Star Citizen – General Discussions

[lir big]

It is fun to see it takes 10 minutes and a google tutorial to modelize that kind of badly shaped and scaled planet in 3dsmax. That with my rusty 15 years old skills about 3d. Real time PG aside of course.

From space their mountains seem like dozen of kilometers high. I don’t even believe that planet is the size they claim it is.   they indeed took nyx that we ‘ve known about for what 6-8 months? Wtf have they been working on since then? . Again there is nothing in there. After 3 years….

 

 

[Anonymous]

I would appreciate it if you make an effort to explain how they are faking this video:

The pupil to planet one could be faked easily, it’s a pre-rendered thing. But the above video is gameplay. If you claim that they faked the gameplay, then I’m going to need more than taking your word for it. You said the same thing about the 2.0 demonstration at gamescom. You said that it was faked, and that it was running on computers with 16 cores. 1, 2

Now that it is out and running relatively smoothly on a good amount of backer’s computers, I am going to go with precedent and assume that when they demonstrate something in gameplay, that it is a viable goal unless you can convince me otherwise.

For all the people complaining about how pretty the first implementation of procedural generation looks, I have this to say. This is not a demonstration of procedural art, but a demonstration of the technology required to make procedurally generated planets work in the game of star citizen without any loading. Notice how in the pupil to planet video, all the text on the bottom is referring to the technology behind the demonstration, not to the way the planet looks. On the stream they even said that the rocky planet+nyx landing zone plopped in there took 2 or 3 days to put together, and it was only done in order to show off the underlying technology. And yes, the planet is unrealistically small to have an atmosphere at 1000km diameter, but the whole point of the technology is that you stream the details of the planet surface in instead of keeping it all in memory, so size shouldn’t be too big of a limitation if they can fit a jupiter sized planet into their maps. It remains to be seen whether or not they can get seamless planetary landings working well in online games, but so far CIG has managed to get the alpha working relatively well in only a week, so I think I’ll give them some credit where it’s due.

This is an awesome addition to the game, and it is something that everyone wanted. The 41 million dollar stretch goal was to set up an R&D team to work on procedural generation, and apparently those guys worked faster than CR even expected. It is an absolutely hopeless thing to try and convince anyone who really likes space games that seamless planetary landings are a bad thing, or that getting them working is a bad sign for the game’s success.

[MDrake SC]

Today’s SC story. The Unmelt tool.

You want to buy an Idris or Javelin? Then melt down your LTI fleet into store credits to prep for the sale. Awwww… you didn’t get your javelin? Want to get your melted LTI ships back? Customer service is backlogged? Concierge too?

Welcome to the new Pledge Buy Back, Unmelt, whatever tool. You can get your previously melted LTI ship back. No store credit or coupons allowed though.

Wait for giant forum rampage on RSI or reddit… One, two, three… And Ben comes in to save the day!

Now look at Ben’s sentence… “We will absolutely change this system, it’s just going to take a little work. We’ve spoken to the web team and there’s not an option for just turning on store credit with the current design… so it’ll take a little thinking and a new build to make right.”

Think about that for a moment. This whole melting down issue has been known for years. It is a problem for white knights and whales. And yet, CIG did not include store credit into the initial release of the tool.

The answer is very obvious. CIG is way beyond desperate for fresh cash, they wanted to release as is, and gauge how the community would react. Too bad, the community isn’t willing to let them cash grab like that. The rest of the info about melting abuse, monthly limits, balance, is just sugar coating, with a tiny legit point for the grey market. Anyone that doesn’t care for LTI and limited ships, has been able to melt their ships and try something else, then melt again and buy back later.

CIG please try again. Esperia Prowler sale? New corvette? Hornet ball turret packages?

[Blix]

100% they wanted to gauge the outrage. There is one thing to be guaranteed about- it is $$ and if they see a cash grab they will take it. Look how they leveraged LTI until it didnt suit them anymore. Or the limited ships for balance – screw that noise going on sale tomorrow for a limited time again. and again 1500 in intervals over 5 days ho! Balance!

 

sorry not sorry Ben.

Why do I get the feeling this is bad acting. Sandi being bad cop and Ben playing good cop. But I bet that wont be fixed for a while right? Want those ships for the holiday? Pony up my little pony.

[dsmart]

If you had actually read the link I posted above, you would see where it was already dissected. Why is that I’m supposed to repeat it?

As I mentioned on social media, this was a level running in the CryEngine editor and in which they put the Nyx base (discussed here) in. That’s where the discrepancy between the terrain features of the base and the proc gen terrain come from.

You are entirely entitled to what you believe. But please don’t profess to know more than engineers like myself who have done this for a living for almost 30 years now. To us, it’s not rocket science. If you believe that they have a procgen planetary tech running, and which they have any chance of making into this game, then you’re part of the problem with this project whereby they keep using smoke & mirrors like this to deceive the public.

To be clear, I have no problem with proof-of-concepts because as engineers we do this all the time. And to their credit, they (engineers) never said anything about this being more than a tech demo. You fans are the ones who are making it out to be something else. Engineers just want to make cool stuff.

When ED:Horizons revealed theirs, it was running, full blown, in-engine. Months later, it’s now part of the game which you can play. This is not the case with Star Citizen which, rife with performance issues, horrendous bugs, various technical issues, remains a glorified $100m tech demo. As I type this, they have yet to implement more than 10% what was promised; yet some fans think that all of a sudden, a $41m stretch goal (procgen planets) is something that’s ever – ever – going to see the light of day. People have forgotten all those cool videos, tech etc shown since 2013 and which have never been seen again.

[dsmart]

I agree. They wanted to gauge the reaction. But at the end of the day, it will take awhile to fix. In the meantime, they still get the cash grab for those who aren’t willing to wait.

[Anonymous]

@dsmart

Your Evidence

The link you posted as evidence was a person criticizing the simplicity of the procedural generation algorithms. A quote from your link:

“The fidelity in the custom made terrain around the base was higher of course, due to it being handmade, but all of the PG terrain around it was very simple compared to even many one man team efforts that have shown of videos on youtube. The terrain tech in SC will without question improve though and I look forward to seeing where it goes, but it’s not like FD is gonna sit around on their hands doing nothing either.

EDs engine is just as seamless when just moving around in the engine. The difference is that in-game in ED we also have the network layer on top. How seamless SC will be while connecting to other players inside the real game instead of a tech demo like this is yet to be seen. However…there is a possibility that it might actually <i><u>feel</u></i> more seamless depending on how the split up them map of the star system. If the connection to the other players happens when using quantum drive to approach “orbit” as shown in the video and you already at that stage gets connected to the people down on the ground then it will be more seamless since no switch will be needed while going down. “

 

This very same engineer that you cite as proof that it will never EVER see the light of day seems to be looking forward to seeing it in the future. I think you are putting words in that guy’s mouth when you use this post as evidence that the planetary landings videos were faked.

 

And yes, there is a discrepancy between the hand made port and the procedurally generated landscape. That’s the entire point of having hand made locations; so that you can make planets more interesting than you can with nothing but proc gen algorithms. Pointing out problems with how the planets look in the first implementation is fine, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a fake, it just means they aren’t done yet.

I read that post you cited as proof that the planetary landing video is ‘smoke and mirrors’, and I couldn’t find anything in it that even implied that it was a hoax. The guy was responding to a person that overstated the quality of the PG work, and he was just pointing out the simplicity of the algorithm, and how atmospheric lighting isn’t a challenge, but a crutch that makes up for poor landscapes. There is simply no way that he meant that it is faked and won’t go anywhere. He specifically said in that very post you cited:

“The terrain tech in SC will WITHOUT QUESTION improve though and I look forward to seeing where it goes…“

So that post you linked me to is absolutely not evidence that the procedural generation was faked. He does not make the claims that you say he makes. I will wait for some valid evidence that actually supports what you are saying. Until then, I will continue to treat this claim just like the false claim that 2.0 was faked.

[dsmart]

Since you either a) continue to miss the point or b) completely ignore it, I don’t think anything further needs to be said. Do carry on, because the jokes on you.

[Author]

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