The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread
- Thread starter Sir.Tj
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- mexican(mexico) nexus
For planetary landings down to roaming in a SRV (or eventually, on foot) you need a huge range in your level of detail reduction, starting from orbit where it's just a sphere with a high(ish) texture, down to ground level where each rock needs to have a detailed model and texture loaded. And this dynamic loading needs to happen really quickly, in a craft you'll be travelling at supersonic speeds, in the SRV you'll be travelling at ~100mph. For the demo above, they didn't really have to worry about that, they moved about the game world fairly slowly, giving the engine time to dynamically load the assets. Even still, you could see elements popping in as the player moved about.
Well at 4K it kind of becomes pointless
Unless you're on a 60" screen, then you kinda want it again.
Don't tell me those people aren't out there either
Yeah I know, but I can dream... I really don't expect it to look as good as some engines posted around the forum. I'm no expert but it seems nigh impossible to incorporate such fantastic engines on the scale of E: D. But you wont hear me complain either if it looks a bit less spectacular.
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There's also a risk for too high expectations. I'm also trying to be realistic but I'm quite sure that Frontier will deliver a certain standard!
In case anyone doesn't know, you can get UnrealEngine yourself (it's freely available to download) and play at making games / worlds or whatever you like. 5% commission on any commercial sales you make though It's fairly simple to get the basics down with lots of tutorials across the net. Quite a bit of downloadable stuff from their 'marketplace', including a lot of free stuff from Epic Games themselves.
It's fairly simple to get the basics down with lots of tutorials across the net. Quite a bit of downloadable stuff from their 'marketplace', including a lot of free stuff from Epic Games themselves.
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Actually, if planetary landings look like that, we are all in for some very expensive PC upgrades...
In case anyone doesn't know, you can get UnrealEngine yourself (it's freely available to download) and play at making games / worlds or whatever you like. 5% commission on any commercial sales you make though
Unrealelite confirmed... come on guy's, I got no time for it...just kidding... wait for horizons!
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We shouldn't expect handcrafted stuff. Remember that planets in ED have to be created procedurally, except maybe partially those from our solar system. Obviously Frontier will create textures and instructions how ED will randomly put the parts together, but I bet we will see a lot of repetition between planets of the same type throughout the whole galaxy. Hope I am wrong though.
Nah, this sort of fidelity is something I would expect from the next instalment in the TES series, NOT in Elite Dangerous. Elite will have to conjure up a compromise on the graphics, as the distances are vast, well, endless really, so there isn't a point in handcrafting to the level of detail - like we saw in that video - people will be whizzing by at 400 m/s too. Bethesda, on the other hand, can afford to concentrate on upgrading their engines to such levels as the map isn't going to be huge, yet mostly handcrafted, as per tradition..
I expect FSX level of detail for atmo-planets. A notch higher perhaps.
I expect FSX level of detail for atmo-planets. A notch higher perhaps.
You're absolutely right. But -I know it has been posted here before, just can't find the link to it- there's this one engine by this Russian (or Slavian at least) guy that is proceduraly generated and that looks quite stunning. Not at all like No man's sky, which, I agree, doesn't look realistic at all. Way too.. I don't know, cartoon-like for lack of a better word.
Elite can be pretty ok even with current version of Cobra. The graphics is not the main thing: take a look at Red Dead Redemption for example, which looks now ... pretty old. The game is great, that's what matters.
However, there are 2 things in current engine that bug me quite heavily:
1) When you finish a jump the whole background 'jumps' somewhere. Just when you approach a station or smth and go out of supercruise, the planet jumps a little bit to the point where it was like 0.5 secs ago. Same happens with interdiction - you end up a few seconds 'before' the interdiction was completed. Will this ever be fixed?
2) Some textures are unloaded and then when you turn your head they're not there. In few seconds they magically appear. That's bad especially in CQC, where everything is super-fast.
With 2) it's quite unclear. Is that too much to pre-load every possible texture that can be used in that scene/scenario/system, including planets? Or it's going to be too much?
However, there are 2 things in current engine that bug me quite heavily:
1) When you finish a jump the whole background 'jumps' somewhere. Just when you approach a station or smth and go out of supercruise, the planet jumps a little bit to the point where it was like 0.5 secs ago. Same happens with interdiction - you end up a few seconds 'before' the interdiction was completed. Will this ever be fixed?
2) Some textures are unloaded and then when you turn your head they're not there. In few seconds they magically appear. That's bad especially in CQC, where everything is super-fast.
With 2) it's quite unclear. Is that too much to pre-load every possible texture that can be used in that scene/scenario/system, including planets? Or it's going to be too much?
We shouldn't expect handcrafted stuff. Remember that planets in ED have to be created procedurally, except maybe partially those from our solar system. Obviously Frontier will create textures and instructions how ED will randomly put the parts together, but I bet we will see a lot of repetition between planets of the same type throughout the whole galaxy. Hope I am wrong though.
I'm hoping important world will receive a bit more hands on designs, Earth, Mars and so on.
Yes as with most movies I always avoid the previews. I go in with a blank slate. For PL in Horizons I am picturing Kerbal, but hoping for something much better.
Problems with a lot of these amazing engines or tech demos you see is that they work fine in their own right but then when you have to add everything else that a game has to do to be a game, the engines need to be compromised substantially to cope.
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These are known issues, I think 1 is hopefully being fixed in 1.4 and 2 will hopefully be improved over time. It's hard to optimize a game for systems that range from laptops that will barely run it to high end desktop PCs that will gorge on it and keep asking for more. The optimizations they've done so far since release have been really great though (still wishing we had pre release rings....) in a lot of departments, they'll continue to make it better and better.
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PG doesn't 'create' landscapes, the programmers do via a set of complexly defined mathematical rules that would make most of us scratch our heads. So AFAIK there's little in the way of basic terrain that you can't do. Caves and rocky overhangs however have been said to be much more difficult to realistically represent. That said FDev have some fine minds working on this. Rumour is their heads are cooled by liquid nitrogen to stop their brains from overheating.
So I'm confident we'll get something visually stunning.
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PG doesn't 'create' landscapes, the programmers do via a set of complexly defined mathematical rules that would make most of us scratch our heads. So AFAIK there's little in the way of basic terrain that you can't do. Caves and rocky overhangs however have been said to be much more difficult to realistically represent. That said FDev have some fine minds working on this. Rumour is their heads are cooled by liquid nitrogen to stop their brains from overheating.
So I'm confident we'll get something visually stunning.
I heard they first tried using liquid helium (for better cooling) but they couldn't get any work done because they were all giggling too hard at their own silly voices.