The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread

[ZeeWolf]

There was some limited information and concept art in this newsletter

"Airless worlds" will apparently be done first. I'd expect we'll just be able to land on small outposts to begin with.

 

[Kitiara]

I'm rather hoping we'll see the worm class ship come in with planetary landings. I really can't see how a ship with the size and lack of aerodynamics of a Type 9 landing on a planet.

 

[Yellonet]

TBH i don't expect a natural and seamless transition where you approach the planet from space in normal cruise mode with your thrusters then dive into the atmosphere with clouds and move through the clouds towards the surface.
Maybe its done similar to approaching a station in SC: you target the planet in normal cruise mode and once you are within a certain speed/distance frame you have to press the 'landing' key.

That would likely be when I stop playing the game.
I still consider the current "loading screen" from SC to normal space a temporary solution that hopefully will disappear when the proper implementation of the seamless universe is released.
The seamlessness has been done before in other games, so it can be done, come on FD!! It's such an immersion killer now and it would be worse when going down to a planet.

 

[dreamer1986]

The concept art for planetary landing looks very promising

 

[Systrom]

i would love to see a game , where we need to hit the atmosphere and according to the size of the planet , atmosphere thickness etc, we need to navigate and manage speed acoordingly or blow up

 

[Tenshi]

I love playing Elite so far. But getting close to so many planets while exploring makes me wonder how will planetary landing work.

Also, what will make said landing fun? Will we explore and scan lifeforms, minerals, be planetary explorers? Or hunt bandits in a shooter style gameplay? Maybe find lost treasures?

I want to know if I should get excited about it or not

It will work something like this " Oh god oh god! We are all going to die." As our ships heat up on re-entry while we fight against the controls and wind turbulence.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

It will probably be seamless to a point, but there will have to be some sort of approach setup, you cant just SC into the planet atmosphere thats not going to work.

I would imagine you will approach the planet and have 'hotspots' (think like resource extraction sites) to aim for. These will be close to starports on the planet surface or POI's. You would then drop out (in a seamless way) a few miles up, and then from there you can drop down to the planet surface using normal velocity speeds.

Then when you leave a planets surface you can probably just head away in any direction, and once you get up high enough (a few miles up say), then you can re-engage SC get your escape vector and away you go.

Thats how I imagine it will work anyway ... Its never going to be completely seamless ..

 

[Sacman]

That would likely be when I stop playing the game.
I still consider the current "loading screen" from SC to normal space a temporary solution that hopefully will disappear when the proper implementation of the seamless universe is released.
The seamlessness has been done before in other games, so it can be done, come on FD!! It's such an immersion killer now and it would be worse when going down to a planet.

I was told the whole year in this forum that the SC exit "loading screens" to stations/USS/asteroid belts etc, is just a placeholders and will get replaced with the "real thing" at release ... did not happen.
So i only can assume they are a core element of EDs architecture based on instancing.

 

[ZeeWolf]

It will probably be seamless to a point, but there will have to be some sort of approach setup, you cant just SC into the planet atmosphere thats not going to work.

I would imagine you will approach the planet and have 'hotspots' (think like resource extraction sites) to aim for. These will be close to starports on the planet surface or POI's. You would then drop out (in a seamless way) a few miles up, and then from there you can drop down to the planet surface using normal velocity speeds.

Then when you leave a planets surface you can probably just head away in any direction, and once you get up high enough (a few miles up say), then you can re-engage SC get your escape vector and away you go.

Thats how I imagine it will work anyway ... Its never going to be completely seamless ..

Why can't it be seamless? The previous two games in the series were seamless. The transition from SC to atmospheric speeds would be the same as exiting into a planetary ring (which you can already do anywhere, not just at a resource extraction site) there isn't much you can do about that (even if the planet detail was pre-loaded) as the speed difference is ridiculous.

 

[Sacman]

Why can't it be seamless? The previous two games in the series were seamless. The transition from SC to atmospheric speeds would be the same as exiting into a planetary ring (which you can already do anywhere, not just at a resource extraction site) there isn't much you can do about that (even if the planet detail was pre-loaded) as the speed difference is ridiculous.

Because of the MMO instancing networking architecture FD implemented space in ED (and all things in it) in blocks/bubbles etc. and this causes necessary transitions seams between them.
The previous games had only offline mode

 

[Jetkar]

My guess their will be several transitions when entering the planets atmosphere (if the planet has an atmosphere) the first transition the entry into the upper atmosphere from SC to Ultra Sonic Speed (USP) (Faster than Supersonic) where the commander has to angle his ship and fight friction the ship is enduring when entering the atmosphere preventing the ship to overheat. The next transition will be the decelration from USP to Supersonic speed between 100k feet to 50k feet pretty much smooth ride during this transition till the ship gets below the 50k feet marker when the ship will endure turbulence, cloud and natural weather patern while it continues to decend towards the planet surface. At this point the commander may continue to fly supersonic or slow down to sub sonic speed. Final stage and transition is when approaching the ground or selected landing area at normal flight speed of 300 to 500mph avoiding foliage and moving around contour of a valley till the ship lands like a VTOL (harrier jump jet).

 

[Kadaeux]

I'm rather hoping we'll see the worm class ship come in with planetary landings. I really can't see how a ship with the size and lack of aerodynamics of a Type 9 landing on a planet.

Considering the accelerations our ships are capable of it's not unrealistic to consider a Type 9 capable of landing on a planet. It'd be a lumbering brick but it could do it.

 

[OnePercent]

I guess there will be another mechanism (similar to SC/HJ) to initiate the landing because the game needs to create the 'planet instance'.
Tbh i don't expect a natural and seamless transition e.g. approaching the planet from space in normal cruise mode with your thrusters then dive into the atmosphere with clouds and move through the cloud layers towards the surface.
Maybe its done similar to approaching a station in SC: you target the planet in normal cruise mode and once you are within a certain speed/distance frame you have to press the 'landing' key which puts you (after some delay...) directly into the clouds and from that you move down to the surface to find ... what?
Another instance transtion to land on the surface on a RNG landing platform?
Please no...

I guess you do not realise that the Cobra engine has no problem with seamless transitions, It already works, there is just no level of detail made for planets YET.

You have to understand, the reason we actually have to drop out of "supercruise" into an instance is Purely for bandwidth and networking protocol, Not because of limitations of the engine.

There Will be seamless transition but it will be purely IN supercruise mode, You fly down to the planet whilst in supercruise, you're ship will then be able to travel BELOW the minimum speed of 30 kilometers per second, In fact the space shuttle on re-entry to our planet is about 6.6 kilometers per second! or 24 thousand kilometers per hour. So it makes sense to keep on supercruising, We should thus be able to fly around planets at hypersonic speeds (up to mach 24) the balancing factor is if you go too fast you will burn up. Once you have picked a spot where you want to exit supercuise mode you then "drop out" into the networking island just like we do now, except you will only be limited to the max speeds we have now.

There should be full supersonic effects relative to atmospheric composition, temperature and pressure.

Flying through the clouds and experiencing the thunderstorms as flashes of lighting bolts pass by, with that "in the clouds feeling"

Just thinking about this makes me extremely excited about how it will be on the oculus rift to be honest, if FDEV pull this off as intended it will truly be a gaming masterpiece.

For those who think this is impossible and will not be as delivered then just look at the odds and run the numbers, 10 people at hello games are already working with similar technology, "No man's sky" will be doing the exact same thing, though not on a realistic scale, but because of the nature of procedural generation and the smart use of level of detail systems, It really doesn't matter, Besides, we got the PC! we're not dumbing down the capabilities and technology to suit the minimum specs of consoles anyway.

 

[Retu81]

Considering the accelerations our ships are capable of it's not unrealistic to consider a Type 9 capable of landing on a planet. It'd be a lumbering brick but it could do it.

"With enough thrust even a brick will fly." - old aviation proverb.

 

[OnePercent]

It will probably be seamless to a point, but there will have to be some sort of approach setup, you cant just SC into the planet atmosphere thats not going to work.

I would imagine you will approach the planet and have 'hotspots' (think like resource extraction sites) to aim for. These will be close to starports on the planet surface or POI's. You would then drop out (in a seamless way) a few miles up, and then from there you can drop down to the planet surface using normal velocity speeds.

Then when you leave a planets surface you can probably just head away in any direction, and once you get up high enough (a few miles up say), then you can re-engage SC get your escape vector and away you go.

Thats how I imagine it will work anyway ... Its never going to be completely seamless ..

Very possible to supercruise into an atmosphere, The NASA space shuttle enters earths atmosphere at 6.6 kilometers per second, why shouldn't these futuristic yachts? I don't know if you remember but in premium beta and beta the minimum speed was 10 kilometers per second, now it's 30. This is not a limitation of the engine.

 

[LawHunter]

Cool description %OnePercent%

The last 2 Elite games did the planetary landing well. More of the same would be nice. Will be great to have combat on planets. FA on will be like fighter jets, turn off to do flips but have gravity to deal with.

 

[Alice Margatroid]

the main problem I see with reentry in this game is how slow it would be in normal space. your ship already has enough "drag" to limit it to 300ish meters per second, a real space ship goes between 2-7km per second just getting out of the planet, and likly much faster going in. and for any planet thats the size of the earth, you would have to fly for about 10-30 min at that speed to get to the planet, and you would not even need to worry about overheating, and people thing sc takes so long as it is. I dont see many people wanting to do planetary landing unless they are a explore. that said, I do wish them luck with it. and I do think that with a chance in the physics of the ship while reentering might help alot.

 

[Sacman]

There will be a planetary landing modul with different ratings/classes which define the astronomical objects/sites for landing.
Everything will be done completely automatically by this module.
Cmdrs will activate this module and relax ... same procedure as with the docking computer.
Thats all regarding planetary landing.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I'm rather hoping we'll see the worm class ship come in with planetary landings. I really can't see how a ship with the size and lack of aerodynamics of a Type 9 landing on a planet.

Landing isn't a problem. Just cut engines. Taking off afterwards might be a problem....

 

[Retu81]

Cool description %OnePercent%

The last 2 Elite games did the planetary landing well. More of the same would be nice. Will be great to have combat on planets. FA on will be like fighter jets, turn off to do flips but have gravity to deal with.

Aerodynamic drag as well when there is atmosphere present. I'd imagine trying to flip something like a Cobra around in a normal atmosphere would bleed off the forward momentum rather quick. That's a huge area to grab the wind with.