Newcomer / Intro Trading.. will it get any better?

Soliluna

Soliluna
Good Evening CMDRs

I posted here in December with some thoughts and fears for the game after I needed to ask a question and was shocked to be met with mature responses. Maturity is as uncommon on the internet as Wolf-Rayet stars in the Milk Way so I hope it was not a one off!

I've recovered and gotten back into the game now and there has been a lot of movement from the developers which I must applaud however I am still concerned over the lack of features being described. I was wondering if anyone had any information about any features that were being planned outside of the ED Newsletters? (Quality of Life Features like the Wings update).

I have experimented with each of the three core aspects of the game for quite a few hours and have found them enjoyable, exploration is possibly most fun because of the semi-authentic nature of the galaxy but I feel trading needs a big improvement.

What I have not found fun in the slightest is the lack of any way to record trading data in game - this confuses me greatly considering we invented computerized data storage medium in the 1920's. We seem to have lost the ability to take a snapshot of trade data while in a space ship, in a space station, in space, centuries later. What keeps going through my mind is - I can buy a computer, that docks my spaceship for me - but not one that records a few numbers for me.

Alongside this being quite immersion breaking it's also really difficult to enjoy trading when I have to take off my Oculus HMD and my headset, find a piece of paper and jot down a price for a particular commodity, go to the next station and then write them down and so on. While playing using a monitor I accept that this is far more plausible however I still feel that it is unnecessary and seems to detract from the realism that FD are trying to achieve.

Importantly I think it is where trading and all the other disciplines/professions differ - trading is the only one where you need to 'leave' the game.

TLDR - Are there any more planned improvements I have missed from the Newsletters? Particularly, are we ever going to see a way of saving a snapshot of trade data from a station?
 

Distance

Distance
Most players are using external tools until fd sort some out. If you don't want to use crowd sourced data and want the equivalent of digital pen and in (without having to type or write down everything by hand) I suggest using :

Elite OCR - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=68771

CMDR's Log - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=96350

With elite ocr you take screenshots of the commodities and it captures the text. You then import it in to cmdrs log and it adds the text in there in a searchable format and even can help you find the best trade route.
 

Soliluna

Soliluna
Hi Distance thanks for the response. You say 'until fd sort some out' forgive my prying but have they confirmed whether such a feature is planned for inclusion, are you of the belief that they will include it or is it a hope? :)

Thanks for the links, I will give OCR a go but again, with Oculus all of these solutions are a great burden - I am guessing no API exists and I would get banned if I coded something that dragged the values out of memory.

I guess the true problem is, how do I convince myself to play without the Oculus, when the immersion is just too damn good to put down.

Edit - Looked into OCR, it will not work unless I can find a screenshot tool that I can run a script to remove the distortion on before a screenshot is taken. If I can find or find the time to make one I will add it to the OCR post for Oculus users.
 
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Distance

Distance
Soliluna said:
Hi Distance thanks for the response. You say 'until fd sort some out' forgive my prying but have they confirmed whether such a feature is planned for inclusion, are you of the belief that they will include it or is it a hope? :)

Thanks for the links, I will give OCR a go but again, with Oculus all of these solutions are a great burden - I am guessing no API exists and I would get banned if I coded something that dragged the values out of memory.

I guess the true problem is, how do I convince myself to play without the Oculus, when the immersion is just too damn good to put down.

Edit - Looked into OCR, it will not work unless I can find a screenshot tool that I can run a script to remove the distortion on before a screenshot is taken. If I can find or find the time to make one I will add it to the OCR post for Oculus users.
Click to expand...

Ahh that sucks that you can't use it due to the rift. Trading isn't much fun, even less so with the rift. Maybe you could try one of the rare trading routes as they seem to be pretty straight forward for good profits to start with :

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101211

Failing that just use the other trading tools on a tablet or second screen.

I'm hoping fd will add a better trade system as right now when you buy the trade data it only shows where things are exported to. They should add digital pen and paper at least but I doubt it's a top priority since the trading tools exist and are endorsed.You can't rip the values out of the memory any more which is why people have turned to ocr. They are planning to release an api at some point so I'm assuming it might be easier then but as usual there's no eta.
 
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Soliluna

Soliluna
Oh that is disheartening :(

But thanks for a link to that post, I think I will give that a go as it seems more cut-and-dry rather than trying to juggle the rift around.

It seems like a really strange oversight; I would have expected them to test different methods and still have some of the code from those tests. Or they have some extremely effective management, programmers are such experimenters and love dabbling particularly in their own time. At least that's my experience of working with them: always looking to perfect their code.

Thanks for all your help :)
 

cmdr lowest

C
You know, I've always been an avid advocate of the old-school, pen & paper philosophy because this is how it was done back in '84.

However you make a very good point with this not being a viable option for Oculus users. Perhaps FD will have to do something once Oculus is actually released beyond development kits? That would be useful as I plan on buying a release model when they are available (just for this game).

For now I think you should get to know a few trade routes and stick to them. Now I am beginning to wonder how Oculus users use the Galaxy map for searching for systems...

Oh and F10 should capture a screen for you (Alt-F10 for 4K resolution). You can map this to a voice command if you are using Voice Attack software, something I would definitely recommend for Oculus users.
 

Derpster Frey

D
I believe they are working on plugin support for the onboard cockpit computer, I heard some devs talk about it.
It's not entirely unrealistic someone is going to make a trade plugin, or the very least, a notepad for that.

Heck, if no one else does, I'll do it when the support is there.

In the mean time, try TCE. Not sure how well it interact with Rift, but it's an overlay to the game.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=119873
 
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Soliluna

Soliluna
cmdr lowest said:
You know, I've always been an avid advocate of the old-school, pen & paper philosophy because this is how it was done back in '84.

However you make a very good point with this not being a viable option for Oculus users. Perhaps FD will have to do something once Oculus is actually released beyond development kits? That would be useful as I plan on buying a release model when they are available (just for this game).

For now I think you should get to know a few trade routes and stick to them. Now I am beginning to wonder how Oculus users use the Galaxy map for searching for systems...

Oh and F10 should capture a screen for you (Alt-F10 for 4K resolution). You can map this to a voice command if you are using Voice Attack software, something I would definitely recommend for Oculus users.
Click to expand...

Hi Lowest thanks for the response, yeah and while we're on the vein of Oculus could I direct you to HTC and Valve's 'ReVive' that was very recently announced with a consumer product planned this year with apparent release specifications:

http://www.htcvr.com/

Oculus finally has a competitor product in the market that will hopefully make things better for us as the end user.

VR is very much in the forefront of peripheral development this year and I hope FD have the time to perfect their implementation of it because it is the perfect type of game for this peripheral.

My setup allows the use of keyboard and mouse and my x52 has a built in mouse also but the map is actually really easy to use with the x52. Throttle hats provide movement of the selection.. pointer. Joystick provides pitch and rotation, it has a scroll wheel and right click and mouse and left click all on the throttle also. Bought it just for ED, Oculus made me buy ED, ED made me buy the hotas!

I have the keyboard between the peripherals and mouse on the far side. Admittedly I have everything mapped and it's only where I need to take the HMD off to make notes that I struggle.



Hi Frey, that sounds like an excellent idea and an excellent tool, unfortunately without any rift distortion there is no way it could display properly - and because the rift renders the game differently I am not entirely sure it would work at all. It seems to also require OCR which wouldnt work because of the distortion rift applies to screenshots. (see below)

This is not my image, just one from the web:
Elite-Dangerous-DK2-1.jpg


Thanks for all the ideas though guys, these are excellent programs and it's good to see that the community hasn't sat idly by waiting for a fix.
 
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