New No Man's Sky Footage (Dear Lord!)

[GribbleGrunger]

JoeTheBro said:

GribbleGrunger said:

1: Yes they do but the he's been talking about it right up the latest IGN first. Why drop it now?
2: Why did the video show the planets don't rotate?
3: Again, the sun would need to move at a ridiculous speed to create night and day on a planet
4: I'm not sure anyone has stood and watched the sky yet.
5: Again, what makes you think it's changed?

I don't understand why you think it's changed? It hasn't. The game is designed like that. It's all mathematics. You're making the mistake of believing the whole universe exists in the console, it doesn't, it's just a mathematical formula that evaluates how far the planet has rotated and then procedurally generates things in line with the answer. It's not difficult to do. It's just a calculation. The difficulty is expressing the result in graphical form.

1: I don't know. Could have had two competing methods and only decided on one at the last minute when PS4 couldn't hit 60 fps? Although it's just speculation anyway. I'm just trying to analysis gameplay video instead of going off interviews.

2: The stars are only visible for a few seconds and are very minor. For most people that video was about showing the game's atmosphere.

3: No. Video games have "point source" lights and they have "directional" lights. A point source light works exactly like lights in real life and would indeed need to move at a ridiculous speed if used for the sun. However video games almost always use directional lights in such circumstances. Directional lights simulate a light infinitely far away from the player. All a game does is rotate the directional light to make it look like the sun is moving.

Again this is standard and is the method used for the sun in almost every 3D game.

4: I found a video showing the stars in the beginning, and as far as I can tell they don't move: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ELX8AEGkE

5: The game makes me think it changed. All in game signs point to the planets not spinning and probably not orbiting.

 

I'm well aware of how procedural generation works in general and what NMS's specific approach is. I've been using procedural generation in my PS4 game for a long time. However that has hardly anything to do with this. NMS still produces planets when you are present, and the question is if they spin while you're looking at them/on them.

SWORDF1SH said:
At Joe

I watched that video of the time lapse but can't see any stars, I can see shooting stars, ships and firefly type bugs (could be watching on phone that makes it difficult) . And if all the day night cycles are 24 mins for every planet, that would just mean all the planets rotate at the same speed, which would be disappointing but I would wait to see if true and what the patch would do. It seems faking it would be just as much hard work to pull off.

Yeah there was some discussion about this way back when that video came out and a lot of people couldn't see them. Try increasing brightness or viewing at an angle.

Faking it would simplify everything. All planets would be static (a huge huge positive for game engines) and planets can be kept closer for better views. Coming up with the concept of faking it this way might take some time, but implementing it is near trivial.

GribbleGrunger said:

It's just a calculation though. Nothing really exists in the virtual space, they're just the answers to those calculations in voxel form. Calculating how far the planet has turned is just as easy as calculating how far the sun has moved. And both would affect the rendering in exactly the same way. LOL

 

They wouldn't affect rendering in the same way. In one case the stars spin and in the other the stars don't. It's a generally minor thing which is why it makes sense for HG to use it, but it sure seems to be what's happening.

I suppose it's a case of just wait and see. I just don't think Sean would mention it again in a video 3 months from release if it had been taken out.