Star Citizen: Chris Robert`s new space sim (the Wing Commander guy)

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TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
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Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
When the approachable planets hit Stanton, I think I'll be able to fly across the surface of them in my Sabre, Tali, Reliant, Connie, Avenger, hell - anything for hours. That terrain generation is amazing and a few leagues ahead of what I've experienced in Elite.
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
When the approachable planets hit Stanton, I think I'll be able to fly across the surface of them in my Sabre, Tali, Reliant, Connie, Avenger, hell - anything for hours. That terrain generation is amazing
and a few leagues ahead of what I've experienced in Elite.

I did some editing so the flame war won't begin.
 

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
I did some editing so the flame war won't begin.

Fair enough, but comparisons are valid. Elite is the only other space flight sim with landing on procedurally generated planets. I have played a lot of it and what I'm seeing here is more impressive than expected.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91


So much good news here.

Really looking forward to the Star Marine AC module.

Procedural is also looking great - once they start brushing out ecosystems it should be amazing.

If I remember correctly, isn't Microtech on an ice planet? Maybe by then they'll have some unique variations to show us on the planet algorithms.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
So much good news here.

Really looking forward to the Star Marine AC module.

Procedural is also looking great - once they start brushing out ecosystems it should be amazing.

If I remember correctly, isn't Microtech on an ice planet? Maybe by then they'll have some unique variations to show us on the planet algorithms.

I don't really care about Star Marine. But I'm looking forward to it for one primary reason: so people will finally quit crying about it on the CIG forums :)
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
just had an amazing time in the PU.

I've been lvl5 criminal for like the past month, and have been having fun playing hard to get.

went out to the ICC probe, and after a few minutes 3 players jumped out there together, i guess to team up and take me out.. didnt really fire back at them, just flew around all crazy to drive them nuts. not too long after, there were no less than 16 players all flying around the probe trying to get me.

TWICE, 2 players collided and exploded/died while trying to get close enough to me to get a good shot.. left the entire server laughing.. twice!

It was nothing short of a party.
 
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rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
I find it interesting that they aim to have Stanton fully playable by the end of 2016. I mean, damn. That's a ton of locations and only five months to go.

And if they're going to add the rest of Stanton AFTER 2.7 that means we have to get a patch 2.8 this year (at least). Four patch iterations. Five months.

I can't help but think this is more of the usual Chris Roberts unrealistic delivery timeline expectations.

Don't get me wrong. Old timers are more than used to this by now. But noobs....well there could be another shit storm when New Year's day hits and we're still on 2.6....

I really, really, really wish CIG wouldn't quote dates. At all. Ever.
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
19,003
24
81
just had an amazing time in the PU.

I've been lvl5 criminal for like the past month, and have been having fun playing hard to get.

went out to the ICC probe, and after a few minutes 3 players jumped out there together, i guess to team up and take me out.. didnt really fire back at them, just flew around all crazy to drive them nuts. not too long after, there were no less than 16 players all flying around the probe trying to get me.

TWICE, 2 players collided and exploded/died while trying to get close enough to me to get a good shot.. left the entire server laughing.. twice!

It was nothing short of a party.

does your wanted level persist across play sessions now?
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
just had an amazing time in the PU.

I've been lvl5 criminal for like the past month, and have been having fun playing hard to get.

went out to the ICC probe, and after a few minutes 3 players jumped out there together, i guess to team up and take me out.. didnt really fire back at them, just flew around all crazy to drive them nuts. not too long after, there were no less than 16 players all flying around the probe trying to get me.

TWICE, 2 players collided and exploded/died while trying to get close enough to me to get a good shot.. left the entire server laughing.. twice!

It was nothing short of a party.

I may change your AT Ballers title to Ace or Flight Instructor
I need to get serious about saving for a new machine
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
CIG must be wanting to ramp up the press. Lots of little things are leaking out ahead of Gamescon. Also good info coming out of BritizenCon.

CIG Lead Artist Starfarer vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSV5Z_fjqbc

CIG'S Jeff Birch on Damage States (or lack thereof)

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4ugkih/cigs_geoff_birch_on_damage_shader_programming/

Ok, 1st: the damage tech working on the characters isn't quite so simple as it was created specifically for metals e.g. we have a thickness, burn, denting and temperature set of values we work with to evaluate how to render it and characters don't work in the same way. However character impacts are normally rendered with decals (I'm guessing projected) and that usually ends up looking pretty nasty, now rendering the character damage into a object space would certainly work and wouldn't look so nasty; that's a good possibility. The Character crew are super hard at work at the moment but they have got a unique UV set which could be used for damage stuff and they use a layer blend shader already, so we could do something like increase wear and dirt values and localise that using a damage map system.

2nd: (In relation to the GDC talk) So when we started the damage tech we were working with a very talented Vehicle Artist Neil McKnight who was working on the Gladius (still my favourite ship) and we were moving away from a damage state system to a more procedural system, however there was still debate as to whether we needed any form of state in there, or more specifically a sort of 100% destroyed ship carcass which would be an artist created asset; we decided against it in the end because it added more unnecessary work for the artist as the procedural damage system was more than capable of creating the look we were going for. So because we had this carcass at the time of development, we had access to its relevant data so we could do vertex manipulation to move the standard assets vertices towards those of the carcass when damage was taken. In the end we settled on using a screen spaced perturbed normal technique, which gives a great result.

3rd: (Again, in relation to the GDC talk) The ideas about GPU particles rendered off when we do damage and could also link with our concept of the removal of metal (thickness level in the damage map) so the more metal lost we could spawn off an amount and size of GPU particles which signify how much metal came off. And because we use an object space position map we could spawn them off at the impact location without having to feed back damage visualisation information to the CPU to produce the effect and location of spawning we want. We should probably get around to making a GPU particle system first though, I'm sure that's on the VFX list of requests.

4th: (Finally, in relation to the GDC talk) There is a new piece of GPU technology which we could take use of with DX12/Vulkan which is tiled resources. There's a possibility we could use this to split up the Damage maps and Position/Bone maps with tiled resources and stream the data about when needed. However since the GDC article we have made plans to improve the Damage Tech system to get around some mesh streaming issues we have and also make the Position/Bone Map quicker to render so that we don't need to store them on the GPU whilst they're not being used (we only need them when rendering the damage into the damage map) and we can render them just in time when an impact pushed to the GPU. The plan is to use a proxy mesh to render these position/bone maps instead of LOD0 or LOD1 of the actual geometry, that will make them cheap to render and in terms of memory will be equally as cheap PLUS they'll always being available in system memory (which fixes our streaming issue), unlike the current geometry which gets stream in and out as required. So yeah the damage tech is cheap for performance (it barely even registers as a GPU performance dip) and substantially lower VRAM usage than the old damage state system (so you can stop calling it Damage States because there's no states any more :p) but we can reduce the VRAM usage by half with this new technique of just in time rendering of one of the maps.

AND FINALLY, we have recently (not that recent, but stuff becomes a blur after a while so I can't remember when any more) done a little bit of fix up for the damage tech to get the glow to seat a bit better so now the cool down decay is more reminiscent of the laws of thermal dynamics (I said reminiscent, because in reality they're nothing like the
calculations of thermal dynamics, I only had 8 bits to do the glow calculations alright!

I'm no physicist but I don't think it's possible to do any thermal dynamics calculations using only 8 bits of memory storage. However what it was reminiscent of was, hot stuff cools down quicker than warm stuff < I'm sure you can tell we're super technical here in the render team :D) and whilst doing this improvement noticed that as the glow goes down towards the cool end of the spectrum and it blends in with the metal colour, stuff gets a little, well....erm....green! So yeah, we have to fix that at some point because it'll be super noticeable on cap ships when they take damage. To put it simply, damage tech never sleeps because we've got too many ideas :p
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
those screens look fine as . Gonna sign up when i get home today...

Excellent I assume you've browsed the thread & understand the risks if so here is my referral code. We both get some extra credits

STAR-FKWY-5CVW

Plus join the AT Org, the AT Ballers

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/orgs/OLDSBAMENT

We currently have 31 members and a pretty diverse fleet. We're casual and don't worry you can belong to multiple organizations in the game.
When you join post your star citizen name in this thread so we can welcome you.
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
those screens look fine as . Gonna sign up when i get home today...

Here's what I suggest:

1) Grab a referral code from someone on this site. Use it and you get 5,000 UEC (in game money). They get a referral point and if you collect enough you get stuff. Search this forum...several of us have posted ours...or just pm one of us.

2) Start small. No need to grab an expensive ship or package. Buy one of the $45 starter packages (either Mustang Alpha or Aurora MR). Fly it and get familiar with the game. If you want something else, CIG makes it easy to upgrade to that ship (with real cash...or just wait and earn everything in-game).

3) If you're into single player games, add the Squadron 42 game for an extra $15

4) Join the AT Org. Fanatical Meat has posted the link several times.

5) Have fun but note - those screen shots are not indicative of the game today.....we'll be seeing those in future releases several months from now.
 

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,520
186
106
Best buy right now is Mustang Alpha Combo package.

You get both games (single player Squadron 42 and multiplayer Star Citizen) and a $30 ship - Mustang Alpha - ($5 more expensive than Aurora MR), that flies OK (Aurora is the worst ship to fly right now - I have an Aurora LN), can be better armed than Aurora MR and has a great view from the cockpit (best view from the currently flyable ships).

Mustang Alpha does not have a bed (Aurora MR has one) - that means that if you will save the game while your ship is in the empty space somewhere, you will resume from the nearest space station (according to the available information, at least).

The ship values matters if you want to upgrade (CCU) it to a better ship. You have to pay the difference.
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
Best buy right now is Mustang Alpha Combo package.

You get both games (single player Squadron 42 and multiplayer Star Citizen) and a $30 ship - Mustang Alpha - ($5 more expensive than Aurora MR), that flies OK (Aurora is the worst ship to fly right now - I have an Aurora LN), can be better armed than Aurora MR and has a great view from the cockpit (best view from the currently flyable ships).

Mustang Alpha does not have a bed (Aurora MR has one) - that means that if you will save the game while your ship is in the empty space somewhere, you will resume from the nearest space station (according to the available information, at least).

The ship values matters if you want to upgrade (CCU) it to a better ship. You have to pay the difference.

You can't spawn in the bed now, can you? Like if I exit while I'm in my bed in my avenger, will it spawn me back there?
 

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,520
186
106
Right now, no, you can't spawn in the ship's bed. You always spawn in your room/pod in Port Olisar. And starting with 2.5, the "outlaw" players should spawn in the new GrimHex asteroid station.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
I don't really care about Star Marine. But I'm looking forward to it for one primary reason: so people will finally quit crying about it on the CIG forums :)

lol.

There will just be a new outcry to take its place.

"Why aren't there more maps? Where is the promised vaulting system? Ballistics are OP!! It's too arcade!! It's too sim!! It's too dark!!"

;)
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
lol.

There will just be a new outcry to take its place.

"Why aren't there more maps? Where is the promised vaulting system? Ballistics are OP!! It's too arcade!! It's too sim!! It's too dark!!"

;)

Or my current favorite.....Missiles are broken! Please stop using them! Stop it, I said. STOP USING MISSILES!!