When I tried the protoype I had to use Low settings. i5 2500k (@4.6k), 16GB ram, GTX 670 OC (@1320/700). 100% gpu, cpu 90%, gave me about 36-40fps in space and entering and exiting atmospheres. But whilst in space if I even pointed my ship at the large space crane in the distance my frames dropped to 0. So I stayed well clear of it.
Am on the long road now saving up for a good rig in 2017> So I can play on max+.
I really appreciate the fact that this idea is being taken into account. Itās very refreshing to know that hopefully the game will also be balanced around graphical settings as well, if possible. This is a big issue in a game like planetside 2 where you are limited by the games render distance. Some players can have a larger render distance than others allowing you to shoot first(or not at all in the case of other players not appearing).
@JonnyRedHed the good news is that it was just the prototype and we still have a lot of optimization work left to do so your system is likely fairly representative of our minimum system requirements for a quality experience.
Come game release time I hope to have something better rig wise, but its good to know lower spec systems can still enjoy the final game.
With regards to the fund raising idea. A give way of a few nice things for the every mini 6 months fund raising push would be good to have. Plan them out from now until the final release fund raising and promotional pus, maybe scaling them up to the final pre-release push.
Certainly try and spark up a relationship with Angry Joe, Scot Manley, and other names like Wingman, Bluedrake42, and the CIG team. Getting Chris Roberts into some future demo near release time will be a solid winner of an idea. And I bet heād do another post just prior to release as well. I can always speak to Dave Haddock (Star Citizen lead writer) about that as and when you want.
What with Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous chalking up so many new members each month, a 2-3 monthly update posted on the threads there will no doubt help sweep up some new I:B fans. Canāt hurt anyways. I wonāt do too many updates, every 2-3 months seems a good gap.
AWESOMEļ¼ļ¼ļ¼
Star citizen does āfree flyā weeks/weekends that are very successful. Giving permenant access to anyone for free is obviously a big nono but once your auth is all set up and the game is in a state where you want to present it to a wide audience and net more backers, you should consider it. I doubt any of us backers care people will have a weekends access, it will also be good for volume testing on the servers. Maybe 6 months down the line have it advertised as a free fly weekend to promote the game or something.
Yes, I offered my reply while understanding both. Where the opportunity exists, allow a feature to be turned off. If turning it off would give advantage, then implement an additional scheme that is lower-cost but which ensures that the advantage is not there. Where there is no time to implement that additional scheme, donāt disable the feature. Do what you can. Make the product accessible to as large a market as possible.
[quote=āINovaeKeith, post:84, topic:2161ā]
This forces us to make a choice between the business case of allowing as many people to play as possible vs adhering to our artistic vision for the game.[/quote]
Thereās a third aspect: letting more people play it. Those people donāt care about your business case. They donāt care about your artistic vision. They care about playing a fun game. If you donāt sell copies of your game, your business case fails. If you donāt sell copies of the game, your artistic vision is never experienced.
I think thatās what heās meaning by following their artistic vision.
What if you created a sub-engine that approximates ship visibility at any given time to head this kind of thing off? Maybe hard-wire it as a binary alternative to specific effects or objects which otherwise obscure or increase visibility as a function of the effect? I.E. in the absence of the effect the engine hands ship rendering over to the āship visibilityā sub-engine to determine opacity and contrast. Such a system would have to have a rough model of how everything in the world interacts with the visibility of the shipā¦ but maybe that model could be generated or ālearnedā from one or more high-end run-throughs?
Thatās a possibility but of course increases engineering effort.
Wasnāt radar detection with environmental factors (lava) and so on planned anyway? Why not build something that does both at the same timeā¦
Great ideas! So many great ideas over the years. I think their hands are full though for a while with whatās already at stake.
I expect it would. On the other hand it could be an elegant (not to pat myself on the back too hard 
) solution to a problem keeping whatever number of users out of the game due to hardware constraints. But I say that without knowing where the requirements for world rendering stop and those for the effects in question startāthat would be the most pertinent factor deciding the potential value of the proposal IMO.
If NVIDIA delivers on what it has promised with Pascal then I expect it to totally disrupt the GPU market. When you take into consideration Battlescape will be shipping ~1 year after it launches thatās a good chunk of time for people to upgrade. My current expectation is that even a low to mid range Pascal GPU will be able to run the game at extremely competitive frame rates with the majority of gfx effects enabled. Weāre developing the game around that set of assumptions. If Pascal doesnāt deliver then weāll adjust accordingly.
Oh, @inovaekeith, are the forum badges and developer access forum section going to be released with the prototype, also, you still aiming at releasing the prototype this month?
Hmā¦ Can certain gameplay mechanics (hiding in clouds) be tied to network rules? If someone is in a cloud and effectively āhidingā from sensors is it possible to (connection-wise) remove/despawn that player from the otherās view until it becomes visible again? This way if someone turns clouds to Low it wonāt matter muchā¦ Iām sure itās more complicated than that.
Everything that is logically valid is possible, stuff like development time, robust/reliable coding and thus cost are the determining factors when it comes to implementing a feature.
Iāve lived through half a dozen GPU revolutions that were supposed to be major disruptions to the market. When the new technologies were finally implemented consumer grade components it usually resulted in a 10% to 20% performance boost. The only real market disrupter I can remember was the 3DFX voodoo card.
A 4x memory increase due to HBM2 along with associated improvements in bandwidth and compute power due to a new manufacturing processā¦ thatās looking pretty good for being disruptive to me . Whether or not developers actually take advantage of it is a different storyā¦
I just bought a GTX980 ti hybrid. Bummer. lol