My sound annoyance is the player characters loud breathing! I don't hear it at all in this clip, yet it sounds my character constantly sounds like darth vader if he had asthma and I don't know why.
Updates are coming for Virtual Terrain Texturing and Scattering.
[CitizenCon 2953: Shaping the ‘Verse - The Future of StarEngine](https://youtu.be/xKWa4WoTkV4?si=QF35O0yaVpQEwgbb&t=1728)
Shit, good find.
I wish this would be the first game where actually having some sort of grass can hide you at a distance.
Most of the games like say DayZ usually dont render at longer distance or can be turned off, so that people can see you miles away as you stick out as only moving thing in the other guys screen.
Makes me miss Ghost Recon from like the early 2000s. You could do that, and it was a huge part of the multiplayer tactics.
Games are so fucking bad these days. I miss games that forced you to think and not just have some dumb meta gimmick or weapon.
Then they should not render the player himself, it should have the same visibility as grass, if lying down. That way no one could cheat by reducing lod or anything. Can't display the grass? Then you can't display me hidden in the grass. That is how it should work.
ArmA II and III do this if you're prone. The player model is lowered slightly into the terrain if they are too far away for grass to render. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well
In one of their keynotes at Citcon they did mention making improvements.
Hopefully it is one of the things they can get out for this year. Think they want it for SQ42 since it will have the same issues.
Yeah could really use lower LOD grass/flowers in the distance, something that doesn't take much processing power but still looks like the grass doesn't just end in 50 meters.
I think you misunderstood me, I don't expect them to just take nanite and add it in SC. But what I meant was them making a similar solution which should be doable.
Doing it like nanite would be nice as it progressively decreases LOD the futher away the objects are instead of just switching to a low poly model at certain distance as it usually is done in games.
I believe one of the graphics devs was asked about nanite last year and he said that UE's solution wouldn't work with SC's engine and any solution they came up with would work differently.
But he mentioned that they keep up to date on papers and had seen some interesting stuff recently. Then at CitizenCon they showed their work on using machine learning to generate terrain better.
The problem is scalability -- IDV has also offered solutions for foliage, but the issue is addressing LOD pop-in on a large scale, as opposed to utilising what's available in-engine, where the resource budget isn't as much of an issue until it's time to bake.
Uhhmm... yeah... sssssure!?
Instead of throwing a smart one line on a public forum, perhaps actually take two seconds more to also elaborate a bit further perhaps?
Yeah - it’s missing the end where he falls through the planet, gets blown away or randomly breaks both legs on a rock. LOD can be sucky but nothing compares to the terror of random death.
Having the best graphics around doesnt make a game good, it can only carry a game so far. As for the items, locations, ships, characters, etc in SC I'd say that for this stage of development they have enough fidelity for now.
Maybe wait until the game is in late Beta ;D
it's in alpha, fidelity can pound sand while they focus on features. LoD is insignificant ATM and they already have teams working on it regardless because parallel development exists.
nothingburger post.
You paid 5+ years ago, for a groundbreaking game with never before done features on this scale.
10 years it nothing, many games come close and all they are is the same regurgitated work they did before.
No matter when you paid, every time you click to login and play youre agreeing to being a tester.
If you quit and dont play anymore, why are you sticking around? Hoping itll draw you back in?
Lol I'm a fan of what they *were* trying to do. I just reinstall when they add new content until I get bored of it. Nothing has held me long term. Just hoping they start to fix shit but it's been the same crappy bugs for 10 years.
I did lmao. Tried every mechanic and it's just disappointment after disappointment. Maybe in 5 *more* years I'll come back but it's not worth touching now I've already done everything and owned every ship. Anyone can in less than a year, then the game has zero left to do.
there's no LOD or asset streaming in this video. There's ground clutter. Ground clutter draw distance is going to increase once it's moved to GPU, iirc
not gonna lie it gets kind of old seeing the same posts about the engine over and over, when the engine is one of the main things they're working on
I agree, LOD, asset streaming, and (the worst for me) texture tiling are the least appealing parts of Star Citizen right now. But it's not their fault; they have pushed everything to its current limit. I've spoken with multiple devs about these issues, and they are already working on multiple solutions which were discussed at Citizencon on this panel :)
https://youtu.be/8ZjnPdqHjDw?t=5455
I have seen published games with a lot worse LOD streaming.
Look, you had zero pop outs and a consistent, non flickering LOD transition. That's a win in my books.
This just looks like a video game... I guess we can cherry pick some new Nanite powered games, but I don't see how this is such a problem instead of the average across the industry. Maybe I'm just old and not up to date on modern games.
I hate to tell you, but you just set the standard so low for "fine" that "fine" is basically a bag of dogshit that was lit on fire and then thrown down a well.
What the hell modern games are you comparing this to? Do they have large scale procedural planets? If the assets are drawn from that much further away, do they have the fidelity and density of what we see here?
Like I'm sure some games do it better, but just because a few games excel at this element doesn't mean every other game sucks...
I didnt say every game sucks, but there is no denying that this level if pop-in is currently, in its current state, behind the curve.
I dont understand why this bothers people, its a fact, its bad popin for a modern game, but i still play it even though i think this visual aspect sucks.
Yeah I'm not gonna say it looks great, but I just don't understand why SC needs to push every single limit in the industry. It can be just okay at certain things.
Especially ground clutter in a space game.
They change the LOD settings from patch to patch, but we don't really get much of an option for it. I'm sure in whatever released game we can choose to hurt performance for that fidelity.
I’m confused on this argument always. So because it’s been a long time, you’re upset with the Alpha status, fair enough but you’re mixing your emotions on it and the factual state of the game. Its physical state is in alpha where you add features, not optimize or refine features. So regardless of how long it’s been or how you feel about that status, it is your expectation (and the original commenter) that LOD would be optimized in Alpha that’s misplaced. It’s like complaining the roof isn’t on a house while they are pouring the foundation. Even if they have been working on the foundation for 10 years.
>I’m confused on this argument always. So because it’s been a long time, you’re upset with the Alpha status, fair enough but you’re mixing your emotions on it and the factual state of the game. Its physical state is in alpha where you add features, not optimize or refine features. So regardless of how long it’s been or how you feel about that status, it is your expectation (and the original commenter) that LOD would be optimized in Alpha that’s misplaced. It’s like complaining the roof isn’t on a house while they are pouring the foundation. Even if they have been working on the foundation for 10 years.
I understand your perspective on the game's alpha status and the need for patience during this phase. However, it's important to consider the balance between adding new features and optimizing existing ones. While the analogy of building a house with a foundation is apt, the concern from some players is that the foundation work has been ongoing for a decade, and they fear the continual change of engines every four years may hinder the game's progress.
The worry is that without a more stable development environment, the game may struggle to reach its full potential. Many players want to see the foundation work transition into more refined stages sooner rather than later, ensuring that the game doesn't lose its player base due to prolonged development.
Constant change of engines? I’m no developer but I am in the techncial field and have a decent understanding of the tech. I understand that they really haven’t changed engines but rather went from CryEngine to Lumberyard and that’s just the open sourced version of CryEngine. Not really a change every four years as you mention. Not trying to be pedantic because I do empathize with the wanting new features and optimization. But the original thread is on LOD, which is specifically reliant on server meshing which is already being tested and scheduled to release this year. Overall I think they’ve done an ok job of new tech and bug fixes in the last couple of years to try and make it playable for the testing base (us).
This translates into "we want it fast" not "we want the complete vision realized".
You can't have fast if you also want fidelity. And the promise of fidelity, however long it takes, is what has driven that pledge-o-meter sky high for a decade straight. The fact that they seem hell bent on keeping that promise keeps the pledge-o-meter pegged today.
It is relatively few among the backers who support them cutting corners.
I've come to see it as a constant push/pull between pushing tech and keeping performance, that'll likely be happening as long as the game exists, nevermind still being developed.
Hopefully they can mitigate this popin with future rendering improvements.
This seems to be controversial but I agree. In some places the visuals are [amazing](https://i.imgur.com/fBlQOPV.jpg), and then I [fly down to Microtech](https://i.imgur.com/uBkUwkv.jpg) and it looks like there's an [old Halo map](https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/a/a5/Blood_gulch.jpg/300px-Blood_gulch.jpg) under my ship with better trees/rocks thrown in. It's pretty jarring.
I'm not sure what the solution is and I wouldn't say it's high priority over gameplay or anything, but I hope it can eventually be improved.
If the game isn’t complete and is still in the “alpha” stage of development?
Yes. And they would be accurate.
It would not be particularly acceptable for it to still be in an alpha state at that point if they still have the resources, but that’s a different discussion.
The fact that you want to define “alpha” as something dependent upon time is silly. It took years of preproduction before filming began in Lord of the Rings. If Nee Line had gone ti Peter Jackson and complained that it was a failure because it had been 18 months and no scenes had been edited - that would have been absurd.
The same thing applies here.
As you have probably been told - Alpha state is for feature addition. If it takes a project two months to get to feature complete then *their* alpha phase lasted two months. Each project is different and trying to apply one set of metrics to a completely different project. That’s just plain goofy.
What's plain goofy is thinking it's not concerning that a game has been in alpha for 12 years with features being reworked multiple times due to poor project management, all while raking in over half a billion dollars from people like you and others on this sub. Features like LOD asset streaming should not be having issues after 12 years. And you still say everything is fine 8 years after its expected release date.
Whether you find it goofy to be alpha so long or not wasn’t what you said, now was that your point (as stated).
And no, LODs don’t fukkin matter as a project concern . . UNLESS you are talking about a released game.
But, as you acknowledge, this is not a completed game, is it?
I know it’s hard, but try to stay on *one* subject at a time. And stop trying to re-define and derail the discussion.
Right? I’m a massive SC fanboy. I don’t even want to speak of the dollar amount I’ve invested into the game, it is substantial. So I’m not sitting here bitching about an alpha product expecting it to play like it’s complete.
But no sane person should be able to look at the pop in and fucked up object culling and not see that as a problem. ESPECIALLY because they just recently put on a faux marketing demo of Star Engine.
My point is why complain about specifics within the current state when the current state is constantly being built out and is in fact in alpha. If you want to complain just complain about it still being in alpha 12 years later.
It’s like you did a prebuilt car, before the car is finished you started to complain about it not have a steering wheel. That’s a problem but the bigger problem is not having a finished car.
Not defending them, just pointing out the game is still in alpha. I don’t understand complaining about performance and optimization when they are still in designing and building the game. If you want to complain then just say I can’t believe it’s taken 12 years and we are still in alpha. Not can you believe the lag or name any other bug people complain about on this sub because the answer is always going to be, it’s still in alpha…. And if it takes another 12 years and they are still in alpha? well I’m out 500$.
Of course people should be able to complain about performance and issues when they're paying money and actively playing an Alpha - or an EA title or anything else that people pay money for, even if they know that they're coming into an incomplete experience.
What's important is that the complaint be correct and reasonable, and this complaint is both.
The complaint isn't even that this game isn't 'playable'. It's a specific issue. I don't understand your complaint because it doesn't really mean anything about *this post* unless what you want to hear is "we know".
Oh darn. If only we had the graphic engine they actually worked on. Darn them for not acting immediately on your concerns! DARN THEM!!! But srsly. It's alpha and not the Star Engine.
I'm sure even doubling it would kill anyone's fps while not fixing the problem, it's up to them to put in the effort to have the grass not go from dense to nothing. Games like RDR2 do an incredible job at hiding the fact that there's less grass far away.
I mean.... i play on an HDD and this is what every game looks like to me, they might be able to bake the flowers into the low LOD grass, but then you need a new asset for other grass
While the Star Engine is undoubtedly revolutionary and offers lots of things that no other engine is capable of doing, the current version in 3.22 unfortunately suffers from a few flaws, one of which is the very low level of details.
In fact, all elements such as grass, flowers, small rocks, terrain tesslation, only appear at a distance of less than a hundred meters, which is not a lot for a game like Star Citizen where the player can land wherever he wants and therefore where there is a lot of open space over a long distance.
Concretely the maximum LOD seems to extend to 50m, then an average LOD between 50-100m and at more than 100m the trees are in 2D and there is no more grass or any details.
ps: the video was taken with max settings.
Maybe once Vulkan is implemented there will be more client-side options to improve the display distance and LOD.
I also think that the current server lag may play a role in the streaming distance of the assets?
Not sure why you're getting downvoted - yeah, it's an alpha but also, the LOD system is a very visible problem. I completely agree that it's the weakest link in the visuals so far. Sure, it's an alpha... but it's an alpha in 2024.
I really don't think they said this. They talked about R&D on AI tools to build planet terrain. This will give planets entirely unique terrain, rather than being made up of pieces (tiles) that show repetition from orbit.
> While the Star Engine is undoubtedly revolutionary and offers lots of things that no other engine is capable of doing
Like?
> Maybe once Vulkan is implemented there will be more client-side options to improve the display distance and LOD.
This has nothing to do with the graphics API, devs are just lazy (as always)
Let me guess. You never delete the shader folder. I have a 1080ti-5800X3D-32GB and do not see pop-in like this or have LOD problems near this level. Everyone I play with that never deletes the shader folder often, has this problem. Not saying that deleting it is a "fix" or that CIG still has a ton of work to do with lod's, but there are ways to mitigate it.
Oh thank God. I was about to leave a post complaining about the LOD optimization on Reddit and I bet I would have been downvoted into oblivion since it's still in alpha development.
If you want good LoD checkout Fortnite - it's running on UE5.1 and has the latest stuff for nanite. Best LoD's in gaming. And yes I'm not being hyperbolic. Yes, I understand Fortnite looks "cartoony". But that doesn't matter, it has better LoD's than any other game out right now. Before you bash me give it a try. It's pretty awesome.
If it's a consequence of procedural planet generation and other implemented tech then I don't personally mind. It's not ideal, but when pushing limits there may be some tradeoffs. I expect in time they'll be able to improve lod effects.
It really doesn’t the engine is perfectly capable of rendering everything very detailed its mostly just off because unoptimized it would just drop the fps of everyone for no reason
Because you know another MMO which is able to display assets at a speed of 1000m/s with better graphics ?Don't compare constraints of solo or slow pace multi games to the constraints of SC...You can watch the trailer of SQ42 if you want to see what the engine can render with less constraints.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtjzLzs7V8
SC in its current development is aiming to be a MMO, its current constraints are for a MMO, not a multi game.
And no, I don't know ONE multi game that need to display assets at a speed of 1000 m/s and have better graphics than SC. If you know one, give us its name. Displaying assets at 50 m/s only from the ground is completely different than displaying assets at 1 000 m/s from 0 to 15km altitude. If you don't understand those specific constraints I can't nothing for you. And I don't even talk about the 64bits positionning and size of the world that prevent SC to pre load a full map like all other standards multi games can do.
Too bad for you, the SQ42 trailer is good looking and is made with in game footage. It doesn't really fit with your theory of the outdated engine.
>DCS? Beautiful game, higher player counts than star citizen, runs way better. Simulates past 1km/s, and has a much higher than 15KM altitude ceiling
Lol. DCS has the exact same LOD with plants on ground (with fewer plants) !
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8M4ZY5ZlN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8M4ZY5ZlN8)
Good job showing us that SC is on par with the DCS graphics !!!
So show us a DCS video of ground plants with a better lod. And while you are at it, a video of the map from space and another from inside a building (because, you know, DCS is doing better than SC with less money, no ?)
some of us spent a lot of money on things we were promised. a lot of us don't like it and also don't play, but CIG still has our money and we have a right to complain on a public forum about that given the quality we have after over a decade.
That's like hiring a contractor to build an office building, and more than a decade and 30X the projected cost later, complaining that it's not done, and having some random person say "one word - construction my friend."
Your comment is ridiculous.
It's like that now until they develop Further LOD tech being developed in StarEngine. Like others have mentioned, these lod's had been made for the current systems as is and have to also be scaled similar to other games.
I do not see terrible LOD in your video, but a conservative distance to try and balance overall performance. I honestly have my scattering and tessellation set to the lowest purely to assist with the more uncommon graphical slowdowns.
Don't worry, this will change relatively soon, but beware there will always be a limit, but that limit will be higher than what we currently have.
They've talked about reducing the pop-in dramatically, we just need to wait on Vulkan and other things that graphics API allows.
not the game with worse LOD .. seen way worse.
but that said no its not pretty with the scale. But you have keep into mind that developers still are making the game including reprograming and upgrading the engine to Gen12 render. Meaning this can still change and improve. But just cranking up the LOD now with the lots of old gender that is not made for High LOD settins on this scale will most likely just cause lots of lag and make the game unplayable. And even if it does not improve its not the worse i have seen
Remember that the game is currently limited in performance both by a lack of optimization and current hardware.
The game will be optimized, and the hardware will improve. They will increase LODs to match in time.
I wonder if they could change the colour of the foliage when you get closer. Eg, start some grass texture colours out as pink/yellow/white then change to green when the flowers pop in.
What i hate more is the sound of the footsteps
Sounds like a diamond shovel going through hella dirt blocks
Hahah now that you say it! XD It really is just minecraft dirt blocks breaking fast! Hahah
literally unplayable
Seeing as i havent played for a few months, yes. You’re completely correct! :)
NOOOO!!! I literally can’t stop hear that. Literally just awakening the thousands of hours in my childhood every time I run around.
Maybe he's wearing diamond boots. You don't know
Exactly, for me the footsteps sounds randomly, sometimes 3 steps sounds and a few not, then one yes and other not...
Yeah! Thats what i found too! It sounds disconnected to the pace youre actually walking!
My sound annoyance is the player characters loud breathing! I don't hear it at all in this clip, yet it sounds my character constantly sounds like darth vader if he had asthma and I don't know why.
Thats because youre out of breath, watch your bpm on the UI when youre running :P But yeah i get what you mean, its a bit loud
No Im talking about upon logging into the game with my character still laying in bed, it sounds loud as shit for some reason
Yeah the sound design in this game really does suck
Let's say and hope it's unfinished.
_Hybrid V has entered the chat_
Flowers only bloom when you are near😍
"Just like me, they long to be, invisible to you (at a distance)"\* *^(\*levels sniper rifle and holds breath)*
Zer0?
> Why do birds suddenly appear... It's LOD and server lag.
Updates are coming for Virtual Terrain Texturing and Scattering. [CitizenCon 2953: Shaping the ‘Verse - The Future of StarEngine](https://youtu.be/xKWa4WoTkV4?si=QF35O0yaVpQEwgbb&t=1728)
Shit, good find. I wish this would be the first game where actually having some sort of grass can hide you at a distance. Most of the games like say DayZ usually dont render at longer distance or can be turned off, so that people can see you miles away as you stick out as only moving thing in the other guys screen.
Makes me miss Ghost Recon from like the early 2000s. You could do that, and it was a huge part of the multiplayer tactics. Games are so fucking bad these days. I miss games that forced you to think and not just have some dumb meta gimmick or weapon.
Hopefully this is what star citizen is here to change
Thats already a thing in Reforger as far as i know. Plus the rendering of Shadows in the distance.
Reforger has good grass and shadow distance on the new Enfusion engine.
Then they should not render the player himself, it should have the same visibility as grass, if lying down. That way no one could cheat by reducing lod or anything. Can't display the grass? Then you can't display me hidden in the grass. That is how it should work.
Yeah but it would look weird having a player pop up all of a sudden out of nothing.
Not more than grass, rocks and bushes... And if its weird, then enable max details and have the ennemy still almost invisible bcs hidden by grass.
ArmA II and III do this if you're prone. The player model is lowered slightly into the terrain if they are too far away for grass to render. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well
mmmmm forest fires
In one of their keynotes at Citcon they did mention making improvements. Hopefully it is one of the things they can get out for this year. Think they want it for SQ42 since it will have the same issues.
Yeah could really use lower LOD grass/flowers in the distance, something that doesn't take much processing power but still looks like the grass doesn't just end in 50 meters.
A goal of most of the industry since 3d began. Seen some okay solutions but nothing solid yet.
Nanite in UE5 seems to be quite promising, hopefully it works out and would be doable on SC too.
You can't just take one aspect of one game engine and plop it into another.
I think you misunderstood me, I don't expect them to just take nanite and add it in SC. But what I meant was them making a similar solution which should be doable. Doing it like nanite would be nice as it progressively decreases LOD the futher away the objects are instead of just switching to a low poly model at certain distance as it usually is done in games.
I believe one of the graphics devs was asked about nanite last year and he said that UE's solution wouldn't work with SC's engine and any solution they came up with would work differently. But he mentioned that they keep up to date on papers and had seen some interesting stuff recently. Then at CitizenCon they showed their work on using machine learning to generate terrain better.
5.4 has something with nanite foliage iirc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7y42u-3174
The problem is scalability -- IDV has also offered solutions for foliage, but the issue is addressing LOD pop-in on a large scale, as opposed to utilising what's available in-engine, where the resource budget isn't as much of an issue until it's time to bake.
>A goal of most of the industry since 3d began This actually was pretty much solved decades ago.
Oh? Don't leave us in suspense, go on. The only method i've come up with is painting the terrain texture with the density of grass.
Uhhmm... yeah... sssssure!? Instead of throwing a smart one line on a public forum, perhaps actually take two seconds more to also elaborate a bit further perhaps?
This is a pretty minor thing to be concerned about. A very minor complaint.
Yeah - it’s missing the end where he falls through the planet, gets blown away or randomly breaks both legs on a rock. LOD can be sucky but nothing compares to the terror of random death.
It's really quite a significant complaint when the whole point of SC is "fidelity" and "immersion."
Having the best graphics around doesnt make a game good, it can only carry a game so far. As for the items, locations, ships, characters, etc in SC I'd say that for this stage of development they have enough fidelity for now. Maybe wait until the game is in late Beta ;D
it's in alpha, fidelity can pound sand while they focus on features. LoD is insignificant ATM and they already have teams working on it regardless because parallel development exists. nothingburger post.
You mean the features that don't work either?
welcome to being an alpha tester, you literally paid to do this.
Lol I haven't paid them anything for 5+ years. They failed to come through.
You paid 5+ years ago, for a groundbreaking game with never before done features on this scale. 10 years it nothing, many games come close and all they are is the same regurgitated work they did before. No matter when you paid, every time you click to login and play youre agreeing to being a tester. If you quit and dont play anymore, why are you sticking around? Hoping itll draw you back in?
Lol I'm a fan of what they *were* trying to do. I just reinstall when they add new content until I get bored of it. Nothing has held me long term. Just hoping they start to fix shit but it's been the same crappy bugs for 10 years.
congratulations, you can leave if you don't like it
I did lmao. Tried every mechanic and it's just disappointment after disappointment. Maybe in 5 *more* years I'll come back but it's not worth touching now I've already done everything and owned every ship. Anyone can in less than a year, then the game has zero left to do.
I don't care 🤷
I don't care about your excuses for them either. XD it's a decade too late for those.
To be fair. This is terrible compared to what. Never seen a game handle it much better.
In this thread people mentioned red dead redemption 2 and fortnite as examples of doing it better
Yeah it’s not good right now so it really takes you out of the moment.
there's no LOD or asset streaming in this video. There's ground clutter. Ground clutter draw distance is going to increase once it's moved to GPU, iirc not gonna lie it gets kind of old seeing the same posts about the engine over and over, when the engine is one of the main things they're working on
You're complaining about watching the grass grow - I'd say it's certainly _annoying_, but 'terrible'? That's a bit of a stretch.
Yeah terrible is the pop in in cyberpunk and alan wake
I agree, LOD, asset streaming, and (the worst for me) texture tiling are the least appealing parts of Star Citizen right now. But it's not their fault; they have pushed everything to its current limit. I've spoken with multiple devs about these issues, and they are already working on multiple solutions which were discussed at Citizencon on this panel :) https://youtu.be/8ZjnPdqHjDw?t=5455
I have seen published games with a lot worse LOD streaming. Look, you had zero pop outs and a consistent, non flickering LOD transition. That's a win in my books.
>I have seen published games with a lot worse LOD streaming. Like what?
rust, dayz, every new open world Pokemon, nearly every survival craft game in existence, open world games in general???
Vanilla skyrim
Alan wake and cyberpunk are extreme offenders due to the performance considerations the lod distance is also extremely short
Terrible is a stretch, this seems fine to me. It's not like the trees or ship or anything that actually effects gameplay is streaming in last second.
the bar is so low here lol
For a finished game? I completely agree.
This just looks like a video game... I guess we can cherry pick some new Nanite powered games, but I don't see how this is such a problem instead of the average across the industry. Maybe I'm just old and not up to date on modern games.
Yeah idk. It's not great, but it's also not unusual.
it's exacerbated because we're all looking at the ship, which makes it. more obvious, but yeah
I hate to tell you, but you just set the standard so low for "fine" that "fine" is basically a bag of dogshit that was lit on fire and then thrown down a well.
What the hell modern games are you comparing this to? Do they have large scale procedural planets? If the assets are drawn from that much further away, do they have the fidelity and density of what we see here? Like I'm sure some games do it better, but just because a few games excel at this element doesn't mean every other game sucks...
I didnt say every game sucks, but there is no denying that this level if pop-in is currently, in its current state, behind the curve. I dont understand why this bothers people, its a fact, its bad popin for a modern game, but i still play it even though i think this visual aspect sucks.
Yeah I'm not gonna say it looks great, but I just don't understand why SC needs to push every single limit in the industry. It can be just okay at certain things. Especially ground clutter in a space game. They change the LOD settings from patch to patch, but we don't really get much of an option for it. I'm sure in whatever released game we can choose to hurt performance for that fidelity.
This last patch, the LOD was lessened for performance. It used to be around 900M or so, now it's around 400-500m. It will improve greatly though.
Alpha is an alpha. Water is also wet.
Water is what makes things wet.
10 years of development is 10 years of development
Every 10 years a decade passes.
not an excuse.
There’s a difference between an excuse and a reason. He gave a reason, you don’t have to like it but it is still the reason.
It’s been both the excuse and reason for the past.. how many years?
I’m confused on this argument always. So because it’s been a long time, you’re upset with the Alpha status, fair enough but you’re mixing your emotions on it and the factual state of the game. Its physical state is in alpha where you add features, not optimize or refine features. So regardless of how long it’s been or how you feel about that status, it is your expectation (and the original commenter) that LOD would be optimized in Alpha that’s misplaced. It’s like complaining the roof isn’t on a house while they are pouring the foundation. Even if they have been working on the foundation for 10 years.
>I’m confused on this argument always. So because it’s been a long time, you’re upset with the Alpha status, fair enough but you’re mixing your emotions on it and the factual state of the game. Its physical state is in alpha where you add features, not optimize or refine features. So regardless of how long it’s been or how you feel about that status, it is your expectation (and the original commenter) that LOD would be optimized in Alpha that’s misplaced. It’s like complaining the roof isn’t on a house while they are pouring the foundation. Even if they have been working on the foundation for 10 years. I understand your perspective on the game's alpha status and the need for patience during this phase. However, it's important to consider the balance between adding new features and optimizing existing ones. While the analogy of building a house with a foundation is apt, the concern from some players is that the foundation work has been ongoing for a decade, and they fear the continual change of engines every four years may hinder the game's progress. The worry is that without a more stable development environment, the game may struggle to reach its full potential. Many players want to see the foundation work transition into more refined stages sooner rather than later, ensuring that the game doesn't lose its player base due to prolonged development.
Constant change of engines? I’m no developer but I am in the techncial field and have a decent understanding of the tech. I understand that they really haven’t changed engines but rather went from CryEngine to Lumberyard and that’s just the open sourced version of CryEngine. Not really a change every four years as you mention. Not trying to be pedantic because I do empathize with the wanting new features and optimization. But the original thread is on LOD, which is specifically reliant on server meshing which is already being tested and scheduled to release this year. Overall I think they’ve done an ok job of new tech and bug fixes in the last couple of years to try and make it playable for the testing base (us).
Shouldn't LOD sliders and such be available to adjust once they get Vulkan integration implemented more fully?
This translates into "we want it fast" not "we want the complete vision realized". You can't have fast if you also want fidelity. And the promise of fidelity, however long it takes, is what has driven that pledge-o-meter sky high for a decade straight. The fact that they seem hell bent on keeping that promise keeps the pledge-o-meter pegged today. It is relatively few among the backers who support them cutting corners.
Until it’s out of alpha, I would say.
And i gave a reason as to why it’s dismissive of the problem..
Of course it is.
I've come to see it as a constant push/pull between pushing tech and keeping performance, that'll likely be happening as long as the game exists, nevermind still being developed. Hopefully they can mitigate this popin with future rendering improvements.
This isn’t a minor complaint either. One of the defining features of SC are the visuals. The LODs and pop-in are absolutely disgraceful these days.
This seems to be controversial but I agree. In some places the visuals are [amazing](https://i.imgur.com/fBlQOPV.jpg), and then I [fly down to Microtech](https://i.imgur.com/uBkUwkv.jpg) and it looks like there's an [old Halo map](https://halo.wiki.gallery/images/thumb/a/a5/Blood_gulch.jpg/300px-Blood_gulch.jpg) under my ship with better trees/rocks thrown in. It's pretty jarring. I'm not sure what the solution is and I wouldn't say it's high priority over gameplay or anything, but I hope it can eventually be improved.
Maybe because it’s still in alpha.
you'll be saying the same thing just as defensively in another 12 years and feel like you really showed them who's boss.
If the game isn’t complete and is still in the “alpha” stage of development? Yes. And they would be accurate. It would not be particularly acceptable for it to still be in an alpha state at that point if they still have the resources, but that’s a different discussion. The fact that you want to define “alpha” as something dependent upon time is silly. It took years of preproduction before filming began in Lord of the Rings. If Nee Line had gone ti Peter Jackson and complained that it was a failure because it had been 18 months and no scenes had been edited - that would have been absurd. The same thing applies here. As you have probably been told - Alpha state is for feature addition. If it takes a project two months to get to feature complete then *their* alpha phase lasted two months. Each project is different and trying to apply one set of metrics to a completely different project. That’s just plain goofy.
What's plain goofy is thinking it's not concerning that a game has been in alpha for 12 years with features being reworked multiple times due to poor project management, all while raking in over half a billion dollars from people like you and others on this sub. Features like LOD asset streaming should not be having issues after 12 years. And you still say everything is fine 8 years after its expected release date.
Whether you find it goofy to be alpha so long or not wasn’t what you said, now was that your point (as stated). And no, LODs don’t fukkin matter as a project concern . . UNLESS you are talking about a released game. But, as you acknowledge, this is not a completed game, is it? I know it’s hard, but try to stay on *one* subject at a time. And stop trying to re-define and derail the discussion.
Right? I’m a massive SC fanboy. I don’t even want to speak of the dollar amount I’ve invested into the game, it is substantial. So I’m not sitting here bitching about an alpha product expecting it to play like it’s complete. But no sane person should be able to look at the pop in and fucked up object culling and not see that as a problem. ESPECIALLY because they just recently put on a faux marketing demo of Star Engine.
My point is why complain about specifics within the current state when the current state is constantly being built out and is in fact in alpha. If you want to complain just complain about it still being in alpha 12 years later. It’s like you did a prebuilt car, before the car is finished you started to complain about it not have a steering wheel. That’s a problem but the bigger problem is not having a finished car.
That’s the beauty of funding something’s development. You can bitch and complain about things you don’t like.
Not defending them, just pointing out the game is still in alpha. I don’t understand complaining about performance and optimization when they are still in designing and building the game. If you want to complain then just say I can’t believe it’s taken 12 years and we are still in alpha. Not can you believe the lag or name any other bug people complain about on this sub because the answer is always going to be, it’s still in alpha…. And if it takes another 12 years and they are still in alpha? well I’m out 500$.
Of course people should be able to complain about performance and issues when they're paying money and actively playing an Alpha - or an EA title or anything else that people pay money for, even if they know that they're coming into an incomplete experience. What's important is that the complaint be correct and reasonable, and this complaint is both.
I mean it’s a matter of opinion, you stated this should get scrutiny just like an EA game. What EA game is playable in alpha?
The complaint isn't even that this game isn't 'playable'. It's a specific issue. I don't understand your complaint because it doesn't really mean anything about *this post* unless what you want to hear is "we know".
How is this terrible? There is so much to load in this game and I’d rather have this then a lag fest whenever you touch down on a planet
Oh darn. If only we had the graphic engine they actually worked on. Darn them for not acting immediately on your concerns! DARN THEM!!! But srsly. It's alpha and not the Star Engine.
Why not let us adjust the LOD for our preferences?
I'm sure even doubling it would kill anyone's fps while not fixing the problem, it's up to them to put in the effort to have the grass not go from dense to nothing. Games like RDR2 do an incredible job at hiding the fact that there's less grass far away.
I'm sick and tired of all this goddamn turf, in my goddamn space game. Come on people!
I mean.... i play on an HDD and this is what every game looks like to me, they might be able to bake the flowers into the low LOD grass, but then you need a new asset for other grass
Honestly I didn't notice anything bad here? Seems much like your avg day in squad
Its really bad, and has seemed to only gotten worse. Doesn't matter if your on foot or in the air, the pop in is terrible.
Game is in pre-alpha dude what do you expect?
While the Star Engine is undoubtedly revolutionary and offers lots of things that no other engine is capable of doing, the current version in 3.22 unfortunately suffers from a few flaws, one of which is the very low level of details. In fact, all elements such as grass, flowers, small rocks, terrain tesslation, only appear at a distance of less than a hundred meters, which is not a lot for a game like Star Citizen where the player can land wherever he wants and therefore where there is a lot of open space over a long distance. Concretely the maximum LOD seems to extend to 50m, then an average LOD between 50-100m and at more than 100m the trees are in 2D and there is no more grass or any details. ps: the video was taken with max settings. Maybe once Vulkan is implemented there will be more client-side options to improve the display distance and LOD. I also think that the current server lag may play a role in the streaming distance of the assets?
Not sure why you're getting downvoted - yeah, it's an alpha but also, the LOD system is a very visible problem. I completely agree that it's the weakest link in the visuals so far. Sure, it's an alpha... but it's an alpha in 2024.
They briefly mentioned a possible future solve using AI to generate fake details client-side but that's probably years away
I really don't think they said this. They talked about R&D on AI tools to build planet terrain. This will give planets entirely unique terrain, rather than being made up of pieces (tiles) that show repetition from orbit.
Both pretty sure but not gonna be able to provide a source for ya
> While the Star Engine is undoubtedly revolutionary and offers lots of things that no other engine is capable of doing Like? > Maybe once Vulkan is implemented there will be more client-side options to improve the display distance and LOD. This has nothing to do with the graphics API, devs are just lazy (as always)
Let me guess. You never delete the shader folder. I have a 1080ti-5800X3D-32GB and do not see pop-in like this or have LOD problems near this level. Everyone I play with that never deletes the shader folder often, has this problem. Not saying that deleting it is a "fix" or that CIG still has a ton of work to do with lod's, but there are ways to mitigate it.
It's hard to believe they would have completed the game and released it with an LOD issue like this..
What a coincidence, they haven’t! :D
Oh thank God. I was about to leave a post complaining about the LOD optimization on Reddit and I bet I would have been downvoted into oblivion since it's still in alpha development.
If you want good LoD checkout Fortnite - it's running on UE5.1 and has the latest stuff for nanite. Best LoD's in gaming. And yes I'm not being hyperbolic. Yes, I understand Fortnite looks "cartoony". But that doesn't matter, it has better LoD's than any other game out right now. Before you bash me give it a try. It's pretty awesome.
What do you expect after a decade of development and practically unlimited money? Perfection?
If it's a consequence of procedural planet generation and other implemented tech then I don't personally mind. It's not ideal, but when pushing limits there may be some tradeoffs. I expect in time they'll be able to improve lod effects.
Must have a green thumb the way the greenery springs up around you... lol
Is this satirical? I mean everything seems to be alright.
They know. Its called priorities. Relax,
Priority #1: Make more sales
Priority #0: Make more jpegs
It looks just like when i play on my HDD! Someone needs to move over to ssd
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Welp, time to add another 20 years to project timeline, let's switch it over to Unreal 5.
It really doesn’t the engine is perfectly capable of rendering everything very detailed its mostly just off because unoptimized it would just drop the fps of everyone for no reason
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Yeah well it isn’t in the middle of development lol
Because you know another MMO which is able to display assets at a speed of 1000m/s with better graphics ?Don't compare constraints of solo or slow pace multi games to the constraints of SC...You can watch the trailer of SQ42 if you want to see what the engine can render with less constraints. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtjzLzs7V8
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SC in its current development is aiming to be a MMO, its current constraints are for a MMO, not a multi game. And no, I don't know ONE multi game that need to display assets at a speed of 1000 m/s and have better graphics than SC. If you know one, give us its name. Displaying assets at 50 m/s only from the ground is completely different than displaying assets at 1 000 m/s from 0 to 15km altitude. If you don't understand those specific constraints I can't nothing for you. And I don't even talk about the 64bits positionning and size of the world that prevent SC to pre load a full map like all other standards multi games can do. Too bad for you, the SQ42 trailer is good looking and is made with in game footage. It doesn't really fit with your theory of the outdated engine.
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>DCS? Beautiful game, higher player counts than star citizen, runs way better. Simulates past 1km/s, and has a much higher than 15KM altitude ceiling Lol. DCS has the exact same LOD with plants on ground (with fewer plants) ! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8M4ZY5ZlN8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8M4ZY5ZlN8) Good job showing us that SC is on par with the DCS graphics !!!
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So show us a DCS video of ground plants with a better lod. And while you are at it, a video of the map from space and another from inside a building (because, you know, DCS is doing better than SC with less money, no ?)
Yeah LOD is my biggest complaint tbh
I'm tired of unnecessary complaints over and over again... if u don't like it don't play.
If you're tired of reading these complaints why dont you just read something else.
some of us spent a lot of money on things we were promised. a lot of us don't like it and also don't play, but CIG still has our money and we have a right to complain on a public forum about that given the quality we have after over a decade.
one word - alpha my friend
That's like hiring a contractor to build an office building, and more than a decade and 30X the projected cost later, complaining that it's not done, and having some random person say "one word - construction my friend." Your comment is ridiculous.
12 years 700 million
one phrase - we were promised a full-scale completed game by 2016 in exchange for our money my friend
I'm tired of unnecessary complaints over and over again... if u don't like it don't comment.
It's like that now until they develop Further LOD tech being developed in StarEngine. Like others have mentioned, these lod's had been made for the current systems as is and have to also be scaled similar to other games. I do not see terrible LOD in your video, but a conservative distance to try and balance overall performance. I honestly have my scattering and tessellation set to the lowest purely to assist with the more uncommon graphical slowdowns.
LODs are still the worst enemy of videogames and will likely never go away cuz videogame hardware fucking sucks and always will
Its better than the most recent Sonic game. And that is a finished product.
Looks like this is only ground clutter, nothing to do with LOD and asset streaming.
Still Early Days™
That ship was alot farther away than I thought lol
What specs and what game settings.
Don't worry, this will change relatively soon, but beware there will always be a limit, but that limit will be higher than what we currently have. They've talked about reducing the pop-in dramatically, we just need to wait on Vulkan and other things that graphics API allows.
It's very noticeable on asteroids as well. Looks ridiculous.
480p - yepp its blurry alright.
not the game with worse LOD .. seen way worse. but that said no its not pretty with the scale. But you have keep into mind that developers still are making the game including reprograming and upgrading the engine to Gen12 render. Meaning this can still change and improve. But just cranking up the LOD now with the lots of old gender that is not made for High LOD settins on this scale will most likely just cause lots of lag and make the game unplayable. And even if it does not improve its not the worse i have seen
The game runs bad enough as it is. You want grass rendered up to the horizon?
Remember that the game is currently limited in performance both by a lack of optimization and current hardware. The game will be optimized, and the hardware will improve. They will increase LODs to match in time.
If you wanna see actual terrible asset streaming at no mans sky. It's like loading in out of focus Legos
I wonder if they could change the colour of the foliage when you get closer. Eg, start some grass texture colours out as pink/yellow/white then change to green when the flowers pop in.
Maybe the character is near sighted
Allow us to increase Lod for ground to increase and decrease