planets shouldn't be 3d

[Mulbin]

The planets and suns really dont look right when you get fairly close (like dropping out of frame shift next to sun) they only seem about 100 feet across. The reason for this is that fd renders them with 3d depth, the human eye can only perceive depth up to about 200 meters, after this everything is actully flat, like a painting. Planets should appear to be focusses the same as the sky box in 2d to actually appear like a massive object in the distance. It feels like fd made them pop out in 3d simply because they can, rather than making it realistic.

E D... please switch of separation on objects further than 200 meters! You really notice the difference when you look at a gas giant when sitting in its rings, the gas giant is correctly rendered as 2d at this distance an looks truly massive.

 

[Desert63]

The planets and suns really dont look right when you get fairly close (like dropping out of frame shift next to sun) they only seem about 100 feet across. The reason for this is that fd renders them with 3d depth, the human eye can only perceive depth up to about 200 meters, after this everything is actully flat, like a painting. Planets should appear to be focusses the same as the sky box in 2d to actually appear like a massive object in the distance. It feels like fd made them pop out in 3d simply because they can, rather than making it realistic.

E D... please switch of separation on objects further than 200 meters! You really notice the difference when you look at a gas giant when sitting in its rings, the gas giant is correctly rendered as 2d at this distance an looks truly massive.

Fascinated by this....I know elsewhere there was a thread that said the reason planets may not look as real or big as they really are was due to us being used to seeing planets from the view of our very limited spaceflight and probes. Since travel in ED is some crazy thing like 25X the speed of light we move past planets at such a speed it minimizes them, but what you say above has me thinking.

 

[Masta Squidge]

I have never noticed this to be a problem.

In my experience with the DK2, dropping in next to a sun is a massive, awe inspiring thing. It looks exactly as I imagine a sphere that large should look, and am inclined to think you have a setting wrong. There is a STARK contrast between a star on my monitor, and one in the OR.

 

[Mulbin]

It's not exactly a problem. Just not very realistic. We simply do not see in 3d at those kinds of distance. An object having depth is one of the visual cues our brain uses to tell us something is close, putting this effect on something that is supposed to be far off is counter productive.

You can test this in real life just take a look at the moon... Notice how it doesn't pop out in 3d!

 

[Mulbin]

we see an object in 3d because one eye can see the object from a different angle to the other. This has a very noticeable effect on a small object close to us as we can see far more of one side of the object with the right eye and far more of the other side with the left eye. When dealing with a large object at a great distance the relatively tiny distance between our eyes is insignificant so both eyes see almost exactly the same image causing the object to appear flat like a painting. This isn't opinion just scientific fact.

 

[r00x]

If this is the case, then I'm all for them tweaking things in the manner described... but if it were, wouldn't the planets also look tiny when we drop out of supercruise?

For instance if I fly to a planet with rings, it does look pretty small as I approach. By the time I'm floating around in the rings though, it's back to appearing massive. Shouldn't I expect it to still look quite small here or is there something else cancelling the effect?

 

[Ryder35]

Interestingly this came up in Gamma and here is a quote from Ben Parry (one of the devs)

"Kaelis: You're not the only person to experience this, some of our earliest feedback from the Oculus Elders was that the planets felt too small, clearly something's tripping up people's scale perception. Unfortunately whatever it is isn't as simple as the scale actually being off, we have everything measured in metres, and are using the same eye cameras to draw the planets as we use for the cockpit."

Here is the link to the thread (Ignore the rubbish from the OP the rest is very interesting especially from page 6 when we start looking at left/right eye images )

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=33650

 

[Mulbin]

If this is the case, then I'm all for them tweaking things in the manner described... but if it were, wouldn't the planets also look tiny when we drop out of supercruise?

For instance if I fly to a planet with rings, it does look pretty small as I approach. By the time I'm floating around in the rings though, it's back to appearing massive. Shouldn't I expect it to still look quite small here or is there something else cancelling the effect?

No, planets will look massive if correctly displayed without 3d "pop-out" just like earth looks massive from the space station even though they cannot see it with 3d depth as it's more than 500 meters away. They will look bigger and further away (the correct size and distance) instead of smaller and less than half a mile away as they look now due.. due to the fact that only things close to you (less than half a kilometer) are ever 3d in real life.

Look at the sky box... it's not 3D it's like a flat painting, but when you are high above the galactic plain... boy does it look massive!

- - - Updated - - -

Interestingly this came up in Gamma and here is a quote from Ben Parry (one of the devs)

"Kaelis: You're not the only person to experience this, some of our earliest feedback from the Oculus Elders was that the planets felt too small, clearly something's tripping up people's scale perception. Unfortunately whatever it is isn't as simple as the scale actually being off, we have everything measured in metres, and are using the same eye cameras to draw the planets as we use for the cockpit."

Here is the link to the thread (Ignore the rubbish from the OP the rest is very interesting especially from page 6 when we start looking at left/right eye images )

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=33650

That's all well and good... but it is ignoring the fundamental issue. If an object has 3d (binocular) depth, it is closer than 500 meter to your face. Fact. Planets pop out in 3d in Elite which is just plain wrong. There are only 2 reasons this could happen... FD have either added a false 3d pop out to planets, or the planets are no where near full size in the game world.

I notice from that thread that someone has compared left and right and found no binocular difference when overlaid... however looking at the screen shot it just looks like they are outside the distance that ED starts adding the 3D pop-out. I'll try the same later up closer to a sun and see if there is any difference between left and right eye... if there is.... FD have got it wrong!

 

[horizone]

I notice from that thread that someone has compared left and right and found no binocular difference when overlaid... however looking at the screen shot it just looks like they are outside the distance that ED starts adding the 3D pop-out. I'll try the same later up closer to a sun and see if there is any difference between left and right eye... if there is.... FD have got it wrong!

So by now, you must have completed your investigation. What's the verdict?

 

[Mazhurg]

It's not exactly a problem. Just not very realistic. We simply do not see in 3d at those kinds of distance. An object having depth is one of the visual cues our brain uses to tell us something is close, putting this effect on something that is supposed to be far off is counter productive.

You can test this in real life just take a look at the moon... Notice how it doesn't pop out in 3d!

A couple of items here.

While you are correct in saying that our eyes can't perceive stereo (angular difference is below perception threshold) past a certain distance (I think something like 1') our very human and Mcgyver brain will still appear to perceive relief depth as long as there is shadow contrast on things. You can prove that to yourself by using a backyard telescope (or even plain binoculars) to look at the moon to enhance the relief.

By the same token, our brain is very poor at judging size and distance if you remove familiar context around an object.

 

[seanwasere]

I think that part of the issue is actually the resolution of the DK2, the Red Green and Blue leds are spaced far enough apart that we can see them in the lenses.
On the training missions 'launch' and 'travel', if you do a bit of free flight, you will notice this affect mostly on the moon that sits near the earth like planet when you leave the station. it has red splotches all over it that pop out, which appear to give it a 3D effect like it its closer to you, but it's not, it's the displacement of the red leds from the others which are together producing the whites and blacks.
You can also see this effect on the right information panel in the cockpit, the different coloured elements appear to have different 3d depths.
It's the fault of the DK2 being such low res I say, and being so close to your eyes.
If the planets were rendered in black. whites and greys, i don't think you would notice the issue so much.

 

[Ben Parry]

There shouldn't be any need to "turn off" 3D to make things beyond 200m seem to converge, because drawing them more than 200m away should be making them converge. It's a waste of resources, obviously, a clever system could probably copy-paste bits of one eye into the other to save time. There are a lot of edge cases to make that hard, though.
I still figure it's something to do with the shading model or texture resolution that makes it seem small though. Some subtle hindbrain clue. Maybe Horizons will fix it by letting you go really near it.

 

[IronGremlin]

I think that part of the issue is actually the resolution of the DK2, the Red Green and Blue leds are spaced far enough apart that we can see them in the lenses.
On the training missions 'launch' and 'travel', if you do a bit of free flight, you will notice this affect mostly on the moon that sits near the earth like planet when you leave the station. it has red splotches all over it that pop out, which appear to give it a 3D effect like it its closer to you, but it's not, it's the displacement of the red leds from the others which are together producing the whites and blacks.
You can also see this effect on the right information panel in the cockpit, the different coloured elements appear to have different 3d depths.
It's the fault of the DK2 being such low res I say, and being so close to your eyes.
If the planets were rendered in black. whites and greys, i don't think you would notice the issue so much.

Yes, this seems extremely likely to be a hardware thing and not a software thing.

Note that we (humans IRL) can percieve depth at up to 200 meters via paralax, when the distance between our eyes is only a few inches.

The perceived shift between eyes for a object that far away is super tiny - someone with better trigonometry skills than myself please feel free to chime in with yhe exact values here.

That means that we obly have to perceive an extremely small difference in the display between eyes to "trigger" that part of our brain.

Hence, if the display angle for each eye isn't an extremely precise mirror, things will look 3D even when they wouldn't normally.

It could be as simple a facial assymetry - one eye being slightly further away from the lens than the other would totally cause that kind of effect, for example, because the angle of eye to lense would be different for each eye.

 

[Dweezil_Moon]

Exactly.
Additionally, *movement* is often enough to understand relief and depth.
From my DK2 perspective, the planets and suns look absolutely right, size-wise.

A couple of items here.

While you are correct in saying that our eyes can't perceive stereo (angular difference is below perception threshold) past a certain distance (I think something like 1') our very human and Mcgyver brain will still appear to perceive relief depth as long as there is shadow contrast on things. You can prove that to yourself by using a backyard telescope (or even plain binoculars) to look at the moon to enhance the relief.

By the same token, our brain is very poor at judging size and distance if you remove familiar context around an object.

 

[Stocker]

I'm a smuggler in my type 9, and to get the best position to go into the stations. I have to sometimes skim the planets (I get the proximity impact alert) and the planets are huge. Because of the gravity well I'm actually getting like a aerobrake maneuver. Also when fuel scooping you can see the size of the star. The only thing that is staring to become a little annoying now, is that I wish the stars were brighter the closer your got to them. Yes the SweetFX mod has helped to improve it a little but would wish they did a update that would make them brighter and you would have to engage screen tint for visibility. but also have it in the graphic settings so you can set brightness from standard to extreme.

 

[seanwasere]

So i guess that the 200 meter 3d rendering optimisation problem, is not dealt with inside the oculus drivers, and this maybe is a major flaw with them.
ie,
the game engine renders objects father then 200m as a flat image, to save resources,
but the oculus drivers don't,
i'm just guessing here, it maybe a new angle to imagine our VR judder problems from.

 

[dementia]

The planets and suns really dont look right when you get fairly close (like dropping out of frame shift next to sun) they only seem about 100 feet across. The reason for this is that fd renders them with 3d depth, the human eye can only perceive depth up to about 200 meters, after this everything is actully flat, like a painting. Planets should appear to be focusses the same as the sky box in 2d to actually appear like a massive object in the distance. It feels like fd made them pop out in 3d simply because they can, rather than making it realistic.

E D... please switch of separation on objects further than 200 meters! You really notice the difference when you look at a gas giant when sitting in its rings, the gas giant is correctly rendered as 2d at this distance an looks truly massive.

I've actually done the maths on this and ED is correct when you take into account the distance and field of view. I started another thread somewhere similar to your question only to answer it (and disprove) myself. I haven't tried it with every object (i would expect the scaling to be different though). The maths is a little complex (not terribly) but in brief, in ED the FOV is about 90 degrees (so about 8ls wide) so therefore if you fly towards a star that is 4ls across then the star should take up 50% of your screen and you will be able to see it all in your FOV. I've found this to be correct for every star and planet I've tried so far.

Many people have also claimed that ED is not correct in terms of the FOV being static but either by design or accident, ED is actually correct. Yes when you approach light speeds then your FOV should narrow more and more however in ED your ship never goes faster than a few 100 metres a second (or whatever its non FSD max speed is) so any FOV changes would be so small you wouldn't even detect them.

 

[dementia]

I'm a smuggler in my type 9, and to get the best position to go into the stations. I have to sometimes skim the planets (I get the proximity impact alert) and the planets are huge. Because of the gravity well I'm actually getting like a aerobrake maneuver. Also when fuel scooping you can see the size of the star. The only thing that is staring to become a little annoying now, is that I wish the stars were brighter the closer your got to them. Yes the SweetFX mod has helped to improve it a little but would wish they did a update that would make them brighter and you would have to engage screen tint for visibility. but also have it in the graphic settings so you can set brightness from standard to extreme.

So you'd want a manual control on the screen polarisation instead of the automatic one we have now (essentially)? I'm not sure why anyone would want that. What I would say though is that it should perhaps be a feature of the cockpit canopy that when it receives a certain amount of damage then the first thing to go is the polarisation function. That at least would make for added danger when fighting around the nav beacon/close to a star. Take too much damage to the canopy and you will get max brightness and bloom from the star thus forcing a tactic where you can only attack with your back to the star.

 

[xondk]

E D... please switch of separation on objects further than 200 meters! You really notice the difference when you look at a gas giant when sitting in its rings, the gas giant is correctly rendered as 2d at this distance an looks truly massive.

Maybe I am misunderstanding. but I don't see how this has anything to do with anything, last I checked the reason we aren't great at perceiving depth at such great distances is that we have no frame of reference for it, if you had some frame?

However that does not change that if they made the game render stuff in 2d, it would not improve the quality of what you see, the reason planets do not seem massive is that they are extremely far away from you, and you have nothing between you and it to use as reference to judge the size, if you keep flying towards planets you will still be enormous amounts of distances away from them but you will come to realize just how big they are just like if you did it irl

the game engine renders objects father then 200m as a flat image, to save resources,

I am confused, OP seems to indicate that game does not do this, you say it does?

 

[Darkmark07]

OP, Is this not a case of

<father_ted>these are small, those are far away</father_ted>

?