Odyssey isn't that bad, it's actually pretty good now

[metatheurgist]

Holy crap, you must take really good care of your machine...

That's a nice way of saying I'm stingy, thanks.

 

[Clumsywordsmith]

Since odyssey dropped I've continued. Never gone back to horizons.
I've watched as it went from choppy, laggy, crashy, and downright hard to play, to a smooth slick beautiful looking game.
Yes I've a nice vr rig. And I worked hard to get it.
Customised a hp omen pc into something resembling a gamer pc.
Yes the AI is alot better. The combat in space is rendered better now, with nice animations of explosives, rails, and other assorted effects just brighter and more colour.
Planets look fantastic now. I've still seen a bit of repetitive tiles on surfaces but it's rare.
Topographical detail is better in my opinion.
It's a better game now than at rollout.
IF it had come out like it is now, omg the reviews would have skyrocketed upwards.
Fdevs share prices would have too...I got some I know hehe.
Time for devs to reflect on what could have been.
Covid didn't help.
But Op is right.
Odyssey is now playable.

I’d honestly be intrigued to know what you’ve done to get Odyssey playing nice with your VR rig. What settings, what headset? Have you compared your VR horizons performance to VR Odyssey?

I ask because I have a pretty decent rig myself — not top of the line, but with a 3900x, 6900xt and 32 GB of RAM running a reverb g1, I don’t really struggle to run other games in VR (DCS, ILS), but Odyssey runs terribly with the same settings that give me an excellent experience in Horizons. I have a pretty good stomach for VR at this point, and even I’d hesitate to call 35 FPS dips and 25+ ms frametimes “playable”.

Are you taking part in any combat/res site scenarios? Or are we talking hauling/explo here? There seems to be a disconnect between the guys saying ‘runs great in VR’ — which it almost kinda does in empty space — and those who disagree, because the moment you spend a few minutes doing what (IMO) the game is all about, and start shooting, performance takes a wild roller coaster ride for the worst.

 

[Sheronimo]

I took a break from Elite after the release of Odyssey, which I played for over 1000 hours, due to the troubles and demoralization I experienced. I come to the forum from time to time to check the current status, but the general opinion was rather salty. Last week I decided to give it another chance and I've been playing Odyssey for the past week.

First of all, I would like to point out that I am playing on Geforce Now, not on my own computer. So the computer I play on has above average performance. So what is the situation on a low-configuration computer, I have no idea, thb.

I've played over 20 hours in the last week and the game hasn't crushed even once. I did not encounter any bug while performing the missions and haven't experience instant FPS drops in the game.

I tried almost all the variety of mission types and in general I liked it. I even felt like I was playing Assassin's Creed in some of them. I especially liked the stealth-based missions.

Moreover, it wasn't just the Odyssey missions that I liked. NPCs tried to hunt me down like never before while I had a bounty on my head while I was on the ship. Moreover, I tried to be interdicted many times even in far systems where I was not wanted.

In summary, I've returned to my favorite game for the past week and I'm very satisfied for now. Those who are thinking of returning may want to give it another chance, fyi.

Thank you for posting. I have had so little trouble with EDO, I was beginning to think my computer was one in a million. I am running Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-Core 4.0 GHz and GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 980Ti 6GB XTREME GAMING OC EDITION and my game hasn't even slowed down. I have been playing since Alpha and still going strong. I feel bad with so many people having issues, I just cannot relate.

 

[Mogen Teras]

not top of the line, but with a 3900x, 6900xt and 32 GB of RAM running a reverb g1

"not top of the line"

has the highest tier AMD GPU and one of the best Ryzen CPUs

You're top of the line buddy. No need to be modest. It also highlights how awful Odyssey performance is, considering even the market's best hardware can't brute force it's way through the performance issues. It also disproves the claims I've seen of "Odyssey is designed by 2021 standards and therefore makes sense that it needs 2021 hardware to run fine."

 

[Rudi Raumkraut]

It also disproves the claims I've seen of "Odyssey is designed by 2021 standards and therefore makes sense that it needs 2021 hardware to run fine."

that's a typo... should say "2012"

 

[AkenBosch]

The computer is the potato, the card gets upgraded as required. The card is the newest part of the machine! The rest of it is <checks receipts> 12! years old. Wow, older than I thought. See, I get around the same performance as you on high. Graphics is not likely the problem.

If the rest of your machine is 12 years old, and the CPU specifically, that means if you bought the very best at the time you should still be running on a 1st gen i5-i7, or an older Core Q9xxx if you were "on a budget". As much as these were all mighty processors in their time, as far as gaming go they aren't really fit for purpose by today standards. Your 2060 is probably wasting a good part of its cycles waiting for stuff to come from the rest of your machine, I can assure you you are using it way below its actual potential, regardless of how badly optimized Ody currently is (and boy, is it badly optimized, like badly).

I'd suggest not upgrading your gpu further before updating the rest of your machine, that poor 2060 must be already working severely bottlenecked.

(Do you mean slowdowns in the FSS like actual frame drops, or the panning movements slowing down at times? Because the latter seems like it should be intended when your reticle gets closer to bodies to zoom in, while I have none of the former on a card half as fast as yours, so that could be clearly your cpu topping its limit)

 

[metatheurgist]

If the rest of your machine is 12 years old, and the CPU specifically, that means if you bought the very best at the time you should still be running on a 1st gen i5-i7, or an older Core Q9xxx if you were "on a budget". As much as these were all mighty processors in their time, as far as gaming go they aren't really fit for purpose by today standards. Your 2060 is probably wasting a good part of its cycles waiting for stuff to come from the rest of your machine, I can assure you you are using it way below its actual potential, regardless of how badly optimized Ody currently is (and boy, is it badly optimized, like badly).

I'd suggest not upgrading your gpu further before updating the rest of your machine, that poor 2060 must be already working severely bottlenecked.

(Do you mean slowdowns in the FSS like actual frame drops, or the panning movements slowing down at times? Because the latter seems like it should be intended when your reticle gets closer to bodies to zoom in, while I have none of the former on a card half as fast as yours, so that could be clearly your cpu topping its limit)

The frame rate dips when that happens. I don't get the problem in Horizons which is why I doubt that graphics is the sole problem with Oddy. Yes, I'm well aware that I'm due for an upgrade, I just didn't know how due til I checked the receipt for the previous post.

 

[Northpin]

FD's "minimum" PC requirements are delusional at this point

So are the recommended requirements to get the advertised performance.

IIRC the recommended requirements are i5-8600 (6c/6t) and GTX1060. With this setup, the game is supposed to run 1080p, 60 fps, high settings.
And it definitely doesn't, not even on my i7-9750h (6c/12t), GTX1660TI - which is sensibly above the recommended specs.

 

[Demonlord79]

I think that FD changed their recommended specs couple months ago. Used to say GTX 900 TI series but I guess that the minimum now...I could be wrong so don't take that to heart.

Also @metatheurgist, I can't believe you thought that LOL. My feel bads are hurt now...
Keeping it clean and some TLC always makes a platform last, which you obviously do..

And why are you all picking on peoples hardware with Odysseys problems. Kind of figured a platform runs Horizons perfectly on Ultra, solid frame rate, then Odyssey comes along and SCREECH, CRASH, BOOM, AHHHH, SEAT BELTS, GRAB THE KIDS AND RUN..........
/facepalm...Sorry guys, hardware has nothing to do with Odysseys problems. RTX 2080 runs anything at highest settings and solid frames EXCEPT Odyssey, for now I guess.

Lets just hope when FD fixes Odyssey they go back and fix Horizons problems mixed with Odyssey.... Kind of funny how you can fire up Horizons alone and it runs perfectly again...lol solid frames..

Ya wanna test you GPU and frames go download World of Tanks HD, set everything to ultra and hold a 120+ frames. Now that's a fine tuned graphics engine.

 

[Mogen Teras]

So are the recommended requirements to get the advertised performance.

IIRC the recommended requirements are i5-8600 (6c/6t) and GTX1060. With this setup, the game is supposed to run 1080p, 60 fps, high settings.
And it definitely doesn't, not even on my i7-9750h (6c/12t), GTX1660TI - which is sensibly above the recommended specs.

Technically there is no industry-mandated standard of what "recommended spec" is supposed to get you in terms of settings and performance. For most PC gamers it is unofficially agreed that RecSpec gets you 60fps on High or Ultra, but this is by no means universal.

If a dev targets 30fps 1080p Medium for RecSpec, then you are meeting expectations if you are getting that performance. Cyberpunk 2077 for example has similar specs as EDO for RecSpec; 8th gen CPU and a 1060 6GB, but they were explicit that this hardware was for 1080p 30fp Medium settings, and that if you wanted Ultra settings 60fps at any resolution, you would need at minimum a 2070S level GPU and a 3700x equivalent CPU.

As much as I dislike how Odyssey performs, the sad truth is 1080p 30fps Ultra is likely what they targetted for their RecSpec. So as far as FDev is concerned, EDO is performing as expected and has been since launch.

 

[Stinja]

That's a nice way of saying I'm stingy, thanks.

You're not meant to impersonate other users... oh wait, Stingy not Stinja nvm

I used to play ED on an 11" Macbook Air with an integrated HD5000(?) and it worked pretty well, great for going on holiday. This was of course before FDev killed OSX/MacOS support. Sometimes (below) min specs has a use case.

Has anyone done an actual "how does Odyssey run on min and recommended specs" test? I'd be quite interested.

 

[Mogen Teras]

You're not meant to impersonate other users... oh wait, Stingy not Stinja nvm

I used to play ED on an 11" Macbook Air with an integrated HD5000(?) and it worked pretty well, great for going on holiday. This was of course before FDev killed OSX/MacOS support. Sometimes (below) min specs has a use case.

Has anyone done an actual "how does Odyssey run on min and recommended specs" test? I'd be quite interested.

I'm sure you'd be able to find some steam reviews that cite their hardware. Might take some digging but they're likely in there.

Some have indeed done performance tests here on the forum, but since I can't remember what they titled their post, I'm hard pressed to give advice on finding those posts.

 

[Demonlord79]

Technically there is no industry-mandated standard of what "recommended spec" is supposed to get you in terms of settings and performance. For most PC gamers it is unofficially agreed that RecSpec gets you 60fps on High or Ultra, but this is by no means universal.

If a dev targets 30fps 1080p Medium for RecSpec, then you are meeting expectations if you are getting that performance. Cyberpunk 2077 for example has similar specs as EDO for RecSpec; 8th gen CPU and a 1060 6GB, but they were explicit that this hardware was for 1080p 30fp Medium settings, and that if you wanted Ultra settings 60fps at any resolution, you would need at minimum a 2070S level GPU and a 3700x equivalent CPU.

As much as I dislike how Odyssey performs, the sad truth is 1080p 30fps Ultra is likely what they targetted for their RecSpec. So as far as FDev is concerned, EDO is performing as expected and has been since launch.

So you obviously understand how optimization works with different types of hardware. (bravo for someone that understands). But I'm running pretty high end hardware above and beyond recommended and still seeing these 30s in foot bases, obviously solid 60s in space or any other places, even in bases without NPS's, not too bad for me but how can other players with mid range hardware deal with this annoying frame rate?
Does FD plan on optimizing a bit more for lower end machines?

Now I'm one of those lucky players with a super platform but I don't brag about that more so than I think about the other players that aren't so lucky. Please I am not bashing on what you said at all but as one who knows some type of direction with FD's intentions and hardware, are they planning on slowing down GPU usage a bit for older platforms and putting a bit more usage on CPU?

By the way, very well said on explaining how minimum and recommended specs work...o7
Thanks for the information @Mogen Teras...o7

 

[Northpin]

As much as I dislike how Odyssey performs, the sad truth is 1080p 30fps Ultra is likely what they targetted for their RecSpec. So as far as FDev is concerned, EDO is performing as expected and has been since launch.

Well, then it still fails since my laptop (i7-9750h, gtx1660ti) is not able to sustain 1080p ultra at 30fps.
Certain settlements and Concourse in planetary starports/outposts still kills it with lots of deep dips below 30. (In space it's fine)

Currently i'm running 1080p high settings with amd fsr supersample 0.85 and cas 0.4 (manually set in xml file, defaults being 0.77 and 0.5).
And there are still dips under 30.

 

[LKx]

Technically there is no industry-mandated standard of what "recommended spec" is supposed to get you in terms of settings and performance. For most PC gamers it is unofficially agreed that RecSpec gets you 60fps on High or Ultra, but this is by no means universal.

If a dev targets 30fps 1080p Medium for RecSpec, then you are meeting expectations if you are getting that performance. Cyberpunk 2077 for example has similar specs as EDO for RecSpec; 8th gen CPU and a 1060 6GB, but they were explicit that this hardware was for 1080p 30fp Medium settings, and that if you wanted Ultra settings 60fps at any resolution, you would need at minimum a 2070S level GPU and a 3700x equivalent CPU.

As much as I dislike how Odyssey performs, the sad truth is 1080p 30fps Ultra is likely what they targetted for their RecSpec. So as far as FDev is concerned, EDO is performing as expected and has been since launch.

Target performances are ps4/xbone releases.

 

[Northpin]

Target performances are ps4/xbone releases.

IIRC, but i cannot find any official quotes, target performance is 720p 30 fps low for minimal system requirements and 1080p 60fps high settings for recommended.
Horizons runs in 1080p 30fps on my XB One S, and the graphics setting is "performance" (XB1X and PS4 Pro have quality mode too) - which i'd say is something between low and medium (closer to mendium) on PC.

 

[LKx]

IIRC, but i cannot find any official quotes, target performance is 720p 30 fps low for minimal system requirements and 1080p 60fps high settings for recommended.
Horizons runs in 1080p 30fps on my XB One S, and i'd say the graphics setting is "performance" (XB1X and PS4 Pro have quality mode too) - which i'd say is something between low and medium (closer to mendium) on PC.

IIRC they said 720p for the minimum and 1080p for the recommended, without mentioning specific fps, in the beginning of the supposedly unoptimized alpha.
I guess that silently carried over the unoptimized "release", since they even raised the min specs (the day before).

The only mention of fps i remember is from DB himself, talking about 30fps as appropriate, and i think he meant for recommended.

 

[Northpin]

The only mention of fps i remember is from DB himself, talking about 30fps as appropriate, and i think he meant for recommended.

While i do find 30 fps playable, i would not say it's appropriate.
Especially in fast paced combat scenarios.

 

[Mogen Teras]

IIRC they said 720p for the minimum and 1080p for the recommended, without mentioning specific fps, in the beginning of the supposedly unoptimized alpha.
I guess that silently carried over the unoptimized "release", since they even raised the min specs (the day before).

The only mention of fps i remember is from DB himself, talking about 30fps as appropriate, and i think he meant for recommended.

Braben commented that performance was "fine" on his GTX 970 at home (LOL at the notion that the CEO of a game dev studio only has a 970), so I'm gonna guess that he meant it was "fine" insofar as the minimum spec expectations imply; 30fps at 720p Medium.

And to be fair, I can get 60+fps on my rig if I drop below my native res (1080p) and drop settings to medium, so I guess minspec isn't WRONG per se.

The problem is that I blew way past 1080p Ultra in Horizons, and Odyssey's RecSpec doesn't really perform any better than MinSpec.