Will space legs look as good as star citizen?

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Was just clearing though the OA backlog over lunch, and it got me thinking.. are we going to get any graphical updates for elite with the upcoming premium content? I think the following factors are interesting:

- The rest of the industry has slowly but surely upgraded to a level beyond base elite. While elite perfectly balances technical effects with its art style for a cohesive appearance, certain parts of it are starting to appear very dated now: the detail of the original ships, the effects and general appearance of stars (up close), the model complexity of station interiors and in general. Assuming that frontier won't be going to be going back to a seasons model straight after the release, the end of year content will have to appear current for at least a few years, and is the live level really up to it? Without downgrading elite fully into b grade territory like the truck simulators anyway. Say what you want about gameplay and community management, frontier prove to current that they put effort into presentation so it might not be unrealistic.

- Star citizen while mindblowing back in 2015 from video footage anyway seems like in the standard today (if expensive looking from cinematic camera footage). Is it actually that good, especially in interiors? Does it even work in practice over being a tech demo? Ie is it realistic anyway?

- In my opinion, there's no way the current generation of consoles could field any upgrade from their today performance.. at least with the live engine optimisation. But then look at the release date of space legs...

- While comforting to receive and visually appealing, even the detail found in the new ships (krait + mamba) etc is still below the current industry standard.

- At the very least, would it be nice to get space upgraded back to the alpha graphics that I sadly (or luckily) missed out on. Ed lewis public claims that consoles didn't effect the pc version is still a wound.

Of course we cant expect anything, but because we don't have any information either, we're free to speculate, and as usual provide some free market research for frontier via opinion.

Sadly we can only dream.
 
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Kelster87

Kelster87
Industry standard for what? CGI? FPS games? Flight sims? Open world games? Hell, specs for that vary from developer to developer. FDev could make the PC graphics look stunning, but it would choke the hardware of most Elite players and be unobtainable on consoles. Given the scale of the game and the hardware of the playerbase, the graphics are more than adequate and sufficient detail. Increased detail requires increased performance, I'm sure FDev are more than aware of the hardware their players have and won't move until the time is right.

Not everyone runs the latest and greatest hardware and not everyone needs it, why force them to in order to play a game they've already paid for - with published minimum specs..
 

Good Whiskey

Good Whiskey
I'm still figuring out how the VR and static movement systems will differ and simultaneously work together.

My real concern with Space Legs is that if it comes out before 2025 or some other distant date when it is fully realized, we'll get something bare bones that is little more than a novelty. EVE added something called Captain's Quarters to the game. It was a room you could walk around in when you weren't in your ship. There was nothing to do in it. It looked nice. It was fun to walk around in. For about 5 minutes.

Unless we can get out and stretch our "legs" on distant worlds... I think it will be a disappointment. It either goes all the way, or it shouldn't go at all. Because I can see it now. An army of players who expected an interactive extra-vehicular world and got a very detailed cage instead.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
DNA-Decay said:
Does it need to?
Click to expand...

Well that's the question isn't it. Honestly for me, the only thing that plainly doesn't work in today's elite is gas giants. Its really self control exercise not to think about it. The rest of it is very serviceable. As forum therapy i've been playing other games though, and while elite was and is strong in effect, in detail becoming noticeably underpar. You can ignore it out of familiarity but i wonder how long its going to be invisible for us and new players. I guess that's the point, the more you play other games, it becomes obvious. Yeah if you just play elite its fine... except for gas giants.

As far as gameplay goes im not going there. Back in my love years i've already done that once.. had such high hopes for the passenger update, it could have been so good. That was good training to expect the worst nothing for gameplay out of frontier. Actually of course i did it again for thargoids too. No really im good no gameplay, just expect legs on the screen.

Gets even better. Crime and punishment was a headline feature for something. Defied all imagination that any entity would produce and market a new system that did nothing but 100% negative effects on a player.. and thought this was strong and right. Zero positive effects, only negatives. That's where we get it from. And then left it never to be developed again. Sorry.
 
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VR Jay Le Chardon

VR Jay Le Chardon
There was a quote recently posted in here where David Braben commented that all the assets are generated in a format that supports up to 16k resolution, and that is what they use for their publicity materials. He cited the huge banners at a games show he was being interviewed at, however its not inconceivable that those same high res assets are what the cinematic trailers are made using. My guess is that we are still using lower detail assets to accomodate the full range of hardware being used to run elite, from high end top spec ultra gaming/workstations through consoles and potatoe PC's, the "Live" game will use the lowest common denominator, or highest res assets the lowest of those machines can run with.

Does 'Supporting 4K, 8K and 16K' Imply Assets Too?

It seems it might... Braben has often mentioned this bit of future proofing. And I've often wondered if that meant the assets are prepared to 16k standards (at least in terms of textures), but only downsampled / 4k etc versions are currently used? I just stumbled onto this early vid where he...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

Graphically, the one thing that cracks me up the most is how bad their antialiasing is, even at 4k on a 65" screen with FXAA and SMAA and a bit of supersampling, when inside a starport like Jameson Memorial the dancing jaggies are still evident and really irritate me. Another cringe moment is when I go to a tourist starport, with the white buildings, statues and parks, and the trees are like something from a late nineties racing game where the foliage is flat sprites cocked at funny angles to give it volume. Surely to foxtrot they could port in the trees from one of their other titles? And while they are at it, temporal antialising please. Also the Jaggies on a coriolis' square edges when its rotating such that the edges are at a shallow angle to the vertical or horizontal, but as I fly FA off all the time, generally on approach to a coriolis I'm too busy trying to wipe off some speed from boosting after dropping from SC at the station and requestng landing permission that I don't have time to notice those jaggies, but once they are seen they are never unseeable.
 

SAB380

SAB380
Star Citizen is progressing along, and if you squint hard its kind of a game at this point.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has now been out a while but IMO nothing comes close to it from a graphics perspective. But that's a very different type of game.

But I'm hoping more that space legs will be implemented in a seamless way, rather than worrying about graphics.
I'm not a fan of the teleporting from place to place that E:D does. I hope we can get move around inside our ships, go down to the cargo bays, look at the components, leave via a ladder/ramp/cargo bay door ... and then move around on the planets/stations. I hope we don't teleport from our seat to standing on the planet, or in a small space station playable area.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Its an interesting question OP. How can ED hope to match the fidelity of things like this...

hrc09xl18ko01.jpg
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
dekot said:
So many people are going to be disappointed with space legs if FD actually does space legs. I don't think FD should be leading those people on, it's a no-win situation all around. Hopefully FD knows this and focuses on overhauling their "placeholder" mechanics.
Click to expand...
Yes, let's get people to pay for something they don't need to.

It's a payed expansion, it needs to expand the game. I'm sure some parts of the current game will be updated, but for the most part, it will be about the paid expansion.

Any overhauling of "placeholder" mechanics will be free for everyone.
 

Shiro Akai

Shiro Akai
When saying "space legs" we think - walking on planets.

While in reality space legs = ship interiors (all ships), station and outposts interiors, planetary base interiors. That's a LOT of assets to be created and tested for just collisions. Plus, it would be nice to have some variety instead of one generic and repetitive design. After all we have regular stations, industrial ones and pretty tourism ones. Interiors for those should reflect station type. Which implies multipliers for the assets.

I occasionally play SC as I like the idea behind, solid realism basis, powering and accessing various things in order to make them work. I'm hoping it will soon be released but I'm not holding my breath. ED's space legs - feature I'm looking forward. This would add a lot of RP element into the game, thing I personally like.
 
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