Horizons No more player made time-lapse videos?

pettytyrant101

P
I like to explore- a large part of my enjoyment of Frontier comes from just going and finding amazing vistas, beautiful sunsets and planet rises ect.
And like most tourists I like to take my camera with me- in the form of screen shots and video captures.

I have made a few vids, not to the standard of the finest of the commanders with a camera, but I enjoy it.
And one of the things I like to do is time-lapse footage as when playing you rarely stay in one place long enough to watch the sunset or appreciate the ballet of orbits.

Previously this was fairly straight forward, set your shot up, record, go away for several hours (I used to favour overnight whilst I slept) and come back for your footage. And all you really had to worry about was if the servers had gone down.

But either I have become very unlucky indeed- or this innocent pursuit in Frontier is now impossible.

I have tried now 6 times in a row to get such footage and every time, even on distant far out planets outside the bubble of civilisation, at some point it generates a hostile NPC who will blow up my ship or SRV.
The only way to avoid this as far as I can see is to be sitting there at my pc for hours and hours on end watching for it randomly happening- but even then you'd have all the trouble of resetting up the same shot to continue recording afterwards.

There have been some stunning time-lapse video produced by other commanders in the past. Is it now impossible?

If so that would be a great shame and take away an aspect of the game some of us play for. And because of the multiplayer there is not the old accelerate time function of previous Elite games so this was all we had left!

Are any other film maker Commanders out there having the same problem when trying to get time lapse shots now?
 
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pettytyrant101

P
I use HitFilm Pro for all my editing.

And my last attempt to record some footage was about twice as far out as the Coal Sack Nebula, so not a huge distance, but decent enough.

I never had the problem before so I assume its an update change to how things spawn.

Thing is if I am out a bit into space, and in a system as I was with over 40 bodies, chances are I should be able to land on some small planetoid somewhere and have a very, very good chance of not seeing another soul out there for at least 8 hours- you would think the odds would be very much in favour of that given the smallness of a SRV and the scale of the universe- yet every time random hostile NPC spawns.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
Yes, it does look like someone is following you!
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I'll leave my second Cmdr sitting on a planet while I play my main one so I can see if an NPC turns up.
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Are you just recording the whole stay and then editing the mp4 to be time lapse?
I was thinking it was more like timed snapshots of the screen that was then put together into a video.
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pettytyrant101

P
Yeah I just record the whole thing and then change the playback speed in hitfilm- that way you get nice smooth animation when you speed it up.

And thanks for having a little experiment of your own to see if I am just very unlucky since the update or if hostile NPC's are spawning to often in such places. I will be interested indeed in your findings.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
It's been running for just over 2 hours now, taking an automatic snapshot every 10 minutes.
I'm sitting on a moon in Col 173 Sector KY-Q D5-47, about 900LY from the edge of the bubble.
No NPC's yet!
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pettytyrant101

P
Looking at my last vid I recorded it was about 6 hours in when I got taken out by a hostile NPC out of the 8 it recorded for. Though I suspect its completely random.
Rather annoyingly the scene it was recording was a sunset over a planetoid in close proximity to the sun, and by luck the way the shot was composed the sun was just about to set behind my ship (after 6 hours of recording) when BAM! So I lost what would probably have been a rather nice sunset.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
It looks like the NPC's only come out at night.
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I had my Cobra III sitting on a moon about 900LY from the edge of the bubble yesterday running on my old PC, whilst I continue flying my T7 to Colonia on my newer PC, side by side. I could watch it continuously from about 1pm to midnight. There were a couple of disconnections so it wasn't continuous in that respect and strangely only for the Cobra III, no disconnections for my T7 at all.
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At midnight I changed mode to solo to rule out all but NPC's. The 10 minute timed screenshots and logs show that at about 1:30am the Cobra was destroyed.
So, even this far out a lucky NPC can find you, I would not have expected that.
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pettytyrant101

P
Thank you again for taking the time to check this- I am hugely grateful to you for it.

I should have stated at the start I was in solo play- also on more than one of the occasions out the six I would have had salvaged cargo onboard too (I know for sure I had an occupied escape capsule in the cargo hold on at least two of the six occasions)- I don't know if that factors into the games calculations for spawning, but it might increase the odds of a hostile spawning.

I tried again today by leaving it recording whilst I was at work- came home to find I had got about 5 and half hours before being blown up by a random npc (no cargo onboard this time). Again a reasonable distance outside the bubble where you would think the chances of meeting anyone would be fairly low.

But sadly that means for me that's 7 attempts in a row now to record over a long time period and 1 attempt by you and neither of us have managed to cover a single earth 24 hour day cycle. I haven't even made it to half a day yet before BAM!

This does present a bit of a problem to those of us who enjoy filming the sights and using timelapse in that.


Might have to get fighter cover, keep it handy for close encounters! :D
 
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Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
I will do some more tests.
Turning everything off to go as cold as possible might work.
Clearly with shields etc off you're vulnerable but they don't help anyway!
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Steyla

Steyla
I would say cargo is the main reason. When I go exploring I never have cargo with me. And the occasional cargo I find on planets I leave alone. It is just not worth it. I never have seen any NPC's so far.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
Cargo is definitely what they are after but I wasn't carrying any.
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I'm currently sitting on the "landing pad" at the ancient ruins. I've turned everything off and the heat level is 7%, with ice on the screen. I've scraped some into my glass of space whisky.
There are some weird sounds coming out of this place.
Started at 7pm UK time..... fingers crossed.
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John Hand

J
From what you guys have been saying, its the Auto AFK finder. No matter where you are, or how far away, the NPC will find you automatically and kill you for being "AFK". Seems like a move by the devs really.
 

Nick Sticks

Nick Sticks
Running cold it ran for about 12 hours last night, only stopped by the server reboot this morning.
This planet is relatively close to the bubble, so the chance of NPC's should have been reasonable.
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I'll try somewhere else next.
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pettytyrant101

P
I hope not John- that would be a move and make any long period time-lapse completely impossible- which is annoying as Frontier themselves have in the past highlighted player vids that have such time-lapse in them and to great effect. Its such a good way of showing off their galaxy and the only way to see it all in motion since the loss of the accelerate time button of yore. I don't know why they would want to stop folks doing it.

I wonder if there is a way to program things so the system can to tell you are in camera mode rather than just absent?

- - - Updated - - -

That sounds more hopeful Nick- 12 hours is as long as we've managed yet. Sadly I could not test it again myself last night as cold weather brought a series of power cuts to my corner of the world but will have another go tonight.
 

John Hand

J
just seems like an unforeseen consequence on their part (seems like this company does that...a lot, hope they have no relation to CCP LOL). Probably just a mechanism to keep there servers...cleaner? I guess. Less "people doing nothing" means the servers can better respond to "people actually doing something".
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Maybe there's just a really, really low minimum chance of some NPC popping up, kinda like the chance of "interesting" PoIs being supposedly very, very low.

I would like to see some way to remove oneself from such mechanisms without dropping to the main menu, e.g. a "wake dispersion" function that uses fuel to do lewd things with the FSD to disrupt your wake and make you invisible from supercruise or some other handwavy procedure. Just so you could sit down in a reasonably remote place and take a break without quitting to the menu out of fear.
 

Skyfire

Skyfire
If I remember correctly, when the game first came out you would only encounter NPC's up to about 200ly's out from anywhere around the edge of the 'bubble'. I think more recent updates has pushed that out to 1000ly's so if you are anywhere within about 1000ly's of any inhabited world there is still a chance of NPC's turning up.

With the 'bubble' being only around 400ly's wide/deep etc then this 1000ly 'range' seems a little odd. However, FD have obviously looked at it that with players going out and exploring, and with the Colonia area starting up, the edge of where the 'bubble' starts/finishes has obviously become somewhat less 'defined', so NPC's possibly turning up within about 1000ly's of the settled areas would seem reasonable. Of course, it also encourages players to explore further afield too! That's possibly a good thing, to ensure that some of the 'easter eggs' they have scattered around are actually found!

Then of course, at some point, will come the Thargoids, and whichever direction/system/s they emanate from!
 
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