Why is 'space legs' so technically difficult?

[Devari]

And you still don't understand that I am not even talking about it. Your claim was that no other games shares the same first and third person models. That's factuality wrong. Since then you moved goal posts because you are unable to admit it. It's one thing to misunderstand what I said. But you even manage to forget what you said yourself. I added your initial post in my reply above.

Again, you're not actually reading and understanding what I've already explained to you. No other commercially available engine unifies the first and third person perspectives and that is why Star Citizen required a custom-built version of Cry Engine. Even the few examples of games where the character animations may have been unified the level of fidelity was nowhere near adequate to do what Star Citizen was trying to accomplish, which as I have already shown includes HUD animations and other details that no one else would have ever even attempted to unify. You still don't seem to understand anything I've been explaining to you.

At this point you're either trolling or you simply aren't capable of understanding what I've typed. You can either go back and re-read what I've already posted to try understand what I've been explaining to you, or you can keep demonstrating you have no understanding of the topic and end up on my ignore list again.

 

[babelfisch]

Again, you're not actually reading and understanding what I've already explained to you. No other commercially available engine unifies the first and third person perspectives and that is why Star Citizen required a custom-built version of Cry Engine. Even the few examples of games where the character animations may have been unified the level of fidelity was nowhere near adequate to do what Star Citizen was trying to accomplish, which as I have already shown includes HUD animations and other details that no one else would have ever even attempted to unify. You still don't seem to understand anything I've been explaining to you.

At this point you're either trolling or you simply aren't capable of understanding what I've typed. You can either go back and re-read what I've already posted to try understand what I've been explaining to you, or you can keep demonstrating you have no understanding of the topic and end up on my ignore list again.

This is what you said and what I replied to:

All other games have cheated from a design perspective and what one players sees from a first-person perspective and what another player sees from a third-person perspective are completely different in terms of the character models.

It's wrong.

 

[tafkabb]

Personally, I think it's an issue of community. Myself and others, I'm sure, would love nothing more than to just wander the many decks of an Anaconda, taking in the views from all of the observations decks, or walking around a Coriolis landing platform, maybe going up to the control room and watching the ships arrive and leave. Or walking around a garden station, sitting on a park bench, listening to the trickling of the fountain as I watch the hustle and bustle of the busy station. I'd love that.

But can you imagine the vociferous anger from some quarters if that's all it was? I'm sure we all saw how angry some contributors got just because the Type 10 had a rear spoiler. [where is it]
In trying to please some people, other people will explode in righteous anger. I'm not sure space legs is worth Frontier's effort.

Unless, of course, they implement a FPS mechanic - essentially creating a whole new game. And again, because Elite is not a FPS, they'll be creating a game for the wrong audience. Look at CQC: a very well made and well-thought out arena battle that nobody wants to play.

 

[Devari]

It's wrong.

No, it's a correct statement, you simply don't understand what it means to properly unify the perspectives. There are no other games that fully unify the perspectives the way that Star Citizen is doing. They all cheat on some level, especially for the UI elements and weapons animations. Even in the rare cases where there may be some unification of the character animations there is still a lack of complete unification of the perspectives and you are still not actually seeing the same character models.

If you can't understand this concept after I've explained it several times there is nothing more I can do to help you understand it. Welcome to my ignore list.

 

[ilo]

Again, you're not actually reading and understanding what I've already explained to you. No other commercially available engine unifies the first and third person perspectives and that is why Star Citizen required a custom-built version of Cry Engine. Even the few examples of games where the character animations may have been unified the level of fidelity was nowhere near adequate to do what Star Citizen was trying to accomplish, which as I have already shown includes HUD animations and other details that no one else would have ever even attempted to unify. You still don't seem to understand anything I've been explaining to you.

The reason for all this is called: scope creep. Even CR said the other day in the latest RTV, if he knew where was he getting into he would have not said some things.

So you are saying the quake, any other unreal games or any other cryengine game just doesn't work in fps and 3rd person view? only star citizen does? if an FPS is good enough, I'd be too busy trying to spot my enemies to really worry about the fidelity of my 1st and 3rd person animation, which I don't need at all.

 

[Devari]

The reason for all this is called: scope creep. Even CR said the other day in the latest RTV, if he knew where was he getting into he would have not said some things.

So you are saying the quake, any other unreal games or any other cryengine game just doesn't work in fps and 3rd person view? only star citizen does? if an FPS is good enough, I'd be too busy trying to spot my enemies to really worry about the fidelity of my 1st and 3rd person animation, which I don't need at all.

I have no idea what you're trying to ask here. The unification of first and third-person perspectives cannot be done in CryEngine or Unreal or any other commercially available game engine without a massive re-write to the point that it is no longer really the same engine any longer. You need to custom-build an engine to accomplish this. This is a massive amount of work and completely unnecessary for most games but Star Citizen is one of the few games where this issue actually matters.

 

[Stigbob]

Personally, I think it's an issue of community. Myself and others, I'm sure, would love nothing more than to just wander the many decks of an Anaconda, taking in the views from all of the observations decks, or walking around a Coriolis landing platform, maybe going up to the control room and watching the ships arrive and leave. Or walking around a garden station, sitting on a park bench, listening to the trickling of the fountain as I watch the hustle and bustle of the busy station. I'd love that.

But can you imagine the vociferous anger from some quarters if that's all it was? I'm sure we all saw how angry some contributors got just because the Type 10 had a rear spoiler. [where is it]
In trying to please some people, other people will explode in righteous anger. I'm not sure space legs is worth Frontier's effort.

Unless, of course, they implement a FPS mechanic - essentially creating a whole new game. And again, because Elite is not a FPS, they'll be creating a game for the wrong audience. Look at CQC: a very well made and well-thought out arena battle that nobody wants to play.

CQC just needs bots, I got bored and logged out waiting for matches and eventually stopped trying.

They could try to please everyone by having smell the roses gameplay for you and a transporter pad for me so I don't have to walk down the same corridors to get to the seedy high paying mission NPC. The only issue with that is that some people don't like others being catered to at all, just look at the four years of mode arguing we've had so far.

 

[ilo]

I have no idea what you're trying to ask here. The unification of first and third-person perspectives cannot be done in CryEngine or Unreal or any other commercially available game engine without a massive re-write to the point that it is no longer really the same engine any longer. You need to custom-build an engine to accomplish this. This is a massive amount of work and completely unnecessary for most games but Star Citizen is one of the few games where this issue actually matters.

Ok, cool, can we go back to the topic now then?

 

[Alpha087]

I don't get it. It's not as if walking around with a first-person view ground-breaking in the video game industry. I would have thought by 2018 most developers would be able to do it quite easily.

It is likely due to the same reasons for Multi-Crew barely functioning, Ship-launched Fighters being so pointless and Engineers needing 3 different iterations.

 

[Devari]

Ok, cool, can we go back to the topic now then?

The main topic is that there is really no reason why FD couldn't give us a rudimentary version of space legs. They've given us a rudimentary version of every other game feature in Elite so there's no need to suddenly raise the bar just for space legs. It would be a useful addition to the game, would dramatically increase immersion and would be heavily utilized by players even without any specific game content, just like the SRV and many other bare-bones features have been. The only limiting factor is whether Braben is willing to instruct FD to put in the minimum amount of resources to animate the holo-me avatars, create a basic UI interface for fps combat and give the avatars a hitbox and a laser pistol. It could easily be done, it just requires a minimum amount of work to accomplish.

 

[ilo]

The main topic is that there is really no reason why FD couldn't give us a rudimentary version of space legs. They've given us a rudimentary version of every other game feature in Elite so there's no need to suddenly raise the bar just for space legs. It would be a useful addition to the game, would dramatically increase immersion and would be heavily utilized by players even without any specific game content, just like the SRV and many other bare-bones features have been. The only limiting factor is whether Braben is willing to instruct FD to put in the minimum amount of resources to animate the holo-me avatars, create a basic UI interface for fps combat and give the avatars a hitbox and a laser pistol. It could easily be done, it just requires a minimum amount of work to accomplish.

This is just your opinion. I've seen other people pointing out the opposite of what you said with even some reasoning.

I usually run away when I hear someone not expert saying 'easy' and 'minimum effort' in the same sentence.

 

[Devari]

This is just your opinion. I've seen other people pointing out the opposite of what you said with even some reasoning.

I usually run away when I hear someone not expert saying 'easy' and 'minimum effort' in the same sentence.

We're talking about a level of effort equivalent to a cheap $5 or $10 indie game on Steam. That is how low the bar is here. Are you seriously suggesting FD couldn't at least give us that? With over $100 million USD of Elite revenue and over 300 employees, you seriously think that is something they couldn't easily manage?

 

[CMDR ShoutOfHellas]

I was reading through the first two pages of this thread 'till I thought to myself "what the is this <Nope>?!"
Skipped to the last page and hit reply. Here's my thought on it:

It is not difficult to let you walk around your cockpit or outside of the SRV. In fact you can do it already, if you are on an Occulus or a Vive like me. You can walk around untill you run out of bedroom. This is something that could be implemented really easy and quick in the desktop version. It's cool for 5 minutes. Then you sit back down and fly to the next cashgrab. This is just not worth the time implementing.

So, how do you make this an experience that lasts longer than 5 Minutes? Let the player walk either through the whole ship, or a station, or both. Let's break this down. First, the ships. Who of you feels confident enough, to construct spaceship interiors? There are 35 Ships right now. There are 2 more coming. I seriously doubt that FD even thought one second about where the powerplant, pilot cabins, space toilets, FSD, cargobay, and everything else is located in one Adder. FDevs have to create 35 models, that all look different to not make it boring, that don't screw up the "science"-part of science-fiction and don't get ignored after 5 minutes. Not to mention, that some of the ships are specialized and need special treatment, like the Orca, where you have huge luxury passenger lounges you want to enter of course. Secondly, Stations. This is easier, since FDevs don't have to cram an insane amount of compartments into something of the size of a sidewinder, they can create space bars and research labs and stuff like that, but why? To add minigames to elite, where you stand in a lab, "analysing" Thargoid poop?
Stations may be easier to stuff but they wouldn't pay off. Stuffed ships would pay off, if you can actually interact with some modules on your ship, but at an insane amount of work and furthermore, research.

As you might see now OP: THIS IS NOT EASY

Fly save,
Dimitri

 

[ilo]

I was reading through the first two pages of this thread 'till I thought to myself "what the is this <Nope>?!"
Skipped to the last page and hit reply. Here's my thought on it:

It is not difficult to let you walk around your cockpit or outside of the SRV. In fact you can do it already, if you are on an Occulus or a Vive like me. You can walk around untill you run out of bedroom. This is something that could be implemented really easy and quick in the desktop version. It's cool for 5 minutes. Then you sit back down and fly to the next cashgrab. This is just not worth the time implementing.

So, how do you make this an experience that lasts longer than 5 Minutes? Let the player walk either through the whole ship, or a station, or both. Let's break this down. First, the ships. Who of you feels confident enough, to construct spaceship interiors? There are 35 Ships right now. There are 2 more coming. I seriously doubt that FD even thought one second about, where powerplant, pilot cabins, space toilets, FSD, cargobay, and everything else is located in one Adder. FDevs have to create 35 models, that all look different to not make it boring, that don't screw up the "science"-part of science-fiction and don't get ignored after 5 minutes. Not to mention, that some of the ships are specialized and need special treatment, like the Orca, where you have huge luxury passenger lounges you want to enter of course. Secondly, Stations. This is easier, since FDevs don't have to cram an insane amount of compartments into something of the size of a sidewinder, they can create space bars and research labs and stuff like that, but why? To add minigames to elite, where you stand in a lab, "analysing" Thargoid poop?
Stations may be easier to stuff but they wouldn't pay off. Stuffed ships would pay off, if you can actually interact with some modules on your ship, but at an insane amount of work and furthermore, research.

As you might see now OP: THIS IS NOT EASY

Fly save,
Dimitri

Dimitri, the thing is, the experts have spoken and said just the opposite..

Neither do my mates who work for Rock Star (one of whom is fairly senior) when i've spoken to them about it. Are you going to judge their lack of knowledge as well?

 

[Stigbob]

The main topic is that there is really no reason why FD couldn't give us a rudimentary version of space legs. They've given us a rudimentary version of every other game feature in Elite so there's no need to suddenly raise the bar just for space legs. It would be a useful addition to the game, would dramatically increase immersion and would be heavily utilized by players even without any specific game content, just like the SRV and many other bare-bones features have been. The only limiting factor is whether Braben is willing to instruct FD to put in the minimum amount of resources to animate the holo-me avatars, create a basic UI interface for fps combat and give the avatars a hitbox and a laser pistol. It could easily be done, it just requires a minimum amount of work to accomplish.

Games tend to specialize in certain things, Elite is a galactic scale spaceship flying game so that's where the effort has gone and it excels at it. The x series are mogul games with good economies and player building options, but sucky flight mechanics and failed previous attempts at space feet. NMS is spore and minecraft mashed together which is good if that's your thing and don't mind the really simplistic flight model. Alien isolation is an incredible atmospheric first person get eaten by the xenomorph game, but has nothing beyond that.

They are all very good at certain things, with concession made in other area's so they can excel at those things as no game can do it all.

ED FPS would likely be on a par with X3TC's flight model, functional but not exactly amazing.

 

[Devari]

Games tend to specialize in certain things, Elite is a galactic scale spaceship flying game so that's where the effort has gone and it excels at it. The x series are mogul games with good economies and player building options, but sucky flight mechanics and failed previous attempts at space feet. NMS is spore and minecraft mashed together which is good if that's your thing and don't mind the really simplistic flight model. Alien isolation is an incredible atmospheric first person get eaten by the xenomorph game, but has nothing beyond that.

They are all very good at certain things, with concession made in other area's so they can excel at those things as no game can do it all.

ED FPS would likely be on a par with X3TC's flight model, functional but not exactly amazing.

The issue here is that Elite was originally described as having space legs as a development goal. Not just some theoretical "add on" but as something central to the gameplay. This was not only described by Braben in his videos (both during the kickstarter and since then) but we also have some concept art that very clearly shows the design direction Elite was supposed to take.

Remember this? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

What about this one, where you would literally move around the ship to repair a hull breach?

The really sad part is that no one is asking for these activities any longer. Everyone seems to have accepted that Elite will never reach anywhere near this potential, which is really sad. All that players are asking for now is basic, rudimentary space legs. A simple animation of the holo-me avatars, a hitbox, laser pistol and the ability to walk around a cockpit. Even that is somehow "too difficult" for FD to manage apparently.

Think about that for a second. After buying a $60 base game, a $45 Horizons expansion, countless cosmetic store items, which have allowed Elite to bring in at least $100 million USD franchise revenue for FD (that's a very conservative estimate by the way) and after 3.5 years of development, we're just asking for the ability to walk around our ship cockpit.

That's it. That's the lowest possible bar we can set for FD to produce now. Even that is apparently more than Braben and FD are willing to put into the game, after showing us concept art of boarding actions and repairing a hull breach, now we apparently can't even expect to simply walk around our cockpit.

 

[M00ka]

We're talking about a level of effort equivalent to a cheap $5 or $10 indie game on Steam. That is how low the bar is here. Are you seriously suggesting FD couldn't at least give us that? With over $100 million USD of Elite revenue and over 300 employees, you seriously think that is something they couldn't easily manage?

I am starting to get a headache here. You have stated several times that SC with their modified engine are the ONLY developer that is attempting to do FPS correctly - is that a fair summation of your argument so far? Are you saying that all the FPS games I have played since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (both came out in 1993) were somehow wrong, and this lack of programming skill has continued to 2018. I am aghast that some of my favourite game franchises like Far Cry, CoD and Battlefield were inadequate because of this fidelity problem. It is strange to say the least, I haven't had a problem seeing the correct weapons/outfits, even insignia on my fellow team mates so I can't quite grasp what you are trying to state (and before you start feverishly typing, yes I have read your posts!).

Now you state in Post #242 that you would be quite happy to have minimal effort put in by FD just to wander around your cockpit? I think anyone who has ever read your posts will agree that you will be leading the charge in attacking FD if that happens, you seem to take great delight in 'discussing' any shortcomings in the game.

I was reading through the first two pages of this thread 'till I thought to myself "what the is this<Nope>!"
Skipped to the last page and hit reply. Here's my thought on it:

It is not difficult to let you walk around your cockpit or outside of the SRV. In fact you can do it already, if you are on an Occulus or a Vive like me. You can walk around untill you run out of bedroom. This is something that could be implemented really easy and quick in the desktop version. It's cool for 5 minutes. Then you sit back down and fly to the next cashgrab. This is just not worth the time implementing.

So, how do you make this an experience that lasts longer than 5 Minutes? Let the player walk either through the whole ship, or a station, or both. Let's break this down. First, the ships. Who of you feels confident enough, to construct spaceship interiors? There are 35 Ships right now. There are 2 more coming. I seriously doubt that FD even thought one second about where the powerplant, pilot cabins, space toilets, FSD, cargobay, and everything else is located in one Adder. FDevs have to create 35 models, that all look different to not make it boring, that don't screw up the "science"-part of science-fiction and don't get ignored after 5 minutes. Not to mention, that some of the ships are specialized and need special treatment, like the Orca, where you have huge luxury passenger lounges you want to enter of course. Secondly, Stations. This is easier, since FDevs don't have to cram an insane amount of compartments into something of the size of a sidewinder, they can create space bars and research labs and stuff like that, but why? To add minigames to elite, where you stand in a lab, "analysing" Thargoid poop?
Stations may be easier to stuff but they wouldn't pay off. Stuffed ships would pay off, if you can actually interact with some modules on your ship, but at an insane amount of work and furthermore, research.

As you might see now OP: THIS IS NOT EASY

Fly save,
Dimitri

Well said (repped). There are some in this thread that think an FPS module would be a simple thing to do. They just don't understand a couple of things: One, the size of the sandbox, it would be a monumental task to model so many different ship interiors just to allow some bored soul to wander around and go 'gee wiz, that's pretty'. As you stated Dimitri, FD would have to model the ships to reflect the configuration each player has installed. I can see the salty posts by some Commander stating that he/she/it has passenger modules install but all they see in the cargo bay is the standard shipping containers!

The second thing is this Community, some here look for any excuse to rant and rave against problems, whether real or perceived. Can you imagine the frothing threads when they realise each station will look the same "Oh noes, FDdevs are useless, there is a Starbucks in the same place on every station - the game is dead!!!!).

 

[Red Fox Four]

Well, I've been doing it IRL for about 45 years and I'm not bored with it yet.

While I understand the humor of your comment it should also be noted that you aren't walking back and forth to the bar 37 times each day to go look for potential missions, contacts, whatever else might be implemented as an added feature to complement the 'space legs'.

Pretty sure you'd be bored already on your 7th trip back and forth to the bar in the same day and under such circumstances would stop going to the bar and rather start moonshining at home instead.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The issue here is that Elite was originally described as having space legs as a development goal. Not just some theoretical "add on" but as something central to the gameplay. This was not only described by Braben in his videos (both during the kickstarter and since then) but we also have some concept art that very clearly shows the design direction Elite was supposed to take.

Remember this? Pepperidge Farms remembers.



What about this one, where you would literally move around the ship to repair a hull breach?



The really sad part is that no one is asking for these activities any longer. Everyone seems to have accepted that Elite will never reach anywhere near this potential, which is really sad. All that players are asking for now is basic, rudimentary space legs. A simple animation of the holo-me avatars, a hitbox, laser pistol and the ability to walk around a cockpit. Even that is somehow "too difficult" for FD to manage apparently.

Think about that for a second. After buying a $60 base game, a $45 Horizons expansion, countless cosmetic store items, which have allowed Elite to bring in at least $100 million USD franchise revenue for FD (that's a very conservative estimate by the way) and after 3.5 years of development, we're just asking for the ability to walk around our ship cockpit.

That's it. That's the lowest possible bar we can set for FD to produce now. Even that is apparently more than Braben and FD are willing to put into the game, after showing us concept art of boarding actions and repairing a hull breach, now we apparently can't even expect to simply walk around our cockpit.

Sorry, but people are asking for these activities. This is simply not true. All you have done is pick up on the few that want to just walk around the ship or bridge for no reason at all and applied that to everyone else.

 

[Devari]

I am starting to get a headache here. You have stated several times that SC with their modified engine are the ONLY developer that is attempting to do FPS correctly - is that a fair summation of your argument so far?

No, that is not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that SC is the only game that requires that the developers unify the first and third-person perspectives because their entire game engine has to run at this level of fidelity. No other games do this because no other games need to do this. They can cheat all day long and the player won't even notice. In SC, however, they devs need the game to work properly, not by cheating, but by doing exactly what they need it to do.

Are you saying that all the FPS games I have played since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (both came out in 1993) were somehow wrong, and this lack of programming skill has continued to 2018. I am aghast that some of my favourite game franchises like Far Cry, CoD and Battlefield were inadequate because of this fidelity problem. It is strange to say the least, I haven't had a problem seeing the correct weapons/outfits, even insignia on my fellow team mates so I can't quite grasp what you are trying to state (and before you start feverishly typing, yes I have read your posts!).

No, that is not what I'm saying. Those games have no need unify the first and third-person perspectives. It does not benefit them to even attempt to do so. SC needs to do this because your character is moving through transitions that occur on a massive scale and are completely seamless without loading screens. Your character goes from a planet to a ship to orbit and then jumps to another star system as one continuous game world. The only way for that to work with the character animations and overlapping physics grids and everything else was to unify the perspectives so the game is rendering only one set of animations for everyone. Otherwise the game would have layers upon layers of distorted perspectives, flat-out cheating to show one person one thing and everyone else some approximation of that viewpoint. That does not work when everyone needs to share the same universe at the same level of fidelity at all times.

Battlefield 4, which is probably my favourite fps game, does not need to do any of this. It can cheat all day long showing me one type of first-person perspective reloading animation and everyone else a completely different animation that is approximately similar. No one will notice or care because it doesn't require that level of fidelity and does not have to do what SC does in terms of the game engine.

Now you state in Post #242 that you would be quite happy to have minimal effort put in by FD just to wander around your cockpit? I think anyone who has ever read your posts will agree that you will be leading the charge in attacking FD if that happens, you seem to take great delight in 'discussing' any shortcomings in the game.

The entire game has been produced with minimal effort. I don't see why space legs should be any different.

it would be a monumental task to model so many different ship interiors just to allow some bored soul to wander around and go 'gee wiz, that's pretty'.

No one actually expects FD to do this any more, despite concept art and Braben videos that clearly described that level of detail.

The second thing is this Community, some here look for any excuse to rant and rave against problems, whether real or perceived.

There are more than enough real and serious problems that FD is dealing with that no one needs any "excuse" to discuss them. You literally can't play the game without the various problems smacking you right in the face.