General Will the Elite Dangerous Universe become free?

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

It’s a brilliant idea OP, ignore the naysayers.
First eliminate jumping, just supercruise to the next system. Now you don’t need an FSD to jump, no boosters required. Just lovely long SCA everywhere.

The forum would melt.

Keep these ideas coming.

 

[Achtung-Goomba]

It’s a brilliant idea OP, ignore the naysayers.
First eliminate jumping, just supercruise to the next system. Now you don’t need an FSD to jump, no boosters required. Just lovely long SCA everywhere.

The forum would melt.

Keep these ideas coming.

Make it a truly single-player game so you can bring back Stardreamer and I’d literally wet my pants at the thought.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Make it a truly single-player game so you can bring back Stardreamer and I’d literally wet my pants at the thought.

One good idea like OP’s has turned on the tap and now the good ideas flow like a deluge.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Just imagine it. You could start at Sol, aim for Colonia, hop in SCA, go on a short seaside break and when you came back you’d be outside Jaques Station.

You literally wouldn’t have to play, it’s an ED player’s dream come true.

 

[CMDR Deano The Imperial]

I think the OP is secretly trying to get into permit locked systems.

On another note I can imagine hitting a station with a stray pulse laser shot that I fired 3 weeks earlier and then when I eventually arrive at said station getting nailed for it.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

From the thread title, I thought the OP was going to propose making ED free-2-play or something. But this is something very different!

 

[SMcA]

From the thread title, I thought the OP was going to propose making ED free-2-play or something. But this is something very different!

So did I and the answer would have been "yes". If FD had to abandon Elite, it was promised, that the server code would be made available. But that was a long time ago and memories are short.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

Now we have got rid of the jumps, they should create a big M25 in space, so you can drive from Sol to Colonia in an srv.

Hey! Now you’re getting legs, you could walk there!

Man, this is going to bring this game into the modern era.

 

[CMNDR REY Dl]

del

 

[varonica]

I have read the comments and want to answer some of them.

In this wish, we are talking about a defined gaming experience, which, in my opinion, is very lacking in Elite Dangerous. Do not worry about the fact that it will be exactly the same as traveling from a star to a planet in an hour of real time. I am more than sure that this can be balanced in
the most convenient way or made exactly the same in terms of balance as it is already done. And who said that the speed of such movement will be the same for all ships? The progression must remain.

No you completely misunderstand the point of the loading screen. Space Engine doesn't need one because apart from looking at it there's no interaction with the objects, however with ED you expect to land on some of them, drive around, shoot things, find things, the amount of data that needs to be crunched and generated for that is massively greater than Space Engine, so much greater that it can't be generated seamlessly and for more than 1 system at a time. Jumping into a system generates the objects in the system, planet surfaces, biology, geology, everything else that is in a system. Sure of they were just modeling a few dozen or hundred systems they could probably do it seamlessly, but they aren't, they are doing an entire galaxies worth, 400b star systems and that can't be done in the same was as space engine.

 

[SMcA]

No you completely misunderstand the point of the loading screen.

No! It is magic and the spell is time based in computation. Those trippy clouds are the 'fluence.

 

[Vetinari]

I'm always slightly confused when people say that because its totally devoid of meaning like its real world origin.

Elite in this case didn't stop being great because we have a loading screen between systems its all we've ever had since the game when gold.

By that definition its greater, we used to have loading screens going into the Station itself in first version in 1984

That 15s is just the right amount of time to check my phone to see if my latest hilarious forum posting has enough ‘likes’.

Finally! Someone has the right priorities.

Do you really prefer to look at the same non-existent space? And would you prefer the loading screen to the space of the universe?

I prefer a loading screen to long periods of non-active flight. I prefer the loading screen to be as short as possible and only used when 'necessary'. Im still astonished that planets 'glide' is not actually a loading screen, the entire system is ready in real time.

The loading screen itself. Is much better than an immersion breaking cut-away or something with text hints. Thats fine for logging in and out but not for gameplay. Some people want more variety of loading screen, im not bothered, it would probably be the last thing I would work on after everything else is done.

In ED as pointed out a lot more 'assets' are loaded or proc-gen created in one instance, and only what is necessary for that instance, which is both efficient and clever. There is a game trying to break the speed of light with how much data it wants to load at once, its not doing great tbh. But if that company manages it, I shall change my view and ask for Frontier to do the same.

 

[Crazy Joe]

It’s a brilliant idea OP, ignore the naysayers.
First eliminate jumping, just supercruise to the next system. Now you don’t need an FSD to jump, no boosters required. Just lovely long SCA everywhere.

The forum would melt.

Keep these ideas coming.

I hope that in that case the supercruise scale factor is being severely extended, because at the 2000c factor we get now maximally, it would take you about 22 hours to travel 5 lightyears!

I can't imagine that people would be happy having to travel at those speeds across the bubble, let alone an exploration trip to the other side of the galaxy...

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

I can't imagine that people would be happy

I agree.

 

[Sylow]

No you completely misunderstand the point of the loading screen. Space Engine doesn't need one because apart from looking at it there's no interaction with the objects, however with ED you expect to land on some of them, drive around, shoot things, find things, the amount of data that needs to be crunched and generated for that is massively greater than Space Engine, so much greater that it can't be generated seamlessly and for more than 1 system at a time. Jumping into a system generates the objects in the system, planet surfaces, biology, geology, everything else that is in a system. Sure of they were just modeling a few dozen or hundred systems they could probably do it seamlessly, but they aren't, they are doing an entire galaxies worth, 400b star systems and that can't be done in the same was as space engine.

Just as a sidenote: planet surfaces also have a loading screen. It's called "glide". That being said, the difference is that for landing on a planet, the glide was a very logical step. I'd yet have to see something as logical and seamless for the jump. But as i neither have come up with a better idea nor have actually read any actually good suggestion on it, i think what we have is as good as it gets.

As long as the suggestions i read are on the level of "make it better, i don't know how, but you sure have an idea", i personally only have one improvement suggestion: allow us to use some of the left and right side panel while in the jump. You can currently still open them, but they don't show anything. So it would be nice to pre-load the info for the panels before the jump, so you could check out that info while jumping.

 

[varonica]

Just as a sidenote: planet surfaces also have a loading screen. It's called "glide". That being said, the difference is that for landing on a planet, the glide was a very logical step. I'd yet have to see something as logical and seamless for the jump. But as i neither have come up with a better idea nor have actually read any actually good suggestion on it, i think what we have is as good as it gets.

I'm not sure that it is actually a loading screen, I once mapped an entire planet using glide mode and discovered just under 20 bio/geo features from the blue POI's, that was before the FSS, if it was a loading screen I seriously don't think you could do that. Planets and moons do load, but I think it's from further away, at least from the distance the old DSS did it's scan, and these days it has been stated by FDEV that the planet has to be generated to position the bio/geo sites so I think the planet/moon generates when you scan with the FSS.

But really only FDEV know that for sure.

 

[Crazy Joe]

I'm not sure that it is actually a loading screen, I once mapped an entire planet using glide mode and discovered just under 20 bio/geo features from the blue POI's, that was before the FSS, if it was a loading screen I seriously don't think you could do that. Planets and moons do load, but I think it's from further away, at least from the distance the old DSS did it's scan, and these days it has been stated by FDEV that the planet has to be generated to position the bio/geo sites so I think the planet/moon generates when you scan with the FSS.

But really only FDEV know that for sure.

I think that the end of glide is used to generate the actual assets on the planet surface, not just the markers that you can see while you are in glide mode. This would be the 3d assets for things like the bases, geological and biological features. And possibly the resource items that are placed on the surfaces (though those could be placed only when you get near them).

This would be similar to the 3d assets for space stations and ships only being rendered when you pop out of super cruise. It probably improves performance to not have to draw those assets before that time. Maybe that is also the time that Elite switches from a coarse scale that is suitable for representing an entire star system at once, to a fine scale that is better suited to represent a planet surface.

 

[Pug]

Not that I want to start a whole ED vs SC thread debate but I think Elite Dangerous has shown why instancing is the way forward. I've played Dual Universe and Star Citizen both try to be seemless but those games are years from working. Maybe we just don't have the tech and power for seemless giant universes. Elite doesn't feel compress or small by any means.

I've never understood the reasoning behind the SC community claiming no loading screens when it takes circa 20 odd minutes to fly to another planet and variants of time above and below this.

As Mr Hat states I also do Not understand this misleading post title, although I did enjoy the video pointless as it was.
Pug

 

[SMcA]

although I did enjoy the video pointless as it was.
Pug

The plot was a bit predictable. Good subtitles though.

 

[Arioch]

I'm not sure that it is actually a loading screen, I once mapped an entire planet using glide mode and discovered just under 20 bio/geo features from the blue POI's, that was before the FSS, if it was a loading screen I seriously don't think you could do that. Planets and moons do load, but I think it's from further away, at least from the distance the old DSS did it's scan, and these days it has been stated by FDEV that the planet has to be generated to position the bio/geo sites so I think the planet/moon generates when you scan with the FSS.

But really only FDEV know that for sure.

You can sometimes see the moment something happens to a planet in the far distance - it’s like a brief shadow flicker over the entire globe. It could be when the planet is loaded, instead of being a distant sprite.

The planets are inflated cubes that get progressively more detailed as each square sub-divides, the closer we get. Assets like starport cities pop into existence from several hundred km’s away.

As for Glide being used as a loading screen - seeing as you can drop into normal space above Glide altitude and (slowly) fly down to the surface from there (it takes a while!), I’d say Glide isn’t a hidden load.

From the last Q&A with Dr Ross, it sounds like the tech is changing in Odyssey.