Re: Elite: Dangerous - and the return

[Cody]

Don't panic, JH... at least not until you've tried the Beta. The Alpha may be problematical, but I'd wager you'll be able to run the Beta/Gamma.

[JazHaz]

Don't panic, JH... at least not until you've tried the Beta. The Alpha may be problematical, but I'd wager you'll be able to run the Beta/Gamma.

Yeah! Here's hoping!

Least I have Oolite to fall back on, can run that at 60 FPS at high detail, even with Griffs and Povray Planets.

[cim]

Least I have Oolite to fall back on, can run that at 60 FPS at high detail, even with Griffs and Povray Planets.

I find it difficult to imagine what we could do in Oolite that would need that much power - your graphics card, going by this list, is around 40 times as powerful as mine, which also runs Oolite at 60FPS. I was expecting it to end up below the minimum spec for Elite Dangerous, but I've been quite surprised by just how far below - what are they doing that needs that much power?

[Arexack_Heretic]

Installing spyware?
Running SETI search in the background, and planet search! E4 will need to find lots of planets to keep as realistic a universe as possible.

[Gimi]

Least I have Oolite to fall back on, can run that at 60 FPS at high detail, even with Griffs and Povray Planets.

I find it difficult to imagine what we could do in Oolite that would need that much power - your graphics card, going by this list, is around 40 times as powerful as mine, which also runs Oolite at 60FPS. I was expecting it to end up below the minimum spec for Elite Dangerous, but I've been quite surprised by just how far below - what are they doing that needs that much power?

To be fair, these are requirements for an Alpha build, so requirements are more likely to go down then up. But I do agree, graphics requirements look hefty when you start comparing different cards out there, as is the requirement for a CPU with 4 physical cores.
Also, my laptop graphics card scores 6.7 on the windows experience index for 3D gaming graphics, but when I look at different comparison charts on the Internet it's way behind the card that Michael gave as an example. I am able to run quite a few recent games at reasonable speed, so I have a "wait and see" attitude right now.

[pilot babo]

But I do agree, graphics requirements look hefty when you start comparing different cards out there, as is the requirement for a CPU with 4 physical cores.

I am a lot more surprised by that 4 core requirement than with the video card. From a programming standpoint it's relatively easy to max out the capability of a video card - just throw at it larger textures and more triangles/shaders and that's about it. However, making the engine capable of actually using all 4 cores as opposed to only two is an entire different matter. I'm a bit sceptical about that requirement. It's not that I doubt the capability of the FD developers, but maybe we should read this as "you need a modern i5" instead of "our engine can use all your cores".

[drew]

But I do agree, graphics requirements look hefty when you start comparing different cards out there, as is the requirement for a CPU with 4 physical cores.

I thought this was interesting too. You *can* optimise your code to take advantage of 4 cores, but it's insanely difficult to do and very rarely achieved by a game - we have enough trouble making use of 4 cores on serverside enterprise software.

But it has been stated that two cores may not be enough.

Cheers,

Drew.

[Wolfwood]

Will be interesting to see if 4 cores are actually used. My G19 keyboard has a fancy LCD applet showing the load on each core and I've rarely seen all the cores actually at work (heavy duty) at the same time.

[Gimi]

Yes, I did wonder about those 4 cores. In general there are a few things that I suspect might be the reason for this. (I'm not a programmer, so I fully expect one to come and tell me I'm stupid). My main suspect is positional prediction of objects in game to take the load off the network during combat manoeuvres.

[cim]

I can believe four cores - something vaguely like:
1 thread display
1 thread simulation and AI
1 thread network
n minor threads for sound, logging, moving data to/from disk etc. none of which are individually quite so time-critical.

It's not so much a case of "does it saturate four cores" as "does it have time-critical stuff running on two and something else to do on top of that", since there's not really any such thing as a "three core" computer. You can certainly throw arbitrary loads at the display and simulation threads just by increasing the object count - at which point having some other cores handle the rest of the game is important (and then now you're requiring three you might as well go for a fourth)

[JazHaz]

Peek of the Week no.9

Here we have a little peek of the cockpit interior for the Sidewinder being modelled.

[Disembodied]

I like the BBC Model B keyboard to the pilot's left ...

[Commander McLane]

I like the BBC Model B keyboard to the pilot's left ...

… I'm not so sure about the cheap car floor mats, though.

[JazHaz]

Dunno how, but I've missed three Peeks of the Week:

So here they are:

Peek of the Week No.10

Wait a minute, this was meant to be the back-end of a Sidewinder...

Peek of the Week No.11

I've not seen one of these before, I wonder what it does?

Peek of the Week No.12

Can I interest you in a shiny used Cobra? Vintage Mark III with only one not-so-careful owner...

[Griff]

if that little guy hiding off to the right in the shadows of that cobra III pic is to scale then there's something seriously wrong with the size of that cockpit
no wonder the cobra III needs 2 pilots, they have to stand on each others shoulders just to be able to reach up to the steering wheel