The Importance of Atmospheric Worlds
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- Atmospheric worlds and planetary tech. are a huge deal for space games. However, as gaming technology continues to improve, we will soon be in a time where detailed planets are more important than ever. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2 are all leading the way with new and improved gaming tech for highly detailed game world.
Star Citizen recently show cased their v4 planet tech, meanwhile Flight Simulator has shown what is possible at the extreme edges of current technology. But what does this mean for the future of the space game genre?
#AtmosphericWorlds #FlightSimulator2020 #StarCitizen
If you had to choose; space legs or atmospheric world's?
Atmospheric worlds.
@@ObsidianAnt Me Too. :)
atmospheric worlds without a doubt
Atmospheric worlds, without a doubt.
Atmospheric worlds
When you stand still for so long eventually even the turtle will pass u by.. if only the Elite rabbit realized it sooner
Excellent analogy
Elite waited around so long that Star Citizen, the "never to be released" game caught up, and passed it by. Man... Full-scale city planets, earth like worlds, weather, space legs, etc... And Elite is still silent.
The flying and space combat is complete trash in star citizen. On top of that elite doesn't gouge there player base. Looking pretty is all good but when the core mechanics of your game are dog shit does it matter ?
@@drewwirsching3865 It's not complete trash lol
You don't like it. It is different from Elite. It has some issues, maybe some serious but complete trash? "Dog shit"? Such hyperbole all the time... Now wonder no one listens to gamers anymore when this level of maturity is what you get from people, everytime you make a game
ED is the turtle, launching slowly from years and made is path. On the other hand, SC is the game promising a 10y adavanced leap from other games and 7y later, not even made a minimum viable product (for us gamers, because for Roberts, it's very viable).
In addition to atmospheric worlds, Frontier really needs to consider allowing players ways to build planetary bases, space stations, and get actual control over systems outside the bubble. I just keep getting the impression that Frontier doesn't want Elite players to have much agency whatsoever which leads to the game feeling ultimately hollow. It's such a shame because there is so much potential having a fully realized galaxy that players and groups could carve out a piece of for themselves.
FDev always spouts that in ED you are nothing, a cog in the machine and while that is true and should be preserved to some extent (we don't need a EvE 2.0) they NEED to start looking ahead, people have been playing this game for a long. Long time now and they have amassed billions, if not trillions of credits and are essentially 'well known and connected' members in the galaxy. I believe Carriers are a good way to start this but it needs to be made more expansive. As you said, we should be able to create and manage stations. Build mini colonies. If FDev wants the Milky Way to be "their zone" where they tell the story and have complete control? Sure. That's fine but open up the Andromeda Galaxy and let people go nuts. Something, ANYTHING for "end game" content needs to be pushed forward. I mean hell, I am the highest rank available for the Federation and I can't even have a Federation decal? Or have the Federation Security Services recognize my rank? c'mon now. Elite Dangerous is if you have a 400 million mile long sand box, but contains no sand for you to mold yourself it only has pre-molded sand castles that fall apart whenever a new one is plopped down into the box.
That's what Powerplay players have been asking for. We got shitty Grom and then they threw us in the back of the office.
alexandsimba There could be so much more intrigue and reasons to keep playing if they just opened up the sandbox a little.
Building mechanics seem pointless to me unless space legs is implemented as well. Control over systems would be awesome though.
Feels like frontier felt safe being ahead of other developers and suddenly they are years behind. We dont even know what they are working on. Makes me sad.
This exactly. Comms is essential for any business. The fact that Star Citizen are continually sharing their roadmap, and that the features they're working on appeal to the Frontier fan base should be ringing alarm bells for Frontier.
ToCoSo did you ever think that only a year after ED launched we got planetary landings...only for the logical follow-on to come *five years later?* I honestly thought that we would’ve had atmospherics of some form in ED _at the latest_ by the end of this year.
Yeah, misplaced management, lazy mofos from Frontier made me finaly quit the game. So unprofessional, and Ive been very patient for a long time, until I saw that things CAN BE DONE in other rival titles.
@@Ebalosus yeah I dont know if they will ever come as it will tax the graphics engine too much. But it would be good to have some insight from frontier but they have been expanding their company and games ambitiously, shame elite has been left to decay.
ToCoSo while I agree that it’s great that Elite runs on most of my computers, whereas SC only runs well on my super-well-specced gaming laptop, FDev shouldn’t let hardware hold them back by that much. Weather and liquid bodies (the *actual* graphically difficult parts of atmospherics) can reasonably well fudged thanks to ray-tracing hardware...which both MS’s and Sony’s next-gen systems contain; and given the timing of the next DLC, FDev would be fools not to take advantage of the capabilities of the next-gen systems.
I’ll say this: space legs and base building can be done on current-gen systems, as their hurdles are more related to networking than anything else.
I've stopped playing Elite due to the complete and utter lack of atmospheric planet development. It was teased in the beta and I've been playing loyally, waiting patiently, since then. It needs more variety, and that would bring it for sure, but until it has that, I'm logged off near the galactic core with two passenger contracts, and some very angry tourists that aren't going to be going home until atmospheric landings are in the game. They are my hostages until that happens.
They'll just eject, many kylies from anyone but you, just out of spite. Elite's npcs aren't too clever, either.
3.8 in Star Citizen is a good point to jump in and rummage around earth-like and city planets for your fix while Frontier sort their shiet out. That should be out in the next couple of weeks.
Haha I like that :) I'm out in the void.. 30k lightyears away from the bubble.. I'm pretending to be in cryo sleep until some random NPC calls from an atmospheric world
@@Kathrynerius Star Citizen is even worse. I was an OG Wing Commander fan, and backed SC from the beginning. Come 2015, when the original launch date was already passed, I got my refund. Say what you want about Frontier's trickle of content, at least they have a game.
Nah, I went and checked out No Man's Sky. It's much more casual, but it's actually not too bad. As far as content goes, it isn't even remotely lacking.
@@remielpollard787 Haven't kept up with SC lately, huh? SC is real playable right now. Getting even better in a week or two. Ship rentals, combat, mining, exploring, etc. I did some salvage missions, spelunking in caves with flares, rucksack and all, combat patrols, etc. Actually enjoyed it more than the usual A to B Elite space trucking.
Its always been my opinion that if Elite doesn't somehow get Atmospheric landings and space legs, it will be left behind and die. Its too big of a feature for the genre right now.
People are less impressed by the specifics of a particular genre, but rather by the degree to which a product satisfies expectations. ED doesn't suffer from a lack of space legs, atmospheric landings, or detail... it suffers from a lack of ambition to match its existing players expectations. ED is gorgeous, has top notch sound design, and an established universe/story to interact with... an nothing to do that feels important or interesting. Put ED ships in MS Flight simulator, it makes no difference... flying for flying's sake isn't what people pick up ED for. People want some sense of adventure that ED doesn't offer, but is strongly implied by the level of detail in the rest of the game.
Everyone:
ObsidianAnt: “Atmospheric Worlds is important.”
FDev: “Lol. Here’s a ship kit and skins.”
made me laugh o7
Where by "here" you surely mean "hand me your Arx".
*rolls eyes*
It's funny cause it's true.
And a new premium currency system.
Star Citizen may be taking longer then some would like or expected but that tech on display is pretty legit.
and I get 60fps on my 1080... Its an amazing game so far and 3 more patch by june with massive content.
@@cutty02 and the best is yet to come, as soon the last hurdles are sorted out: SOCS and server meshing. THEN the content (planets and systems, AI, missions, tradesystem with quanta) will explode. most stuff is held back, because the server tech is on its limit atm.
@@IceyJones And SOCS is coming in 3.8! Too bad server meshing will take till the end of 2020, though. But SOCS will make it far more playable than before.
@@Kathrynerius the version one of SSOCS is coming in 3.8 not the entire thing
@@zwade612 yeah, but still, it is massive; SOCS and SM was something i myself was kinda scared the devs could not acheive. i mean, this is tech that litteraly NO ONE managed to do in a complex engine yet, with only haedan or novaquark having made thing similar, and as of right now, not to that scale
The importance of keeping your fanbase in the dark.
-Frontier.
When the fanbase turns so instantly toxic and exposes how ignorant it is when any thing comes up, Frontier is "Damned if they do, damned if they don't" at this point. Why open themselves up to large numbers of know-nothings that *think* they know something?
Cajun76 they already get that. Just look in the chat of the major live-streams from FDev.
@Super Jeff people arent paying $1000+ on ships to fund Elite either.
@@MagiofAsura No one is currently funding No Mans Sky, and look at what they accomplished with a much smaller dev size than fdev.
One aspect is that Frontier *has* the tech ready. But it is in the "other" game of theirs. Which seem to be their focus and ED is left behind.
I had a theory that the "other" games were test software for later implementation into Elite🤔👀...
@@qSPARTANp I've had this idea in the back of my mind as well
@@qSPARTANp I want to make a zoo at Beagle Point!
Honestly, it seems like fdev are just bored with elite. Hopefully this assumption is incorrect.
SARNIAN SPARTAN I want to believe that too bro, but the delays this year have given me pause for thought on the matter. I never thought that Elite would be beaten to atmospherics by the other modern space games, especially since it added planetary landing first.
Every single gamer friend who didn't know Elite who saw me playing asked: "well can't you land there? Why? What? There is an invisible wall?". Either you meet 2019 gaming standards, or you perish.
I think there's a disconnect between what a rather ignorant gamer *expects*, and what can be currently done. That's something that's beyond any developer if there are unrealistic expectations.
B-but according the subreddit, space legs is far more important to a spaceship flying game than new environments to fly our spaceships in.
"No, I can't land there because my Convas is A PIECE OF SHIT!"
@@Ebalosus honestly, the subreddit is now simply a long stream of screenshots or pics of 3d printed ships. I don't even mention the Forums, an absolute pit of toxicity. The Elite fanbase is Elite's greatest problem.
Wilfrid Sephiroth I feel that way at times too.
>Before the leak
_"meh, space legs would be a nice addition, but atmospherics are where it’s at!"_
>after the leak
_"OMFG space legs will rule! Who cares about atmospherics?! They add nothing to the game! I’m Golgot and will write multi-paragraph screeds with links to what the developers said before the game launched to back my beliefs that space legs are coming and will be amazing!"_
IMHO, we've not had a bar raising addition to ED in four years. It's felt like we've just had small simple bolt ons year after year. It's certainly not felt like 100 people are bashing away at it.
Will next year's content see this change?
listening to OA burning those salty people in the Frontier forums is like getting hit by rain in the desert. do a space legs next to double tap those haters.... pretty please.
Didn’t realise that the forums were super against either dream feature. Usually it’s a spectrum where at one end you get super-pro atmospherics and at the other you get super-pro space legs, with people like me being pro atmospherics but also see the value of space legs in Elite (I just want atmospherics first), or people who are pro space legs, but also want to see atmospherics at some point. On the subreddit at least, it’s rare to see [non-cynics] being anti-either.
And all of this is why i backed Star Citizen and voted for the expanded development-cycle back in the day.
Smart man we have to thank all of you ambitious backers for what we have today. CR is changing gaming
@@cutty02 Please dont thank me. I only have the base pack for 35€ from 2012. I cant afford more venture capital. Thank the “Whales“ everybody and their mother loves to speak ill of.
They lifted this project to its heights. And continue to do so.
@@TheJusttired no I mean for the expanded features vote
@Rod 1984 hahaha this guys... so many lies in your statement. 8 years? They did kickstarter oct 2012 they didn't really start working on the actual game until months after they started crowdfunding. 1/3? more like nearly complete Stanton system. 3.7.2 was very stable.
I think we can now be a bit confident that our gamble is set to pay off.
Half assed implementation would be better than none. Elite Dangerous is a game where the vast majority of all planets are atmospheric icy bodies that are completely useless in every way. Add a skybox and wind noises and a lot of people would be happy with it just because it would be some sort of progress.
Or simple water worlds. Taking a screenshot of my Asp floating on the surface would be priceless for me.
No no half assed if you're gonna do something do it right the first time so they won't have to do it over
@@zwade612 Frontier now does neither. They "try" to fix something and break 2 more things. At least before we had the new content to keep us busy while they dealt with the bugs.
@@alexandsimba hmm cant argue there
I have a feeling that Frontier has no idea how to add in space legs or atmo landings.
They shouldn't have any problem with it, honestly; their planets already behave like you'd expect atmo planets to behave w/regard to re-entry and landings, and they've got the tech in Jurassic World and their cancelled FPS game (which was also made in COBRA) for space legs. The only possible problem I could see is the back-end transition from "this person is a spaceship" to "this person is a person inside the spaceship" and tbh they should already have that largely ironed out thanks to rovers and fighters.
As much as I hate to admit it, it may require them to reboot the entire franchise i.e. start over with a brand new, space leg, FPS, atmospheric friendly engine. And as much as I hate to take this poison pill, I'd even go as far as saying CRobbers had the right idea when he reinvented Cryengine to suit the space leg friendly needs in SC. I seriously doubt DB would be successful in adapting the paraplegic based Holo Me to a walking, FPS friendly avatar in ED at this point. After their calculated market hype over FCs, I feel ED is too dated mechanically to break even on this. :\
@@alvatoredimarco they would have to remodel all the ships in game and all the space ports in game to be capable of getting out of your pilot seat and walking around your ship. Nothing is to proper scale.
Quality or quantity , I'll take quality
At this point I’ll take quantity
What are Atmospheric worlds really without Space legs?
Nothing more than pretty pictures. If all you can do is look at them then it's a waste. People claiming atmospheric worlds are so important likely only want to take pictures. There's no point to them without space legs.
Uh, something they had in the 90’s Elite games?
@@manrightchea To take a break from the action. To create your own temple or paradise. Find a long lost civilization or ruins, etc. The mystery is what is fun. The journey, not the destination.
@@Skellotronix Good luck doing that without getting out.
Lion is right. I think the Elite fanbase gets too carried away with an idealistic concept of atmospheric world, they forget it needs content to serve a gameplay purpose, otherwise landing on an atmospheric world will get boring after the first dozen or so times. It will just be Horizons all over again; a novelty that wears off quickly.
Now if we had space legs and the option to actually do something on these atmospheric world other than blast rocks in an SRV, then maybe it will retain interest for much longer and more newcomers will be interested in playing.
Not to mention, space legs will bring in A LOT more options for cosmetics in the Frontier store as well as open many new avenues for new types of gameplay.
If the leaks are true, the next update will be space legs. And it seems likely Frontier is working to get space legs ready for the next console generation with their current focus on new player content, Holo-me, the revamped ARX store, thargoid in the flesh models, etc.
OKAY im actually pretty stoked about Microsoft Flight sim. The claim that you may be able to find your home in their game is awesome.
It's essentially Google Earth made playable. It looks fantastic from above but it looks just as bad once you go down close enough to the ground.
@@MyN0N4M3 Bing maps actually with 3d elevation 'very like' Google Earth. So its not a 'sim' or a 'model' its real data, and as rich (or not) as that data is.
@@mike_lowndes Yes and as I said. It looks garbage on ground level, since the resolution of the maps is garbage when you zoom all the way in. Which isn't really important for a flight simulator but would be essential for all these space games or any other game that you would try to use this tech for to recreate earth as a game map.
Also, what you say is only partially true. MFS will feature procedural terrain. Something you can utilize while playing in offline mode, where you can't stream data from their servers.
The skyline of a city you fly over will then be populated with generic skyscrapers. Forests will be generated procedurally etc.
I cant wait to crash into my own house
That's an exaggeration I assure you
It is a bit sad to see Elite Dangerous fall so far behind. But with Cyberpunk and Flight Simulator coming, I cannot really care that much, it is their own doing. Even freaking Star Citzen is leaving Elite behind.
And Star Citizen is finally getting gameplay systems in that are at least as good as those in E:D. The bounty hunting system actually sends you out to kill specific targets (both NPCs and players) in space and on foot. And the mining minigame is a lot more engaging too. And you can already pay other players for services like transport or escort, so once player rearm/repair/medical is in, it'll be easy to do those services for people too.
Well, when I decided to give CIG money in 2014, I know it's gonna be long (it did go longer than I expected, but having watched it every step of the way, it makes sense) and it's gonna be a gamble. Right now I'm just seeing the gamble seemingly paying off bit by bit.
@Rod 1984 um, Microtech is the last planet of the Stanton system and it is done. It's three moons are almost finished as well. They also finished the Planet V4 rework for the whole system in just 2 months, from what I read. Once we see if Server OCS works well enough to add another system, they will. They are ready to drop another (Pyro) system in now, at least the planets and moons without places of interest. Nothing broken about Stanton system other than one rest stop they removed.
No need to compare with SC. Just if we have what is available in Space Engine that would be enough right now. And I am talking about current state of technology. ED has just 20 different planets and they are all the same.
I’ve been exploring in my Beluga since 17 DEC 2018 and am on the other side of the galaxy. There’s definitely more than 20, heck, more than 40 different planet types / models.
@Max Pain Fully agree. There may be 20 basic 'building block' planet types but the variety within even just ONE of those building blocks is crazy. The only planets which are pretty much the same, just with different shaped continents and clouds on them are - funnily enough - the atmospheric earth-likes.
@Max Pain I dunno if you've ever played Star Citizen, but a couple of the moons there are almost if not entirely lifeless. One of them of note is Daymar, a planet that's entirely a desert. It's something you could find in Elite if they had ground textures other than "rock" or "ice", and the only real difference is that there's an atmosphere overhead to scatter the light. For being such a small difference, though, it's effect is enormous. As such, I don't understand why, among all the lifeless rocks we can land on, at least some of them don't have atmospheres.
@Max Pain "Elites done a good job when it comes lifeless, non-atmospheric planets, which is the majority of what's out there in space anyways."
This is an incorrect statement as extra-solar planetary observations have shown us that, in fact, the inverse of your statement is true. There are more planets with atmospheres than without. In our own solar system only one planet (Mercury) lacks an atmosphere. Even many of the moons have one.
That said I do agree that Elite has done a remarkably good job with what they have.
Each space game has got its own technical marvel thing about it. Star citizen has insanely good detail, absolutely nothing else as good looking but as expansive in its planetary detail than star citizen.
No Man’s Sky has the huge procedural tech where 18 quintillion planets explorable. That games sky is literally the limit only being held back by hardware. It can keep going and going and going to the next generations.
Elite has a amazing simulation and detail of space and planets but lacks the accessibility that other games have. It has beautiful graphics with an expansive array of planets in our Milky Way
Each game has its huge pros and all three of them set the first flag in uncharted territory.
Right now, that might be true. The difference being that the other two are progressing at a steady pace (fast or slow that might be). Elite has been sitting still for over a year.
Wilfrid Sephiroth make that years
There's some problem with ED engine, unfortunately, just look at that crazy anti-aliasing buzz everywhere, just look at ships & srvs at 4:49 mark .... Unfortunately, it may not ever be solved. The game starts to look extremely dated now and FD doesn't seem to care, pushing even minor updates over and over to the future.
Meanwhile in FD... tumbleweed rolles by.
Thank you for acknowledging the comparison but not focusing on it. It's one thing to just prefer a kind of game over another but the idea that you either choose Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous like there's only one choice is a reductive mentality. I'm glad you recognize and promote the idea that both games offer completely different experiences and have different goals for what they want to be despite thematic similarities. Why put Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen in a competition when you can just play both?
Good video! Please talk more about atmospheric worlds! FDEV needs to understand that this game can't go further than this without atmospheric planets ..... Anyway I love the part where you said that Chris in complete silence created atmospheric worlds, while David talked about it so much and in the end did nothing! LOL!
Honestly...keep space legs. I can live without it. But atmospheric planets with more to explore is what I would love to see. Maybe even some small villages with side missions too. I love elite dangerous but im tired of seeing the same damn rock planet every system I go to. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Star Citizen has space legs, and most people do their planetside exploring on ground vehicles when they can.
@@alvatoredimarco good point.
In all honesty, ELW/WW's I can do without. Lava world/ammonia world exploration. Now. That would be cool as hell. I mean ELW/WW would be neat but we already have that in many games as OA says. But they could go crazy with Ammonia/Lava worlds. ahh. The possibilities..
That sounds like a cop-out to me. How do you explore a planet without being able to get out? You going to drive through the trees and into the cave?
If you can't get out and walk it's nothing more than pretty backdrop that you can't do anything with.
I want both or nothing at all.
I’ve been playing Elite Dangerous exclusively for the past 4 years. However, next year I’ll be playing Star Citizen. The atmospheric worlds AND space legs are a huge draw. How long will I be playing Elite Dangerous? I really don’t know....
Why wait until next year? The 3.8 update is arriving this month (they hope to have it out before Xmas so there's time for important fixes before holiday break) and will put an end to server wipes in all cases except "absolutely necessary".
Alvatore DiMarco
Well, when I said next year I meant January 1, 2020 ( just a few weeks away). I’m getting my PC upgraded for Christmas, so I’ll be straight. It’ll be a great way to start the new year.
@@bootney66 I just bought Star Citizen, myself. Also an avid Elite player since the lifetime pass days. But Frontier sat on their laurels for half a decade, and now Star Citizen has not only atmospheric worlds, but earth likes, and even CITY PLANETS. Something I never thought possible. A full ecumonopolis. A Coruscant.
Katherine
Yeah, Frontier need to step it up. Well, I’ll “see you in the verse” in 2020!
Patch 4.0 of Star Citizen in July 2020 will complete the first star system of the game with a floating city called Orison on Crusader planet. I love Star Citizen developers because they decided to start by the most difficult tasks when it comes to the diversity of planets of their first star system. They are many more star systems in the Star Citizen lore that won't require as much diversity and work as this first star system. They will also port the game to Vulkan.
Their was a day when Braben looked enthusastic about E:D's future.. Look at the game now, it's like a side project nobody gives a damn about at frontier anymore.. :(
When was the last time Braben even said anything about the future of Elite? This is a legitimate question, because we see both Saint Sean Murray the Redeemed and Chris Roberts every so often talking about their space games, but I can’t remember the last time I saw something from David Braben about Elite. Maybe 2017?
Was thinking the same thing the other day leading up to Xmas; time was when Branden would be very visible around the Xmas live stream time and as the years have ticked on, less and less.
I don't think he made a single appearance on stream in 2019.
Patrick Allen did he even show up to last year’s livestream? The last time I saw him in anything Elite-related was in 2017
Star citizen's graphics can come really close to flight simulator's if they nail volumetric cloud tech + volumetric cloud shadow casting tech. And from what we've seen in the past, they actually do have these working for space.
I still think if Elite and NMS could have offspring it would be epic, Elite's realism, NMS's space legs atmosphere and vegetation, elements and lifeforms... Exploration in Elite would be truly incredible if it did not have such an element of "I've been here before" sameness - they should at least generate some unique elements you could find worth millions of credits and maybe a mention in galnet, not to mention it's been several hundred years humans have been scooting all over the bubble - you cannot tell me there would be no bases built out there in random places like the engineers have that people could stumble across - get a galnet mention and then have another location commanders could travel to...
Elite definitely needs this. I really don't care about "space legs". But this would be a fantastic improvement in the game. That, and the Panther Clipper. Keep up the great work Obsidian, you rock.
Star Citizen does have one advantage. It doesn’t have the handbrake of console support that Elite has.
Everything looks prettier with the atmosphere. Light and atmosphere have beautiful interactions that should not be ignored by developers.
I think you made a very pertinent observation at the end of the video @ObsidianAnt and that is "for those developers who discuss their future plans" . There is no doubt that Frontier face a huge technical challenge in implementing procedurally generated, believable and detailed worlds to interact with. Therein lies another challenge though; that they do most of their work "under the covers". For me, if you're not going to discuss your future plans with your user base, then expectation management is nil, and whatever 'surprise' you then unveil , needs to be additionally impressive than if said communication were more verbose. In short, with their current strategy, they really do need to "pull it out of the hat" , and do it very impressively on the first attempt. I do believe they can rise to this challenge... but it remains to be seen whether than it is the case....
I know this must have been hard for you to write/ record, but it needed to be said by a person with as much clout as you. Obviously, other space games are pushing and pushing hard toward making realistic atmospheric worlds a big part of their games. The one falling behind was the one many of us thought would be paving the way, Elite Dangerous. Watching them grow and spend so much time, money and resources on building new games instead of putting resources toward finishing what they started, what they promised nearly a decade ago, has been extremely frustrating. I hope they hear us fans through bigger influences such as yourself.
Elite: Frontier did it on my 16-bit Amiga waaay back in the early 90's. The fact we haven't got it now in E:D is because FDev have abandoned the game's development. They spoke about atmospheric planets, they spoke about space legs - Braben himself said you'd be able to board a damaged Anaconda and steal cargo from it. They were reasons I backed the game in 2012. They're also the reasons I no longer play it.
MSFS 2020 uses two PETABYTES of data to map one planet. Even if you get that down to a few terabytes per planet, with the number of planets available in Elite, the amount of on demand storage required would be batshit insane. The only way to do it would be some kind of procedural like No Man's Sky, which I'd honestly be fine with.
I think you missed one of the most important aspects of atmospheric worlds: the atmosphere. Remember that ED and similar titles are space sims. They are first and foremost about flying spaceships, and new features need to focus on extending that mechanic. I desperately want atmospheric landings in ED, but not because I want them to look to pretty or because of what I might find on the surface. I want simulated aerodynamics and the atmosphere to actually affect the flight mechanics. Reentry from orbit can tie those mechanics in with space and is an exhilarating experience on its own. KSP would have been a good title to mention for comparison, as it's the only thing I've played which actually makes atmospheres a part of the gameplay and does a pretty good job of it.
You are missing a few facts which explain why we are, where we are. Firstly, MS Flight Sim does take world fidelity to a whole new level - BUT - they can only achieve this because they are Microsoft and leverage Microsoft's Azure Cloud platform to process the scenery. Very few companies have access to such a vast resource. Secondly, and going partly in hand with the first point is the question of budget. Star Citizen has had $250,000,000 USD pumped into it, Elite's budget will be a mere fraction of this. In fact my intuition tells me (I'm a software developer by trade) that Frontier Developments investment in Elite Dangerous is considerably less than what they would like you to believe. This is the only way to explain the complete lack of new content over the last 5 years and also the substandard quality of their releases - they simply are not dedicating any serious resources to Elite Dangerous. From a business point of view it makes sense too. Elite Dangerous has no monthly subscription and other than cosmetics and new joiners (who must surely be in decline by now), no real revenue stream. It makes more sense for them as a business, to use the few resources that they do have to create and release other new AAA titles from which they can make much more money from. One only needs to look at how many new games they have released since Elite Dangerous got released - each of which has substantially more content than anything Elite Dangerous has seen. I'm an original Beta backer - I'm not mad, or even disappointed, I just have a realistic, down to Earth viewpoint of the situation.
This is why I specifically mention in the video that "there are huge development tech and resources at work here".
But the point remains. Games that cannot keep up, are going to look stale in comparison. It's not just atmospheric worlds either. RPGs are soon going to be in the same boat. VR titles will also experience this before much longer.
I'm not saying that games without a huge budget or resources won't be good. It's just that the standards by which they are compared is about to take a massive leap forward.
@@ObsidianAnt To be honest I'd be happy if Frontier actually put some resources into ED. With the announcement of the paid-for expansion, it looks like this may well be the case :)
Yep. I'm looking forward to hearing more about whatever they are working on.
The problem with atmospheric worlds is that the way people envision them is a huge leap from what's currently implemented. We're talking not only just atmospheres, but also climate, terrains of varied densities, wildlife, settlements... All while remaining enjoyably playable and believable, which with Elite's pseudo-realistic approach is hard to pull off.
I would expect small steps here. Starting with atmospheric but lifeless worlds for instance. Like Mars. But access to just those is hard to justify in-universe. Permit-locking has its limits of believability.
@@neonspark707 True but remember that MFS is not really THAT amazing. I mean it looks basically like real life from above and can hardly be improved at that point but go close towards the ground and it looks awkward. And if you could walk around, you would see PS1 era graphics.
It's essentially just Google Earth made playable and unless they launch new satelites to get higher resolution maps, there's no way to really fix or even improve the terrain.
SC and Elite couldn't utilize the tech therefore that MFS uses, even if there somehow already were full maps for all the planets that they want.
What I am excited to see though is that MFS apparently also features completely procedural terrain generation. Wonder how that works/looks
Procedurally generated biome/climate/climate zones/atmosphere/water based on the semi-major axis, the type of its sun(s) the mass/size of the planet, the speed of its rotation, the axial tilt, and the composition of the planet (which can be based on the composition of other planets in its system plus some random variables). Machine learning can be quite helpful with this...
Even the flora/fauna models that will populate these planets can be procedurally generated.
It's to late for ED to catch up unless they get on stuff like this right now, if SC ever actually gets released I think ED will die pretty quickly as far as new players go anyway.
Atmospheric worlds are absolutely needed and just as requested, if not more so than space-legs. The engine is capable of it, much of the assets exist and FDEV has enough time to implement something incredible by 2020.
What a stunning collection of footage... it all makes Elite look sad and dated.
I desperately hope they will bound ahead again. Procedural games have a special place in my heart.
I'm not saying elite shouldn't have atmospheric planets but I don't think star citizen should be compared to when it comes to development priorities
Also flight simulator can do a full planet easier than most because its all satellite data, its not all procedural
Their planets are the best looking right now.
@Max Pain This is exactly why I fear for Elite now. 3.8 is the start of persistence for SC. People will want to play it now. Previously, every minor update, patch, etc, wiped all progress in the game. But now they're letting you keep money and ships and weapons and stuff between patches. That means, you can now grind for a ship with in-game money, get modules for it, etc, and not worry that it will be gone next week. People will begin to actually play SC over other space sim games in their spare time, and 2020 is slated for all of SC's server-side improvements. Like 3.8 has SOCS. Serverside object container streaming. Basically, what's not near a player, isn't loaded, which makes the server run better, which makes the game run better for you. More FPS. Less jank.
@Max Pain I think that's just an excuse. I'll take handcrafted worlds over a dead galaxy any day. So what if there's billions planets if they're all empty and the same. That's just making excuses for Elite stagnating.
People can say what they want but Star Citizen is close to surpassing Elite in every single way, in Frontier have no one to blame but themselves. I also do not believe doing the same thing over and over is made better just because you can do it ten thousand light-years away
Frontier is the slowest, most poorly communicated game development studio I have ever encountered.
The weather systems, which are the real difficult part of atmospherics (we’ve been able to do proc-gen terrain since the 80’s), in MS Flight Simulator 2020 are the compelling part; and that tech can be implemented into ED to give its atmospherics verisimilitude.
Well said. I doubt Frontier will listen to you though. They tend not to listen to anyone.
amazing video, the amount of work you put in to this shows. thanks.
Love your videos OA. You were my go-to when I first jumped into Elite. I've grown weary of the repetitive amd limited nature of Elite, and I'm about to gift myself Star Citizen for Christmas. If you decide to put out regular SC content, you'll have at least one excited fan here. Either way, I'll continue to come back here for the best Elite content on youtube.
From speed of early development I expected some atmospheric planets in early 2019.
And by "some" I mean mars-like barren worlds with sky different colour that black.
By now we would have promised ice world update. And by mid 2020 we would have at least water worlds.
I think mars-like barren, thin atmosphere worlds should be easy.
Just add reentry heating to make it fun, add skies with colors depending on atmosphere content, and leave everything else the same.
Better ice worlds would be harder, cause there should be a lot modeling or making algorithms that would make interesting terrain.
For worlds with thicker atmosphere there would need to be changed flight model.
While most ships don't have wings, they are still longer that higher so even large ships would have some lifting body effect, which would help while turning at speed.
In small crafts like fighters this effect would be relatively stronger, so flying those ships at speed would be more like flying a plane.
All they need to do for this is calculate area of ship when viewed from some angles.
Barren water worlds (Laythe for all KSP players) should also be easy. Just add simple water (that you can improve later), and buoyancy of ships.
Ice caps and few islands would remain barren so no problems here.
Those worlds would also have have thick atmosphere so flight as before.
Now to the meat of discussion. Earth likes and high-metal content worlds with some life.
Those will be hard... Mainly because we are talking about planets on the other side of the galaxy and pine trees would not be expected.
NMS tried this with mixed results, While SC is using Earth plants from what I can see.
We are used to seeing alien planets looking like forests in Canada of outskirts of LA, but alien planet would have much more diversity than that.
And I actually would put those back a lot, like even after space legs.
Weather effects are not required, but would be nice to fly through a storm (and crash after getting stuck by lightning)
I believe much of it might be already offloaded by the fact they made those tycoon games.
Fdev decided to abandon idea of season passes at least for now, but I would pay $15 even if there would be nothing there to do, up to $30 if they would make it interesting (but they would need to make horizons included into base game to not discourage new players).
ALSO ADD MONEY SINKS.
After Void Opals people have billions upon billions of credits.
They should add a small outpost station with one (1) large pad, and couple of smaller, so players can build those in deep space without need of community goals...
Oh... here is better idea. Add "community" back into "community goals" by creating goals by players.
-higher time limits
-building stations/bases
-shifting power by large amount.
-developing better modules by pouring trillions of credits and millions of materials into research. (imagine decreasing exponent factor in FSD, even at 0.01/10T cr... for balancing that they would need to check total worth of all players)
Yeah I too thought that we’d have _some_ form of atmospherics by now at least.
My problem with frontier isn't that they haven't brought atmospheric planets to the game. If they actually addressed what is the biggest elephant in the room I'd be ok. My problem with frontier is their blatant ghosting of the playerbase on this issue. Their being noncommittal sounds like a douchy move to not alienate players waiting for this feature by outright saying "no, it's not happening" but in reality they have no interest in implementing this feature. It's the proverbial carrot on a stick
2020 update will be a "go no go" for ED.
After years of (very) poor communication, features "reprioritization" and half-baked features they have no other choice but to drop something huge.
Atmospheric worlds (atleast part of it - not hoping for full life on planets in 2020) and space legs are the bare minimum IMHO.
Agree
Watch as they underperform and under deliver.
Honestly I feel they should add a bit of both to placate both camps: atmospheric ice worlds for the team atmospherics people like myself, and space legs to allow for ship and surface exploration, and EVA gameplay for the space legs people. No life-bearing atmospherics or wandering around bustling space stations filled with NPCs, but enough to show that FDev hasn’t been arsing about since Beyond chapter 4.
That's a nice way to send the message to elite dangerous "pull your finger out"
My opinion is that it boils down to dollars or pounds. If Frontier (Braben) calculates that atmospheric planets with outposts, landings, and gameplay will bring in revenue then it will happen. If the cost benefit analysis says otherwise, then we'll get more skins and cockpit lights.
The issue with atmospheric worlds in ED is not the biomes and weather. I am sure they can do that.
No, the issue is the hundreds if not thousands of inhabited worlds, that are all atmospheric worlds, where they would literally have to not only design or generate believable worlds with biomes and weather and all that but also cities of various sizes, industrial complexes, starports, air and ground traffic, maybe even pedestrians. On a scale of Earth approx only a couple of hundreds or thousand times over and over again.
Add to that that for instance people would likely wanna see stuff like actual wars happen on the surfaces of those crown jewels of planetary real-estate for instance when the system is at war or civil unrest. If you add atmospheric worlds you suddenly have to design a metric fuckton on general buildings, specialized buildings, military buildings, and then all that shit again for empire, feds and alliance since they are all noticeably different from each other in the concept art.
Also if you do trafic people will ask for more vehicles such as bikes, skimmers, hovercars and tanks or even subs. Oh that's right... atmospheric worlds would also have the odd oceans ofc with yet another biome and set of resources. Did we mention wildlife in general yet? Because the Elite universe has vastly different wildlife on different worlds at times, though some critters are actually on multiple worlds, either by design from humans or on accident. Did I mention humans like to use bioforms aka spliced animal hybrids as biological weapons or cannon-fodder?
You see where I am going with this?
On just one world this would already be a monumental task.
Now do it a couple of hundreds if not thousands of times and you see why it likely will either not come or will be underwhelming people in some aspect or another.
Of course no sane player expects them to craft every single colonized world in this absurd detail. But try to wrap your head around the simple problem of having to decide what to include and what to cut to make it feasable for a release. Do you cut multiple cities per planet? That will not make much sense, especially on terran worlds. Humanity is voracious for space and resources.
Do you cut the trafic simulation? That will save alot of work AND required PC-power but will make the city areas look dead.
Do you cut over- and underwater interaction? Critters? Weather? Differences in building styles?
Hell, even I couldn't give you a top 3 of what I want from atmospheric worlds right now!
It's cute that Obsidianant is comparing the issue to Flight Sim and Star Citizen.
First of all flight sim can have that lvl of detail because it is a) ONE planet and b) an already established one with satelite photos.
And SC can do it because it will be one or a handful of systems. That is a low enough scale that it is do-able.
But start counting the number of settled atmospheric worlds in the bubble of ED and the comparison quickly seems unfair.
Until atmospheric planetary landings comes those planets just have a few bits and bobs of data more than the other unlandable ones.
I dunno, the more I think about it the less I think we will see anything but a very VERY barebones atmospheric worlds system in ED anytime soon.
But hey, maybe they do that and then add things piece by piece over the years.
Been saying for a while now, elite was the shit 5 years ago but not anymore. It will never catch back up, it’s an old game.
Let's be honest, Frontier has pretty much stoped development for Elite Dangerous after the whole Horizons Addon sales concept got up in flames, after so many players ranted against the Addon prices.
After that ony a handful of people improved the game very marginally compared to the Beta phase before ED launched.
They rather developed park building games instead and all development decisions were based on how low the effort would be for implementing a feature rather then truly bringing the game forward.
(Where all those Horizon features might already been developed on since before the ED release.)
I quit playing after awful new scanmodes.
Those were just a big usability nightmare tacked on to a UI and input system never designed to switch between so many modes.
I think Elite would need a new full price Elite Deadly game, with the whole frontier team working on it like on the original Elite Dangerous, to rework everything and build and improve of the systems ED already have, but rework all the interface and stuff and release atmospheric worlds and space legs along with it.
I would love to spend full price upon that.
ED needs SOMETHING so drastically new that it provides new gameplay opportunities. Space legs, Atmosphere, I don't care which, but if needs one of the two and eventually both.
It just seems like they've stagnated, and they don't seem to be assuring us that the game is moving toward this stuff.
The comparison to Microsoft flight simulator is a really bad one for this topic. Yeah it’s insanely detailed, but that’s only possible because Microsoft didn’t have to generate it. Not really. It existed. They had to map it and make it look realistic in 3D, but they didn’t have to code everyone’s house or anything like that. Elite would have to do that. It’s an entirely different undertaking.
I agree.
I don't disagree. The problem is the amount of work (and workers) it takes to create all this is massive even for a small fraction of one planet.
Either Elite goes procedural and ends up with trillions of repetitive worlds like No Man's Sky, or they spend millions on hand crafting a few planets over years and years like Star Citizen.
The problem is clear. The solution is not.
It's easy to miss, but at 5:36 you can see raindrops or snowflakes hitting the cockpit glass and melting, then running off based on the direction of travel. That's a hell of a detail, and it should be amazing in a proper rainstorm.
This is exactly the type of details I am talking about.
A few people in these comments have missed the point about Flight Simulator, assuming that I'm saying space games need fully mapped planets. That's not the point I am making. My point is that it's all in the *detail*, and all the upcoming games I mention in the video have massive amounts of detail on a level not before seen.
Atmospheric Worlds are one such thing that open the doorway to details such as rain on the ship canopy etc.
Of *course* all of this is hard to develop - but those games that can't or won't do it are going to get left behind compared to those games that are now starting to do it.
TL:DR, ED is easy to run. We can have atmospheric worlds.
Just think about this; ED Horizon's recommended specs are still just a quad core and a gtx 770. I know not everyone has that, but we are entering 2020 with affordable 12 and 16 core CPUs and many 8 gb vram video cards that can do either hardware or software based ray tracing. The hardware is there, they just need solid programming (not spaghetti code).
Exciting times ahead...even better if we can get these in vr too
I've been playing Star CItizen a lot more recently, after many post-pledge years of complete inactivity (due to playing Elite). I still prefer Elite's galaxy (both 100% scaled planets and the 1:1 scale galaxy), flight model, and unknown POIs in the far black. But Elite's spark has gone out for me a little since I can get the immersion of walking around in my ships and exploring beautiful atmospheric worlds. I can't wait to see what Elite brings in the next big update, but I'm hoping for space legs AND atmospheres before long. Which one we get first doesn't matter to me, but Elite really needs both.
I’d personally like atmospherics first, because at least then it would feel like FDev finished what they started with Horizons; but I agree that both would be of value to the game.
@@Ebalosus Good point about Horizons. We need the rest of the planets!
Rory Clague or at least the rest of the lifeless ones.
Completely agree with this sentiment. I couldn't care less about space legs but would love atmospheric planets. I think that's a potential USP for Elite if done right. Big animal hunting and procedural generation. It would be awesome. 👍
My money is on the idea that they used Planet Zoo to build the dev tools they need to create atmospheric worlds. If not the source code itself, then lessons learned from the development of Planet Zoo were likely applied to it. Would have also provided lot's of opportunity to learn about wildlife and habitats as well as ecosystems too.
Whenever I hear people saying things like "It's gonna have a huge detailed gameworld", I feel compelled to ask "But what will you DO in it?". No Man's Sky has literally billions upon billions of planets you can visit, but the things you can do on them are, barring a few quirks, exactly the same. What is going to keep atmospheric worlds from being anything but a new coat of paint on the same old theme park?
They’ll be the same as why Fallout New Vegas is better than FO’s 3, 4, and 76; and why Morrowind is more beloved than Oblivion: more verisimilitude.
Outro is
Sense of Space by Jakob Ahlbom
Dude you really stepped it up in the visuals of your videos
It doesn't really matter, the same tech CIG uses can be scaled up to 1:1 size and left in procedural-only mode for compatibility with Frontier's design philosophies.
Atmospheric planets exist. They just are not reflected mechanically other than scans notifying us that they are in detail atmospheric from a distance. Layers of atmospheric piece by piece would be so nice. I like my ship, I use my ship, I'm in my seat. I'd rather have what's outside my windshield be finalized proper before I step out of my seat and ship so to speak. It can be done. They already know which planets they need to simulate as they already scan as atmospheric in DSC and the FSS.
Thermal renders and temperature variances are already within the game as well but not to the full extent it is capable. It isn't about new game mechanics. Its about new game visuals that can already use existing game mechanics.
Space Engine (2010) had BOTH Atmospheric and Non-atmospheric Planets! Admittedly neither were too detailed up-close. But it makes me wonder.
We all want atmospheric worlds, but the amount of work has to be astronomical (no pun intended). Not to mention the power of the hardware to run something like ED with atmospheric worlds. Maybe I am wrong because I don't know about programming, but unique worlds, with unique biomes, in simulating level... Wow!
With the way ed is built it should be easier because everything isn't persistent it's instance based I believe I dunno if fdev even care at this point
@@GhostChilliPepper yeah, it seems that ED is a bit abandoned 😢
Elite will run on a toaster, or a couple of potatoes joined together with copper wire and string. Adding an atmosphere to what it's already got would be virtually no additional strain on hardware; the worst part would be scattering incoming light from the star and they've already got light-scattering figured out in stations.
@@alvatoredimarco well, when I think of atmospheric I mean worlds with life, forests, biomes... I guess that a lifeless rock with atmosphere would be easy to make. In fact, the angle attack and the gliding flight when you land on a planet in ED, suggests that it has to be some kind of atmosphere. I was meaning planets with life, oceans, trees... Those kind of things.
@@alvatoredimarco Can confirm the toaster requirements. I've got Elite running on even integrated graphics laptops before.
I think space sims stand to benefit the most from technological improvements and innovation within the gaming industry. Maybe the future will see space sims dominate the landscape.
Exciting times!! I love both Star Citizen and flight simulators (currently I'm in XP11)
I'm afraid, they think that with atmospheric worlds we want living planets. But no, first we would love to land on planets and moons like current Mars, Titan, or even Venus. No life there, just rocks. A sky that is not black isn't going to cost that much.
Who would have thought that good graphics and masterfully created technology for background simulation alone aren't enough to make a good game. Years after its release it still screams early access.
SC>ED sry.
i love both for different reasons.
I'll take greater interaction with the existing environment over atmospheric worlds any day of the week. And I don't just mean "space legs" because what's the point of walking around a planet, space station - hell even your ship - if there isn't so much as a button which you can press, or a rock which you can pick up and turn over? The way forward for these games is via player-generated content because there's only a finite amount of divergency a twenty-man programming team can inject into an environment. And this is before you consider the fact that like all social groups - the ED design team must be pretty like-minded for them to work together as an effective unit. To create complexity in myriad novel forms you need outsiders whose brains are wired in totally different ways. It's perfectly possible for ED to create some kind of integrated development environment toolset which would allow players to upload unique content. It would need to be screened, of course. But it's doable. I can't see it happening though because it would require ED to release a degree of its control over the IP.
Did not expect you would actually put Fdev on blast like this. Good job!
Everytime something in elite is always "have to wait and see" the game is now a turtle that has artrithus
Id like to have some story and multiplayer coop. Only got like 150-200 hours on elite, but I only once joined forces, and it was to farm boring pirates. That was all there is in that game, farming and grinding. If world pf warcraft was just about killing boars in the woods, it would have never been a success it was.
Being unable to implement the ice worlds and adding any gameplay significant element within the already explorable planets like more complex settlements with their own functions and different landscapes (like caves, canyons that are not just deforming a flat terrain like the technology used now in game) makes me think it's not just a matter of creating something for an entire galaxy but a limitation of their own engine (or talent/resources to invest). They could have added much more to the existing enviroments but most of the time new stations and so on are more of a visual change than something more complex to explore or interact with (alien sites being the most advanced ones, still quite basic). People have a hard time noticing the additions if not for videos and forums than highlight them. Too small changes in huge enviroments doesn't give the right feeling, it's like all is a distant outpost in the middle of nowhere when i guess humanity would have spread more on the same planet or space location (near stations, mining, etc).
Maybe they are rewriting heavily their own tech to allow more complex stuff but we'll see if that "added detail in gameplay" thing will be present too because if not the same problem will be there: people who explore will enjoy go around see different procedural stuff but beyond that the gameplay stops to be fun and they go for the repeatitive grind because it's easier for them to replicate over a galaxy of systems.
Those clouds in Flight Simulator seems really cool, i hope SC eventually have some of those as well, and SC will also need those trees to be destructible at some point, make them burn and fall
Leonardo SA coming in 3.8 this latest patch in the next week or 2
Why do you need atmospheric worlds if you can't get out of your ship to explore and admire the scale in person? You can't really have one without the other. Those worlds need atmosphere, animals, plants, seas, rivers, villages, cities, alien civilizations for the players to explore and interact. It's the 2020s people. Not 1990s. Space simulators need to be more than a box flying in the blackness of space. They have to be space sims, adventures, RPGs all in one. That's what brought me to Star Citizen. May we see more games like this in the near future. Game making and gameplay aspects are different now. Must get up moving forward away from the 1990s gaming.
The whole planet thing sidetracked SC even more than it already was. It's just creates a mile wild ankle deep gameplay without any notable content aside from eyecandy. Elite has the same issue with it's planets adding athmospheric worlds wont change this fact. The same features could have been implemented in space. I blame NMS for starting this trend, everyone suddenly wanted planets because of that game and reallocated resources from actual content to something that didn't add quite as much to the game. Space engineers, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and even Infinity Battlescape lost years of development time on a feature that added little to the enjoyment of them.
@@neonspark707 You can have all those in space stations, nebula, asteroids, etc and more cause you didn't spend 2 years straining your engine to fit a full scale planet into it's world.
I'm not saying these aren't cool. I'm saying that the games got less because they implemented a feature that wasn't planed at the start and took up way too much time to force it into something that wasn't designed to house it.
@@neonspark707
You can have those in space plus different things like vertically walking on walls or huge rotating habitats like in ED. In the end of the day what matters is gameplay content, which is structures, missions, economy, other stuff to do. Not that you simulated a mostly empty mudball that you put half of that content on.
I'm trivializing them because that's what they are, a platform inside a platform that never meant to originally be there and just their existence (NOT the features they come with), just simply the fact they had to change the engine significantly to fit them, consuming countless workhours for that purpose IS my problem with them.
I rather have a huge ass hand made space station with artificial gravity than an empty randomly generated forest with mountains and beaches on a planet that is 99.99999% EMPTY.
@@neonspark707 Of course you are right on that regard. I'm just on the opinion that if the game was not originally designed to house such things, developer time shouldn't be wasted on trying to modify the whole engine just to cater to the fantasies of the playerbase.
I agree that planets are cool. However look how much delay it gave to SC and Elite on the content side. We are talking about years of stagnation for both games because of this, while games like Dual Universe that were designed from the ground up to house planets could focus fully on content and will leave the competition behind.
Don't think NMS started the trend. SC had from very early on always the stretch goal (40 million funding stretch goal) to do R&D on procedural planets.
What derailed SC and more importantly their SP campaign SQ42, was that the R&D yielded incredible results very fast, faster than anyone really expected. So from that point they knew it made no sense to continue development as the had done before and scrapped a whole bunch of stuff they already did and started completely fresh on many things.
@@neonspark707 One thing I will say about SC is that it also has a community of backers that not only take their own presence ingame very seriously but also seem to be far more open to PVP than ED community- and if the game doesn't offer a story, they're happy to come up with their own.
I don't really care about the environments, but I want the new gameplay loops entering the atmosphere would (should) bring.
The future is no longer needing a massive graphics card as all the lifting will be done on the server end with a monthly fee. If you look at both Microsoft Flight Sim (which will much of the real world graphics being generated outside of your PC) and Google already providing that platform via Google Stadia the future looks bright and even more realistic for gamers.
I long for the day we get an experience with the realistic scale of elite dangerous, the detail and beauty of star citizen, and the freedom to create like in the upcoming StarBase. If a developer were able to achieve these three things, I'd happily pay $100+ , and probably wouldn't play any other game. Optimistically, given the advances in procedural systems to create detail at scale, this isn't far away, but I'm afraid I'll never get to play a game like this.
What do SC's atmospheric planets have that Elite's non-atmospheric ones don't? Granted, they look gorgeous, but they are as empty of things to do. The only places of interest are also found in Elite, although in a more modest scale: settlements. FD have always said they would not introduce such worlds until they had interesting stuff to do on them. I'm quite happy to wait instead of rushing to roam vast expanses devoid of life.
All of Star Citizen is a sandbox for the players, anything and everything can happen on the planets once they have all the tech in place. Imagine being shot up in space and crash landing on a hostile planet. You then need to survive the elements (and maybe the player that shot you down is now hunting you in the forest) and try to contact someone to pick you up.
Maybe you're on the run with valuables in your ship, so you decide to land on a remote planet to hide the valuables in a vast network of caves, and come back to retrieve them weeks later.
You can literally think of millions of different scenarios that planets will offer to gameplay. Not to mention that planets have handcrafted areas to them that act as massive hubs.
Star Citizen now has planetary tech v4. Microsoft's new flight simulator has planet tech v8... Well, as a star citizen fan, i'm pretty sure Cris Roberts will meet the standards microsoft just set. A nice time for being a gamer! And yes, i understand the tech are different on each game, but still...
Assuming FD are doing space legs in 2020 as per the leak, then ok, legs and atmospherics are both wanted (by me at least), but i wish they had done atmospherics first.
I’m personally in favor of atmospheric worlds by a long shot, but I can see how Frontier might disagree. Space legs could open up a lot of new gameplay, whereas atmospheric worlds wouldn’t necessarily do this. Especially if they start with just rocky worlds with atmosphere.
I'm a flight simmer that plays elite and I pray for the day that I can fly around clouds in Elite. It's why I still play No man's sky from time to time (besides it just being good). Started a new game and I got a shack on a planet. When I look at the sky I know (or don't know) what's out there. I know this hut next to the water where I'm the only one on the planet is just a small part in an almost infinate universe and the next person is probably inconceivably far away. I need that in Elite.
If this "biggest update to the game ever" they are working on doesn't turn out to be at least the 1st implimentation of that when the release news drops, think I might finally be done with Elite Dangerous.
Yay we have trillions of planets that all look the same with nothing on them. No disrespect to you obsidian love you. I switched from elite to star citizen and it is so much more fun to play.
Your voice is very chill, I tried to find the words for how chill it is, but all I could think was 'tea and biscuits' XD
Yeah but think about it - what would AW bring to a game like ED? Without space legs what are you going to do? Land, go into rover and do exactly what you do on other worlds?
*Edit cause sounded mad*
Think you can still view the original if you want a longer, angrier sounding read (though that's not on purpose, I'm just inept maybe this still sounds angry IDK)
I'd love to worlds as convincing as Flight Simulator's in more space games, but to be working with so much data about the planet in question makes a massive difference to difficulty of the task. I wouldn't be surprised if it took years to see anything on that level generated from scratch without intervention from artists (which makes scaling to 100 or more systems almost unfeasible).
Cyberpunk is set in one city and has been in development for 7 years since it was announced, we don't even know how long it was in development before that. Again, it's got the detail but not the scale.
On the surface level, it might feel like the scale of space games isn't an excuse for less detail/dynamism close up when you look at Cyberpunk and Flight Simulator as completed products but as technical challenges they're wildly different.
If Cloud Imperium were to take another 7 years from now to get a single city of Cyberpunk's size and detail onto one of their planets... I think there would be some level of disappointment among fans.
That's not at all what I am saying.
The point I am making is that a number of upcoming games are using newly designed tech (unique to each specific game), to create gaming worlds of unrivalled detail. Once these games arrive, all other games are going to suddenly look very dated, because the bleeding edge of top-end games will have moved forward by massive leaps.
If other games (whether that's Elite or indeed any other game), want to keep up, then they will also have to develop unique bespoke technology to increase the level of detail in their respective gaming worlds. Atmospheric worlds are just one way for space games to start doing that.
It doesn't mean Elite or Star Citizen have to have Flight Simulator level of detail - and I never for one moment suggested that. It just means that the goal posts of what a high-end game actually is, are about to move.
@@ObsidianAnt Sorry man, I suppose I got the wrong read on this one then. I mean, there's stuff that still confuses me somewhat.
One thing is, while what we anticipate Cyberpunk will be (and what it's selling itself as) is unprecedented in terms of world-building, detail and interaction even looking at existing games there are some titles that far outstrip anything in the Space Game genre in those respects.
A poor example that floats easily to mind is GTA V, but space games don't necessarily have to compete with that (or Cyberpunk) because there are unique experiences to the genre, that make up for that deficiency.
And I don't feel that necessarily changes with Cyberpunk releasing.
Don't get me wrong I'm massively looking forward to both FS and Cyperpunk, and I can totally see a lot of worlds, and planets in the case of existing space games feeling more barren for the greater contrast but I don't see myself turning away from games I enjoy now because of it.
I'm squarely on the side of wanting atmospheric worlds along with the diverse biomes and weather states that entails (I'd love to fight through FSs weather in Infinity Battlescape) but it's not enough to push me away from a game (might be enough to draw me away to another one though if it offered the space battles I love so much).
This is what we thought Mass Effect Andromeda and Destiny was going to be.
Then again as for Destiny we thought it was at least going to be the size of Skyrim