"LOUD NOISES"
"Lol, what do you mean DLC? They just copy paste Horizons and gave it another color!"
"LOUD NOISES"
Update 6 Terrain Comparison Thread
- Thread starter BlackMaze
- Start date
"Lol, what do you mean DLC? They just copy paste Horizons and gave it another color!"
"LOUD NOISES"
If your going to have more realistic planets - especially with water, wind erosion, tectonics mandmade landscapes, proper big mountains and canyons then they will have to be pre-generated - thats why they changed to pre-made stamps. This is the only way to move forward. Yes - current method has a lot wrong but if your going to move forward some form of human input into the procedural generation is the ONLY WAY. Think about it - the only way is stamps.
Now you might look at world machine etc and flight simulator .. but one isn’t realtime and the other is generated from real terrain.
Only way … THE ONLY WAY
PS more stamps please and work out Canyons
Now you might look at world machine etc and flight simulator .. but one isn’t realtime and the other is generated from real terrain.
Only way … THE ONLY WAY
PS more stamps please and work out Canyons
Okay so here's a caveat, these are really old special screens I took of a place I found on my first exploration. My computer was rough back then. I ran graphics low and medium until I did a couple upgrades in later years to make it the modest performer it is today. The point of these graphics isn't to show off quality of the shots or the quality of Horizons textures, we know Odyssey can win here (When they load). What I am trying to show off is the planet gen under the lipstick.
I found a giant mountain on a planet that stuck up into space and was visible from super cruise. That is the first screen shot. I never got a chance to land on it and check it out. I've always planned to go back there and document it fully. I've seen some mountains like this a few times, but never a single dominating one like this.
I found an eyeball looking planet (Fairly common to see those types) but its canyons were so spectacularly deep you could land your ship in them get out in the srv and it was its own little world. These features were huge, the scale was huge, and it was exciting to find stuff like this. I wonder if this is the type of stuff the Hooners miss.
These are the types of things I feel are missing with the Odyssey planet generation. I have discovered nothing even remotely close to this stuff in scale or size. I wish we could get planet gen like this with the stuff Odyssey brings to the table.
That eyeball covered planet in dozens or maybe hundreds of these canyons, they didn't shrink and become weeny as you approached the planet what you saw from super cruise was exactly what you got and that was glorious.
Source: https://imgur.com/a/hMHIKiU
I found a giant mountain on a planet that stuck up into space and was visible from super cruise. That is the first screen shot. I never got a chance to land on it and check it out. I've always planned to go back there and document it fully. I've seen some mountains like this a few times, but never a single dominating one like this.
I found an eyeball looking planet (Fairly common to see those types) but its canyons were so spectacularly deep you could land your ship in them get out in the srv and it was its own little world. These features were huge, the scale was huge, and it was exciting to find stuff like this. I wonder if this is the type of stuff the Hooners miss.
These are the types of things I feel are missing with the Odyssey planet generation. I have discovered nothing even remotely close to this stuff in scale or size. I wish we could get planet gen like this with the stuff Odyssey brings to the table.
That eyeball covered planet in dozens or maybe hundreds of these canyons, they didn't shrink and become weeny as you approached the planet what you saw from super cruise was exactly what you got and that was glorious.
Source: https://imgur.com/a/hMHIKiU
I suspect because if they do proper atmospheric worlds (which seems a lot less likely now) procedural generation isn't going to solve lots of their problems. At 60fps anyways.
Earth doesn't often actually look like procedural generation. You can see the movement of rivers/glaciers/wind (time, basically) reflected in the landscapes and I suspect the only easy way to get these things feeling natural is to combine procedural generation with templates of some sort for where there isn't a quick mathematical noise function that looks like the real thing. So you might have a noise function that looks a bit like sand dunes, but let's face it, it probably won't REALLY look like sand dunes, so you combine a bit of both.
The miracle of the landscapes in ED isn't just what they look like, it's that they're being generated from scratch right in front of you whilst doing a million other things. I wonder if some sort of procedural distortion might help, where you twist the terrain to give a sense of flow to things, but I believe there's already something like this happening.
Sick driving Alec. While you are here I wanted to ask you this, do you feel the srv handling in Horizons was lighter and crisper, almost like it had less mass and you can slide it out more when you wanted with some throttle? I feel like the one in Odyssey is heavier with stickier grip and just feels odd to me.
Yes, I think it is specifically 2.0. DLSS 1.0 was pretty much the same as FSR from what I read. But I think it is also a bit of a detriment for FD, that we have a lot of jaggies even with AA on, and well, the AA options are kinda naff in 2021. Oh well shall wait and see if performance gets any better, or if GPUs are buyable again. Fun fact, I just checked yesterday, and everything below 1000 EUR was gone from the stores in my country
Yes - Horizons looks great, in a lot of instances better that Odyssey. Its Scale in vertical and detail in horizontal that needs work. OD is they way to go but still looks like a height map in many cases once you get over a certain height
One of the big advantages of the new system is that it does biomes so very, very much better than Horizons did. And when you want to move towards thicker atmo planets with denser vegetation and features, you absolutely need that. And yes, thicker atmo planets are all but confirmed to be on the longer term roadmap.
Even discounting what I typed above, to the average gamer the EDO surfaces simply are incredibly stunning and interesting compared to what is perceived as endlessly dull Horizon surfaces. I appreciate how much it means to you and how much time you spend on it, but I can assure you most people would prefer a quick bullet to the back of the head over circumnavigating multiple Horizon planets. Personally I have always been impressed on a technical level by Horizons planets, and the concept of being able to find 'outliers' in the generation is compelling on at least a conceptual level to me. But at the end of the day the 'highlights' are few and far between, and every single time I land at a EDO POI I can't help but notice just how much better it looks than the average Horizon POI landing.
This is absolutely no dig at you at all, and I think it is truly cool what you;ve done with the Horizon planets. But lets be honest; that is so incredibly niche, even for a niche game like ED. For what the average user does (land at POI/settlements, fly around for nice places for cool screenshots) the EDO planets on the surface will for the average gamer simply look better, more interesting, more varied and more realistic.
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I feel like maybe with Horizons it had like 0-100 terrain height to potential do some of the crazy radical stuff.
Odyssey feels like it has 0-25 height to do the same things that's what everything feels smaller and shallow.
Just impressions and these numbers are pulled out of thin air.
There's been an awful lot of debate over this. I think mostly the difference is due to Odyssey's rougher (at the human scale) and "grittier" terrain so you spend far less time bounding off smooth "kickers" and far more time struggling to find a good bounce amongst a pile of rocks. There's also an issue where the underside at the front of the SRV tends to catch on mounds that should act as ramps but which instead act like low brick walls that bring you to a grinding halt. I also think the lower framerates make it feel different but yes, there is a subtle difference.
Yup, I totally acknowledge that. Who knows ... perhaps in five years time when the next big update drops and changes the physics model of rolling objects you'll find me back here saying that I've rolled 5000 Guardian Orbs, that I know what I'm talking about, and that I much preferred rolling Guardian Orbs into bars in Odyssey and no longer feel any compulsion to do so!
Deleted member 182079
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I'm also on a 2060 (s version though), and I'm not planning to upgrade anytime soon - perhaps when a game comes out that my system really can't handle (no, not Elite, lol) - and it might even only be when the 5xxx series come out - and by then maybe prices become sensible again. And to be fair, I own a fair few heavy hitters in the hardware requirements department and my system copes just fine... sure, I can't 100% max out certain games but they look really good even at sub-Ultra settings, and I can play them at smooth framerates and at 2k (only bought a new monitor earlier this year, after using a 1080p potato panel for almost a decade).Yes, I think it is specifically 2.0. DLSS 1.0 was pretty much the same as FSR from what I read. But I think it is also a bit of a detriment for FD, that we have a lot of jaggies even with AA on, and well, the AA options are kinda naff in 2021. Oh well shall wait and see if performance gets any better, or if GPUs are buyable again. Fun fact, I just checked yesterday, and everything below 1000 EUR was gone from the stores in my country
There's absolutely no way in hell that I'm spending more than 500 Euros on a single PC component (I used to think anything above 300 Euros is obscene, but times change), least of all for an unoptimised piece of software like Elite that's well past its prime now. I'd rather go back to my R-Pi and stick to retro gaming worst case.
Yes - this is similar to how Horizons works. In fact horizons uses a lot of noise. But pre-generated Stamps and local noise is only way.
Again, I think you are more complaining about performance issues than anything else. What you see in SC is what you get in EDO, unless due to performance issues you cannot load in data fast enough. Canyons in EDO don't shrink or become 'weeny'. Most of those shots seem to be just fairly standard canyon Ice Planets, and I've even seen rocky planets in EDO with wide canyons and such.
I really feel you are arguing that Horizons is better than whatever broken thing is happening on your pc right now. While that may be true, I am not sure how relevant it is as it is no fundamental critique of EDO planets at all.
Honestly, I'm pretty sure if the bugs are found and squashed, EDO will be pretty enough. But performance, lod problems and other stuff really puts it down.
I literally watch mountains shrink and canyons fill in and become shallow as I approach. The terrain morphing is real. Some features that look dramatic in supercruise become weeny when you get to the planet. The lod on approach is choppy and not smooth also. If they are problems on my end, well that's fine but its still a problem I never saw with Horizons. So my only reference point is me either way, so if I see it happening, is it not legit?
Yes, something to do with creating the foundation for the future. I would guess it's something technical, the way Horizons planets were done maybe didn't lend itself to adding additional (or any?) atmospheres and additional layers they might want to add. Who knows though.
edit- basically what Ian said
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My PC and not Odyssey being rushed and broken. With MULTIPLE apologies by Braben and issues devs have verified and acknowledged? And its really a my pc sucks thing to you lol. That just sounds desperate man.
I see this too - I think the height map adjusts and shallows out as you approach. I’ve seen some loverly deep areas which, as you say, shallow out. This may be a draw problem at distance - but yes I’ve seen this happen