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

Page 235 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
I am so looking forward to when we can get all the AT Ballers together for some flying or even Star Marine action.
 

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,520
186
106
It seems that 2.5 Evocati PTU is again under NDA. Are they intentionally annoying the backers with such pointless measures?
 

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
It seems that 2.5 Evocati PTU is again under NDA. Are they intentionally annoying the backers with such pointless measures?

With these latest patches, there are potentials for huge bugs. I think they're tired of certain groups with ulterior motives using those isolated incidents in very rough patches against them to show as an example of the game's progress (or lack thereof).
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
It seems that 2.5 Evocati PTU is again under NDA. Are they intentionally annoying the backers with such pointless measures?


I see the point.

It's damage control. We don't want Derek Smart getting a hold of seriously bugged footage.
 

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,520
186
106
I see the point.

It's damage control. We don't want Derek Smart getting a hold of seriously bugged footage.

Derek Smart got his money back. He should not matter, or at least not more than the backers. Unless CIG is in financial trouble and we do not know it (in which case they desperately need more backers and bad publicity would impede that).

And NDA does not work very good anyway. One evidence for that are the 2.5.0 leaked patch notes, readily available in multiple places (including in your post from this thread), except where they should be (on RSI public website).
 
Last edited:

SLU Aequitas

Golden Member
Jul 13, 2007
1,252
26
91
Also, I agree there shouldn't really be a NDA except that it should act as a means of further focusing the group further on testing.
 
Last edited:

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
Also, I agree there shouldn't really be a NDA except that it should act as a means of further focusing the group further on testing.

That's another good point. Rather than people trying to get in or wasting their time just to be the first to stream a new feature, people are actually bug testing.
 

Stringjam

Golden Member
Jun 30, 2011
1,871
33
91
I think it's interesting what they're doing with the stores.

Looks like to buy an energy weapon, you'll need to take a trip to GrimHex.

Stores in different locations offering different items as a way to encourage interaction / possible conflict between different groups.

I'm actually surprised that 2.5 has hit testing as early as it has. If we get to 2.7 by the end of the year, I'll be one happy guy.

I know a lot of newcomers think things are moving slowly, but all we had for YEARS was a hangar to walk around in and eventually a few AC modules to play in. By comparison, this year alone content has been flying into the game. I think a lot of progress hangs on the network issues and the item systems....if they resolve that by 2.7, I think we'll really see things take off.
 
Last edited:

Seba

Golden Member
Sep 17, 2000
1,520
186
106
After using a Sabre for a few days during Free Fly, yesterday I had to return to my Aurora LN (in PU). It seems even worse now. I did not renew the rental of Size 2 Tarantulas that I had on it, because they had no ammo (I removed them from the ship at one point and there is this bug that was introduced in 2.4.1 and CIG did not bother to fix for a month and counting), so I don't even have half-decent weapons on it now.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
24,026
13,536
136
So .. how do I go about getting this game without handing over my personal details, mothers maiden name and my home address? They sure do like want to know it all!.. Cant do that, sorry !!
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
19,003
24
81
logged in for the first time in a few months...the R&Y hangar has shrunk? used to be able to fit all my ships in it (freelancer, m50, 315p, super hornet, sabre) but now there are only 3 slots, none of which will fit the freelancer...

edit: never mind, found it in the 2.4 patch notes...temporary thing for performance reasons. Hope I'll be able to see all my ships together once again soon!
 
Last edited:

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
logged in for the first time in a few months...the R&Y hangar has shrunk? used to be able to fit all my ships in it (freelancer, m50, 315p, super hornet, sabre) but now there are only 3 slots, none of which will fit the freelancer...

edit: never mind, found it in the 2.4 patch notes...temporary thing for performance reasons. Hope I'll be able to see all my ships together once again soon!

Be prepared....you might not get to see all of your ships in your hangar....for free. CIG has talked about the current hangar configuration being the base/free hangar and that expansion bays might have an in-game rental cost.
 

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
Be prepared....you might not get to see all of your ships in your hangar....for free. CIG has talked about the current hangar configuration being the base/free hangar and that expansion bays might have an in-game rental cost.

Can't say I'm a fan. Each ship comes with its own hangar. Not being able to see them all in game should be a technical issue, not a way to drive in game currency. Once the PU is up, it's a different story.
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
19,003
24
81
Be prepared....you might not get to see all of your ships in your hangar....for free. CIG has talked about the current hangar configuration being the base/free hangar and that expansion bays might have an in-game rental cost.

really? I stumbled across some threads on CIG forums and people were saying it won't be a pay thing, it's just a temporary thing...
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
^^^from a 10,000 foot overview I generally like in game currency sinks. Give it a better feel & value


Do not confuse this with real world currency
 

rivethead

Platinum Member
Jan 16, 2005
2,635
106
106
really? I stumbled across some threads on CIG forums and people were saying it won't be a pay thing, it's just a temporary thing...

Well yes it's a current thing right now due to system limitations. In future patches we might see the hangars go back to expandable bays like the old days. But when the game goes live.....we have no idea what the hangar system will be like. CIG have told us many different things.....probably because they don't really know. But CR himself has indicated that expansion modules (for living, storage, repair area....additional ships...whatever) would likely need to be rented.

Personally, I hope CIG don't give us free hangars and instead just give us more free UEC instead (with ship/package purchases) Then give us an open, free market for hangar space. Renting a R&Y hangar on Terra should cost a helluva lot more than a Self-Land in the Banshee system.

If they just give us free hangars and let us pick a starting location, I can see the majority of people picking the same location (Terra, Earth, anything in the Stanton system come to mind immediately). I don't think that would be good for the game. I think human Citizens should be spread out. And a free market (with hangar rental costs based upon supply and demand) would be a way to facilitate that.

But this is just one Citizen's opinion.
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
Kinda off topic a bit, but I've been wondering about how the difference between 32bit and 64bit accuracy would play out in a game like Star Citizen.

Say you wanted accuracy down to the millimeter.

If using a 64bit integer, you could ID 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 millimeters along a straight line.

That's 9,223,372,036,854.775807 kilometers, or approx 9 trillion kilometers.

The diameter of the solar system is 287.46 billion kilometers.

It seems that with a single 64bit integer, you can easily uniquely identify each millimeter across the entire diameter of the solar system!

Is my math correct?

Moving on, with 32bit, you can uniquely ID individual millimeters on a line up to 2.1 billion. That means you can only ID an area about 2,000KM before you need additional data.

2,000KM is a huge distance for any traditional game.

Granted this math is based on a single, straight line, and not 3D space, but one can easily see why CryTek might not have wanted to refactor CryEngine for 64bit when 32bit is still capable of huge, huge maps that are far larger than any land based game. But one can also see why CIG needed it and why they decided to invest into making the change.
 
Feb 4, 2009
35,283
16,766
136
Kinda off topic a bit, but I've been wondering about how the difference between 32bit and 64bit accuracy would play out in a game like Star Citizen.

Say you wanted accuracy down to the millimeter.

If using a 64bit integer, you could ID 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 millimeters along a straight line.

That's 9,223,372,036,854.775807 kilometers, or approx 9 trillion kilometers.

The diameter of the solar system is 287.46 billion kilometers.

It seems that with a single 64bit integer, you can easily uniquely identify each millimeter across the entire diameter of the solar system!

Is my math correct?

Moving on, with 32bit, you can uniquely ID individual millimeters on a line up to 2.1 billion. That means you can only ID an area about 2,000KM before you need additional data.

2,000KM is a huge distance for any traditional game.

Granted this math is based on a single, straight line, and not 3D space, but one can easily see why CryTek might not have wanted to refactor CryEngine for 64bit when 32bit is still capable of huge, huge maps that are far larger than any land based game. But one can also see why CIG needed it and why they decided to invest into making the change.

Granted I know little of this subject matter, I remember when 64 bit chips & 64 bit windows was on the near horizon game magazines used to say mmo worlds could become tens of thousands of times bigger but the memory would become a problem.
 

Sabrewings

Golden Member
Jun 27, 2015
1,942
35
51
Kinda off topic a bit, but I've been wondering about how the difference between 32bit and 64bit accuracy would play out in a game like Star Citizen.

Say you wanted accuracy down to the millimeter.

If using a 64bit integer, you could ID 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 millimeters along a straight line.

That's 9,223,372,036,854.775807 kilometers, or approx 9 trillion kilometers.

The diameter of the solar system is 287.46 billion kilometers.

It seems that with a single 64bit integer, you can easily uniquely identify each millimeter across the entire diameter of the solar system!

Is my math correct?

Moving on, with 32bit, you can uniquely ID individual millimeters on a line up to 2.1 billion. That means you can only ID an area about 2,000KM before you need additional data.

2,000KM is a huge distance for any traditional game.

Granted this math is based on a single, straight line, and not 3D space, but one can easily see why CryTek might not have wanted to refactor CryEngine for 64bit when 32bit is still capable of huge, huge maps that are far larger than any land based game. But one can also see why CIG needed it and why they decided to invest into making the change.

Math checks out. However, your figures for distance can be doubled. 9223372036854775807 is the value for 2^63 (which is correct), but that allows you to use a sign so it would be that distance from the origin positive and negative.

but the memory would become a problem.

No longer an issue since engines have developed the ability to stream in assets as the player character moves throughout the world. The entire world doesn't have to be in memory at any given moment.
 

TechBoyJK

Lifer
Oct 17, 2002
16,699
60
91
Was pointed out on reddit that my math was correct, but the use of integers was wrong.

The refactor was applied to floating point values; and because of this the values aren't quite as long as floating point values contain not only a number, but decimal location information, etc.. This reduces the number of bits applied to the actual number, lowering the max values.

That said, the change in scale was still very similar, as a 32bit floating point value was that much smaller as well.
 

Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,100
467
126
Kinda off topic a bit, but I've been wondering about how the difference between 32bit and 64bit accuracy would play out in a game like Star Citizen.

Say you wanted accuracy down to the millimeter.

If using a 64bit integer, you could ID 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 millimeters along a straight line.

That's 9,223,372,036,854.775807 kilometers, or approx 9 trillion kilometers.

The diameter of the solar system is 287.46 billion kilometers.

It seems that with a single 64bit integer, you can easily uniquely identify each millimeter across the entire diameter of the solar system!

Is my math correct?

Moving on, with 32bit, you can uniquely ID individual millimeters on a line up to 2.1 billion. That means you can only ID an area about 2,000KM before you need additional data.

2,000KM is a huge distance for any traditional game.

Granted this math is based on a single, straight line, and not 3D space, but one can easily see why CryTek might not have wanted to refactor CryEngine for 64bit when 32bit is still capable of huge, huge maps that are far larger than any land based game. But one can also see why CIG needed it and why they decided to invest into making the change.

You are mostly correct. The part that you are incorrect about is that location data is actually a FLOAT, not an INT (well more to the point, a DOUBLE now). FLOATs and DOUBLEs are not quite what you think they are. They are actually approximations.

I have not looked at the cryengine source code, so I may be mistake here, but we might also be dealing with SIGNED DOUBLEs (meaning the number can be positive or negative). It really depends on how they designed the coordinate system (i.e. origin is 0,0,0, and you can go below and above that value and the origin is effectively the middle of the map, or 0,0,0 could be the bottom most, left most, southern most coordinate in the map and every point is a positive number away from 0,0,0). So back to my point, a typical SIGNED DOUBLE uses 1 of the 64 bits to store if the value is positive or negative number, the next 11 bits defining an exponent, e where e is the exponent value, and then 53 bits defining a fraction 1.xxxxxxxxxx (where xxxxxx is the decimal value of the 53 bit number), and the actual value of the DOUBLE is (sign bit)*1.xxxxxx*2^(e-1032). Again, this all assumes a specific implementation of floating point notation, as there are other ways which have a dynamically change the number of bits used for the exponent and fraction by sacrificing 2-4 bits which tell you how many bits are in the exponent (as you may be able to get a more precise approximation by changing the number of bits in the exponent to say 17 bits).... It all depends on the implementation.

So what I do know, Star Citizen is absolutely using 64bit floating point numbers for the coordinate system. We know this because they told us this when they originally explained the reason why they had to move to 64bit from 32bit as the problem was with dealing with the error in the approximation of values when going farther away from the origin, which is exactly the problem that happens in large floating point number (the approximations have a greater error range as you get farther away from 0).