Support NeoGAF

[Pomerlaw]

credits viagero

credits CMDR Cheese Wedge

I will play this game for the next 10 years.

 

[Synth]

Can't wait for this to come to PS4.
Fingers crossed for PS VR compatibility too.

Based on the minimum specs that just got released (i7, 16gb RAM, GTX 980), and how the game performs in general on Xbox One, I'd say a PSVR implementation isn't very likely at all.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Here's another video of that moon that orbits its planet in minutes:

http://www.twitch.tv/bwana/v/28036799

On of the things that amazes me is that the galaxy is still doing it's thing, orbits, rotations. From space it was cool to see, from a planet surface, it's mind boggling.

 

[Mik2121]

They released a statement about that (look at posts earlier in the thread). Beta stuff for Elite has always been janky so don't be ashamed if you need to turn down the quality settings a bit for now.

Fair enough. Wasn't sure if it was just the limit of my 680 or maybe driver-related, or just bad performance for now.

You should have the option to remap those functions and invert those axis for the SRV without affecting your ship's handling.

Frankly, Elite's Joystick default configurations - even for those devises it recognizes by name (e.g. the X52) - is poor. You have to remap things to get the best setup for you.

Yeah, I have all the normal controls almost fully customized. For the vehicle, I wanted to know how other people do it to have some references.

Rudder twist to steer left and right, joystick left and right for rolling, joystick up and down for pitch, throttle set to forward only with a button (hold) for reverse, working out just fine so far.

Thanks. Will try that. The rudder twist is the only thing that worries me because at least for the ship it's always so slow, haha. But maybe if in the vehicle it's faster...

Thanks!

 

[Burny]

Thanks. Will try that. The rudder twist is the only thing that worries me because at least for the ship it's always so slow, haha. But maybe if in the vehicle it's faster...

Thanks!

The extremely slow yaw in Elite is a design thing of the ships and the SRV isn't affected. It's rather obvious that they want players to have to use roll actively, considering how much faster your ship rolls than yaws. This might be somewhat unrealistic in a atmosphere-less 0g environment, but it makes the ship's steering a bit more involved than simply pointing the nose towards the target, mouse-style.

One thing I noticed when trying out Horizons with the Mouse+Keyboard: The SRV's roll and pitch can't be bound to the mous axis. It's annoying, because I don't want roll and pitch on the selft/right and (de)accelerate keys, which was apparently the default before. That way, whenever you lose ground contact with one side a bit and try to counter with the wheels steering, the thruster will activate and have you roll.

Also, if anyone notices obvious areas for visual improvement - there are quiet a few and I don#t think they'll all be tackled before the initial release - I'd like to keep track of them in the Frontier Forums.

 

[fred]

Am just wondering if anyone has tried running Horizons with the Intel HD 530 in the Intel i7 6700K and 16GB of DDR4..?

Am halfway through building my VR machine, just got the GPU to get because I can't afford to get it until May next year. I wasn't expecting the HD 530 to be able to handle Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim at Ultra quality settings (although Skyrim crashes for some reason when you start it, but it did select Ultra settings with the auto select thingummybob so hopefully there's a fix or something available for it!) and Elite Dangerous at High quality settings so it would be good to find out if someone could check it out for me please..?

I'm hoping that I'll be able to play it at Medium if possible..?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Wreav]

Am just wondering if anyone has tried running Horizons with the Intel HD 530 in the Intel i7 6700K and 16GB of DDR4..?

Am halfway through building my VR machine, just got the GPU to get because I can't afford to get it until May next year. I wasn't expecting the HD 530 to be able to handle Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim at Ultra quality settings (although Skyrim crashes for some reason when you start it, but it did select Ultra settings with the auto select thingummybob so hopefully there's a fix or something available for it!) and Elite Dangerous at High quality settings so it would be good to find out if someone could check it out for me please..?

I'm hoping that I'll be able to play it at Medium if possible..?

Thanks in advance for any help!

No way in hell it'll handle Horizons...not looking good for the base game either, if you just extrapolate these results. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-9.html

 

[fred]

I didn't think it would have a hope in hell of running Vanilla Elite Dangerous at High settings either. It runs REALLY well. Some frames dropped when in Hyperspace but considering the amount of Alphas the game engine is throwing around at that point that isn't too surprising.

This iGPU has really surprised me tbh. I was just curious to see how it handles Horizons.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Patch 4 is rolling out: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=208873&p=3215665#post3215665

Sub surface scattering added to icy planets, POI now visible from the ship (when applicable--sounds like some POIs are SRV-only?), SRV mouse control improvements, transfer cargo without docking, and some other good'uns.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Patch 4 is rolling out: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=208873&p=3215665#post3215665

Sub surface scattering added to icy planets, POI now visible from the ship (when applicable--sounds like some POIs are SRV-only?), SRV mouse control improvements, transfer cargo without docking, and some other good'uns.

This one is my favorite:

- Prevent tiny planets from having a combination of basins, large scale deformation, europa linae, rifts and craters which add up to a depth greater than the radius of the planet itself

I wish I would have seen that.

 

[espher]

I bought Elite and didn't get a chance to play it before I got tied up in other projects.

... and now I just went and pre-ordered Horizons.

Surely I will play this game by Christmas...

 

[fred]

I bought Elite and didn't get a chance to play it before I got tied up in other projects.

... and now I just went and pre-ordered Horizons.

Surely I will play this game by Christmas...

Once you start playing you won't be able to stop if you're anything like me lol

This game is every bit as addictive as the original which over the years I must have put well over a thousand hours into it since 1985. Not sure how long I've spent playing Elite Dangerous because the Steam time played figure is a stat for the launcher rather than the game itself. Have definitely done well over a hundred so far.

And Frontier have plans to keep updating the game for 10 years or so. :Oo

Just being able to play it in VR next year is going to be enough to make me want to play the thing 24/7 lol

 

[Wreav]

from the main thread:

 

[RadioactiveLobster]

Maybe I'm missing something, maybe it's a bug. I don't know.


Picked up one of those "Find the occupied escape pod" missions from a planetary base run by Minor Faction A. The mission was from them as well.

So I go out flying, see a blue circle, land, find a crashed ship and escape pod. Two sentries immediately popup.

So I go close, get a warning then a fine for trespassing from Minor Faction A. Then I destroy the sentries and get a bounty from Minor Faction A.

How the base that gave me the mission is hostile. So I fly elsewhere, return. The base is no longer hostile and I can land, hand in my mission and get my credits.

I still have a bounty with Minor Faction A though.

Someone explain to me how a faction can issue me a mission that basically requires me to get fined or have a bounty placed on me by said faction. I'm confused.

 

[Starviper]

Maybe I'm missing something, maybe it's a bug. I don't know.


Picked up one of those "Find the occupied escape pod" missions from a planetary base run by Minor Faction A. The mission was from them as well.

So I go out flying, see a blue circle, land, find a crashed ship and escape pod. Two sentries immediately popup.

So I go close, get a warning then a fine for trespassing from Minor Faction A. Then I destroy the sentries and get a bounty from Minor Faction A.

How the base that gave me the mission is hostile. So I fly elsewhere, return. The base is no longer hostile and I can land, hand in my mission and get my credits.

I still have a bounty with Minor Faction A though.

Someone explain to me how a faction can issue me a mission that basically requires me to get fined or have a bounty placed on me by said faction. I'm confused.

Sounds like some form of bug -- usually missions will be affecting other factions opinions of you in some way, rather than the mission giver. By completing the mission you should rank up with the mission giving faction.

 

[Burny]

Sounds like some form of bug -- usually missions will be affecting other factions opinions of you in some way, rather than the mission giver. By completing the mission you should rank up with the mission giving faction.

Or poor mission design in combination with the automated bounty mechanic for killing drones.


A small fix from Horizons, that is probably only interesting to those who play using mouse/keyboard and headtracking:
Previously the station menu had a kind of "hitbox" that seemed to fixed relative to your view direction in the ship. Depending on how you turn/bow your head though, you'll see the menu from a different perspective, because it's a kind of hologram, placed "physically" in front of the pilot. However, with the hitbox moving with your view direction, to hit any button you would have to move the mouse pointer to where the button would have been if you were looking straight ahead at the station menu. Now, wherever you see a button in your current field of view, you can hit it by moving the mouse button over it. An almost negligible detail, but much appreciated. ;-).

 

[Wreav]

HORIZONS DROPPING ON THE 15TH

Beta 5 (final beta) tomorrow

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=209366

 

[Anton Sugar]

HORIZONS DROPPING ON THE 15TH

Beta 5 (final beta) tomorrow

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=209366

IT'S HAPPENING

Horizons gameplay trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_E6jCGusM

 

[Burny]

Disclaimer: They're calling this an "Early Access Release".

Should make it more clear, that they're still updating and not done with Horizons, yet.

Edit: In time for the new Star Wars movie.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

What's the price of this if you've already got Elite?

I haven't played it since the first month of the official release. Need an excuse over Christmas to get the flight stick out and re-install.

 

[mnannola]

What's the price of this if you've already got Elite?

I haven't played it since the first month of the official release. Need an excuse over Christmas to get the flight stick out and re-install.

I believe there is a $15 discount if you buy horizons and already own Elite.

 

[Anton Sugar]

What's the price of this if you've already got Elite?

I haven't played it since the first month of the official release. Need an excuse over Christmas to get the flight stick out and re-install.

$45

 

[Felix Lighter]

I'm glad they are getting it to people without beta access sooner. The Early Access description is interesting. I'll be happy to start contributing to my live Commander again.

 

[TheTrain]

IT'S HAPPENING

Horizons gameplay trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_E6jCGusM

That is a really good trailer.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Obsidian posted a vid about the Beta v4 graphics updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6Fkd0o5vg

Cannot wait.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Bump for title and OP update.

Note, since it's easy to miss: if you did not own Elite: Dangerous standalone and pre-ordered Elite: Horizons (which includes ED), you can play Elite: Dangerous standalone as of today.

It was (puzzlingly) locked off until Horizon's release, but they just announced today it's unlocked.

 

[RadioactiveLobster]

Wasn't paying attention when I landed so you get the ass end of the ASP. I wanted the cheese planet in the shot.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

$45

Blimey £30 dlc?! Then again I don't really know how much content is in this expansion. I'll do a bit of research, thanks for replying

 

[Sarcasm]

Blimey £30 dlc?! Then again I don't really know how much content is in this expansion. I'll do a bit of research, thanks for replying

From my understand its more of an expansion than DLC. You pay for a season of content (think roughly a year).

 

[Burny]

Blimey £30 dlc?! Then again I don't really know how much content is in this expansion. I'll do a bit of research, thanks for replying

They're working a bit with syntactics here. It's called a "season of expansions". They're positioning the game more as a service with continuous updates. You can buy into the current season once and get to play this for as long as you want (and their servers still exist ), but you'll have to buy future seasons if you want to also use those season's exclusive features. You'll still be playing with players owning such seasons if you haven't bought into it however.


Initially, Horizons itself won't get you all that much. Only billions of procedurally generated planets to land on, the synthesis feature (ship/SRV health potions in space! ) and the surface related missions.

Future announced features include the character creator, crafting and multi-crew game mechanics (e.g. carrying player and potentially NPC controlled fighters in your larger ships).


They also hinted at another Beta update today. Seeing that they'll go into the "early access release" next Tuesday, it's probably going to be the last major beta update.

Edit: Beta 5 changelog.

 

[Sodding_Gamer]

They're working a bit with syntactics here. It's called a "season of expansions". They're positioning the game more as a service with continuous updates. You can buy into the current season once and get to play this for as long as you want (and their servers still exist ), but you'll have to buy future seasons if you want to also use those season's exclusive features. You'll still be playing with players owning such seasons if you haven't bought into it however.


Initially, Horizons itself won't get you all that much. Only billions of procedurally generated planets to land on, the synthesis feature (ship/SRV health potions in space! ) and the surface related missions.

Future announced features include the character creator, crafting and multi-crew game mechanics (e.g. carrying player and potentially NPC controlled fighters in your larger ships).


They also hinted at another Beta update today. Seeing that they'll go into the "early access release" next Tuesday, it's probably going to be the last major beta update.

Edit: Beta 5 changelog.

Ahh thank you for clarifcation. I'll probably wait it out and see what they bring to the table later on

 

[Felix Lighter]

Beta 5 notes:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=209765

Hey all,

Thank you so much for your continued testing and support through the beta. It's looking great and the dev team have been hard at work on another update.

It's going live at 11am GMT and the test servers are likely to be down for roughly an hour and a half. Please do jump on in and give your feedback ahead of the full launch on Tuesday next week.

Enjoy!

***UPDATE #1***

We're now expecting the server work to be completed by 3pm. More updates if as they happen.

Change log...


Fix a crash caused by a POI activating during a transition
Fixed multi-threading crash in physics
Fixed crash in mission manager
Fixed crash in terrain patch generation
Fix for missing texture errors in schematics
Fix missing component error if a player goes offline
OSX crash fix for activity incorrectly trying to load incorrect resources
Fix for starting with the keyboard and mouse control preset causing your throttle controls to go weird
Prevent server error if player tries to buy something they cannot afford
Fix a confirmed cause of players loading into the game up to a kilometer up or down from where they saved
Fix for turrets at illegal PoIs not being legal targets
Turn on main engines by defaultso that dying while landed doesn't respawn you with a disabled ship
Networked the direction of the buggy turret
Add anti ship weapons to match anti buggy weapons in certain POI scenes and appropriate trespass zones
Improved surface details by adding more bump from the normals close up and reducing tiling at distance due to the alpha not being faded out at the same time as the normal
Fixed deep space POIs spawning incorrect POIs
Improve flattening on some deep space POIs
Fix disappearing blue circle for POIs
Fixed skimmers at illegal POIs not having bounties
Attacking settlement generators now counts as Assault, and triggers settlement aggro
Scanning private data links now counts as Major Trespass (up from minor, so now a bounty instead of a fine), and triggers settlement aggro
Updated additional POIs to be visible from the ship and adjusting their radar radius size
Made some of the smaller POIs only visible in the buggy
Don’t render no fly zones on the scanner if you’re in the SRV
When evaluating the terrain for flatness when spawning POIs handle the case when one of the ray casts hits an edge of a triangle and goes through the mesh without hitting it
Adjusted the radar circle offset so that POIs are less likely to be spawned towards the centre
Fixed bounties claimed stat incrementing twice as often as it should be
Fixed redeeming all vouchers for a faction instead of just combat bonds
Fixed some Commodity names in the market trend local news articles
Fixed longitude and latitude using the wrong time to establish location
Rebalance LOD stream priorities to help with some streaming issues
Add support for vacant ship death, and for parking a buggy without a parent ship. Landed ship is now killable except during the vehicle swap process, when it can be damaged but not killed
Fade POIs from the radar down based on altitude so that they're at full opacity at 2.25km altitude and transparent at 2.00km
Fixed issue with launching audio
Reduce the scale size to trigger the cockpit/vehicle Role popup to reduce the frequency of unintentionally opening it
Fixed Refinery Panel to show correct strings at the correct time
Updated SRV cargo panels dividers to be more consistent
Fixed focus issue when going to external / internal / role panel while an inbox message is opened
Brought back the cross hair for scooping
Check to see if we have disconnected from edserver before checking to see if we have permission to be close to a planet
Surface material fix for patchiness
Prevent tiny planets from having a combination of basins, large scale deformation, europa linae, rifts and craters which add up to a depth greater than the radius of the planet itself
Building LOD fixes
Building collision fixes
Fixed hitman chatter table
Fixed cargo items in the cargo merge panel not using loc strings
Mission text fixes
Updated tutorial video names and descriptions
Prevent the attempted parsing of $; on data links when scanned info is empty string
Head of Community Management

 

[Sarcasm]

So how does this work if you got lp pass but mainly use the steam version? I been running it from install folder but would like time tracking.

 

[Felix Lighter]

They are going to be giving Horizon owners a Horizon specific Steam key. I beleive it will be available at launch.

 

[fred]

They're working a bit with syntactics here. It's called a "season of expansions". They're positioning the game more as a service with continuous updates. You can buy into the current season once and get to play this for as long as you want (and their servers still exist ), but you'll have to buy future seasons if you want to also use those season's exclusive features. You'll still be playing with players owning such seasons if you haven't bought into it however.


Initially, Horizons itself won't get you all that much. Only billions of procedurally generated planets to land on, the synthesis feature (ship/SRV health potions in space! ) and the surface related missions.

Future announced features include the character creator, crafting and multi-crew game mechanics (e.g. carrying player and potentially NPC controlled fighters in your larger ships).


They also hinted at another Beta update today. Seeing that they'll go into the "early access release" next Tuesday, it's probably going to be the last major beta update.

Edit: Beta 5 changelog.

It isn't billions of planets to land on. It's more like trillions. I was trying to work it out. There's around 400 billion star systems in the Milky Way. I reckon there are an average of 10 astronomical bodies in the average star system (yes, there are a lot of systems with just 1-3 suns but there are also LOADS of systems with 20+, 30+, 40+ and even a good few with 50+, 60+ and even 70+ too!). I reckon 10 planets is a low estimated average but it makes the maths easier lololol

Of those 10 planets over 60% will be landable. So 400 billion x 6 is 1.6 trillion.

Probably the biggest expansion in video game history in terms of expanding the playable area of a game.

Next year can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned, playing this game in VR-O-Vision is going to be GODLIKE!!!!! :Oo

 

[RadioactiveLobster]

It isn't billions of planets to land on. It's more like trillions. I was trying to work it out. There's around 400 billion star systems in the Milky Way. I reckon there are an average of 10 astronomical bodies in the average star system (yes, there are a lot of systems with just 1-3 suns but there are also LOADS of systems with 20+, 30+, 40+ and even a good few with 50+, 60+ and even 70+ too!). I reckon 10 planets is a low estimated average but it makes the maths easier lololol

Of those 10 planets over 60% will be landable. So 400 billion x 6 is 1.6 trillion.

Probably the biggest expansion in video game history in terms of expanding the playable area of a game.

Next year can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned, playing this game in VR-O-Vision is going to be GODLIKE!!!!! :Oo

I recall reading somewhere that someone at Frontier figured it out and the playable surface area being added would fill the entire orbit of Saturn (it averages about 9 AU from the Sun)

 

[Burny]

Probably the last Beta update before the release tomorrow:

- Fix for crash when reporting bindings
- Crash fix for when a cargo canister spawns with either an invalid item, or one set up incorrectly
- Speculative fix for world transform crash
- Fix streaming error in the faction manager
- Fix UI crash in options screen
- More aggressive guards to prevent corruption of the physics proxy pair manager
- Fix crash with terrain evaluation for landing
- Added new graphics option for bottom end video cards to better handle the requirements for Horizons
- Fix VR rendering of surface schematic
- Optimnisations for environment map capture
- Load shaders earlier again on AMD to reduce stalls on loading sequence
- Swap order of long/lat on the orbital HUD: the order is now; latitude, longitude, gravity
- Altered the null chance for POIs such that there is a nice fall off between civilised and unexplored space
- Fix POI's that were visible form ship in the form of a disk but were not spawning when in the ship
- Reduced damage boots from synthesis
- Fixed multi-cannon basic synthesis so that it only gives 50% ammo refill
- Planet ports only care about crimes committed within 4km
- Moved targeting bones to make them more centred in the rock so the turret wont miss
- Fix for wing beacons making player ships spawn colliding with existing ships
- Disable targeting of sub-targets for planetary turrets
- Fix for the assert/silly transforms that happen when you try to Glide down to a planet that's stuck through a ring
- Optimisations for Skimmers
- Adjusted fade off for POI blue circle so that it starts fading out at 2km and fades out by 1km
- Modified timings for Data points on easy settlements based on feed back all should be at least 120 many medium to large should be 180 seconds
- Increased the texture resolution of the cargo bay
- Disabled steering controls when in headlook mode when using a mouse for both
- Fix some network issues with turrets
- Requires missions wipe. Add settlement market id to interface and disable targets missions
- Don't show Horizons missions on platforms that don't support them
- Split available planetary missions into a separate section on the bulletin board
- Remove timeleft contract element from reward collection phases of planetary missions
- Added text for surface mission buckets
- Don't show space missions in the bulletin board
- Allow Commanders to resurrect at other space stations if they last docked at a planet port and their current session does not have access to Horizons
- Fix a cargo bay transaction server error
- Remove the "Warning, thingy has changed jurisdiction" message, it's misbehvaing around POIs and causing more confusion that it's helping
- Ensure that the correct mountain material are being used on high metal worlds where the geology is borderline for metal content
- Fix for mismatch in ice fog density between interior and exterior volume
- Ensure correct splash screen is shown for the relevant platform
- Planet port material optimisations
- SChematic material optimisations
- Memory optimisations by changing material texture data format
- Optimised resource loading
- Female pilot texture optimisations
- Audio: Slightly changed the way how dust grit works. Also setting initial values for them, so it won't pop in without causeIMPORTANT: Mission changes for this release will wipe existing missions

 

[doomquake]

hmm looks underwhelming. Also a bit sad its not seamless.

 

[Khilandros]

Elite Dangerous: Horizons is now on Steam as Early Access
http://store.steampowered.com/app/419270/

Steam keys are already up on the Frontier store if you have bought it there, but the site is getting hammered so you might have to wait a while to get the key.

 

[FlyinJ]

Wait, what is the pricing for existing Elite owners? I've had Dangerous since it's non-Steam beta, do I still need to pay $60 for this?

 

[Khilandros]

Wait, what is the pricing for existing Elite owners? I've had Dangerous since it's non-Steam beta, do I still need to pay $60 for this?

Existing owners get a 25% discount on Steam and on their store for Horizons. You have to log into your account and find the steam key if you bought the base game and/or horizons

I think the link is: https://www.frontierstore.net/frontier_partnerkeys/

 

[Cuban Legend]

so if i don't have horizons do i fuck off to the other thread or is this the new OT?

 

[Anton Sugar]

so if i don't have horizons do i fuck off to the other thread or is this the new OT?

Nah, that's the new OT. Gonna get the old thread closed--ignore this one, too.

User the new OT: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1157327

We'll tolerate your pleb-ass.