Planets grapihics quality leaves a lot to be desired

Soliluna

Soliluna
Tinman said:
I've seen that presentation...many times...and followed Outterra (and any other planetary PG engine) for a long time. This kind of stuff is my "fetish". :D

Yes, Outterra does some really nice things up close and I'm playing around with it every now and then. My comment above wasn't about Outterra though.

As been mentioned several times before though....Outterra does not generate the planet in itself. It uses real world height maps and then adds procedural details on top of that. That has been their main focus for years so of course that looks better. I'm sure we'll get things like horizontal displacement eventually as development progresses on ED. The ED devs even briefly mentioned wanting to use up close displacement when they get around to it in their Twitchstream about the planetary tech...

I do think people often get "fooled" by atmospheric scattering and "atmospheric depth" when comparing to Horizions simply because our brains automatically defines green and "Earthlike" as beautiful. Try turning off atmospheric scattering and clouds in Outterra and you'll see what I mean. This is an example of me trying to replicate the ED look...I could have made far worse screenshots. ;)

http://i.imgur.com/eNGsuKb.png

Still very nice with the horizontal displacement and the procedural rocks...but the difference isn't really that big.
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The difference is pretty insane tbh, that screenshot looks incredible. The rocks look joined to the surface and the random outcroppings of rock look fitting. It's certainly a great deal better than ED's tech... but then Outerra doesn't have a galaxy nor spaceships nor space combat or multiplayer modes. If ED devs focused entirely on planetary rendering I'm confident they wouldn't have any trouble reaching this level of fidelity - however whether or not it could run well once you add all the other components in is questionable.
 

DaveB

DaveB
Varrag said:
One guy working on I: for 11 years in his spare time: 1 man x 11 years x 365 days x 3 hours average each day (probably VERY optimistic assumption) = 12045 work hours.
Horizons - total of ~100 Frontier employees for ED, let's say 10 of them were working exclusively on Horizons: 10 guys x 10 months x 22 days per month (weekends subtracted) x 8 hours per day (full time job) = 17600 work hours.

:)
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There's an IT joke so old it's fossiliized. "When your project is delayed, you can always double the number of developers working on it.. and double the delay"
 

Noddie

N
It's the age-old thing with games development. Do you design it for the top 10 percent of computers, and put it out of reach of the bottom 90? Or do you design it for the bottom 90, and make it "not good enough" for the top 10 percent (who are usually into that amazing looking game...... that nobody bought, because it effectively cost a grand)? Okay, that's a bit simplistic, but it's basically true. Now. You can make the detail levels adjustable but that has a performance hit itself, and only a few people would use the top detail settings.

I'm looking forward to E:D - mainly for the extra content. If it looks ace as well that's a huge benefit, but I recall playing Driller, Elite (1984) & Carrier Command on the Sinclair spectrum, and they were still fun despite being - essentially - monochromatic, 256x192 pixels (with a big border around them, so really rather less for the actual "view"). They were still fun, despite the poxy graphics.
 

Herik

Herik
Ekar said:
Everyone knows by now that people play ED for all different kinds of reasons. Some want to discover something unique and potentially awesome.. it might be a view lasting only ten seconds- a perfect composition before the environment shifts as you reach frantically for the 'printscreen' button. Hopefully there's some kind of balance of gameplay/graphics and I look forward to gameplay improvements just as much as graphics improvements.
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I agree Ekar...
 

Varrag

Varrag
Noddie said:
I recall playing Driller, Elite (1984) & Carrier Command on the Sinclair spectrum, and they were still fun despite being - essentially - monochromatic, 256x192 pixels (with a big border around them, so really rather less for the actual "view"). They were still fun, despite the poxy graphics.
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I remember Driller, also the Mercenary and of course Elite. In those times, ruled by platform game such as Manic Miner and Crazy Kong, 3D vector graphics was revolutionary and usually considered as great.
 

nats

Banned
nats
Yes those settlements look very contrived and 'procedural'. They look reminiscent of such games as Hardwar from the 80/90s (not to mention the old Frontier and FFE games). I expect better from games these days. I dont expect a Fallout 4 level of detail but they need to look like real outposts with tunnels and preferably docking domes that you decend into. I dont like the way they have repeated the use of the pads from the outposts, that's a bit ropey. But I just want these things out so they can develop them over time later, they dont have to be perfect now. As long as they get more important things done on the main game I can live with rubbishy settlements for a few months. Far more important things for them to do.
 
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Jools

Jools
Varrag said:
Yeah. Braben is busy man but I believe/hope that he follows what's going on in procedural generation arena, which is pretty exciting these days. SE, Outerra, I: etc... are not direct competitors to ED, but their technical achievements should serve both as inspiration and challenge for Frontier.
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I doubt that

For one he had completely no clue about the existence of space engine
 
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Insomnia

Insomnia
Nothing to do with Horizons.... Or Elite.
But omg just look at this planet!!!

[video=youtube_share;9bWz8fbkZXI]http://youtu.be/9bWz8fbkZXI[/video]
 
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lysan

lysan
nats said:
Yes those settlements look very contrived and 'procedural'. They look reminiscent of such games as Hardwar from the 80/90s (not to mention the old Frontier and FFE games). I expect better from games these days. I dont expect a Fallout 4 level of detail but they need to look like real outposts with tunnels and preferably docking domes that you decend into. I dont like the way they have repeated the use of the pads from the outposts, that's a bit ropey. But I just want these things out so they can develop them over time later, they dont have to be perfect now. As long as they get more important things done on the main game I can live with rubbishy settlements for a few months. Far more important things for them to do.
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Well, in my opinion they are doing ok, of course it can be better. I always wanted to see something less polished.

6d59916c70323ed3888bb1c4006719fd.jpg

latest

sarang-moonbase-steve-howarth.jpg

What is needed are some texture around the bases with tracks of other SRVs or visible excavation marks on the ground, maybe some moving mining machines.
 
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