Digital Foundry: [4K] Star Citizen: A Next-Gen Experience In The Making... And You Can Play-Test It Now

[Dictator]

Have they said anything about ray tracing support?

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As far as I know, not really in any relevant capacity for a while through official channels or the roadmap - but I do know they are looking into it for possibilities to solve outstanding rendering challenges the game has (shadows at a distance, reflections or GI).

Hard to say what they would do - unfortunately all HW does not support it yet :(

 

[Aztechnology]

Could it have something to do with you playing with us the last few times on EU servers?

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Possibly. Is that what it's pulling from, previous sessions and not a ping? Because 120 on EU isn't that bad at all.

I mean that would make sense. I think when I wrote that post I was a little very sleep deprived.

 

[scitek]

As far as I know, not really in any relevant capacity for a while through official channels or the roadmap - but I do know they are looking into it for possibilities to solve outstanding rendering challenges the game has (shadows at a distance, reflections or GI).

Hard to say what they would do - unfortunately all HW does not support it yet :(

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Don't worry, the raytraced remake of Crysis will be here soon enough.

 

[NuMiQ]

Possibly. Is that what it's pulling from, previous sessions and not a ping? Because 120 on EU isn't that bad at all.

I mean that would make sense. I think when I wrote that post I was a little very sleep deprived.

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Yeah, I think it pulls data from real sessions, except for the FPS data in the middle, which I think is an average of cards in your power/performance range.
I could be mistaken of course. And 120 ping pretty much corresponds with the average ping I get when connecting to US servers, so I would not be surprised if this is indeed the case. This does not mean you should abandon us and exclusively play on US servers now.. please? xD

 

[IamFlying]

Its a nice tech demo, but gameplay in a meaningful way is surely missing, aside from a "walking simulator" aspect.

But the tech will look hopelessly old in a few years, it already looks dated, aside from a few specialities.

 

[IamFlying]

Obviously Star Citizen looks on another level visually but hasn't No Man's Sky already done the whole planet jumping then flying down to it in real time for years?

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The planets and space are very distinctive things in NMS and sadly don't feel connected. Games like Starlink have this done much better.

 

[Raticus79]

Have they said anything about ray tracing support?

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Nice to have, but not a priority due to the difficulty involved.

RTX - Star Citizen Spectrum

Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?

www.robertsspaceindustries.com

 

[Pottuvoi]

Nice to have, but not a priority due to the difficulty involved.

RTX - Star Citizen Spectrum

Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?

www.robertsspaceindustries.com

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Yup, doubt they will go for it.
Especially reflections would need huge amounts of work as they would have to remake all fog tech etc to work with it.

In roadmap they have planar reflections using their render to texture, so they do look into making them better. (Also improvements to SSR.)
Large scale shadows for terrain and large objects are there as well.

 

[Galava]

Regarding RTX, as new ray-tracing capable GPUs improve and performance gets better, they might consider it. A post-launch thing basically.

To use RTX they need Dx12/Vulkan too, which they are actively working on right now. I believe in a recent Q&A they answered the question of vulkan implementation development, and they said it's going nicely. They still need time to properly implement it, but that it's going well. 3.9 or 4.0 is my guess for Vulkan.

 

[Aztechnology]

Yeah, I think it pulls data from real sessions, except for the FPS data in the middle, which I think is an average of cards in your power/performance range.
I could be mistaken of course. And 120 ping pretty much corresponds with the average ping I get when connecting to US servers, so I would not be surprised if this is indeed the case. This does not mean you should abandon us and exclusively play on US servers now.. please? xD

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I don't know, I may need a ride in an 890 jump to persuade me lol.

100-120 really isn't that bad.

 

[NuMiQ]

I don't know, I may need a ride in an 890 jump to persuade me lol.

100-120 really isn't that bad.

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*Looks at lonely Aurora in ship inventory*
*Looks at Zalusithix *

Seems they've pushed a new update with some fixes, but they also had to reset progress.
Don't think I had a lot so eh.. Good for people who were out of AUEC I guess.

 

[Galava]

*Looks at lonely Aurora in ship inventory*
*Looks at Zalusithix *

Seems they've pushed a new update with some fixes, but they also had to reset progress.
Don't think I had a lot so eh.. Good for people who were out of AUEC I guess.

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Yeah, there seemed to be some issues with some people's accounts and characters where they didn't have ship components and other bugs. Wiping character data seemed to fix those issues.

 

[KKRT]

So if anybody is interested in checking Star Citizen themselves CIG just today opened Free Flight Event.
You have time till 3rd of November

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/37-Free-Fly

 

[DieH@rd]

We should make a new thread for this event.

 

[Skyfireblaze]

Can someone borrow me an SSD for this event please? :P

 

[Shy]

 

[Deleted member 20284]

So if anybody is interested in checking Star Citizen themselves CIG just today opened Free Flight Event.
You have time till 3rd of November

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/promotions/37-Free-Fly

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Thanks, I'll jump in for a quick free run, mainly to see how my rig performs and get a quick feel. Don't want to ruin the retail release for myself.

 

[Deleted member 44371]

This is from planet tech v3, planet v4 is right now in PTU testing and looks even better:

(yes you can land on top of the buildings)

 

[Skyfireblaze]

This is from planet tech v3, planet v4 is right now in PTU testing and looks even better:

(yes you can land on top of the buildings)

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Can any backer access the PTU? That looks stunning o.o

 

[Chrome Hyena]

yes this is the good shit right here. Just what I needed!

 

[Valkrai]

I'm hoping Dictator could do an update video showing that new planet tech and if there's any performance improvements with this first implementation of SSOCS.

 

[Nekyrrev]

Here are some screenshots that some players took on the new planet (microtech) in the 3.8 PTU patch:

Best looking planet in the game by far. The new technology is doing wonders.

 

[Deleted member 44371]

Here are some screenshots that some players took on the new planet (microtech) in the 3.8 PTU patch:



Best looking planet in the game by far. The new technology is doing wonders.

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The new planet is sooo goooood

 

[Deleted member 20284]

Shit Destiny's Traveller made a cameo in SC.

Spoiler

Looks brilliant

 

[TheTrinity]

The usual I suppose. Make a fairly good looking thing, can't actually do anything in 99% of it.
When are they going to make the actual game part.

 

[Tekniqs]

yo that looks damn good.
what's the players' goal in the game?

 

[Nekyrrev]

yo that looks damn good.
what's the players' goal in the game?

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It's a sandbox sim. You fly around looking for missions (target to eliminate, goods to transport, etc) or raw materials to mine and sell. There's no end-game or anything, it's open ended and the main purpose is to be immersed in that world. Accumulating money allows you to buy better equipments and weapons for you or your ship. You can buy or rent other ships too, with multiple purposes.
It's recommended to play with some friends.

 

[ObbyDent]

so its basically no mans sky but actually out and heavily improved from when it first came out

 

[Kwigo]

I'm hoping Dictator could do an update video showing that new planet tech and if there's any performance improvements with this first implementation of SSOCS.

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There might maybe eventually be something for 4.0 (since it should be the "big one" with server meshing), but don't take my word for it.

yo that looks damn good.
what's the players' goal in the game?

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Whatever you want!
Tbh at the moment there's not much to do, you can do some trading, mining, bounty hunting and some missions (kill X, protect Y, find Z...) but it looks like the core tech will be fully implemented (not finalized) by the end of 2020 which could mean that a lot more focus will be put on developping actual gameplay loops.
As always with SC, this is highly hypothetical and with how complex the development for this game is, things could change a lot.

Also, a lot of pure gameplay dev is currently focussing on Squadron 42 (the solo campaign).

 

[Nekyrrev]

so its basically no mans sky but actually out and heavily improved from when it first came out

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It's very very far from no man's sky. The only thing they share is that they take place in space and you can land on planets.

 

[Galava]

Just read about increasing the pagefile for Star Citizen. Have the game installed on NVMe but the game always struggled in ArcCorp and Lorville.
I set a 20GB pagefile on the drive SC is installed, and wow, like night and day. Now the game suddenly performs wonderfully on cities :O

Note: Wonderfully means >30-40fps on ArcCorp on my i5-6600k 4.2GHz RTX2060, 16GB RAM

 

[TheTrinity]

Whatever you want!
Tbh at the moment there's not much to do, you can do some trading, mining, bounty hunting and some missions (kill X, protect Y, find Z...) but it looks like the core tech will be fully implemented (not finalized) by the end of 2020 which could mean that a lot more focus will be put on developing actual gameplay loops.
As always with SC, this is highly hypothetical and with how complex the development for this game is, things could change a lot.

Also, a lot of pure gameplay dev is currently focussing on Squadron 42 (the solo campaign).

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I've been in this game since the very beginning and the core of the fans have been saying this every year for 5+ years. Their progress is excruciatingly slow. Saying that they're working on Squadron 42 is even more concerning if true because the SQ42 roadmap has been progressing even more slowly than Star Citizen.

I haven't refunded because I have only my tiny initial pledge but I would not recommend that anyone buy into Star Citizen until they show a lot more progress.

 

[fanboi]

I've been in this game since the very beginning and the core of the fans have been saying this every year for 5+ years. Their progress is excruciatingly slow. Saying that they're working on Squadron 42 is even more concerning if true because the SQ42 roadmap has been progressing even more slowly than Star Citizen.

I haven't refunded because I have only my tiny initial pledge but I would not recommend that anyone buy into Star Citizen until they show a lot more progress.

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Last sentence is true I would say.

But they have been delivering much more latley and keep hitting milestones and so on. So while you are correct from a historic standpoint (and boy you are correct), they have started to get their shit together.