Does the engine support Atmospheric Planets exploration

[Komie]

Is there a possibility that Elite Dangerous will sometime have atmospheric planet exploration in the game. Does the game engine have the ability to support that

[Jeebs]

Odyssey already added the ability to land on planets with tenuous (very thing) atmospheres.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by DeepGraj:

Is there a possibility that Elite Dangerous will sometime have atmospheric planet exploration in the game. Does the game engine have the ability to support that

The same game engine is used in Jurassic World, Planet Zoo, Planet Coaster, F1 Manager and I wouldn't be surprised if it's running the WH games too.

It can obviously handle full atmo, trees and animals in huge quantities.

However... If you play Planet Zoo you'll notice the play area is in a valley/bowl surrounded by mountains. It's a decent sized area, but it's nothing like lifting off in a spaceship and being able to see 100s or 1000s of km in any direction.

All games have LOD issues and pop-in. Most games teleport you from orbit to a point close to the surface, and when you leave the same happens in reverse. ED is more like Flight Sim in that you can lift off and use your thrusters to rise as high as you want.

[Reggit]

Originally posted by DeepGraj:

...atmospheric planet exploration...

There are some alien plants (and bacteria) to be discovered...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3021753423

And while the atmospheres are 'tenuous' - Some are quite thick and pretty...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789935602
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789379494
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972892948

....Of course - we still dream of landing on Earth-likes one day! o7

[Ghojo]

No, the engine already struggles with lifeless planets. You will never get real atmospheric planets.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by Ghojo:

No, the engine already struggles with lifeless planets. You will never get real atmospheric planets.

If you're playing on a potato, maybe...

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Ghojo:

No, the engine already struggles with lifeless planets. You will never get real atmospheric planets.

You need to define what 'struggles' means, and what hardware you're running.

You're not going to get 4k rez at 144fps on a 1060

[ShelLuser]

If this would become a thing then I think it'll be more likely that we won't be able to land there ourselves but would have to take a shuttle toward designated location(s) where you can then explore on foot (or maybe also using a new means of land transportation).

[Jeebs]

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

If this would become a thing then I think it'll be more likely that we won't be able to land there ourselves but would have to take a shuttle toward designated location(s) where you can then explore on foot (or maybe also using a new means of land transportation).

For colonized worlds like Earth I can see this being the case, and it would make perfect logical sense from a realism point of view. Full atmo planets out in the black with no civilization on them, on the other hand, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to land on them like you do now.

[Inquisitor Aldnir]

Really wish I could land on a breathable planet one day. This is a space sim. Maybe walk around in some forests?

[Bordric]

No it doesn't

[Planewalker]

Originally posted by DeepGraj:

Is there a possibility that Elite Dangerous will sometime have atmospheric planet exploration in the game. Does the game engine have the ability to support that

Yes & yes. Problem is workload.

Imagine you had to program weather systems in a galaxy.

[Saucy Wiggles]

No. There are no true atmospheric worlds despite this being promised over 11 years ago, now.

[ZombieHunter]

This is a good question and my answer is 'not so sure'. This could be why we don't see full atmospheric planets. However atmospheres should actually, in theory, be less demanding on the engine. As you add haze and Mie scattering due to particles the frame rate will increase since you are drawing less beyond the haze. They already do a really nice smooth transition between the skydomes and you can see some haze in the distance. I'm pretty sure the reason we don't have these planets is not b/c of the atmosphere but maybe b/c of the life. It would be very hard to do life filled planets and not run into the same assets a milliion times. NMS has this problem and it is an immersion killer for sure. Spore kind of got around this with characters by using creatures created by players to populate other planets in other player's games. It was ingenious and worked well. But plants and rocks and so forth would start to look similar across planets and that would really kill Elite. The beauty now is the planets looks pretty different albeit we do see the same giant craters scattered about on planets but overall they look good.

I also think volcanic and water worlds would be quite difficult to pull off in this type of procedurally generated system. The engine can do water as evidenced by the Jurassic Park series and Planet Coaster. It does water quite well even though we don't see any in ED. Also I'm not sure what version of the engine is being used in ED and perhaps it is impossible to merge the newer versions of the engine into the later version of the engine. That is not a merge I would want to do. But it all depends on how they have been managing it across projects.