What if SuperCruise transitioned seamlessly - wow!

[X-Terminator]

What would be greater is if SuperCruise transitioned seamlessly into simply travelling faster but still using the Key to jump that next stage. Then you could fly directly into Nav points, USS, RES, Asteroid Belts, Warzones, and your ship would automatically drop speed to the Out Of SuperCruise Speed to avoid collisions. Then Traders/Smugglers/Miners could add greater excitement in running through them (fastest route to Station) or go long way around them for safest route.

Nevermind the Loading screen anti, Devs can work harder to make it work!

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

it would be great i agree but unfortunately the transition is used to load you into the instance so no transition, no other players.

 

[Daud]

As great as that would be; you clearly have no idea how the game works.

 

[X-Terminator]

I think it is possible with the lack of graphics to draw over seen distance. Its so much simpler than switching Systems as its already the same data.

Well they fixed stutter in 1.3 so...

Seriously, do you really make constant use of your Radar Range to avoid interventions? It does need this facility for greater nav skills.

 

[X-Terminator]

Understandably the Spacestation needs a loading screen. Nothing else does. Elite originally did not need it either and that was on a BBC Micro with 32k!

 

[Daud]

I think it is possible with the lack of graphics to draw over seen distance. Its so much simpler than switching Systems as its already the same data.

Well they fixed stutter in 1.3 so...

Seriously, do you really make constant use of your Radar Range to avoid interventions? It does need this facility for greater nav skills.

This game is instanced. Not possible, unless they completely re-work everything. This 'feature' isn't here because they want it to be, it's here because of limitations.

 

[X-Terminator]

That argument is not acceptable. It could work and could liven up emersion greatly. There is no need to borrow the same mechanic for Hyperspace. With the limititation already on player numbers within an Instance it merely needs the alteration for seamless after you leave the station. Toatally feasible.

 

[Armour]

Troll thread much? Ignorance of the way matchmaking works is no excuse. They could do it on a BBC because you were flying solo, with no server to interact with.

 

[steevaavoo]

Hey, might not be a troll thread at all.

Frankly speaking X-Terminator, if you know a totally feasible way that the Devs can (re)program the game to remove any hint of a transition, stop wasting your time telling us it's possible and write directly to them! They clearly could benefit from your expertise - and by extension all of our playing experiences would improve dramatically.

Let us know how you get on either way.

Best regards

 

[X-Terminator]

What are you asking or implying Armour by "Troll thread much?" - just look at my profile if you want to know me ok.
There really is very little data to bring together on our highspeed broadband in this age with Gigs of RAM and insane GPu speeds.

 

[Bacon Sarnie]

If there was no transition then no instances could load, its that simple Im afraid.
Ask the devs, Im sure they will give a far more verbose reasoning behind it, but it will basically be the same as what I and everyone else in this thread has stated.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Its not a matter of how much work the Devs do or even how much money they have, its a matter of being sensible.

Sure make the entire system one instance but the game would have to generate the entire space of a system meaning instead of a few bytes of data you are talking MB or GB of data. Think about it, every NPC in every nav point, SSS, USS, RES and station, all their velocities, positions, current status, combat on every last player and NPC in the system. Talk about bandwidth cap and that's without even mentioning the computing power the end user would have to have.

Then add in the rotations of asteroid belts and stations which I think you'll find some are over 50km/s (much faster than the normal ship speed, we are placed in a relative speed instance when dropping into these).

You'd have a hyperspace loading time of minutes per system just to avoid a few seconds in individual loading screens.

Lest we not forget we are over a year into production, I just don't see this ever happening since if they were going to do it they may as well start from scratch and re-design all the core game mechanics.
Computers are faster but not everyone's are, limiting the game to those on 150mb broadband and £3000 gaming pc's isn't going to end well for a company that wants to remain in business. Its bad enough as it is now with players rubberbanding around the place!!!

Tl:dr Not gonna happen, loading everything per system is a bad idea.


Edit: Guys he isn't trolling since similar things happen with offline games like Skyrim/oblivion mods. He just fails to understand the technical background it would need to apply it to a server based game. It really is not as easy as flipping a switch or re-writing a coding line. Its probably about 5 people spending 6 months just to get it to work let alone optimising it so its playable.

 

[Nathanael]

Yeah it sucked in frontier all those years ago, had to buy a 2000mb ram expansion just to load all that system data for seamless flight transition and that cost like 2 gazillion euros back then/.

If only they could have some sort of system where this could work without all the bandwith, I dunno like a single player offline mode or something.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

They could do 'look ahead' transitioning. In most cases it should be blindingly obvious where a ship is going - it usually has that destination targeted. They could do the work to arrange the handshaking with the about-to-be-joined instance whilst you are travelling towards it. Then, most of the time, you could drop out into that instance much quicker. And on the rare circumstances where you change your mind, they have done some unnecessaery work.

Still the issue of a forced exit from supercruise.

However, I think that there is a need for a transition for lore reasons. The mode of travel in supercruise is very different to that of normal travel. You are, in lore, faffing about with space time - the ship is not actually travelling faster than light. What is happening is the the bubble of spacetime that you are in is travelling. This is similar to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive. Anyway, if you really were travelling in that manner, there would need to be some sort of transition to normal travel. IMHO, what we have at the moment where the transition hides the instancing is perfectly appropriate, even if no instancing was needed.

 

[Nathanael]

on a slightly less trolling the trolly fanbois note I think you could fly between systems in supercruise back in gamma , I remember a dev mentioning there was no reason why it wouldnt work. So from that it would seem like there wasnt an issue loading a different instance for the new system without a pause. As far as I can remember anyway. Speaking of supercruise whatever happened to being able to fly in it with flight assist off to make things a bit more interesting?

 

[Armour]

Yeah it sucked in frontier all those years ago, had to buy a 2000mb ram expansion just to load all that system data for seamless flight transition and that cost like 2 gazillion euros back then/.

If only they could have some sort of system where this could work without all the bandwith, I dunno like a single player offline mode or something.

But they don't, so your post is like someone moaning about how they should never have killed off that guy in The Wire.

Anyway, on topic - I think the transition should be more jarring, and that the supercruise mode should be a lot more abstract-looking. If we thought of what we saw in Supercruise mode as a simulation based upon sensor feedback and existing cartographic data, because we can't actually see stuff in FTL travel, then a jarring transition would feel more realistic and give a lore reason for the change. Also, exploration could require periodic dropping out of SC mode to map the surrounding region, and it would make it a bit more challenging - perhaps exploration drones could be ejected into normal space from a ship in SC in order to carry out a scan, and they could act like beacons once they had completed their task so the owner - or someone else - could retrieve them and collect the data?

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Yeah it sucked in frontier all those years ago, had to buy a 2000mb ram expansion just to load all that system data for seamless flight transition and that cost like 2 gazillion euros back then/.

If only they could have some sort of system where this could work without all the bandwith, I dunno like a single player offline mode or something.

Not wanting to go too far off topic but:

And there was me thinking people had gotten over this already
I hope once 1.3 comes out the background simulation will make the always online thing better. I mean the community goals have been really good so far as well as some really fun multiplayer bits but it is a little lacking in current form I agree.

(Lets not open the whole offline can of worms again please )

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

on a slightly less trolling the trolly fanbois note I think you could fly between systems in supercruise back in gamma , I remember a dev mentioning there was no reason why it wouldnt work. So from that it would seem like there wasnt an issue loading a different instance for the new system without a pause. As far as I can remember anyway. Speaking of supercruise whatever happened to being able to fly in it with flight assist off to make things a bit more interesting?

That was 'in theory'. As in, if the code was written it could happen. People tried it and it did not work - because the code had not been written. Then FD said that it would never work anyway because you would run out of fuel (this was before fuel was a thing in game - all travel was completely free). Even if that were true, in theory, with the ability from 1.3 to have extra fuel tanks, it might be theoretically possible again. But they still have not written the code. There would still be the need to transition out of SC when you arrived, so the current code would presumably just work, as long as they wrote the extra code to change the focus of what system you were in.

 

[X-Terminator]

Surely your router only requires Selective Data based upon what it can need within drawing distance. A constant streaming of efficient use of data. Like I say, it already has all of the System data ready. It does not need to load all that data you can not see on screen. It is very possible.
I thought we were here to discuss this game so why mention trolling? Isn't that posting stupid comments rather than being constructive? Guys open up before the ego takes over please.

 

[Nathanael]

Back on topic about the supercruise transition I think it was possible to fly to another system in gamma and have it loaded inrather than the empty location at the moment, which suggests there is a possibility of seamless transition. Although I think the supercruise idea itself could still be improved on, you used to be able to do it with flight assist off which livened things up a bit, at the moment it feels very "dead" with no real feeling of flying in space. I spend time in this game completing tasks but very little time just flying and enjoying the experience. Travel is sort of a means to an end rather than as big a part of the experience as everything else.