Loading/Transition-FX

[phrozen1]

I assume most people got used to it but i wonder if we could get some kind of transition-effect for teleporting and flying through gates.
Even on the best machines you often see planets and other things like fog or npc's popping in AFTER you teleported or jumped through a gate.
I'd rather wait a few seconds when teleporting or jumping and not see this popping of assets.

I think little things like this could contribute to much better immersion. Or am i the only one?

(Also can doors be closed/opened before the npc's disappears/appears please ? )

[CBJ]

The seamless flow between locations is something we're very keen to maintain. We would much rather put time into improving the asset loading prediction, to try and reduce the popping in, than break the seamlessness of the transitions. We have someone looking into that.

[ConorC]

I love the seamless transition idea. It would be great you guys managed to implement that asset loading prediction system. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

That said there is something nostalgic about watching my ship fly down the hyperspace tunnel back in X2.

[phrozen1]

The seamless flow between locations is something we're very keen to maintain. We would much rather put time into improving the asset loading prediction, to try and reduce the popping in, than break the seamlessness of the transitions. We have someone looking into that.

Ok i can understand that. Good to hear that you guys are working on it
Some kind of shader/particle-fx for teleporting and jumping would still be pretty nice though

[CBJ]

It would be great you guys managed to implement that asset loading prediction system.

Just to be clear, we do already have such a system. It's just that when you approach a new sector and it predicts the assets it's going to need, there can be an awful lot to load and it can't always complete in time before you go through the gate. We're just trying to improve that situation, and also make sure that fewer of the assets need to be loaded at that point in the first place.

[Buzz2005]

stop flying trough gates at 10km/s, problem solved

if anyone noticed the highway slows you down to about 3k before gates

[dtpsprt]

[Just to be clear, we do already have such a system. It's just that when you approach a new sector and it predicts the assets it's going to need, there can be an awful lot to load and it can't always complete in time before you go through the gate. We're just trying to improve that situation, and also make sure that fewer of the assets need to be loaded at that point in the first place.

On that note... the ship does not just "happen" to get into a new sector... It is pointed to the gate, there is (most of the time) a guideline through to the next system, there is an order issued to the ship... there are more than 20 sec (in average) before the transition... Better to drop some fps for 5 sec than trying to redraw upon entering IMHO...

Of course this happens except for the times that it has to make a sharp turn right after exit, so the NPC pilot just goes through the gate again and again ad infinitum trying to turn... maybe a page from former X games (the autopilot would keep going some distance at an angle from the gate) is in order...

EDIT: IMHO (again) redrawing should start with the biggest assets first as they are more noticeable, instead of the closest and so on... Something as big as a planet or sun should be there first thing, while the asteroids can "appear" later from the fog even though they are nearer to the ship...

[CBJ]

On that note... the ship does not just "happen" to get into a new sector... It is pointed to the gate, there is (most of the time) a guideline through to the next system, there is an order issued to the ship... there are more than 20 sec (in average) before the transition... Better to drop some fps for 5 sec than trying to redraw upon entering IMHO...

As I just said, we already do that. And there is little or no loss of fps, because asset loading happens on another thread.

[ConorC]

I just tested this tonight, I approached a gate, slowed down just before going through it, in the process delayed entry into the gate by maybe 5 seconds, and when I went through, the transition was seamless. I always go through the gates at high speed so i never noticed this before. The perfect transition looks great. Well done Egosoft!

[ConorC]

Oh, and FYI, my pc is 5 or 6 years old

[Imperial Good]

EDIT: IMHO (again) redrawing should start with the biggest assets first as they are more noticeable, instead of the closest and so on... Something as big as a planet or sun should be there first thing, while the asteroids can "appear" later from the fog even though they are nearer to the ship...

Drawing is not the issue. That happens every frame and you can pop stuff in and out between frames trivially by omitting submitting it to the work queue for that frame. The issue is getting the assets from storage into a state that they can be drawn in a timely and efficient manner.

Advances in I/O promise to greatly improve this area of games. Between CPUs having full access to GPU memory space at all times and GPUs being able to directly retrieve assets from NVMe storage it should in theory be possible to load a vast number of assets in-between frames without impacting either CPU or GPU performance significantly. However such technology is still very much in the future, especially for Linux which it still seems to be very much in the discussion phase. Even then it will require modern hardware to take advantage of these features.

[dtpsprt]

As I just said, we already do that. And there is little or no loss of fps, because asset loading happens on another thread.

I read that... what I am suggesting is that this process can start earlier than now... at best it will be "dumped" in the very rare occasion that the player changes his mind in the last moment. I suppose that the triggering point is time oriented (x seconds before entering), unless it is space oriented (x km before the gate). Space oriented would be interesting since this way you are prepared for "every" eventuality and since, as you said, this process is done in another core it won't cost much in performance if at all....

[CBJ]

I read that... what I am suggesting is that this process can start earlier than now...

And as I already said, it already does what you are suggesting. I don't know how to make it any clearer. The game does not wait until you are about to go through the gate before starting to prepare assets for what's on the other side. It does so well in advance, as you approach.

[dtpsprt]

And as I already said, it already does what you are suggesting. I don't know how to make it any clearer. The game does not wait until you are about to go through the gate before starting to prepare assets for what's on the other side. It does so well in advance, as you approach.

You don't have to... I said earlier than it does now...

[joshish]

You don't have to... I said earlier than it does now...

Don't be rude, as people above have said, it's more of a limit on current technology than anything else. The PS5 I/O demo shows us what the future could be for faster asset loading.