NEWS: Screenshots from X³: Terran Conflict - updated 20/7

[Dave500]

If the GFX are going to be significantly improved, I`m gonna need new hardware, my poor 7800 Card won`t be able to cope. Not without any reasonable ammount of detail.

[Demotruk]

How do u know there cranking the explosions up? No screenie has shown this or trailer.

Edit - And OMG this IS how x should look and feel its so how close to how x should be its amazing, egosoft take heed of that engine and make the sound effects like this as x games sounds suck compared to this as well as cap ships and explosions and shaky cam is needed if near explosions its so cool. Thanks to who found this vid. Glad i saw it even tho the project died it was nice to see such detail that was not rendered but ingame it was way ahead of its time. this im talkin about

That's damn impressive. But nonetheless, I don't want them to feel they need to up the graphics. I think most people have other hopes/concerns that they would like addressed before raw eye-candy is.

[Nanook]

Impressive, yes, but I'll bet the game doesn't have much else going on in the background. Such as 1000+ stations chugging along and 10,000+ ships all flying about at the same time, doing their own little things. I imagine all those pretty graphics use a ton of CPU, RAM and graphics card resources. Probably wouldn't be so pretty in an X game.

[Wougz]

well at least dual or quad core wont be useless !

[Paranoid66]

If the GFX are going to be significantly improved, I`m gonna need new hardware, my poor 7800 Card won`t be able to cope. Not without any reasonable ammount of detail.

I found this online elsewhere about X3TC. After doing a brief search using Bernd Lehan.

Although there is said to be no new engine but Bernd Lehan, Managing Director at Egosoft, told us that there will be a lot of new content: new weapons and enhanced options for steering ships via the command console.

In order to enable better performance, the engine was optimized.

There are screenshots in the gallery below and a video trailer.

Very short, but still two interesting statements. I added the bold for emphasis.

[Skeeter]

Oh please a dual core would run the gfx and the x universe with ease. X doesnt even have dual core support and it runs the visuals and background universe imagine what a dual or indeed a quad core would do. It would run it flawlessly.

[OOZ662]

Are the X games multithreaded? If not, multiple cores wouldn't make that big of a difference if any as far as I know. I run X3 on rather high settings (minus Glow effect; I don't think my video card supports it since it turns itself off. Shaders on Medium and AA/AF are 4x and application-controlled on the video card settings, respectively.) on a stock-clocked 3.06GHZ Northwood P4 and an unlocked 6800. Only slideshows I get involve over 15 cap ships with some fighters slugging it out. So, a single core can handle itself currently.

(Not even goin to try XTM though... )

[Skeeter]

If they stoped finding excuses not to go multithreaded then it will open the performance possabilitys up for dual and quad core users which are rapidly growing in numbers. Given todays games are all multithreaded i just feel sorry for es if they dont get it done for this or their next release.

[esd]

Are the X games multithreaded?

No, just the one thread.

If they stoped finding excuses not to go multithreaded

"Stopped finding excuses"? Multithreading wasn't exactly mainstream when X³ was released, and this next release is an expansion.

Rewriting the game to allow multithreading would require exactly that - rewriting the game (specifically, the engine, from scratch pretty much).

"Excuses". Yeah, that seems like a pretty darn good excuse to me.

[xeon_1]

If they stoped finding excuses not to go multithreaded

"Stopped finding excuses"? Multithreading wasn't exactly mainstream when X³ was released, and this next release is an expansion.

Rewriting the game to allow multithreading would require exactly that - rewriting the game (specifically, the engine, from scratch pretty much).

"Excuses". Yeah, that seems like a pretty darn good excuse to me.

Just ignore those people they probably never even seen programming code let alone written some.

[softweir]

Rewriting the game to allow multithreading would require exactly that - rewriting the game (specifically, the engine, from scratch pretty much).

"Excuses". Yeah, that seems like a pretty darn good excuse to me.

I'm with esd on this. I believe that even the amazing Valve have yet to implement multi-threading in their Source Engine games. It will happen, but it is taking them a lot of time and money to research and implement.

I hope that a multi-threaded, natively 32-bit EgoSoft game engine will happen, but I won't hold my breath and I certainly won't expect it to appear on a game expansion.

[Xamino]

Are the X games multithreaded?

I believe the topic was on discussion somewhere in the forums; one member wrote that there was no real use for multithreading, because the different operations were all dependent on another in such a way that it wouldn't really work... (not my POV, but then, I'm no programmer, sorry ).

But I'm looking forward to TC, mostly for the actual universe with Earth; I wonder if the Earth-sectors will be set up along the same line as XTM. Anyone know something about that?

[eldyranx3]

I wonder if the Earth-sectors will be set up along the same line as XTM. Anyone know something about that?

With a total of three Terran TS's ferrying supplies for the entire Terran Systems? I hope not! All jokes about mining Uranus aside, the Terran custom start in XTM was a breath of fresh air.

[Skeeter]

If they stoped finding excuses not to go multithreaded

"Stopped finding excuses"? Multithreading wasn't exactly mainstream when X³ was released, and this next release is an expansion.

Rewriting the game to allow multithreading would require exactly that - rewriting the game (specifically, the engine, from scratch pretty much).

"Excuses". Yeah, that seems like a pretty darn good excuse to me.

Just ignore those people they probably never even seen programming code let alone written some.

Yeah i don't think esd knows about programming. It certainly doesn't need a total rewrite to implement multithreads. Just some recoding of parts. Depends how organized the source was.

[CBJ]

Sorry Skeeter but you are completely wrong. As has been explained on numerous occasions, you cannot just "recode parts" of a single-threaded engine to implement multi-threading. It needs to be designed-in from the outset.

[KRM398]

As an adicted Xer for a long time, small time fan fic writer and general nut about this game, let me say the new game looks great so far. Ego has done something I and many others wandered about for a while, they implemented a little realism in the new game. Not every single ship or station was destroyed and remade, there are novas and trading stations all just like X3, and some new stuff too...it looks good and has a more 'real' feel to it, not every station owner or ship owner can aford new things every couple years, and I aplaud them for this change from all the other games so far.

[Paranoid66]

As an adicted Xer for a long time, small time fan fic writer and general nut about this game, let me say the new game looks great so far. Ego has done something I and many others wandered about for a while, they implemented a little realism in the new game. Not every single ship or station was destroyed and remade, there are novas and trading stations all just like X3, and some new stuff too...it looks good and has a more 'real' feel to it, not every station owner or ship owner can aford new things every couple years, and I aplaud them for this change from all the other games so far.

To be honest since it is still X3 - TC I always expected a lot of the superficial universe to stay the same. With just the advent of some new tech from contact with the Terrans, and so on.

I hope if any really big changes do come along they are in new found sectors. Or held over to X4, and hopefully set some time in the X Universes future. The changes between X2 and X3 in the timescale delineated seriously stretched credibility. If I had been running the franchise (Great Maker forbid they all cry) I would have jumped forward in time to excuse such radical alterations not just pretended X2 as it (physically existed) never happened.

I've always felt strongly about background history in games. To me this is often the spark that helps fire your imagination, and ties it all together.

Looking forward to finding out what ES did with X3TC really graphic screenshot are the least of it as others have said.

[esd]

Yeah i don't think esd knows about programming.

No, not a thing. That's why I'm lead beta for a different group, on a different project...

"Organising the source" is a) very rare (a lot of development actually forgets to document itself. Programmers also hate commenting their code all the time) and b) Still not much use as the whole lot would need redesigning and recoding from the ground up to make it multithreaded.

[BigBANGtheory]

X3 at its core is an astounding game which is let down by a few rough edges, basically because it was ahead of its time. Smooth those 'well known and discussed' edges out and you've got game of the decade potential.

Beta testers it is your duty to feedback all sources of gameplay frustration this time.

BTW: Anyone that knows anything about coding will tell you multi-threading is not a trivial task to add to a single threaded application. What Egosoft might be able to do easily is add something like texture decompression to a 2nd thread but to redo the whole game engine would be a serious ammount of work, not impossible but a lot of effort.

[OOZ662]

Are the X games multithreaded?

I believe the topic was on discussion somewhere in the forums; one member wrote that there was no real use for multithreading, because the different operations were all dependent on another in such a way that it wouldn't really work... (not my POV, but then, I'm no programmer, sorry ).

My only experience comes from another game's tech support guy saying that their game actually used the performance boost that came from multithreading. He went into a bunch of detail on it a number of times, but I'm not up to that. Being a flight sim, they have a lot of floating point math to worry about and the thing eats CPU like how a grandma goes through tapioca.

Seems as though I've started an incident here, sheesh.