Why is 'space legs' so technically difficult?

[Devari]

A rudimentary, minimum viable effort implementation designed to fill the pockets of the company is a win-win (for FD I guess)? I didn't realize the bar was set that low.

Actually, when you look at the competition...

Well it only really makes sense to go to one extreme or the other, i.e., either a minimum viable product or a proper fps game. A minimum viable product version of space legs would still serve a purpose and would be on par with the quality we've seen from FD for all of the other Elite content. Suggesting that they would give us anything more than that is just not credible so it makes sense to ask for something they could at least theoretically produce for us.

If you want to look at what proper space legs would involve, that is basically Star Citizen and they are still 2-3 years from a proper beta version. The technical challenges involved in that undertaking were absolutely massive, they had to literally re-write CryEngine to the point that it is basically a custom game engine. Even unifying the first and third-person perspectives was a massive technical achievement because no one has even tried to do that. There is no way that FD would invest even a fraction of the effort that would be required to make a "proper" space legs so a minimum viable product version is the only version we could possibly see in Elite.

 

[Julio Montega]

CCP cancelled it because of all the backlash when it was first introduced. Eve Online fans never asked for EVA. When they implemented the basic walk around in and outside the station apartment, they didn't bother to develop it any further.

CCP didn't completely abandon EVA, because they released Dust 514 which is a team-based shooter. Now they're working on a sequel. The unfortunate part is that is not fully integrated with Eve Online. There's no seamless transition.

The player base of Elite Dangerous is different. Because many people want EVA and it's a planned feature as per the Roadmap of Frontier.

Many people who play ED once played or followed Star Citizen. Lots more would switch from SC to ED if we had EVA. A substantial amount of people haven't bought ED, because they're waiting for EVA.

However, ED never will have the shooter part,
that kind of combined arms idea is what i love SC for.

 

[Franc Kaos]

What we may see in the foreseeable future is NPCs ambulating around places as background addition, breathing some life into the environments. Then we'll get loads of threads about "if they can walk, why can't we?".

I would love that! The npcs wandering about, not the whining threads and for them fdev could just do what they do now, ignore 'em.

 

[Frank]

....

3) VR - first person view in VR isn't always successful. There's still a lot of development going on to improve the experience in VR for first person games, and it's probably best to wait until the major issues are resolved (like nausea).

There's a VR game out called "From Other Suns". It's a 1st person shooter and it does not cause nausea. I think it was done by limiting the speed at which you could run. I'm not sure whether the VR base is large enough to pander specifically to their needs, but I hope they do.

They might introduce a few "nausea preventer" graphic options like they do for SRV driving. I guess one way to stop the colly wobbles would be to reduce peripheral vision when sprinting.

 

[Han Zulu]

There's a VR game out called "From Other Suns". It's a 1st person shooter and it does not cause nausea. I think it was done by limiting the speed at which you could run. I'm not sure whether the VR base is large enough to pander specifically to their needs, but I hope they do.

They might introduce a few "nausea preventer" graphic options like they do for SRV driving. I guess one way to stop the colly wobbles would be to reduce peripheral vision when sprinting.

Yes, it's getting there, but I'm not sure it's fully perfected yet.

 

[Ra'Kaan]

Paraphrasing Braben, "...we have to give them something to do..."

 

[Avago Earo]

Not just legs. I might want to replace my SRV with a Lambretta. Not just any Lambretta; a race tumed Scomadi 400. Then the Kawasaki lot turn up. Then Norton get all annoyed that scooters are faster this time round. Next thin Frontier will be selling parkas and sta prest.

I mean, this could go on forever...

 

[krylite]

Not just legs. I might want to replace my SRV with a Lambretta. Not just any Lambretta; a race tumed Scomadi 400. Then the Kawasaki lot turn up. Then Norton get all annoyed that scooters are faster this time round. Next thin Frontier will be selling parkas and sta prest.

I mean, this could go on forever...

Interesting idea. I'm not a racing fan, nor know much about racing, but what if certain planetoids had several thousand km roads (or even roads or paths connecting between ground bases or outposts with some mission based or rng poi's possible encounters on the way & perhaps refueling stations) or even special location several km racetracks with different g's. There could be some race betting mechanism for multiplayer or even solo mode vs. npcs. It could add some flavor to the ED gameplay before spacelegs proper. The X-games often had a special sector location for "ring" racing with ships. Anyways, just an idea that popped up.

 

[lysan]

That depends what you mean by "space legs". Do you mean a fully integrated, unified, single-perspective universe where you are walking on a ship that is moving and interacting with other ships and players? That is basically what CIG has been developing with Star Citizen for the past 4 years and it required completely re-writing and customizing their own version of CryEngine to accomplish. There are multiple reasons for this but generally they relate to unifying first and third-person perspectives, dealing with overlapping physics grids and many other complicated technical issues that are necessary to solve if you are hoping to actually implement the feature properly (which no developer has ever attempted to do other than CIG).

If you mean just having your player character walk around and sit in a chair and maybe engage in some rudimentary fps combat? That's not difficult at all, but it apparently still requires more resources than Braben and FD are willing to put into Elite development.

I think you got this upside down, the issue is that all the assets need to support close contact, the 3D part of it is not a problem, not in the Cobra engine that is, the problem is that you need to flesh out huge space stations, bases, and anything you could get into. That is a huge amount of work, then you got all the ships.

They are not ready to do all these huge amount of work, because it will be very repeatable in the design if they just used the same model and copied it all over the place.

However if they dedicated a team of artists to do it, they could probably pull it off. The way to success would be to do it in stages.

 

[Julio Montega]

Let us not talk what would be optimal, but what is realistic to be implemented:

We will not have direct control over avatars from the start,
that simply will not allow FD to release this "space-legs" (is that a special bootlegger?)
with relatively low development time spent.
We will not be able to freely control the avatar like in an isometric RPG.

What is realistic then?
Well "Cutszenes", you klick on outfitting and you see how you exit
the ship and go talk to someone in the bay doing refits,
like Freelancer did.

 

[ALEX CAOS]

not that difficult egosoft is a small german software company look whats in the next parts of x comming this year, a view bugs will come too but they allways great at fixes.

If egosoft can do frontier can if they want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIeKMYaIAk

 

[Devari]

I think you got this upside down, the issue is that all the assets need to support close contact, the 3D part of it is not a problem, not in the Cobra engine that is, the problem is that you need to flesh out huge space stations, bases, and anything you could get into. That is a huge amount of work, then you got all the ships.

They are not ready to do all these huge amount of work, because it will be very repeatable in the design if they just used the same model and copied it all over the place.

However if they dedicated a team of artists to do it, they could probably pull it off. The way to success would be to do it in stages.

For an initial iteration of space legs they could simply use the existing ship cockpits and station landing pads as areas to walk around in. They wouldn't absolutely need to add new interiors to the ships or stations although it would obviously be better if they did this. The issue here is that some players are setting up an impossible standard for space legs that they aren't applying to the rest of the game, i.e., the SRV is very bare-bones, so is multicrew and basically every other feature that FD has introduced. To suggest that FD would need to put a massive amount of effort into space legs is really not true, otherwise we would have never gotten those other features in such a minimal form during Horizons.

 

[BL1P]

not that difficult egosoft is a small german software company look whats in the next parts of x comming this year, a view bugs will come too but they allways great at fixes.

If egosoft can do frontier can if they want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIeKMYaIAk

Played x2 and all the x3s. All of them were great. Rebirth was a mess but lets ignore that.

I am looking forward to X4 very much !

 

[Devari]

The longer FD can keep the tease going about Legs, the longer it will.

Technically FD hasn't said anything definitive about space legs actually being a planned feature, and has consistently told us that it's still "a long way off". Which can also mean never, and probably does, given the quality of what we've gotten so far from Horizons and Beyond.

We've seen enough already to know it's coming, but if they introduce it too early, the tease has gone and there are howls of derision about how there is no game play.

So, they either continue to develop it quietly, behind the scenes as it were, or we get a placeholder that too many will complain about. But now they are confident enough to show work in progress, aka Krait Cinematic Short.

I don't know why so many people seem to think that the Krait trailer has anything to do with space legs. We had a CMDR walking to a ship in the original Elite trailer shortly before launch and it had nothing to do with space legs whatsoever, it was a purely cinematic trailer that had nothing to do with the actual gameplay. The only difference is that the Krait trailer appears to be rendered primarily with in-game assets, i.e., Krait bridge and holo-me avatars, but there's really nothing to suggest this has any connection with space legs. They most likely used the in-game assets for the trailer simply because they were easier to use than starting from scratch but that doesn't mean that anyone from FD is actually working on space legs.

 

[joshman72nd]

That depends what you mean by "space legs". Do you mean a fully integrated, unified, single-perspective universe where you are walking on a ship that is moving and interacting with other ships and players? That is basically what CIG has been developing with Star Citizen for the past 4 years and it required completely re-writing and customizing their own version of CryEngine to accomplish. There are multiple reasons for this but generally they relate to unifying first and third-person perspectives, dealing with overlapping physics grids and many other complicated technical issues that are necessary to solve if you are hoping to actually implement the feature properly (which no developer has ever attempted to do other than CIG).

If you mean just having your player character walk around and sit in a chair and maybe engage in some rudimentary fps combat? That's not difficult at all, but it apparently still requires more resources than Braben and FD are willing to put into Elite development.

let me show you thats a load of bull.

these guys did it before fail citizen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtM5CUt-Qck

 

[Devari]

let me show you thats a load of bull.

these guys did it before fail citizen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtM5CUt-Qck

I have no idea what you think that video shows but I can 100% guarantee they did not unify the first and third-person perspective because there is no gaming engine that is capable of doing that without extensive customization. All existing fps engines other than StarEngine (i.e., Star Citizen's modified CryEngine build) rely on "cheating" where they show a highly distorted first-person view for the fps perspective and a completely separate third-person view to other players. In order to unify the two views requires a tremendous amount of work and literally no one other than the Star Citizen development team has even tried to do this.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I don't know why so many people seem to think that the Krait trailer has anything to do with space legs. We had a CMDR walking to a ship in the original Elite trailer shortly before launch and it had nothing to do with space legs whatsoever, it was a purely cinematic trailer that had nothing to do with the actual gameplay. The only difference is that the Krait trailer appears to be rendered primarily with in-game assets, i.e., Krait bridge and holo-me avatars, but there's really nothing to suggest this has any connection with space legs. They most likely used the in-game assets for the trailer simply because they were easier to use than starting from scratch but that doesn't mean that anyone from FD is actually working on space legs.

Thats obvious. The original trailer was a CGI trailer and nothing to do with the in-game engine.

The new commander chronicles looks like the in-game engine. It may not be, but it certainly looks like it. And if it is the in-game engine using in-game assets, then it could be the beginning of the work they are doing on Elite Feet.

They very well may have a team working on this just like DBOBE said they had.

 

[Devari]

Thats obvious. The original trailer was a CGI trailer and nothing to do with the in-game engine.

The new commander chronicles looks like the in-game engine. It may not be, but it certainly looks like it. And if it is the in-game engine using in-game assets, then it could be the beginning of the work they are doing on Elite Feet.

The issue here is that it's still a cinematic trailer. It simply used the Krait bridge and holo-me avatars but there's nothing to suggest it's running in the Elite game engine at all. There's a massive difference between simply using an in-game 3d model for a cinematic trailer and running the trailer using the actual game engine itself.

They very well may have a team working on this just like DBOBE said they had.

I wouldn't take anything that Braben says at face value. He was quoted in a recent interview stating that "all of our expansions have been free" which is utter nonsense. I don't think Braben has been involved in Elite development since basically the kickstarter, which explains why basically every single video he's produced about Elite has nothing to do with the actual gameplay and has zero relation to the actual game development process.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The issue here is that it's still a cinematic trailer. It simply used the Krait bridge and holo-me avatars but there's nothing to suggest it's running in the Elite game engine at all. There's a massive difference between simply using an in-game 3d model for a cinematic trailer and running the trailer using the actual game engine itself.

Except it looked exactly like the in-game engine. I am not saying it is or it isn't. I am not ruling it out, that is all.

If all people do is look at things in black and white all the time, then they will be wrong a lot of the time about stuff.

I wouldn't take anything that Braben says at face value. He was quoted in a recent interview stating that "all of our expansions have been free" which is utter nonsense. I don't think Braben has been involved in Elite development since basically the kickstarter, which explains why basically every single video he's produced about Elite has nothing to do with the actual gameplay and has zero relation to the actual game development process.

Just like I can't take anything anyone says on the forums as face value.

I do not know DBOBE and I do not know you or anyone else on these forums personally.

As to that interview, I have expressed my views and won't comment on it anymore. Basically it means nothing.

 

[Devari]

Except it looked exactly like the in-game engine. I am not saying it is or it isn't. I am not ruling it out, that is all.

My point here is that there is really nothing in the trailer to suggest this. All we know is that they appear to have used the Krait bridge and holo-me avatars but beyond that we have no reason to believe they used the game engine to render the cinematic trailer at all.

Just like I can't take anything anyone says on the forums as face value.

I do not know DBOBE and I do not know you or anyone else on these forums personally.

As to that interview, I have expressed my views and won't comment on it anymore. Basically it means nothing.

You seem to be rejecting any evidence that goes against what you personally want to believe here. That's hardly an objective or logical position to take on the issue.