Game Discussions Why doesn't Odyssey have Oceans and Clouds?

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Cosmo said:
I doubt it takes 1 year to expand the flight model for atmospherics. Well ideally they'd be working on that since 2019, but I guess they don't have the manpower or budget to do it for this expansion.
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Well, we don't know how long it would take them to do atmospheres and oceans plus all required attending features. I certainly don't. I'm certain you don't. Which is why i threw 1 year out there as a possibility.

Maybe it would take them 6 months, maybe 2 years. It took them 2 years to do airless worlds for Horizons (with attending features).
 

CMDR DragonHorn

CMDR DragonHorn
If they make atmo worlds with oceans and forests, no one will be buying their Planet Zoo games, so it's like shooting yourself in the leg.

On serious note, to make proper atmos, even very limited biodomes for expansion release, it would take several years of hard work and very-very talented dev team, eventually to flesh out the rest (or most) possible biodomes. With what they're doing for Odyssey, it's not just much easier task, but also a lot better for PR. Consumer gets impression like he gets a lot of features in one package, which beats having only atmos. Just compare: spacelegs (slow SRV) with guns, recolored skybox, improved textures of the ground, copy-paste interiors of space stations and ground bases. Feels so massive, aye?
 

EdzUp

EdzUp
It's all quite simple really, not all worlds out there have liquids. These are the ones we will get to land on which is why it's a thin atmosphere.

You can rest assured it will be the next two expansions that add more to the planets for players to find.
 

Winterwalker

Winterwalker
EdzUp said:
It's all quite simple really, not all worlds out there have liquids. These are the ones we will get to land on which is why it's a thin atmosphere.
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Also not the focus of the update which is about FPS interactions with objects and environments, on foot.

Actually reassuring, your buoyancy in water is between 50 and 90% (depending how deep you submerge, 0.5 - 0.9) while, walking on a solid surface, your bouyancy is always 100% (1).

So I'd take the absence of oceans in Odyssey to signal that FD are reserving the possibility of giving you a different behaviour in different environments (ie. a bouyancy variable that is less than 1 in water .. or less than zero even, in quicksand).
 

Qualityoflife

Qualityoflife
Am I wrong!
When translating what you see on screen and how a controller receives that input, creates "the feel".
Wouldn't atmospheres be deduced to the push and pull of the controller against the flight model. Sort of like fps' and the sensitivity settings(sluggish vs hyper sensitive). Why would atmospheres be so difficult to translate? Feedback vs tolerances.

Before you even reach a planet's body you get information on what it's like. so at these settings it controls this way, at those settings it controls that way?

Is it more complicated, then how?

This is still fantasy remember!
 
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Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
Cosmo said:
How can it be difficult to develop when NMS and SC have it? Maybe there isn't enough budget for the team to do it. Just hire people from the NMS team.

It's disappointing that we're getting improved, yet barren atmospheric landscapes.
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From a commercial point of view it could make a lot of sense to dedicate a future paid update to all or some of those, gas giants too etc. The focus with Odyssey is space legs and first person gameplay obviously, not atmospheres or oceans.

In the same way Odyssey seems to be shaping up to be much more than just the "legs", a future atmospheric related expansion would probably be much more than just the "clouds" or the "water".

A dedicated expansion probably also makes sense from a technical point of view too if you add in specific related gameplay: Flight models, rain etc, and any other atmospheric effects and surface related geography or additional organic forms (all of which would probably need to be non trivially integrated procedurally to the Stellar Forge accross the whole galaxy) or unique gameplay and content linked to it etc. Depending on what FDEV decides to add to it, it could potentially be quite a lot actually, and it may deserve its own expansion.
 
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Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
This.
And I thought it's always been the plan atmosphere less > lifeless thin atmosphere > earthlike and waterworld.

And from dev diaries we know that Odyssey is not just a fancy color ramp skybox added to the existing planet generator.

Though i don't see any heavy difficulties with oceans, but for me it should be forethought with many liquid variations in mind: magma, ammonia, you name it... and how it interacts with planet's material (shore, erosion...). NMS's and SC's are barebone classic oceans. If I had to give a goal it would be Sea of Thieves's ocean. Now it starts being a serious challenge.

Same for clouds: sorry but I don't want NMS's clouds in ED, they're ugly joke. And apart from their fancy citcon fakey shows, clouds in SC aren't yet per se. If i had a goal to aim at it would be FS2020's clouds. And moreover its full weather system, applied as for oceans to multiple chemical compositions, and with a real impact on flight model, with gas giants in mind too.

Helluva challenge !
 

oscarolim

oscarolim
Cosmo said:
How can it be difficult to develop when NMS and SC have it? Maybe there isn't enough budget for the team to do it. Just hire people from the NMS team.

It's disappointing that we're getting improved, yet barren atmospheric landscapes.
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Why doesn't NMS have a proper flight model and a realistic 1:1 galaxy?
Why doesn't SC come out of beta, works on a potato PC and has a 1:1 galaxy?

"Maybe there isn't enough budget for the team to do it. Just hire people from the NMS FDEV team."
 

Craith

Volunteer Moderator
Craith
adding just an animated water layer at a certain height would be no work for FDev at all. A few floating clouds would be a performance thing, but apart from that easy to do for them. They already do both in their other games.

Both features would also make no sense in Elite with its nod to science and realism without adding weather, wind, atmospheric pressure and corresponding flight model, which are a lot of additional work. Now add to that that this has to work with a wide range of parameters, and be processed procedurally at runtime. I'd expect different weather and flight characteristics on Venus or Io than on Earth.
NMS deals with it by just ignoring any restrictions from science and having no flight model, SC by having very few planets where the parameters can be manually set and that all are more or less like some areas of Earth and having a very arcade-style flight model.

Adding rivers to procedural generation at runtime is even harder.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Because it would be insanely hard.

You'd need to have identical weather patterns for you on the ground, flying through the air, someone in orbit, someone in SC. Is it instanced? Is it fixed and proc gen somehow? Not to mention it has to not impede rendering (remember how you'd have a loading hitch of a few frames when old surfaces were rendered?). Its an immense challenge to do right- I think its possible but it would not be MS FS level.
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
oscarolim said:
Why doesn't NMS have a proper flight model and a realistic 1:1 galaxy?
Why doesn't SC come out of beta, works on a potato PC and has a 1:1 galaxy?

"Maybe there isn't enough budget for the team to do it. Just hire people from the NMS FDEV team."
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Yeah, its amazing init? People are still 'waiting' for the game to become something that is there already.

NMS is all about adding-stuff-because-it-was-easy-and-because-it-looks-nice. Lets keep it there.
 
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