Star Citizen, Roberts Space Industries - Chris Roberts' life support and retirement fund [2012-]

[Dictator]

I link the wrong video I compare to Death Stranding and it is much better on Death Stranding side, the rock, the ground has much more details. In Star Citizen this a flat texture with a few blocky rock. And I prefer to compare to Death Stranding because this is the same type of barren land. This is why the photogrammetry was done in Iceland for Death Stranding.

Two direct feed images if you are not able to see there is much more details and polygons on the ground in Death Stranding.

EDIT: Photo of Mars

Not to say anything definitive, but that moon is not trying to be mars or something. Rather each moon or planet whatever will be an artist set up thing, some moons or planets or some parts of moons/planets have more scattered rocks than others...more scattered vegatation or whatever. Some are areas are just mainly white powdery sand.
It matters where you land and "explore".

 

[PSman1700]

Everyone should be aware of CIG's practices.

And they are more now then ever, after DF's video, it's a hot topic not only here, but on the channel itself aswell, and probably many other game and tech-related forums. That still doesn't take away how much tech it pushes and how amazing it can look, even though created out of nasty practices. I never backed SC, didn't even know about the politics behind it untill yesterday. Even then i'm not calling DF's video bad, cause i'm only appreciating the tech being shown to me, Alex even mentions the problems behind the whole thing, which he shouldn't even have to.

I think the video nicely introduces us to the advantages of games written for SSD's in mind, a much discussed item with the next-gen consoles going to just do that, and how the PC will cope when that happens. We could have an early look at how things might be.

Oh and some terrain shots, even zoomed in the details are quite impressive.

https://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343335/3170874-5233512875-Plane.png

https://static2.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343335/3170873-3246049983-mtqRZ.jpg

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/sys...l-planetside-graphics-and-al-33373736/?page=1

A hot topic there too, with some childish ingredients? A quote from that topic by user GarGX1'

''What's wrong with, just for once, actually admitting that Star Citizen looks fantastic even in this early stage? We all know a game on PS4 that's even slightly good looking has you drooling like you have rabies, yet all you can do is pour scorn on anything that's not on PlayStation. Very childish indeed.''

Atleast, the problems behind this game aren't native to b3d, gamespot forums... but still

https://imgur.com/ZApxRlE

https://imgur.com/ygXJmUX

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well yes true, the worst of SC looks worse then the best of even older games then HZD i think

I think the worst of any game looks worse than the best of any game.

Cherry picking screenshots to prove a game looks good/bad is always poor discussion. People should post screenshots that show a presence/absence of a tech, and a game's average should be used for 'overall goodness'.

It still looks...better then anything else out there.

Please refrain from such unqualified statements. It just leads to screenshot warring. At best, you can say you prefer its look. If you want to say it looks better than other games, please stick to technical discussions about that SC is doing and how that compares to these other games. Technical points can be debated where subjective ideas of best looking games can't.

I think the video nicely introduces us to the advantages of games written for SSD's in mind, a much discussed item with the next-gen consoles going to just do that, and how the PC will cope when that happens. We could have an early look at how things might be.

Things like that just kinda grate on me. We don't need a 7 year long development game to show that, when that title didn't even implement rudimentary asset streaming in the first place. We can look at what console devs have been doing for decades with streamed assets and extrapolate from there, the way we did when talking about the value of an SSD to next-gen consoles, and see that an SSD will be a game changer.

I guess the positive PR CIG manage to generate with all their showboating is what grates and what bothers ToTTenTranz most, in that it fuels their continued survival. "We're doing something no-one else has done before!" Except loads of devs working quietly behind closed doors who'll actually release games using RT and SSDs are whatnot. I guess some of us naturally feel the need to burst their bubble!

 

[chris1515]

I think the worst of any game looks worse than the best of any game.

Cherry picking screenshots to prove a game looks good/ba dis always poor discussion. People should post screenshots that so a presence/absence of a tech, and a game's average should be used for 'overall goodness'.

Please refrain from such unqualified statements. It just leads to screenshot warring. At best, you can say you prefer its look. If you want to say it looks better than other games, please stick to technical discussions about that SC is doing and how that compares to these other games. Technical points can be debated where subjective ideas of best looking games can't.

I take the screenshot of some planest available inside the digital foundry if I understood this is coming from the last alpha of the game. I literally link all planet capture from the digital foundry video. I don't cherry-pick screenshot you can rewatch the df video there is all the planet screenshot of the game

I saw 30 minutes of this video and this is the same.

 

[DavidGraham]

This is a technical analysis video about the technical aspects of a technically ambitious game .. developer politics, gameplay, game reviews is not and should not be part of the discussion.

If it should be part of the discussion then why not also mention the agressive monetization schemes in Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Battlefront 2 or FIFA or whatever, in their respective technical videos. How about loot boxes and the horrible gambling practices in dozen other titles? There will be no end to this kind of distractions.

 

[chris1515]

And they are more now then ever, after DF's video, it's a hot topic not only here, but on the channel itself aswell, and probably many other game and tech-related forums. That still doesn't take away how much tech it pushes and how amazing it can look, even though created out of nasty practices. I never backed SC, didn't even know about the politics behind it untill yesterday. Even then i'm not calling DF's video bad, cause i'm only appreciating the tech being shown to me, Alex even mentions the problems behind the whole thing, which he shouldn't even have to.

I think the video nicely introduces us to the advantages of games written for SSD's in mind, a much discussed item with the next-gen consoles going to just do that, and how the PC will cope when that happens. We could have an early look at how things might be.

Oh and some terrain shots, even zoomed in the details are quite impressive.

https://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343335/3170874-5233512875-Plane.png

https://static2.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1534/15343335/3170873-3246049983-mtqRZ.jpg

https://www.gamespot.com/forums/sys...l-planetside-graphics-and-al-33373736/?page=1

A hot topic there too, with some childish ingredients? A quote from that topic by user GarGX1'

''What's wrong with, just for once, actually admitting that Star Citizen looks fantastic even in this early stage? We all know a game on PS4 that's even slightly good looking has you drooling like you have rabies, yet all you can do is pour scorn on anything that's not on PlayStation. Very childish indeed.''

Atleast, the problems behind this game aren't native to b3d, gamespot forums... but still

https://imgur.com/ZApxRlE

https://imgur.com/ygXJmUX

Better try to find gameplay video with this type of planet details for the moment I did not find.

EDIT: It looks very procedural and empty from what I have seen but the vehicle looks very good and detailed.

 

[PSman1700]

I don't cherry-pick screenshot you can rewatch the df video there is all the planet screenshot of the game

There's more then DF's 15 minute video for footage. I strongly doubt DS's terrain is better then SC's. We can pick a moon with no assets to something from DS with assets, it will always favor the one with more assets.

Please refrain from such unqualified statements. It just leads to screenshot warring. At best, you can say you prefer its look. If you want to say it looks better than other games, please stick to technical discussions about that SC is doing and how that compares to these other games. Technical points can be debated where subjective ideas of best looking games can't.

Oh ok. If i'm saying that one game looks better then the other, it is ofcourse my opinion. Everyone here has their own opinions it seems to what looks best But i agree screenshot warring doesn't lead anywhere.

Better try to find gameplay video with this type of planet details for the moment I did not find.

Well actually they do exist not only on yt, they are ingame shots, the last two in my post are taken on some planet thats procedural rendered i think he wrote, and it looks to my eyes much better from your shots of DS, he didn't even capture at 4k, but let's not bomb each other with screenshots and video's as per shifty's comment. It won't lead anywhere, i can find screens that look better and so can you. I had alot of links but i'm not going to continue posting screenshots and video's as were ignoring a mods warning then.

 

[chris1515]

https://vimeo.com/336380113

And next-gen we will have this or better. They have tons of work to do but this is only an alpha.

 

[Dictator]

Better try to find gameplay video with this type of planet details for the moment I did not find.

EDIT: It looks very procedural and empty from what I have seen but the vehicle looks very good and detailed.

That is from version 3.0 - which is rather old. IMO, just try out the game in the free weekends they have to take some screens and get a look at it.
If you go to other areas, depending upon the geology or what type of scattered object is placed, you get different results:
This footage is from me walking around the aberdeen moon in an area with caves:

 

[Rootax]

This one you can read about if you follow their game dev blogs or status updates.
Originally the game engine was designed around standard HDD principles - preload with long load times and get in game and utilising as much of your system RAM as possible. But that was still causing them massive stuttering problems when large complex entities would need to be brought quickly on screen, stalling the game a lot since not everyone has 64 GB system ram. So they rewrote I/O to not be focused on sustained speed but rather burst i/o and multithreading - grabbing in tiny chunks of data constantly for different objects all the time. It had the positive aspect of greatly increasing performance if you had an SSD and also the positive aspect of the game loading much quicker overall on SSDs.
They actually targetted the game to not work correctly on HDDs basically, but designed loading around that burst i/o that SSDs excell at.
It made it so the game did not stall for example when a large carrier style ship would enter the view port/simulation range or when a planet would come into view.

I know what they're saying. But I don't "believe" them. I don't see anything crazy out of ordinary to justify that.

Anyway, nice video, it's well done as usual, even if, imo, it's lacking some criticism or at least some "why the hell are they even doing this" moments.

 

[PSman1700]

And next-gen we will have this or better. They have tons of work to do but this is only an alpha.

Nice, can we try it, see how it runs on a 2080? Doubt next-gen is going to look like that as standard 2020.... The same doubts as i have if they will approach SC at it's best like that. Sure if rockstar, ND etc go all in later in the gen. But as that video, it's not really that much better then SC's best.

Exactly, that's why I and many other PC enthusiasts are excited for the advent of RT in the PC space, it's a breath of fresh air to the current tiresome trend of console like PC ports.

Not that anyone would say no to RDR2 with the pc enhancements, it just looks so damn nice. I don't think we can call it bad times, just that it could be better.... but thats how it is, modern times see mostly cross platform games cause there where the money is. Aside from a few (about 10?) exclusives that really push things. Over a time span of 7 years. Game development has gotten more costly over the course.

@Dictator
Some posts back my screens where not looking worse then DS, i think atleast. This whole screenshot postings won't lead anywhere as he will come with a comment and says that looks bad or something, hiding behind personal criteria. I think that's what Shifty ment in his comment

 

[cheapchips]

If it should be part of the discussion then why not also mention the agressive monetization schemes in Ghost Recon Breakpoint or Battlefront 2 or FIFA or whatever, in their respective technical videos. How about loot boxes and the horrible gambling practices in dozen other titles? There will be no end to this kind of distractions.

It's different because any technical analysis for those titles is based on what's in the product, regardless of subsequent monetization . The SC video talked about things that may never exist and are essentially a promotion of CIG's crowdfunding campaign. Some sort of disclaimer to let your audience know what they could be in for with any crowdfunding campaign seems like good practice to me (and doubly so for project with SC's history).

 

[chris1515]

That is from version 3.0 - which is rather old. IMO, just try out the game in the free weekends they have to take some screens and get a look at it.
If you go to other areas, depending upon the geology or what type of scattered object is placed, you get different results:
This footage is from me walking around the aberdeen moon in an area with caves:

This one from the 3.7 looks better at least.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

"What's wrong with, just for once, actually admitting that Star Citizen looks fantastic even in this early stage?(...)"

What's wrong is calling it early stage after burning through ~$300 million throughout 8 years of development.

 

[PSman1700]

What's wrong is calling it early stage after burning through ~$300 million throughout 8 years of development.

Where did i say that? How did you quote that under my name is beyond me.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I did quote your post even though it's a quote you pasted yourself.

 

[PSman1700]

Yes but i even noted clearly it wasn't my post, you should quote the whole thing then.
Anyway, i agree with DF that in general sc looks next-gen, more so then other games. The politics behind it are maybe nasty but i'm not interested in politics on a technical forum. Maybe there's better places for that.

A nice looking game gets posted, PS exclusives somehow get involved and we have a lengthy discussion. Maybe better to just discuss DF's video on how they accomplished things rather then the politics and how it compares to PS games.

 

[DavidGraham]

The SC video talked about things that may never exist

They exist right now, and they keep getting more advanced. That's what matters to the technical video and to those who are interested in the technical aspects of the game.

are essentially a promotion of CIG's crowdfunding campaign.

The video is in no way shape or form a promotion to CIG's campaign.

It's different .. regardless of subsequent monetization

Bad shit is still bad shit, whether it happens before releasing a game or after it. Cutting your game into little pieces and spoon feeding it to customers to allow for filthy monetization schemes is no better than delaying your game to add new things while milking you crowdfunding customers.

 

[PSman1700]

Crysis 1 allowed itself to took quite horrible at tge lower sertings, so those don't count. Medium to tigh was a minimun for it to look comparable to contemporary games. So that's where a lot of the criticism came from. From when its graphics at then unplayable ultra settings were compared to other games that actually strove to be efficient. It just wasn't a fair comparison then.

Compared to what games? I remember even on the lower settings it was quite a stunner, impressed more then most others for the time.

 

[cheapchips]

They exist right now, and they keep getting more advanced. That's what matters to the technical video and to those who are interested in the technical aspects of the game.

Persistent 1000 player instances with 6000 sophisticated NPCs is far more than an advancement of their existing networking technology. At this stage it's a crowdfunding promise, not a natural technical extension of their existing server technology. Alex touched upon how their proposing to address this, but sure it's worth pointing out the gap that exists between today's 3.7 and what CIG are selling.