Pushing the bounderies: Elite/StarCitizen

[CMDR DeadPorkins]

First of all, I love this game and the graphics as well as the sound are impressive. There's been this question in the back of my head recently as to how far FD are planning to push the power of current high end PC rigs.

Yesterday evening I decided to watch someone playing Star Citizen on a live Twitch stream. I have an account with RSI but have yet to invest in a starter ship, so I really haven't played it myself hands-on yet. I have watched alot of youtube videos in order to get a sense of what this game offers.

After watching someone play for awhile on Twitch, I became acutely aware that this game was a totally different beast than ED. I asked the person playing what he thought of the differences between the visuals in SC and ED. He brushed off the question, saying that the graphics in ED are awesome.

As much as I agree that ED's graphics are amazing, I felt that it wasn't quite the answer I was looking for. I simply let the question go.

After awhile, he wrapped up his stream and shipped everyone over to watch someone playing Elite. That's when it hit me hard. After watching this guy playing Star Citizen for about an hour, the shift over to Elite: Dangerous was visually jarring. For the first time since playing ED for over 180hrs, the graphics, the cockpit layout, and the space in front looked kind of flat and bland by comparison.

Now please, understand that I am raising a topic only out of concern for the future development of this game. My main concern is that I don't want Elite to be limited or look outdated two or three years down the road. I wonder how much they intend to push PC hardware. I wonder if they are holding back something in order to accommodate a broad spectrum of platforms. I wonder if what we are seeing visually in the game is pretty close to how the final release will look. If we can expect surprises between now and full release, just how big will they be?

I am sure that Frontier is well aware of their immediate competition. I guess I wonder how much energy and inspiration they could be feeding off of that. I am not saying any of this to take sides at all. This is purely a question of aesthetics.

I do understand that RSI has a much larger budget to work with compared to FD. I also understand that SC is far from finished. Still, in it's current state, if ED is coming close to the end of its main game, full release development cycle, 2 years down the road when Star Citizen is making headlines, Elite's visual presentation could very well look like a trip back to 1985 by comparison.

Just throwing it out there, if only to challenge the team. I wish the best for Frontier's project and can't get enough of it!

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

If you buy Star citizen based on that, you're going to be one sad customer. I own both and the only thing I can say is if you noticed anything like the disparity you claim between Star Citizen and Elite it was something to do with the streamer's settings and PC.

 

[Adept]

The visuals in SC do nothing for me, I'm afraid. I don't like the ship designs (I picked the 325a since it was the least ugly), and the visuals of space are just a hollywood set. Skyboxes, etc.

The visual fidelity of Elite is just fine, and IMO the game can stand the comparison perfectly.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

and the visuals of space are just a hollywood set. Skyboxes, etc.

This is important to note. The only thing Star Citizen has right now is an arena mode that was deliberately designed to look more impressive than it really is when on display.

There is nothing impressive about it when you realize the planet in the background is just a flat picture, the entire area is fenced off in invisible walls and if you take the time to slow down and look at the objects in space they look like trash.

The lighting effects are what really give Star Citizen the appearance of polish, and it's a smoke and mirrors job. They deliberately added in multiple artificial light sources to give the game the illusion of extra depth and variety in appearance than it really has.

The lighting effects in Elite are nowhere near finished, and are still superior. They just aren't being thrown in your face to hide everything else that isn't finished.

 

[Valcrow]

Like you I've watched a whole bunch of streams on SC/Elite. And I totally agree with you, SC looks WAY better in terms of pure graphics. The spaceships are richer inside and out, the backgrounds are impressive.

I think the only visual element I like better in elite vs. SC is the hyperspace jump (holy cow that's cool especially when a star zipps at you at light speed) and the weapons. SC looks amazing until you start seeing laser projectiles. eeww.

That said, I recently just decided to back elite over SC because the gameplay is so far so much more impressive. And gameplay is king.

I would also stretch to say that elite feels much more immersive than SC right now, even though the graphics are better in SC, the sound and everything coming together in a cohesive size and scale is much more convincing than SC's arcadey kinda feel.

But I would like to see more colour and detail in elite, and more impressive stations and ships. X-rebirth (although riddled with bugs) was truely a marvel to fly around.

Bottom line for me though, gameplay first, graphics second. And they look like they are diverging in gameplay so I'd probably end up getting both.

 

[Rhaedas]

Two points about ED. The models have been designed to upscale to future graphic potentials, and likewise, ED can downscale to let average rigs play it quite well. Certainly can't say that about SC at the moment. Now you can use the reasoning that it's not optimized yet, but I don't think they are looking to downscale the graphics all that much to let the typical non-gamer PC play it.

And I'll say what I've always said about games in general. Eye candy is nice to look at, but I'll play a game that looks lesser in the graphics quality if it has great game play behind it. Eye candy with no substance makes nice desktop background pictures.

 

[rayvon]

I read somewhere that Braben and co were pinning their hopes on future tech .
ED plans to push the boundaries in the future, not just in the few years prior to release.

 

[knowles2]

Personally the visuals are the least of my concerns, in fact I suspect most players can't run the game at full graphical settings as it is today. So my opinion is that the game is perfectly fine in this area.

I'm more worried about how far they are going to push the the procedural generation sides of things, how much will this universe they have built will adapt and change to how players play. How random will everything be.

I'm more worried about the lack of aliens species and enemies other than humans. So far this galaxy they have built looks a bit empty.

Having watch a few Star citizens videos and played the game during their free beta weekend, I just found the whole thing dull, all pretty graphics and not much else. Whilst watch elite dangerous videos get me excited to play the game. But I have decided that I will probably wait until it at least Beta 2 or Beta 3 before buying it, I want to save myself for the full game.

 

[forger]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/17/david-braben-expresses-desire-to-future-proof-elite-dangerous/
this might help. also we didn't see beta 2 cockpit yet and still all is work in progress, but knowing how CIG is selling ships they just are bound to make all pretty, otherwise nobody will buy those.

i think ED is looking way better. and game play really is a king, i will choose scientifically correct galaxy over fantasy one every day

p.s. i have backed both games but currently i doubt i will play sc, it just feels disgusting, maybe they will fix it, maybe not

 

[Doomus]

I read somewhere that Braben and co were pinning their hopes on future tech .
ED plans to push the boundaries in the future, not just in the few years prior to release.

David Braben is on record saying:

"We're going through some wonderful effects internally that look truly beautiful, and we're saying, that slows the frame-rate a bit, doesn't it? And we say yes, but we don't mind, because it looks so beautiful. But what we're going to do is attach it to this part of the detail slider. Or we'll call it out as a tick box. The hope is that with the help of Moore's Law, which predicts that computing power will increase significantly every two years, and ever cheaper prices of graphics cards, Elite will continue to look impressive for years to come. Moore's law is our friend, even if your PC of today can't run with all the features on, your PC of tomorrow might."

Which I think is just damn awesome.

 

[xxThe_Dice_manxx]

The graphics don't matter , FTL is a fantastic game, nuff said.

 

[Kerrash]

Ahh the eternal struggle between gameplay and flashy GFX will wage on...

The key advantage that ED has over SC is the scalability of the assets. Frontier can easily layer on more detail as our GPU's catch up, but SC will need an artist to rebuild models/textures at higher detail. This is a big reason why SC will need more and more funding.

 

[JamesBondage]

I couldn't help noticing how much sleeker the SC cockpits look, still going to play ED, mostly because I can't pay real money for a ship haha

 

[Dan-Erik]

I couldn't help noticing how much sleeker the SC cockpits look, still going to play ED, mostly because I can't pay real money for a ship haha

I don't know much about SC, but I checked out two Twitch streams because of this thread. The first stream had a cockpit that was just a black frame, no instruments visible. The environment looked a bit meh to me. The second stream I checked had a cockpit that looked almost identical to ED, except the instruments were moved around a bit and color changed to blue. Again, the graphics didn't look as good as ED does, in my opinion. So I don't understand what it is you think is "sleeker"?

I read up a bit on wikipedia articles and such. Looked at the ships SC offers, I only saw one that wasn't outright ugly. I'm sure CryEngine can produce pretty graphics, but they don't seem to be aware of how space actually looks. You don't seem to get the same feeling of vast expanse as you get in ED.

Dunno, guess I sound like an ED fanboi. Truth is, I just recently discovered this game. But I have to say, I'm not the least bit worried about lacking "pretty graphics", because already now it's stunning to me. And I much prefer it to what I've seen of SC, even though I haven't actually tried that game myself. Also, the devs of ED already said there is no upper limit of resolution, so there is already a lot of hardware scaling built in that no one can use.

 

[Jenner]

Star Citizen is quite beautiful, it's true. So is Elite I think. Both games have a distinct visual style. FD have said before that they are designing the game to be as 'future proof' as possible and I believe them.

Visual fidelity is important but so is game play. In this regard Elite is doing quite well. It looks good and it plays good. Star Citizen isn't quite as 'baked' yet and has a ways to go, but it already looks great. In time both games will be mature and will stand on their own.

 

[Gwyvern]

Rig burning graphics do not make a good game, easier to run is a much better quality to strive for.

 

[Naranek]

i'm with elite since the alpha phase and only a week ago got into sc and tried arena commander. yes, it does look "prettier" – which actually surprised me because it is something i only realized when i finally played it myself. for some reason its (superficial?) beauty doesn't quite come across when just watching e.g. a youtube video of someone else playing.

so, at the moment, when i switch directly from ac to ed, for a minute or so it feels weird – flatter, less flashy etc. but only for a minute. as soon as my mind is fully back in the immersive world that elite dangerous beta (already) is, all doubts are gone. the comparison is out of my head. the graphics are just fine. the design (and the sound!!!) is just amazing.

i'm not going to judge star citizen, because let's face it, it'll come out in 2016 or something like that. as for elite, i can already tell it's everything i wanted. the way it is now, and even more so when it's finished.

 

[JonnyRedHed]

There's no harm in wanting the best cutting edge graphics and great game play together. I want cutting edge graphics, and beyond. Being a frustrated futurist I want what's around the next 5-10 corners now! when it comes to games and technology to drive them.

All moving to slow for my liking, GPU's CPU's, motherboards, and cutting edge games.

 

[kwik]

The only thing that is good looking about SC is the hangers and the backdrops. (And the maps are static, nothing rotates or moves around other than the ships).

In combat its cloudy and full of icons that you shoot at, not ships. The cockpits hide a lot of the screen and the UI is clogged up with un-needed stuff. There is only so much actual meat you can see when your jousting and turreting.
SC's graphics has become a mantra, keep repeating that they are better than ED's and you will believe it.


Frontier have stated that they will have more graphic options available that our PC's cannot handle right now. And they can evolve their own engine a lot easier than RSI can evolve cryengine.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

......

Am I the only one that doesn't see a significant difference between quality in the two games?

Significant difference in aesthetic and style, but not quality. Easy to check when you can alt-tab between the two.

And considering that Elite is full of a bunch of placeholder art and visual effects while Star Citizen is a bloated tech demo that equates to an elaborate bullshot that will in no way be representative of the final product (anyone familiar with Aliens: Colonial Marines?) I think that gives Elite: Dangerous an edge.

I'm not even going to get into the topic of the fact that they have delayed their latest patch for said tech demo 3 times because it's "not ready for the public."

How do you delay a patch for a beta because it's buggy?

It's still going to be filthy with glitches when they finally release it! They always are!