assets are the social spaces, settlements, the biology and the terrain. Someone out there has probably done the digging to figure out what percentage of that extra 20Gb is terrain pieces and how many there are. Or are we all blowing in the wind?

Even if the extra assets @Drelthar said is needed are added - the extra compute needed will probably take a toll on devices like mine, never mind the ones that half the forum are complaining about now with GTX 1050s etc. When that half of the forum turn round and say they can't afford to buy a new PC just to play the game, and considering the state of scalping in the market today, you think it is would be a great idea to up the specs and exclude a good portion of the current game base in order to have what you deem as acceptable?

Once again, I consider myself and the current player-base fortunate that your ideas do not hold weight at FDev. Thank you for contributing. Let's move on.

 

[hunvagy]

I thought you were the one that read all the Alpha posts. You never saw when people moaned about going up from 50Gb to 70Gb... which is hardly double. Selective memory it must be, along with skewing of facts.

I have a 2020 machine, it runs slick as a whistle for me.

I have noted that your statements are constantly overstated/exaggerated/assumptive without the backup of data. You're arguments in this matter hold no water.

20Gb of extra assets and the changes to assets are the social spaces, settlements, the biology and the terrain. Someone out there has probably done the digging to figure out what percentage of that extra 20Gb is terrain pieces and how many there are. Or are we all blowing in the wind?

Even if the extra assets @Drelthar said is needed are added - the extra compute needed will probably take a toll on devices like mine, never mind the ones that half the forum are complaining about now with GTX 1050s etc. When that half of the forum turn round and say they can't afford to buy a new PC just to play the game, and considering the state of scalping in the market today, you think it is would be a great idea to up the specs and exclude a good portion of the current game base in order to have what you deem as acceptable?

Once again, I consider myself and the current player-base fortunate that your ideas do not hold weight at FDev. Thank you for contributing. Let's move on.

Again, it is not me who said the recommended is a 1060. It is FDev. And my machine is from 2019, yet it doesn't run properly on it. 36 fps in 1080p is not "running properly". Not when my 2060 is a generation younger then what they say is recommended. And certainly not that poster with the 3080 getting crap frame rates.

Also it is 30Gb of extra assets. Yes, I remembered wrong, 70GB is the whole size of my folder, with both EDH and EDO.

So good for you that it "runs slick" as you put it, but that doesn't negate what FDev said. They first said it'll run the same as Horizons did. Which it doesn't, unless 36 = 90. Then they sneakily changed the hardware requirements a day before release. And it doesn't even run properly on that.

And yes, if they can't fix this, they will have to up the specs again, and bite the bullet. Because so far I have seen exactly 0 improvement to my gameplay in the last 5 patches. Still runs below 60 fps on settlements, which is not something I accept.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean problems do not exist.

 

[jojon]

Many and large as the new prefabricated terrain bitmaps are expected to be, I quite suspect the lion's share of the increased installation (from 19GiB, Horizons, to 47GiB Odyssey, on my machine), to comprise the touted large amount of lounge music.

The sad thing about the relationship between the new terrain and performance, is that you really need massive amounts of supersampling to make the terrain look good (...and even that does not always help - it depends on the terrain type - not all children of the creator seem to be equally loved).


EDIT: About the specs issue, by the way... I recall alarm bells going off back when they announced that: yes, you will be able to run Odyssey on the same machine... As I recall, something about the formulation of words seemed way too engineered to avoid having to say whether you would be able to run it equally well.

 

[Erei]

People are definitely mixing up level of detail bugs, with "bad looking planets"

There has to not be a bug happening to make a judgement on the planet tech, there's zero point judging the tech when there a graphical error occuring.

That's a separate issue.

They are sadly intertwined. If you speak of the low noise map and the like. If you watch the video and picture, you can see there is a lot more noise, more than horizon, which already have more than odyssey in most cases. Breaking patterns in the oldest trick in the book to avoid seeing shapes. Zebras, tigers and modern camo are all working on that principle.

Such level of noise would make repetition nearly impossible to see, because it would be "covered" up, basically. This and the biological/geological scan that went from real heat map into "somewhere on the entire planet lol" blue. The blue scan really make repetition easier to spot.

If we kept the repetitions we have today, and greatly increase the noise, then the issue would be mostly "fixed". Without working on it.
Or you can keep the low quality but try to fix the repetition. Which is a more difficult job, because it was not planned to be seen in the first place, and as such, nobody cared/seen it at Fdev until we saw it to.
Guess which one Fdev is doing.

I don't know why the planet gen was nerfed so hard, but it seems they are unwilling to un-nerf it, and it's very much intended. It seems it was also done extremely late in development (which, for such a foundation job, is a terrible thing to do), because even in alpha, mere weeks before release, we had better.

 

[DarthLuca]

I don't come across it too often now, but when you do it is very noticeable.