On my seeming constant disconnect with "The Forum"

[Greasetrap42]

I just truly think that the overwhelming amount of vitriol is hyperbole...and therein lies my disconnect. I'm not hyperbolic.

True enough, i see your point. Its just a game, and pretty cheep price too, regardless what anybody says. Its realistically worthy of a forum post showing disappointment, and then moving on to more important things in life.

A great reality check is to complain about it to your spouse or friend.
---> Warning: Don't. Its the most stupid thing to complain about to actual real-world people.

I played Horizons last night and it was fine. I might try Odyssey again in a few weeks.

 

[Darth Ender]

if you're a player who's odyssey has occlusion culling working, no gamma issues, terrains look improved over horizons and framerate is totally on par with horizons then totally, post your specs, post your graphics configs, and scream it from the rooftop how your experience has been positive.

but if you're experiencing all of this same garbage everyone else is, but your level of acceptance is so low that you still find that you enjoy it - well what is anyone supposed to make with that feedback? it's not constructive in the least, or helpful at all to anyone. It just creates this sense of the problems with the release maybe not being developer facing but instead some how dependent on individual configs and hardware peculiarities (which it is not ... only the degree of how playable the poorly released game is - varies on those points).

That's why there is always a defensive response when someone comes in and offers just "i had fun" ... because at best, that means nothing, and at worst it tries marginalizing what has been proven to not be a player oriented problem.

plus, now they got an email address and survey they want players to fill out experiencing issues on steam. Which is a nice PR stunt to make it seem like they dont know or directly experience these issues themselves already. How could they have realized before release .... it must be some odd hardware/setting that only the full release could have uncovered and they need more data in order to fix - totally not a way to stall for time and divert blame.

 

[rOmiLaYu]

if you're a player who's odyssey has occlusion culling working, no gamma issues, terrains look improved over horizons and framerate is totally on par with horizons then totally, post your specs, post your graphics configs, and scream it from the rooftop how your experience has been positive.

I have no idea what "occlusion culling" is, so I can't say as to whether or not it's working. My gamma settings are fine, the elite logo on the left is just barely visible in settings. My terrain definitely looks improved to Horizons and frame rates are always above 30, which is what FDev has said is acceptable. I'm running an Alienware 15 R3, i7 quad core 2.8ghz. NVDIA 1070 GTX with 16gb RAM. Settings are ULTRA and my experience has been largely positive. I run the Frontier stand alone launcher and have been in game nightly. The only exception to that being Sunday afternoon when I was locked out to due to excessive Blue Cobra errors.

 

[Dartay]

if you're a player who's odyssey has occlusion culling working, no gamma issues, terrains look improved over horizons and framerate is totally on par with horizons then totally, post your specs, post your graphics configs, and scream it from the rooftop how your experience has been positive.

but if you're experiencing all of this same garbage everyone else is, but your level of acceptance is so low that you still find that you enjoy it - well what is anyone supposed to make with that feedback? it's not constructive in the least, or helpful at all to anyone. It just creates this sense of the problems with the release maybe not being developer facing but instead some how dependent on individual configs and hardware peculiarities (which it is not ... only the degree of how playable the poorly released game is - varies on those points).

That's why there is always a defensive response when someone comes in and offers just "i had fun" ... because at best, that means nothing, and at worst it tries marginalizing what has been proven to not be a player oriented problem.

Hey mang you're not really helping my point here.

There's no need ridicule or belittle them for enjoying the game. Why should we make fun of someone just because they care about something?

That would be the same as ridiculing and attacking people for experiencing problems with Elite or Odyssey and caring about the franchise.

Don't be like them.

Plus theres plenty of other things to ridicule them for.

 

[Erei]

I have no idea what "occlusion culling" is, so I can't say as to whether or not it's working.

To save processing power, a game doesn't show what you can't see. For example, I'm in a station, I don't see the space behind the station, since there are solid walls there is no need to draw it. Or the stuff behind you. You don't see in your back, so it's not drawn.
Odyssey have a big issue of drawing EVERYTHING all the time. Like the entire FC when you are inside the hangar bay and can't see it. Or the entire station, including the entire skybox (space), when inside the concourse.

It put a needless drain on processing power, and affect the game performance negatively.

 

[rOmiLaYu]

To save processing power, a game doesn't show what you can't see. For example, I'm in a station, I don't see the space behind the station, since there are solid walls there is no need to draw it.
Odyssey have a big issue of drawing EVERYTHING all the time. Like the entire FC when you are inside the hangar bay and can't see it. Or the entire station, including the entire skybox (space), when inside the concourse.

It put a needless drain on processing power, and affect the game performance negatively.

Oh right. I saw that thread on reddit. How I would know if that is working or not, I have no idea. But it sounds like it could explain the slow frame rates.

 

[Sysmon]

if you're a player who's odyssey has occlusion culling working, no gamma issues, terrains look improved over horizons and framerate is totally on par with horizons then totally, post your specs, post your graphics configs, and scream it from the rooftop how your experience has been positive.

Desktop PC here, i7, 4 cores, 4 GHZ, 32 GB RAM and 2 x EVGA GeForce 1070 GTX GPUs in SLI. The SLI is probably causing more issues than Odyssey is. Refresh rate is locked with G-SYNC at 60 Hz, but is often dropping to 20 - 30 Hz at settlements.

One interesting issue is that if I turn VR off on the launcher (/novr), the game constantly crashes. If I just turn the HMD off in the graphics settings, the game runs fine (barring brief swarms of adders and cobras depending on server status). Graphics are set at NVIDIA recommendations, which is mostly Ultra and High settings.

S

 

[Darth Ender]

Hey mang you're not really helping my point here.

There's no need ridicule or belittle them for enjoying the game. Why should we make fun of someone just because they care about something?

That would be the same thing as ridiculing and attacking people for experiencing problems with Elite or Odyssey and caring about it.

Don't be like them.

what people find acceptable is subjective - nobody is attacking that (i'm not), so people are going to fall on a scale ...that's not an attack or ridicule. That's how things work.

I'm saying it's way lower than what it should be for a non-early access game for those people who find it acceptable with all of it's flaws ...but to say it's not low is ignoring the fact that it has to be low. it can't be defined as any other way. The sample size of over 10,000 players says that not only is it low, but it's in the lower 30 percentile of what is expected.

And that those kinds of feedback statements aren't helpful when they're acknowledging all of the same flaws but coming to a vastly different conclusion.

As for those who say they're not seeing the gamma issue in odyssey, i'm sure we'd love to see some screenshots of similar images that everyone else is posting showing planets white washed, ui elements darkened to the point of barely seen, gamma sliders having to be maxed out just to make that somewhat corrected but then the galaxy map is grey-washed and the colors of ship paint jobs looking like they should look (like in horizons ) and not like they do in odyssey. Since the cause of this problem is stemming from flaws in how the game is sending the graphics backend data - so it should exist in a similar manner for all hardware unless you're on a different execution pipeline and not getting those buggy code paths.

and i dont think the community is ever going to accept that 30fps is acceptable framerate or intended in 2021 for fps gameplay, much less gameplay that existed in horizons at 140+ on the same hardware. The graphics updates do not warrant such a hit, and we can see for sure that such a hit is being taken not from technical needs, but just really bad code.

edit: typo

 

[Dartay]

As they should. Do I need to run and grab a different example of the people the YouTube is making fun of?

Sure, it would be appreciated.

You do not seem to be a very fast runner.

Maybe your legs are experiencing FPS drops?

 

[Darth Ender]

Oh right. I saw that thread on reddit. How I would know if that is working or not, I have no idea. But it sounds like it could explain the slow frame rates.

check the framerate when looking at nothing, then turn until you are viewing something with a model in the view. Bonus if it has an interior.

compare to horizons doing the same thing in the same place. Horizons have somewhat ok occlusion culling working. EDO does not. You'll notice a huge difference if that's the case. Unless you have a frame limiter on and you're still pegging it.

 

[Darth Ender]

Desktop PC here, i7, 4 cores, 4 GHZ, 32 GB RAM and 2 x EVGA GeForce 1070 GTX GPUs in SLI. The SLI is probably causing more issues than Odyssey is. Refresh rate is locked with G-SYNC at 60 Hz, but is often dropping to 20 - 30 Hz at settlements.

the framerate dropping in settlements compared to just empty terrain travel is due to occlusion culling not working (among other things but that's a huge factor). Because they turned it off for alpha, said they would enable for release and then never did.

One interesting issue is that if I turn VR off on the launcher (/novr), the game constantly crashes. If I just turn the HMD off in the graphics settings, the game runs fine (barring brief swarms of adders and cobras depending on server status). Graphics are set at NVIDIA recommendations, which is mostly Ultra and High settings.

S

hrm.. i launch vr or non-vr from steam (it gives separate launch options) ... and i've been testing out of vr in odyssey and have not had any issues with the game crashing.

However, after this recent hotfix #3, i did get a game crash for the first time (not just a colored cobra logout) while in SC for no apparent reason. First time in a very long time that's happened. is your vr / novr issue new for post-hotfix 3 or since release/alpha times? I've not heard of the issue anywhere else.

 

[galahad2069]

Here are some more dudes (using pretty monster rigs btw) who seem to feel disconnected from something... well, mainly from their frame rates I guess:

Today’s patch killed my frame rates

I run a fairly high-end gaming machine with a 2080 Ti. Until today, I have not had terrible odyssey performance. Definitely not ideal, but not terrible. In surface CZs I was getting 30-40 fps. However, after today’s patch I’m getting 15-25 fps—it’s literally unplayable. I can’t see any changes...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Sysmon]

the framerate dropping in settlements compared to just empty terrain travel is due to occlusion culling not working (among other things but that's a huge factor). Because they turned it off for alpha, said they would enable for release and then never did.



hrm.. i launch vr or non-vr from steam (it gives separate launch options) ... and i've been testing out of vr in odyssey and have not had any issues with the game crashing.

However, after this recent hotfix #3, i did get a game crash for the first time (not just a colored cobra logout) while in SC for no apparent reason. First time in a very long time that's happened. is your vr / novr issue new for post-hotfix 3 or since release/alpha times? I've not heard of the issue anywhere else.

We had the occlusion issues in space stations in Horizons (I think?). I at least got low framerates even when I was just sitting leafing through menus.

Turning Ambient Occlusion on seems to work somewhat: I get 60 Hz staring at an elevator in the Pilot's Lounge, but 20 - 30 Hz when I'm in the elevator facing the lounge (and space station interior).

VR has worked well for me in Odyssey, especially after launch. With one persistent and important exception: The DSS probe vector moves freely around and can't be used. So I happily switched in and out of VR mode using the HMD on/off setting under graphics. Until I got tired of that and just added /novr to the stand-alone launcher short-cut. Interestingly, my framerate in space dropped to 40 - 50 doing that, and the game started crashing as it would do during the Alpha due to memory leakage. So there is something wonky going on.

S

 

[Dartay]

what people find acceptable is subjective - nobody is attacking that (i'm not), so people are going to fall on a scale ...that's not an attack or ridicule. That's how things work.

I'm saying it's way lower than what it should be for a non-early access game for those people who find it acceptable with all of it's flaws ...but to say it's not low is ignoring the fact that it has to be low. it can't be defined as any other way. The sample size of over 10,000 players says that not only is it low, but it's in the lower 30 percentile of what is expected.

And that those kinds of feedback statements aren't helpful when they're acknowledging all of the same flaws but coming to a vastly different conclusion.

As for those who say they're not seeing the gamma issue in odyssey, i'm sure we'd love to see some screenshots of similar images that everyone else is posting showing planets white washed, ui elements darkened to the point of barely seen, gamma sliders having to be maxed out just to make that somewhat corrected but then the galaxy map is grey-washed and the colors of ship paint jobs looking like they should look (like in horizons ) and not like they do in odyssey. Since the cause of this program is stemming from flaws in how the game is sending the graphics backend data - so it should exist in a similar manner for all hardware unless you're on a different execution pipeline and not getting those buggy code paths.

and i dont think the community is ever going to accept that 30fps is acceptable framerate or intended in 2021 for fps gameplay, much less gameplay that existed in horizons at 140+ on the same hardware. The graphics updates do not warrant such a hit, and we can see for sure that such a hit is being taken not from technical needs, but just really bad code.

I agree with your entire technical assessment and am personally also very sensitive to that stuff.

However, some people just aren't. Lol a lot of console gamers are very used to 30fps gaming and many people can barely tell the difference. There's also always going to be diehard fanboys who foster feelings of love for corporations for some reason. You're not going to change their minds about that.

All we can do is try to talk to the disillusioned people (I.e those who would not have made the purchase) and try to convince them to stop preordering and buying on launch day in the future. Also ofc we should call out people who are trying to belittle and make fun of those expressing their problems with the release.

 

[Darth Ender]

i've also heard that the entire UI system can disappear in the loadout pages for VR users, with no other option but to escape out of the game.

but the system map memory leak issue i've also heard of.. where every time you view the system map, it uses a bunch more vram until it's used so much that the graphics system can't manage to swap memory from system to gpu fast enough and starts dropping LOD's of what's on screen.

The LOD issue is also something not really working well in odyssey, where distance from viewer isn't properly impacting the LOD of some of the meshes drawn to screen around bases and such. Causing unecessary gpu load.

as for your test about the elevator, i would imagine that there just happened to be nothing on the other side of that elevator when facing it from the outside. it's hard to get a good apples to apples comparison wihout being able to compare between a known good (horizons) and your test.

That's where profiling tools come into play, where we see all kinds of things that shouldnt' be happening getting left in the scene to render in odyssey. Fixing occlusion culling alone would drastically improve framerate even with leaving much of the rest of the code unoptimized / cleaned up and polished. Except for the mem leak issues.

 

[Sysmon]

i've also heard that the entire UI system can disappear in the loadout pages for VR users, with no other option but to escape out of the game.

but the system map memory leak issue i've also heard of.. where every time you view the system map, it uses a bunch more vram until it's used so much that the graphics system can't manage to swap memory from system to gpu fast enough and starts dropping LOD's of what's on screen.

The LOD issue is also something not really working well in odyssey, where distance from viewer isn't properly impacting the LOD of some of the meshes drawn to screen around bases and such. Causing unecessary gpu load.

as for your test about the elevator, i would imagine that there just happened to be nothing on the other side of that elevator when facing it from the outside. it's hard to get a good apples to apples comparison wihout being able to compare between a known good (horizons) and your test.

That's where profiling tools come into play, where we see all kinds of things that shouldnt' be happening getting left in the scene to render in odyssey. Fixing occlusion culling alone would drastically improve framerate even with leaving much of the rest of the code unoptimized / cleaned up and polished. Except for the mem leak issues.

The Oculus Home app supposedly uses a lot of VRAM, which is why I tried to turn it off in the first place: As long as I'm exploring and using the DSS a lot, hopping in and out of VR is annoying. It was dismaying to get a bunch of CTDs again when starting the game in flatland mode.

I did the test with the elevator exactly because of that: There is nothing or not much behind the door when facing the elevator door from the outside. If occlusion works, there should be nothing or not much to continuously update behind the door too when it is closed and viewed from the inside.

S

 

[Stelar 7]

You do not seem to be a very fast runner.

Maybe your legs are experiencing FPS drops?

I have a day job.

 

[Stelar 7]

Sure, it would be appreciated.

Here are just a few ..

 

[Erei]

Here are just a few ..

View attachment 231592View attachment 231594View attachment 231595View attachment 231596

I don't understand your point. You are saying that making fun of people for their opinion is OK. Which by itself is wrong : it's never ok to make fun of people. And then to prove your point, you post a few topic which are very mild ? The "incompetence" is probably the one closest to crossing the line, so to speak.
I see people who really want to like the product, but don't. They all seem invested and disappointed. They are angry, and they it shows.

And you want to make fun of them, is that right ?

 

[Deleted member 182079]

See...this is exactly what I am talking about. Take a step back and look at how ridiculous this statement is. Would you even know what your frame rate was if you didn't hit Ctrl F? I only found out about that function in this thread. Come to find out my game is routinely dropping into the 30's planetside and only topping out at 60 in supercruise...hanging around 45 in stations and terminals....and without "Ctrl F," I wouldn't even know that.

The problem is the variation in frame rate, which makes the game feel janky and inconsistent (and lower frames can introduce input lag on top of that).

I used to be fine with 30fps coming from consoles, but since I own a gaming PC I've gotten used to stable 60fps - it feels more comfortable for my eyes and looks nice, clean and responsive. Even if it drops by just 5 to 10 frames, believe me when I say I notice. So the game dropping to below 30 is quite unpleasant in comparison for me at least.

Additionally, I normally play with TrackIR, which relies on a smooth frame rate - if it's not, head movements appear very stuttery and add to the felt discomfort. I stopped playing with it for the time being as it's just not pleasant right now.

I used to lock the game at 30fps on my old laptop, but I just can't go back to that again. You get used to the good stuff after a while.