[VIDEO] Obsidian Ant: The Importance of Atmospheric Worlds

varonica

varonica
Kubicide said:
This video highlights just how far behind Elite is. No one should be surprised though as nothing significant has been developed over the past five years since launch. Nothing.
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No it doesn't really. Games like SC, or should I say tech demo's like SC, are exactly that, just demonstrations, they are no closer to having a space game that features atmospheric planets than ED is, in fact they don't even have a game! As far as MSFS the next generation is concerned they don't actually have a planet, the scenery is done from Bing satellite images, isn't actually an interactive environment and even the devs have said once you get to close the illusion starts to break down because the algorithms that convert the flat 2D image into a realistic 3D scene don't work up close.

On the other hand we know nothing regarding what ED has been doing over the last few years as far as atmospheric planets is concerned and that's not really a surprise having seen the behaviour of the ED online community over the last few years. Whether it will be part of the big release in 2020 I have no idea, but if it isn't I will be surprised because that's supposed to be a game changing update and I don't really see anything else in the future that will have that effect.
 

Phongsalt

Phongsalt
Kubicide said:
This video highlights just how far behind Elite is. No one should be surprised though as nothing significant has been developed over the past five years since launch. Nothing.
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Behind what? FD can hardly be held responsible for individual expectations.
Thargoids and molluscs weren't in the game five years ago.Whole list of things weren't in the game five years ago.
 

thistle

T
Phongsalt said:
Behind what? FD can hardly be held responsible for individual expectations.
Thargoids and molluscs weren't in the game five years ago.Whole list of things weren't in the game five years ago.
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Yup. Sometimes wish it were possible to jump back and try version 1 again, the game changed massively.

Or even better, if fdev "accidentally" reverted the game to version 1, or even 2.0. Oh the demands for all the missing development that people now claim didn't happen would be glorious to behold.
 

Dutchman141

Dutchman141
Mengy said:
I have to admit, at five years into Elite Dangerous being live I did really expect the game to be more developed with regards to planet landings. We only have what was introduced by Horizons all the way back in 2015. In all those years we haven't had a single new planet type introduced to land on, if you had told me that back in 2015 I would not have believed it. I really did expect FDev to trickle in new planet types one by one.

I feel like making all (or at least most) planets landable should be a higher priority in a space game set in a true to scale version of the Milky Way.

I wonder if the spaghetti code issues they've had has hampered development on this issue more than we realize? Maybe the New Era will open some more doors for new planet types to be introduced in the future?
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I agree, when Horizons was added to the game my hopes went skyhigh for this game but sadly that's where it started and ended at the same time.
Some bits and pieces were added since then but no major addition has been released.
Re-prioritizing additions, that's what they do realy well though.

Kubicide said:
This video highlights just how far behind Elite is. No one should be surprised though as nothing significant has been developed over the past five years since launch. Nothing.
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Well they did add some bits and pieces, oh and new grinds too.
The Guardian sites are beautiful additions to the game, the atmosphere is second to none, to bad they only function as stages for another grind.
We are to believe that late 2020 will change everything, considering the evolution in graphical development they realy need to step up if they want to seriously compete with other games out there, ugh we don't even have multiple light sources and their corresponding shadows yet.
As for atmospheric landings? Imho we wont see those for a long time to come, definitely not by the end of 2020.

Your are right though, the amount that's been added during the last five years is quite meager to put it mildly.
 

Soron Silin

Soron Silin
I can see two problems with atmospheric worlds:
It will at least double the surface generation time because most of them will have flowing liquid and that carves landscape.
It seems unreasonable to be able to land on all planets except Earth-likes. There's no reasonable justification for it in-game; it's easier to land on Earth than on Venus. If you can land on Earth-likes then players will want to get out of the vehicle and walk around.

So I expect space-legs first. Just maybe we might get atmospheric planets without Earth-likes at the same time but we are just as likely to get all of them a year later.

The extra wait time will allow more powerful GPUs to be around. When is the PS5 due?
 

varonica

varonica
Soron Silin said:
I can see two problems with atmospheric worlds:
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I see a third one. With non-atmospherics it was possible to introduce them a bit at a time. Add volcanics, biology, improve the bit and bump mapping, change the colouring, it didn't matter that much because they are for the most part, 99.99999% (can probably add a few more nines in there as well) just blank surfaces. When people here talk about atmospherics they aren't just expecting atmosphere, they are expecting oceans, rivers, rain, hail and snow, forests, cities, a lot of biology, that's not stuff that will work by adding a bit at a time. People see an ocean and river from space, islands and green stuff, cyclones and rain clouds, the lights of cities and that's exactly what they expect to find.

So a few years in-house development is probably to be expected, and then no doubt they hit all the problems everyone else is having and have had to work those out. Seriously I don't think many people realise how difficult the task is and how badly people would take it if it was a poor implementation.
 

Riverside

Riverside
varonica said:
I see a third one. With non-atmospherics it was possible to introduce them a bit at a time. Add volcanics, biology, improve the bit and bump mapping, change the colouring, it didn't matter that much because they are for the most part, 99.99999% (can probably add a few more nines in there as well) just blank surfaces. When people here talk about atmospherics they aren't just expecting atmosphere, they are expecting oceans, rivers, rain, hail and snow, forests, cities, a lot of biology, that's not stuff that will work by adding a bit at a time. People see an ocean and river from space, islands and green stuff, cyclones and rain clouds, the lights of cities and that's exactly what they expect to find.

So a few years in-house development is probably to be expected, and then no doubt they hit all the problems everyone else is having and have had to work those out. Seriously I don't think many people realise how difficult the task is and how badly people would take it if it was a poor implementation.
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First they can add the thin atmospheres, essentially what we have now, then the Mars-likes & Venus-likes (geological fluid erosion terrain, no surface liquids), then the more 'interesting' Io-likes (surface liquids), lots of opportunities to add piece by piece before we get to terraformables, water worlds & earth-likes :)
 

RooksBailey

RooksBailey
I came across the video earlier today and had mixed reactions to it. On one hand, OA is correct: the ability for games to generate believable "atmospheric worlds" is no doubt the next holy grail for ambitious game developers. No argument there. And, sure, gamers would love to see devs reach that goal sooner rather than later. The part that I take issue with is how OA suggests - and I might be reading too much into his comments, so apologies if so - that other devs are already achieving this lofty goal while Frontier is stuck in the past. I actually see no evidence of that. The bulk of his video uses footage from two unreleased titles to support his case - SC and the new MSFS - but I think that is grossly unfair as neither title is released yet (to say the least), so we have no idea whether those visions will actually prove to be a playable reality. What is more - and OA does point this out - MSFS' assumed ability to generate a realistic simulacrum of Earth and SC's ability to create 100-odd worlds is not nearly as complex an undertaking as the billions and billions of procedurally-generated worlds Frontier would need to tackle for ED. The mere fact that of those two titles, only ED is already generating billions of 1:1 procgen worlds suggests to me something quite the opposite of what OA states, i.e., that Frontier is actually ahead of the competition when it comes to playable planetary procgen on a galactic scale. Overall, I think OA is quite correct about the goal, and indeed, the desirability of being able to have truly atmospheric worlds, but I think his suggestion that the creation of complex atmospheric worlds is now here, and that Frontier has lost the atmospheric worlds battle already, is a bit.premature. The closest we have to that reality is what Hello Games has achieved with NMS. To be sure, those fellas deserve kudos for the atmospheric worlds' tech they have created, but as any player of that game knows, while Hello Games has achieved a lot, there is still a long way to go before the worlds are as immersive as gamers expect them to be.
 

varonica

varonica
Riverside said:
First they can add the thin atmospheres, essentially what we have now, then the Mars-likes & Venus-likes (geological fluid erosion terrain, no surface liquids), then the more 'interesting' Io-likes (surface liquids), lots of opportunities to add piece by piece before we get to terraformables, water worlds & earth-likes :)
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We already have that, FDEV have already stated that some landable planets have thin seasonal atmospheres. The problem with this is you are getting a subset of atmospheric planets added at each stage, but at the stage you are proposing, venus and marks like, it starts to get complicated, we aren't even sure Mars has no life yet, and venus is basically a hell hole with 90 times earth pressure and winds in the 300kph range that would need to be modeled planet wide.
 

Demsit

D
There is only one way to create and simulate several, if not hundreads or thousands of atmospheric worlds: procedural generation. This is ED, so atmospheric worlds would look stunning and become repetetive quick. Imagine planetary landing today with a few additional ounces of pretty.

You simply cannot handcraft the surfaces of several planets. The reason why exploration is so much fun in games like 'subnautica' or 'witcher III' is because the the maps are handcrafted and a little gem is to be found here and there. Clues are left, hints are given, this kind of thing. Atmospheric worlds won't have that, as they are, again, procedurally generated.

They would be neat to have, so much admit, but the amount of work you'd have to put into is in no relation to the outcome you'll get. So I absolutely get why FDEV didn't give them top priority.
 
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-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
Bryan K said:
Oh I agree, the planets we have need so much more on them. I’d love to have a reason to land other than to gather mats or do some settlement-related mission. I’d hoped the Thargoid and Guardian surface sites would be the first of many improvements, but it seems that line of development petered out.
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Agreed, but there is only so much you can find and do on planets without atmospheres. Maybe a few other bits like planetary mining, but not much else especially when we can't get out of our seats.

Bryan K said:
Don’t get me wrong, planets are one of my favorite things about ED, and I’d rather have atmospherics than anything else (including bug fixes), but I just haven’t seen the level of skill or technology needed to craft them demonstrated in ED yet.
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We haven't seen it because they haven't shown us. There is nothing to suggest that they can or can't do it. But I suspect that the atmospheric planets they want to add are as realistic as possible which is a hell of a job to achieve. Unlike games such as Star Citizen which is going to have very few planets in game when it's done, with many or all done by hand which is achievable because the planets are so small.

As to a flight sim that only has one planet to think about and a planet that virtually the whole surface mapped out anyway, well that's even easier to create with modern tech.

Atmospheric planets need to be done in a PG way that makes them realistic, any life on these planets also need to be realistic to the type of atmosphere, pressure and G. That's a huge amount to work on, far more then any other game out there.

I'd we are to get atmospherics anytime soon, don't expect any with any complex life on them.
 

kilvenny

kilvenny
I appreciate the goal of reproducing beautiful atmospheric worlds.

FS doesn't work once you get up close to the objects, so they have set landings and it works for one planet - earth, using images available because its earth. A tech that works for what the games is, fly from earth based airfield to air field and never walk around.

SC again looks beautiful, but judging by the recent show they did is not full proc gen, so is not going to scale across a galaxy. In fact they made a point of rejecting full PG.

NMS is a great technical feat using full proc gen, allowing walking around. However its done by compromising the graphic style to none realistic and the planets are small.

ED sits between these products, it has to use full PG to fill a galaxy and be realistic, so making comparisons in terms of graphics I think can be done, but is bound to shed a negative light on ED, because ED is based on a different base premise.

FD can do what FS and SC have done, you only have to look at their JW and Planet products to see they can do it. The problem is those are not worlds based on PG.

A better comparison is to Space Engine which demonstrates the PG planet tech, but I don't believe does things like weather, it is just planets with no activity or buildings on them.

I am confident FD can do it, but I also think it will result in compromises which will automatically make it look inferior to the more handcrafted approaches. However time and tech advances may soon reach a point where that gap can be mitigated. Doing legs and some form of base building first will provide game play that can be utilised subsequently on atmospheric worlds.
 

Bryan K

Bryan K
Mengy said:
I have to admit, at five years into Elite Dangerous being live I did really expect the game to be more developed with regards to planet landings. We only have what was introduced by Horizons all the way back in 2015. In all those years we haven't had a single new planet type introduced to land on, if you had told me that back in 2015 I would not have believed it. I really did expect FDev to trickle in new planet types one by one.

I feel like making all (or at least most) planets landable should be a higher priority in a space game set in a true to scale version of the Milky Way.

I wonder if the spaghetti code issues they've had has hampered development on this issue more than we realize? Maybe the New Era will open some more doors for new planet types to be introduced in the future?
Click to expand...
It’s a bit like the Space Race. During the Apollo program, the thought was that we’d keep going to the Moon, then send humans to Mars, all in the 20th century. Then Nixon came along and slashed the budget and here we are now in 2019 scrambling to get back to 1969 again.
 
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