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Star Citizen Pre-Alpha: 'Arena Commander' Dogfighting

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staticneuron

staticneuron

Member
Zalusithix said:
Cross sectional signature differences should be marginal given that they're both about the same size. EM/IR have differences and the Beta is technically lower than the 315 in both at idle. When pushed to their limits they have the same rough IR, and the beta retains a lower EM. Frankly though, the differences are negligible. Neither one is all that stealthy.
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That post is a whole lot of awesome information but yes I was specifically talking about flying without taking any shots.

Considering the ships are not static at all in relation to those parameters I find it hard to believe those numbers even when pushed because EVERYTHING about the Beta is much lower than the 315.

From the actual size and mass of the ship, the powerplant, the amount of thrusters and the weapon hardpoints (the tractor makes it one up), I am not sure if it is something to do with balance within arena commander but even when pushed it should not reach similar numbers to the Super Hornet even at max simply because of size and powerplant.
 
R

Reishiki

Banned
Installed the 1.1 PTU

The Retaliator is amazing, and I didn't even see the upper deck. I do hope I'm able to refit the massive torpedo bay for cargo purposes, though. I seem to recall reading something about being able to do that once the PU hits.
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
staticneuron said:
That post is a whole lot of awesome information but yes I was specifically talking about flying without taking any shots.

Considering the ships are not static at all in relation to those parameters I find it hard to believe those numbers even when pushed because EVERYTHING about the Beta is much lower than the 315.

From the actual size and mass of the ship, the powerplant, the amount of thrusters and the weapon hardpoints (the tractor makes it one up), I am not sure if it is something to do with balance within arena commander but even when pushed it should not reach similar numbers to the Super Hornet even at max simply because of size and powerplant.
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Well the 315p is 33% larger and 18% longer (can't quickly reference height/width for the 300 series) so the Beta's cross sectional signature will be lower for sure. I can't say exactly how much that'll affect the signature because there's no way to look at that data. As for EM/IR, the power plants are actually the same size. Engine wise, the Beta is smaller, but it has two of them so it's not that big of a break for it. If anything it's seemingly easier to red out on the Beta. The shields are higher on the 315p which would explain the higher base EM. Weapons only come into play when being fired but given the Beta has S1 compared to the S2 in the 315p, the 100/135 difference vs 168/153 difference from idle seems about right. The similar peak IR value also makes sense as IR is heat dissipation. Both have the same power plant size and roughly the same size frame, and thus when pushed to their max should have roughly the same peak heat emissions. Heat builds up over time and it probably would have continued to climb slowly had I given them more time. The 315p just gets there quicker.

As for reaching similar levels to the Super Hornet - they don't. Sure the IR gets close, but the SH is still higher. I mean, the SH uses the same class engine used in the 315p, so the main differences come down to the power plant and weapon loadouts. The power plant can provide more power, and more weapons obviously generate more heat, but they can only go so far before they overheat and have to cool down which limits the overall heat output. As such, the 200 peak IR difference between the SH and the others isn't that crazy. The EM output, however, is radically higher. The bigger power plant, better shields, and tons of weaponry spike the EM to over double the Beta's during full out combat maneuvering. Add to that the larger cross section and you're talking a much greater overall signature in combat. Granted combat wise, you're also talking a wolf vs a house cat in capabilities...

As for the tractor beam, I have no clue how it affects the signature as its unusable currently. Still, for an exploration craft, it seems like it'd be rather useful. At least more so than a turret that can only accept weapons. As far as that goes, I'm not even sure there will be S1 tractor beams to be able to mount on the Beta in a fixed fashion.

Reishiki said:
Installed the 1.1 PTU

The Retaliator is amazing, and I didn't even see the upper deck. I do hope I'm able to refit the massive torpedo bay for cargo purposes, though. I seem to recall reading something about being able to do that once the PU hits.
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Yeah, you can, but it'll be lackluster as an every day transport. AFAIK the listed 720 FU capacity is with the bay removed. That would basically make it a super heavily armed transport with limited capacity. It's why I haven't jumped on it any of the times it's been on sale. Love the look, but don't care for the purpose. Undoubtedly useful in a corp setting, but not exactly that great as a personal ship.
 
staticneuron

staticneuron

Member
Zalusithix said:
Well the 315p is 33% larger and 18% longer (can't quickly reference height/width for the 300 series) so the Beta's cross sectional signature will be lower for sure. I can't say exactly how much that'll affect the signature because there's no way to look at that data. As for EM/IR, the power plants are actually the same size. Engine wise, the Beta is smaller, but it has two of them so it's not that big of a break for it. If anything it's seemingly easier to red out on the Beta. The shields are higher on the 315p which would explain the higher base EM. Weapons only come into play when being fired but given the Beta has S1 compared to the S2 in the 315p, the 100/135 difference vs 168/153 difference from idle seems about right. The similar peak IR value also makes sense as IR is heat dissipation. Both have the same power plant size and roughly the same size frame, and thus when pushed to their max should have roughly the same peak heat emissions. Heat builds up over time and it probably would have continued to climb slowly had I given them more time. The 315p just gets there quicker.
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https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/origin-300/315p
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/mustang/Mustang-Beta

Both have the same "max" power plant size but the default for the 315p is a S3 (K3S-9) while the Beta is a S2 (Endurance-600). Everything else is dependent on that even the thrusters and engines. The spec page points to the fact that you may be able to upgrade the beta's power plant.

There is a 3 metric ton difference in mass. 6 meter difference in length, 3 meter difference in beam, 1 meter difference in height.

So yes the difference makes sense but not the peaks because the beta by default again has a smaller power plant which in turn means less power available to all installed parts

Zalusithix said:
As for the tractor beam, I have no clue how it affects the signature as its unusable currently. Still, for an exploration craft, it seems like it'd be rather useful. At least more so than a turret that can only accept weapons. As far as that goes, I'm not even sure there will be S1 tractor beams to be able to mount on the Beta in a fixed fashion.
Click to expand...

To be honest I wished the Beta came with a Jump Point scanner instead of being jealous of the tractor beam.
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
staticneuron said:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/origin-300/315p
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/ships/mustang/Mustang-Beta

Both have the same "max" power plant size but the default for the 315p is and S3 (K3S-9) while the Beta is and S2 (Endurance-600). Everything else is dependent on that even the thrusters and engines. The spec page points to the fact that you may be able to upgrade the beta's power plant.

There is a 3 metric ton difference in mass. 6 meter difference in length, 3 meter difference in beam, 1 meter difference in height.

So yes the difference makes sense but not the peaks because the beta by default again has a smaller power plant which in turn means less power available to all installed parts



To be honest I wished the Beta came with a Jump Point scanner instead of being jealous of the tractor beam.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I botched the power plant thing. Too much quickly jumping around between different ship pages, brochures, etc lol. Saw the max S3 on both and forgot to check the actual equipped unit. Either way, it doesn't matter much as neither ship is really using all of that power as they both have hardpoints empty.

Anyhow, while just flying around the Beta does have a lower IR signature. Weapons are what brings it up to the same point, but that's a peak measurement that's bound by constraints other than available power. Basically the weapons overheat and have to cool down which limits the total amount of heat that can be emitted. Having more power available to it doesn't matter as the weapons can't take any more power; they're already overheated. The S2 weapons on the 315p should generate more heat than the S1 on the Beta, but the weapons sink to the ship. The ship can only dissipate so much energy so fast. Assuming the ships have the same maximum safe temperature, equivalent sink sizes, and similar same heat dissipation characteristics for those sinks, the max IR signature will be the same. The 315p would reach that limit quicker, but couldn't go over it.

Alternatively, the 315p might be capable of sinking heat over a larger area which would then be capable of radiating more heat to space at the same IR signature. (A larger surface radiating the same amount of heat will have a physically larger, but less intense heat emission. IR locks tend to use differentials of heat, so a smaller, hotter source is easier to lock onto than a larger diffuse one even if they're both emitting the same amount of heat total. Thus a larger surface can radiate more heat before it would be as bright as the smaller surface.) This would allow the S2 weapons on the 315p to fire as long as the S1 weapons on the Beta before overheating while remaining in the same IR envelope.

Getting a final answer on the matter would require more testing by flipping weapons around on the ships and timing how long it takes them to overheat etc. Testing that I'm not inclined to do, however, given the amount of long loading screens I'd have to stare at again. Then there's the torture of using the holo-table to swap the weapons. Quite a bit of work for two ships that I have no inclination of getting lol. My Mustang is the Delta, and my 300 series is the 350R. Not even remotely similar ships.

Given the volatile nature of the game right now, I'll just shrug and let it be what it is. There's no sense trying to figure out why exactly something is the way that it is when everything can drastically change in a single patch.

As far as the jump point scanner goes, I'm not sure you wont be able to put one on the Beta. Unlike the more traditional hardpoints, the AE section isn't well understood.
 
staticneuron

staticneuron

Member
I agree. I have a feeling things won't be finalized until the multicrew ships hit and a clearer picture about the modular sizes and weapon classes come into play.

I just love the fact that we can discuss the game like this and not be overselling the devs ambition. After the past few updates it looks like even the system on "noise" is going to be automated and pretty impressive.

I have high hopes for this game.
 
Zalusithix

Zalusithix

Member
Yeah, the depth that's made possible by all the interconnected systems that they're implementing is really quite amazing. All those variables, however, kill any attempts at fine tuning the game's balance.

With the hardpoint counts and size limitations they can enforce a certain amount of basic checks and balances, but within those limitations, chaos will reign. It's basically going to take the shotgun approach that with enough options on the table, a counter to anything can be devised. The meta-game is going to be insane with SC.
 
D

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
SnowTeeth said:
Well it is as of approximately one month ago..
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A lot can happen in a month, I guess: http://forums.starcitizenbase.com/topic/14945-rob-irving-leaves-cig/

a poster there named Chimaera said:
I just got this email from Wingman. Does anyone have info on this?

Descendent Studios

Hello Chimaera,

There are a couple of things to talk about. One is that Rob Irving has joined our team, you can read his blog here:

http://descendentstu...-back-together/

Rob recently became available and gave us a call and we were thrilled to add him to our game and team.

Also, the promo for the Tuesday livestream is up, and yes, of course in the spirit of fun, we decided to have some fun with an old Sci Fi classic movie 2010. I hope you enjoy it and it makes you chuckle like we did making it.

http://youtu.be/HG-n2sJAR3I

The front page puzzle game is going well, no one has solved it yet, we will give some clues out tomorrow if that is still the case, but we do see everyone is on the right track.

Tuesday's Kickstarter launch should be fun, you can find it live at noon CST on Tuesday March 10.

Thank you for your continued support, and help us spread the word, this is our project & together we will make it happen.

See you all in the verse.

Eric "Wingman" Peterson
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

So Rob Irving "recently became available," which sounds like he either quit or was let go from CIG.


[edit] Also, this is off of Rob's Linkedin:

Creative Director
Descendent Studios
March 2015 – Present (1 month)Austin, Texas Area

We're bringing back Descent on Kickstarter - paying homage to the original while adding new gameplay elements and bringing modern graphics and technology to the classic six-degree-of-freedom space shooter.


Cloud Imperium Games
Lead Designer - Star Citizen
Cloud Imperium Games
February 2013 – February 2015 (2 years 1 month)Austin, Texas Area

Lead Designer for both the initial development of the persistent universe on Star Citizen. Heading up and building the Austin design team, working with leads on total product design. Community interaction.
Click to expand...
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Tommyhawk said:
Snazzy trailer! I like the new animations the look much more natural now.

But they really really need to implement some sort of AA asap. The aliasing is just hideous.
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I think they are waiting with AA for lower level APIs. They just dont want to do the work two times, now and in future.
 
T

Tommyhawk

Member
KKRT00 said:
I think they are waiting with AA for lower level APIs. They just dont want to do the work two times, now and in future.
Click to expand...

That's a shame but of course understandable.
Downsampling is the only option for now but my good old 660Ti sure as hell won't cut it. :(
 
K

KKRT00

Member
Blizzard said:
Is there some reading material available on this? I had been hearing about DX12 and Vulcan but I'm not sure I heard about AA techniques.
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Dunno in which presentation i've read this, but definitely it was on one of the Mantle presentation from Repi, in one of the Timothy Lottes' blog post and in one of the Tiago Sousa presentation from Crytek.
Generally, You will get much better control over framebuffer, much better control over custom hardware aspects of GPU, like CSAA, better ability to sync, which will solve TAA being viable with SLI etc.
Generally more control over buffers and hardware will lead to smarter AA hacks :)

What a pity that CIG started Frankfurt studio after Tiago Sousa left for id. It would be great addition. They should do everything to get him, Timothy Lottes and Jorge Jimenez!
 
D

Dictator93

Member
KKRT00 said:
Dunno in which presentation i've read this, but definitely it was on one of the Mantle presentation from Repi and in one of the Tiago Sousa presentation from Crytek.
Generally, You will get much better control over framebuffer, much better control over custom hardware aspects of GPU, like CSAA, better ability to sync, which will solve TAA being viable with SLI etc.
Generally more control over buffers and hardware will lead to smarter AA hacks :)

What a pity that CIG started Frankfurt studio after Tiago Sousa leave for id. It would be great addition. They should do everything to get him, Timothy Lottes and Jorge Jimenez!
Click to expand...
Lottes now works for AMD on VR, just got hired!
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
tuxfool said:
That should be possible if they start using SFR across the board.
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TAA = Temporal AntiAliasing = TXAA? (can lead to blurring / ghosting across frames, something I really dislike in CryEngine 3)

SLI = Scalable Link Interface, two graphics cards working together

SFR = Split Frame Rendering? (both GPUs work in parallel rendering a single frame)
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Blizzard said:
TAA = Temporal AntiAliasing = TXAA? (can lead to blurring / ghosting across frames, something I really dislike in CryEngine 3)

SLI = Scalable Link Interface, two graphics cards working together

SFR = Split Frame Rendering? (both GPUs work in parallel rendering a single frame)
Click to expand...

Yup. Currently the most common mode of multi gpu is Alternate Frame Rendering, meaning each gpu takes a turn rendering a frame. As temporal AA solutions need access to historical data TAA and the like don't work well on multi-gpu.

TAA is probably the most effective in terms of cost and performance. Ghosting doesn't have to happen, for a really good implementation you can try the one used in UE4 (try UT on Outpost23). Note that it isn't the same as TXAA.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
tuxfool said:
Yup. Currently the most common mode of multi gpu is Alternate Frame Rendering, meaning each gpu takes a turn rendering a frame. As temporal AA solutions need access to historical data TAA and the like don't work well on multi-gpu.

TAA is probably the most effective in terms of cost and performance. Ghosting doesn't have to happen, for a really good implementation you can try the one used in UE4 (try UT on Outpost23). Note that it isn't the same as TXAA.
Click to expand...
If TAA and TXAA are both temporal antialiasing, what is the difference?

Also I'm confused because a brief Google search turns up people calling Unreal Engine 4's implementation TXAA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOStBqP6F3M).

I'm not a fan of temporal antialiasing even in UE4 sadly.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Blizzard said:
If TAA and TXAA are both temporal antialiasing, what is the difference?

Also I'm confused because a brief Google search turns up people calling Unreal Engine 4's implementation TXAA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOStBqP6F3M).

I'm not a fan of temporal antialiasing even in UE4 sadly.
Click to expand...

That video looks like garbage. It is pointless to look at YT videos for this kind of thing. TXAA, afaik is a combination of fxaa,msaa and temporal supersampling. Where TAA is temporal supersampling using screen space algorithms but with randomized subpixel sampling see this as it pertains to UE4, I don't know the specifics of the CryEngine implementation.

I'm afraid you're generally going to have to deal with this kind of AA, or just suffer aliasing. Spatial Supersampling is way too expensive and MSAA only works effectively on Forward renderers (even then it only works on geometry and not shading or alpha).
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
tuxfool said:
That video looks like garbage. It is pointless to look at YT videos for this kind of thing. TXAA, afaik is a combination of fxaa,msaa and temporal supersampling. Where TAA is temporal supersampling using screen space algorithms but with randomized subpixel sampling see this as it pertains to UE4, I don't know the specifics of the CryEngine implementation.

I'm afraid you're generally going to have to deal with this kind of AA, or just suffer aliasing. Spatial Supersampling is way too expensive and MSAA only works effectively on Forward renderers (even then it only works on geometry and not shading or alpha).
Click to expand...
Why is it pointless to look at YouTube? It has its flaws, but even on that low-quality video, you can see more detail in one side. I don't think YouTube compression is going to remove detail on half and not remove it on the other half.

I'm not certain there is an industry-accepted / industry-mandated term for a TXAA definition versus a TAA definition, but perhaps I am wrong. They seem to be terms that nVidia and Epic are respectively using.

Also, I miss forward rendering.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
Blizzard said:
Why is it pointless to look at YouTube? It has its flaws, but even on that low-quality video, you can see more detail in one side. I don't think YouTube compression is going to remove detail on half and not remove it on the other half.
Click to expand...

It doesn't show you an aliased mess on the other side of the screen either.

Dictator93 said:
It depends on the game. A game like star citizen, would quite arguably suffer from pure Forward Rendernig. It needs lots and lots of lights.
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They could use forward+. Doesn't CryEngine have a partially forward+ renderer?
 
Z

Zabojnik

Member
Everybody check out those slides, there's an extended and very HQ video of the new damage model inside.

SDuCPeR.jpg


rgytzgK.png


1hyliym.jpg


W0Gyavk.jpg


The Gladius is just fucking glorious.
 
P

pottuvoi

Banned
Blizzard said:
If TAA and TXAA are both temporal antialiasing, what is the difference?
Click to expand...
TXAA is Nvidia specific implementation using MSAA with additional temporal pass and a custom resolve to final screen size.
The resolve pass has wider than normal box filter which cannot be stable under motion. (This is similar to AMD tent filters.)

TAA is general term for the temporal pass and/or a method which uses information from temporal axis to give better results.
Blizzard said:
Also I'm confused because a brief Google search turns up people calling Unreal Engine 4's implementation TXAA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOStBqP6F3M).

I'm not a fan of temporal antialiasing even in UE4 sadly.
Click to expand...
Yes, many are confused about the terms, UE4 doesn't use TXAA.

They have their own temporal AA method which doesn't use MSAA buffers. (View slide 23 to see advantage of wide tent filter in motion.)
https://de45xmedrsdbp.cloudfront.net/Resources/files/TemporalAA_small-71938806.pptx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNQ47MY-Eo0

It's very good and helps on a lot of things, especially for specular aliasing and such.
I haven't played with console commands to see if one can tweak how wide the resolve filter is etc.

Imho, TAA and/or some specular AA method within shading would be really important for Star Citizen as it's art has plenty of highly specular metals, sharp geometry and high dynamic range.
Something like Valves geometry trick would be reat as well.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
tuxfool said:
They could use forward+. Doesn't CryEngine have a partially forward+ renderer?
Click to expand...

Yes, it does, but pure forward+ wouldnt cut through all the lights You can generate in this game.

---
Blizzard said:
TAA = Temporal AntiAliasing = TXAA? (can lead to blurring / ghosting across frames, something I really dislike in CryEngine 3)
Click to expand...
There is no ghosting with best TAA solutions and slight blur is quite cheap price to pay for almost completely aliasing free image.
Look how great just TAA works in Ryse:
http://a.pomf.se/owwgio.webm
http://a.pomf.se/vrbhfg.webm

And the best thing about TAA techniques are that they scale with resolution and framerate substancially, so if You aim for slight downsampling and 60hz in game like SC, then they will look amazing.
 
S

SneakyStephan

Banned
staticneuron said:
Bigger weapons, more hardpoints mean more power draw. Chances are it means a higher sig. You are going to "need" those weapons if you show up as a bright blip on the radars, where as the beta most likely has a lower sig and will attract the least amount of attention.





I wasn't interested my self till this vid.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6_6VEjQvxY

After a glass of wine or two, she isn't so bad.
Click to expand...

Wow the cockpit looks amazing from the inside, it' so open!
 
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