Suggestion: More subtle asteroid pop-in?

[deadmoomin]

The asteroid pop-in is pretty jarring. Not 100% sure if it affects asteroid drawing but I have my LOD setting at max and still the sudden un-smoothed appearance of huge asteroids takes you out of the moment.

What I'm about to suggest seems like an obvious solution that could help a little, so I'm guessing EgoSoft have already tried this, but here goes: it could possibly help "smooth" the appearance of asteroids if each one was "faded in", from 100% transparency to 0%, over say 3-4 seconds (or whatever works best). This way, the player's senses have a period of time to accept the asteroid into his vision and the appearance of each asteroid may not be such a "sudden jolt"...as they are now.

Could that help. or?

[Axeface]

It would be nice if something was done about it. No mans sky does something else that is very interesting, it scales the asteroids into view rather than fading them. You are flying towards them anyway so its quite natural. I think a combination of the 2 could work in x4.

[deadmoomin]

Never played NMS, but i can imagine a fade+scale combo. being powerful beyond comprehension.

[MakerLinux]

+1 for that change. I know it is something that usually applies to many games, and that in the current state of the game there are still performance improvements to be made, but there are some techniques that can help with drawing these distant objects.
And btw, there is also an issue where you teleport somewhere and the textures appear gradually. To be frank I'd prefer a longer pause than to see each object appear when it's loaded. The most jarring are the planet backgrounds which initially show a blotch or something like it.

[Imperial Good]

Running off a solid state drive helps with the texture pop in a lot. Asteroids also pop in far enough away that you will not really get a shock even if flying at 10km/sec and faster. Not even a high end one is needed, it is all about the random access seek performance over a mechanical drive which gives these huge improvements.

[photomankc]

Running off a solid state drive helps with the texture pop in a lot. Asteroids also pop in far enough away that you will not really get a shock even if flying at 10km/sec and faster. Not even a high end one is needed, it is all about the random access seek performance over a mechanical drive which gives these huge improvements.

Is that a setting tweek somewhere? I'm on an SSD and the asteroids appear in front of me first as a small rock and then begin to pop like popcorn into large rocks as their final scale as I approach. They only pop to full size when I'm a certain distance out. In a big field of them It's very noticeable and one of my only real visual gripes. It's not too bad for me on sector backgrounds, They normally load almost instantly, but people in the ships are a little bad in that they sort of materialize from the floor up with a moment or two of headless bodies or just sets of legs walking around. Slow the teleporter bay doors opening a bit and let the NPC load or get close would help.

[Imperial Good]

Is that a setting tweek somewhere? I'm on an SSD and the asteroids appear in front of me first as a small rock and then begin to pop like popcorn into large rocks as their final scale as I approach. They only pop to full size when I'm a certain distance out. In a big field of them It's very noticeable and one of my only real visual gripes. It's not too bad for me on sector backgrounds, They normally load almost instantly, but people in the ships are a little bad in that they sort of materialize from the floor up with a moment or two of headless bodies or just sets of legs walking around. Slow the teleporter bay doors opening a bit and let the NPC load or get close would help.

It is as if the NPCs unload unless one faces them. The issue is that loading them back in either requires more IO or is CPU expensive so not as fast as one can spin the camera around.

[Axeface]

Running off an SSD has no impact on asteroid pop in. Asteroid popin at a certain distance regardless of your hardware, and there is a maximum distance that they will popin on maximum graphics settings. It might have an effect on planet texture popin though, maybe thats what you are talking about.

[adeine]

Not just asteroids, stations could also do with some tweaks.

Some of the LOD transitions are pretty jarring, and while there is an attempt to fade in/out this doesn't seem to apply to all modules equally, so parts of stations will go invisible at certain distances while the rest is still showing.

Anyway, don't think it's a priority for devs right now given there's more important issues to attend to, but it would be nice to see some improvements down the line.