Brilliant A*++ would read again. Not quite sure I see any mileage in telling everybody 'I told you so' over common knowledge works though, maybe next time I walk into a supermarket I shall tell everybody that they're expected to pay for their shopping before taking it home and finish with 'I told you so!!!' just to see how it feels.
Told you so.
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Brilliant A*++ would read again. Not quite sure I see any mileage in telling everybody 'I told you so' over common knowledge works though, maybe next time I walk into a supermarket I shall tell everybody that they're expected to pay for their shopping before taking it home and finish with 'I told you so!!!' just to see how it feels.
Would be interesting to know what FD consider planet size, actual diameter size of in-game planets. The ones we have look pretty small, been trying to find out, not sure they want to say yet.
We know the Earth is over 12000km and the smallest, I think, is 3-4000km, so what size will in-game planets be I wonder.
We know the Earth is over 12000km and the smallest, I think, is 3-4000km, so what size will in-game planets be I wonder.
Look it up in the system map, it's will tell you happily what the radius of any body is so long as it's not unexplored and I'm resisting posting Father Ted and the sheep to explain that they are far away...
All planets in game are real size, Earth has radius of 6,300km. On average most of the small moons I have been investigating have a radius between 1,100 km & 1,500km.
It's easy to check for yourself using the galaxy/system map. Look for planets/moons labeled NO ATMOSPHERE, then check out the Radius.
Edit - An Icy planet orbiting one of Diso's gas giants has a radius of 3,200km - Am sure plenty of gigantic airless worlds exist
In Alpha CENTAURI - A tiny Rocky planet has a Radius of 684km, and a Metal rich planet (no atmosphere) 4,315km
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Let me put it this way. You can start driving on the moon in the early morning and if you are lucky you might get halfway around the moon by nightfall. Its a 1:1 scale. I'm not expecting a huge amount of detail on the planets yet though. I believe they will continually improve thoughout the year and they are adding in volcanoes to them as well later on in the year I believe.
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Its the size in-game they're going to make them, not they're real size. If they can replicate the real size in-game, well that's great, but they have to offset it with performance (thinking xbox).
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So it is in-game size I'm interested in. What do they consider planet size. For instance in Space Engineers they're introducing planets, these are thought to be anything over 120km diameter. In Empyrion they're around 8km diameter at present. NMS has also said planet size, although they don't mention what that is. When devs say something then not actually mention a size in-game, I start to wonder why not.
Now they have tested a little over 3000km in Space Engineers to match the smallest planet size, it works o.k. but then you have to think, are you going to step out of the space side i.e. loading screen into the planet side, then run that separately or are they going to be as Space Engineers are i.e. seamless, no false loading screens. Therefore reducing them to afford performance.
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Just wondering after the term planet size planets was used. What size do players think these are in-game now, my estimates are around half a km at a guess, that's because they can set any wall to stop us getting close. Which of course they have, then state the planets are huge, we wouldn't know for sure until we can fly around them or into the atmosphere and see for ourselves. I make 2-3km planets and put them into Space Engineers now. They look larger than the one in the trailer for Horizons, but its unclear and it interests me.
Also mining these planets and/or getting out and walking around (if there is gravity), just clarifying what terms mean to FD (planet size, planets) .
It's a 1:1 universe so they will be planet sized.
What's not to understand... Planets are real size. They always have been.. Borrow a friends DK2, trust me, planets are not half a km in size lol, floating above Earth in low orbit, it is actual size.
Even when looking at an Orbis station in VR, you can see that it is km's long stretching off into the distance. It's your 2D screen that limits the sense of scale
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Because airless planets are a good starting point. Planets with atmosphere, water and life are going to take a lot more development time to make worthwhile and as scientifically convincing as the rest of the game, especially on the 1:1 scale that Elite is based on.
Sure, No Man's Sky has all that stuff already and it's looking like an amazing achievement, but it has a much more stylised and arcadey scale. The transition from surface to space, for example, happens over less than 2000m. That's not a criticism, by the way it's just an observation, and it will absolutely suit it's game style to the ground. I'm really looking forward to it.
But Elite is on a very different scale and is built around a simulation of our current understanding of how the galaxy and it's bodies are formed. Its atmospheric worlds will have river systems that are as long and as complex as the Nile, Congo or Amazon (there was a brief demonstration of how they're working on that aaages ago, showing how the procedural system is being designed to simulate erosion to create realistic landscapes with realistic water channels), they'll have mountain ranges as varied as the Himalayas on Earth and the Hellas Montes on Mars. It's not just a matter of putting in a few more textures and skyboxes.
Getting all this stuff done in one go on a relatively small budget for a very niche audience isn't really possible. If it was, I'm pretty sure FD would do it if only to get there before No Man's Sky and bring more people in, but this kind of development takes time, resources and money to do properly. And to get those resources and that money is going to take time and, whether we like it or not, more than one paid expansion over said time.
I think that niche audience thing is often forgotten when people talk about Elite. It's completely fair to say that it's standard gameplay can be a bit weak, but I don't think it's setting out to be a playground (at least not yet) so much as it's building a kind of National Park, to be viewed and enjoyed in a very different way until there's enough of it there for the gameplay opportunities to present themselves. But I don't think it'll ever appeal to the masses, and it's already too far down it's own line to satisfy them even if FD were to suddenly change their priorities.
And that's OK - there's room for niche games as well as the mass-appeal behemoths in the gaming market. This is something David Braben said himself in one of the videos from 2014 or 2013.
You called FD would do what they said they will do, sooooo... everything great?
Please don't feel offended, but your post illustrates how badly informed many people are. Once you understood that ED is the most realistic simulation of the galaxy we can get you'll be much more forgiving regarding it's flaws and weird design decisions. Maybe it's just something for people who are into fractals and stuff.
I'll give an example Outerra engine. I'm sure many have played with the engine also Space Engine, but more to the point would be Outerra. Now, can we expect that size and detail, I have my doubts having made some smaller planets for Space Engineers using a mod tool. This allows as said upto 3km diameter planets, obviously very reduced to the games possible planet size. But the devs are straight forward and say performance is an issue where planets are concerned, that is why they're thinking about size of planets now (PG), there will be seamless landings as there are on the ones you can access now. So this is why 120-150 or beyond that may be possible or giving the player the option to choose depending on their own gaming system.
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We already have, in ED, loading screens (jump/hyper drive). We can't fly directly to a planet from another, even at an extreme speed such as jump speed. They make us use a jump to do that, whereas they could simply increase speed. That would lead me to think, that these are separated in some manner, which gives the reason of not being able to fly directly out of one space station and without a loading screen to another.
Maybe some are not understanding, when you say, planet size, there will be a line that the engine stops at and performance won't allow. However, if loading screens are to be used again, as now, then that may not apply, so the planet is in its own environment and therefore the size could be much larger.
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We already have, in ED, loading screens (jump/hyper drive). We can't fly directly to a planet from another, even at an extreme speed such as jump speed. They make us use a jump to do that, whereas they could simply increase speed. That would lead me to think, that these are separated in some manner, which gives the reason of not being able to fly directly out of one space station and without a loading screen to another.
Maybe some are not understanding, when you say, planet size, there will be a line that the engine stops at and performance won't allow. However, if loading screens are to be used again, as now, then that may not apply, so the planet is in its own environment and therefore the size could be much larger.
Oh, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on
1:1 means 1:1 is all I'm going to say. Not all engines treat scale the same, and it's probably no accident FD developed their own engine for this - so comparisons to other engines are probably not analogous.
Check early videos of ED, back in Alpha you could fly right up to planets. We'll say it one last time, everything is to scale in ED
Transitions in ED are for network only. Please don't represent your misinformed opinion as facts. If you have no clue how background loading/streaming in works, better don't.
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