Planet Landings?

[ninjitsumonk]

I don't know what the fuss is about PLanet Landings, here's ninjitsumonk reporting from argon prime in her lonely little nova.
News from nex patch? News of a high end mod?
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]
[ external image ]

Alas, no these aren't leaked screenies, they aren't anything special, just me messing about in the galaxy editor, trying to find a special object that was invisible(which I've now got thanks to TEKing, cheers again )

This is basically my attempt at showing those here in the X scene that although kinda laggy, planet landings are completely possible.
I found out that the way the planet mission is done is that it is actually a sector, ingame, but the planet itself is one self contained model, with the sky as a sky and the floor being a kind of smoky animation.
Why do I bring you this information?
Because I wanted to prove that it could be done, although it is kinda laggy and causes a huge drop in FPS, it is possible.
I want to show other modders how EGOSOFT did it so that we can do it ourselves, rather than thousands of threads saying "I want a planet to land on".

[SymTec ltd.]

Isn't this really rather a Scripts&Modding-thing?


Now, I've been playing around in that specific scene for a while, and I do not think it is a really good solution to the attempt to have a really-completely-fully useable planet:

1.: The X3-engine is not made for planets, buildings etc. From what we see in the relation between number of buildings and performance, we can rather quickly guess that no complete city, let alone a whole planet will work with more than 10fps in X3.

2.: What these screenshots cover up is the fact that the scene always displays only one little part of the city it is designed to resemble. The whole scene is animated, so a whole long ride through the city is possible (as seen in the mission), but the engine cannot handle all streets at the same time, so only one per time is displayed. This is of course not an option if you were able to move freely in that city.

3.: One city is boring - one city is not a whole planet, and a whole planet is just even more killing the game's graphics, size of the scene etc.


So, the textures are there and a good modder can really make something out of this. But I would not expect anyone to actually do it, as it is loads and loads of work for very little effect.

[ninjitsumonk]

Yeah I suppose it is now.
You are correct in all but your second point, in the mission the objects may be animated etc, but most of the special objects concerning this were very much static, meaning that they were probably loaded rather than animated.
I loaded the entire city that you fly round and flew pretty much the entire route in the galaxy editor, and it worked, and to be honest was no more laggy than that final battle vs the kha'ak.

[Azanor]

When most people say "we want planet landings" I dont think they mean "we want to play sim city" nor planet landing should mean dozens of cities and areas you can fly around. I believe it was only expectation of couple cut scenes showing you landing a planet and then bringing you a menu where you can visit the shipyard, equipment dock, bar, some different factories etc..

Game engine doesnt need to be designed for it nor it needs to be something complex at the begnining. I am sure couple scenes of landing and a planet menu with fancy background will do.

Its nice work ninjitsumonk. I am sure it will be useful in the future.

[Carlo the Curious]

was no more laggy than that final battle vs the kha'ak.

So, about 0.5 fps then?

Admittedly my PC is fairly low spec (P4, Gf 6800 GS/XT), but 'no more laggy' than the laggiest scene I've encountered in the game doesn't really seem practical for regular use.

It is pretty though .

[Kha'ak]

Many people complained about this aspect, why they can't land on planets; i don't know what to say...

For sugh a large universe in which you are free to explore, free do anything, limited only by your enemies, to land on planets and to explore them it would be way to much(remember, the sector that may be large it's just a small area on the planet's low(or high)orbit). For the games in which the player is restricted to the "in sector scenarios", games I hate, perhaps it's a good idea to add the landing on planet as a major part of the gameplay, some military bases to equip and refuel your ship and god know what else.

Perhaps we should have a different approach on this painful subject: instead of landing and visiting the planet itself, why not to include the planets in the life of the X-Universe? Establish a real population, not the random numbers, the population should be affected by the economic or military events (such as invasions), make that planet a raw resource producer(energy and minerals, transported from the surface to the trading stations by some scripted TS), enable the possibility to make contact with the surface via the special menu in the trading stations, to trade with them(for example to require a huge quantity of ore for your new laser fab, for a special price).

[ninjitsumonk]

There was a game that did that, can't remember for the life of me the name though.
Whilst the speed(for most) is near crippling, I believe that this can be fixed up by using lower poly models, and less of them.
It just depends on what players actually want, do they want to have a feature that very few players will be able to use, or a feature that integrates the idea and the practicality of the issue.
What I mean is, making planets accessible, besides the huge amount of modelling required and possibly programmed pathfinding(or pathfinding integrated to the scene), do players actually want to "touch down" or do they just want planets to play a more active role in the economy?
Reason I ask is not because I'm mad, not because I just want a debate, but because there's a mod that I'm working on and this could be a highly valuable addition to it, IF and only IF players like it.

[Elffin]

Thats very interesting work though....

Defnitley worth looking at Ninjitsumonk.

please keep us updated with any further results.

[blazer1121]

I turn your attentions toward Infinity. You can flt straight through a planets atmosphere, fly anywhere you want on a planet, land in the cities and all without load screens. Now I know, it's a different game and a different engine and all of that, but it is a wonderful example of what is possible.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/ Just if you want proof of what I say, go to the media page and watch the videos XD

[Nanook]

Infinity is also an MMO, where all the massive amounts of data calculations for planets and everything else are kept on the huge server(s) it uses. Unlike our poor little PC's that must do everything themselves.

[Kha'ak]

Yes, but a MMO is a MMO, a ASF(a term invented by me, meaning Addictive Singleplayer with Forum support) is something very different, other rules, other game style and of course our "little PC's" trying so hard to please us.

[Admiral-Dyroi]

OK so cities lag because of what it has to generate...What about a sparsly populated primative planet with only tribes people with no tech living on it? but say one man has set up a small trading port on the planet.

(something akin to the kotor jedi temple on dantooine) that was a primarily grassy planet good for mining valuable ore for space ship construction.


just something to think about, this certainly has alot of potential.


sorry i have to ask...how many right turns did you have to make until you found the gay bar?(its just a joke calm down!)

[Observe]

While perhaps not to everyones liking, there is one mod having a "planet" with surface features and buildings - done about as well as I could at the time (ages ago) given X3 limitations for this sort of thing.

[ external image ]

[ninjitsumonk]

It would all depend on how you wanted the surfaces to be rendered. If you wanted realistic looking grass etc etc then it may have just as much trouble loading as a city, it also depends on size, the size of the city I showed was probably about 2 or 3 the size of presidents end(perimeter covered by gates) at most.
I think trying to create a skyscraper style environment(like in the mission) is a bad idea as there was a large amount of animation on the floor, perhaps having an almost unrendered floor is better than having an animation for fps, and less detailed buildings(more like boxes than sleek looking buildings) may be a better idea.
EDIT: Changed 2/3 to 2 or 3, realised it looked a bit like 2 thirds

[Alfred Bester]

Altough planet landings would be nice, I think its fair to say the X3 clearly wasn't designed with this aspect in mind. Sure you can create some polygon models and make the engine display them, but call that a planet?

Beside the scenery it should have functionality as well, like in Freelancer, but their planets were just noninteractive animations.

No, if anything, I would really like to see Egosoft revamp the whole "Space" concept. The much applauded "space physics" in X3 is really just a limited subset of all physics necessary to convery a true sense of being in space. To name a few, the sideway thrusters provide the same acceleration for all ships, the tiniest M5 to the bulkiest M2. This is especially unbelievable because supposedly the main engines of the former can hardly propel the craft to a measly 50km/?h? and even that takes a long time.

Then there is the effect of gravity. Some sectors put you right above the atmosphere, but the sun is not moving! Assuming the orbit is stable, we do not fall on the surface by ourselves indeed, this is only possible when you are in geosyncrhonous orbit above the planet - 36000km or so for Earth - and it looks a whole lot smaller then, too.

So, suppose you are in low orbit, as is often portrayed in sectors. A small thrust in either direction will alter your orbit significantly and some strange counterintuitive things start to happen. To catch up with a craft in higher orbit you have to go slower in a sense.

Outside of the gravity well of near planets the behaviour should be simple though.

But, the distance and speed scales in X3 don't make sense either. 200km/h is *Not* fast, especially in space, where everything is moving at relative speeds of kms/second. Also, if you keep the thrust applied you accelerate indefinately, and you don't "Cap out" at some fixed speed (unless you run out of fuel), but this means decelerating takes more time too.

So, even without Planet Landings, there is so much more to do to give this wonderfull game more space realism, and I for one would hope they would give more thought about this first.

Space is HUGE, and there is more to it then just creating a whole lot of sectors.

[Paranoid66]

Even forgetting landing it would be good if planets were somehow part of the economy even if they just acted as sinks via specific planetary trade stations for manufactured goods that are shuttled down by npc craft.

Some kind of visible active commercial bridge between the planets and space would be great. I like to think of planets as the ultimate space station in X. However at present they do absolutely nothing.

You would think the space side economics should be tied to planetside consumerism on some level. Unless all those stations are just really support for the creation and operation of protective Fleets which I guess might make sense when you look at the tech tree. Nonetheless, it seems surprising that planets and space feel so unlinked in general gameplay.

[Realspace]

Well people, I started a kind of tutorial on how to make landable planets and did it today only 1 day after this topic had started ! ... and I missed this one only becouse it is in the wrong forum (it should be in the modding forum)!!

Anyway I don't repeat here my (long) procedures, here is the link, hope to be usefull:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 45#2321445

I turn your attentions toward Infinity. You can flt straight through a planets atmosphere, fly anywhere you want on a planet, land in the cities and all without load screens. Now I know, it's a different game and a different engine and all of that, but it is a wonderful example of what is possible.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/ Just if you want proof of what I say, go to the media page and watch the videos XD

really? you mean "what is IMPOSSIBLE!!" so long someone doesn't find a way to integrate the procedural engines like the I-novae used in Infinity (but there are many others, see the links in my tutorial) inside the X engine...and considering we can't neither modify small things like flight physics and max sector size, I repeat: impossible, sorry..

Infinity is also an MMO, where all the massive amounts of data calculations for planets and everything else are kept on the huge server(s) it uses. Unlike our poor little PC's that must do everything themselves.

False, the server just calculates the players in game and economics etc. ALL THE GRAPHIC ENGINE is loaded inside the player's PC. It works becouse it procedurally generates models and texture's combination (base textures are the same but very light), the trick it is makes the same rendering in all pc about the same planet.

Just try to play ELITE and see how light it is even for a program of that age, if you consider the many planets/systems it has to genereate. Download the PC adaptation here: http://www.tomatarium.pwp.blueyonder.co ... ntier.html

While perhaps not to everyones liking, there is one mod having a "planet" with surface features and buildings - done about as well as I could at the time (ages ago) given X3 limitations for this sort of thing.

Observe, I don't think your way is alternative, I suppose they should be integrated, if you read my tutorial I explain how. As matter of fact your planets are too small, and I suppose it depends by the limitation of the 3D models that can not have more than, what (?).. 60,000 triangles?

But what about creating not a sphere with canyons etc. but just a curved surface that is put on one side of the sector? this way you'd have many more polys to be used for mountains and canyons.... Youre the only one that can do it!!!

[Azanor]

Then there is the effect of gravity. Some sectors put you right above the atmosphere, but the sun is not moving! Assuming the orbit is stable, we do not fall on the surface by ourselves indeed, this is only possible when you are in geosyncrhonous orbit above the planet - 36000km or so for Earth - and it looks a whole lot smaller then, too.

So, suppose you are in low orbit, as is often portrayed in sectors. A small thrust in either direction will alter your orbit significantly and some strange counterintuitive things start to happen. To catch up with a craft in higher orbit you have to go slower in a sense.

Outside of the gravity well of near planets the behaviour should be simple though.

But, the distance and speed scales in X3 don't make sense either. 200km/h is *Not* fast, especially in space, where everything is moving at relative speeds of kms/second. Also, if you keep the thrust applied you accelerate indefinately, and you don't "Cap out" at some fixed speed (unless you run out of fuel), but this means decelerating takes more time too.

So when you guys talk about planet landing, you dont really mean landing the planet like docking the stations (perhaps after flying to landing site a little while like ninjitsumonk showed us) but X3 is switching to MS Flight Simulator once you enter the orbit. That shouldnt be impossible, Microsoft did it with all landscape and cities and real dynamics of a airplane. Lets ask egosoft if they want to sell us two games in one package.

Any of our developer friends bother explaning us what kind of resources needed for implementing it into X3?

[ninjitsumonk]

Simple answer. Its impossible, such would require an entire rewrite to the X3 engine, now if you have the manpower, and are willing to do it for free, I'm sure EGOSOFT would let you.
But if you went out that far you may aswell write a whole new flight sim game and release it in competition with microsoft's.

Then there is the effect of gravity.

Why? Surely we're that advanced in space that we have engines that can compensate to make flying as easy as possible for the pilot.

The aim here is to make planets available, but not entire ones. an entire one would be awesome, sure, but I don't think the X3 engine can handle a small city, let alone an entire planet face, sure you may be able to do it if there were no objects on the surface, but where's the fun in a textured ground with a few bumps and bangs here and there?

Look at almost any game and when you see grass there is a textured ground with 3d grass, shrubbery, rockery etc, to give the idea of more realism.

Covering that in the X3 engine is hard enough.

[Carlo the Curious]

Then there is the effect of gravity.

Why? Surely we're that advanced in space that we have engines that can compensate to make flying as easy as possible for the pilot.

I don't think that necessarily follows - if you're hanging just above the atmosphere of a gas giant you're going to need a lot more power to stay in place (automatically or otherwise) than if you're in deep space. Possibly more power than you have (how I remember being dragged down onto planets in Frontier).

Having said that, I think adding gravity at all to X3 would be extremely complex and is part of the whole 'realistic physics vs playability' debate. Personally I don't think it would add much, but that's just me .