Digital Foundry: Star Citizen's Next-Gen Tech In-Depth

[Pottuvoi]

Fine video, cannot wait to see next episodes.

It's nice that they moved to raycasted far distance shadows on planets, should be quite efficient and scalable. (and quite bit less artifact free than shadow maps.)
I wonder if they will incorporate some of the large objects or man made structures into the height map in future.

 

[TeenageFBI]

These last few DF threads are appalling. You can do better, Era.

Dictator + DF, I really love your work. Retro, modern, whatever! I even like when you're talking positively about tech that's beyond what we can get on a console, which I assume is why threads about DF's Star Citizen and ray-tracing videos turn to shit every. Single. Time.

 

[tuxfool]

I agree with you, but to bellyache about the negativity seems really dumb to me. There's an above 0% chance that people are going to talk about Star Citizen's development woes in every thread relating to it. It's married to the game at this point.

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Then fuck discussing anything at all...


This is the kind of shit that drives people away from the forum. I don't post as much anymore precisely because of all this shit.

You can make a thread about nearly anything. Does it hurt to actually discuss what the thread is about.

 

[curiouscharles]

Then fuck discussing anything at all...


This is the kind of shit that drives people away from the forum. I don't post as much anymore precisely because of all this shit.

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I have no problems with such posts disappearing.

/waves bye to Felicia!

If people wanna whinge about SC's development issues, create a thread where that is the context.

Context here is tech, which is insanely intriguing, and DF covers tech - pretty simple no?

Again, great video you guys!

<3

 

[gozu]

You would need to rely less on them to make sure things controlling light are working, as they would systemically work. But I would still personally want them there to make sure something ELSE did not break in the build I am working on for the level.

Like, the shading could break for some reason.

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Good video. I enjoyed it as a next-gen showcase.

One question: How much improvement can we expect with pop-in with next-gen's SSDs? Now that lighting, aliasing and tearing are essentially solved, the biggest (non-framerate related) eyesore becomes pop-in. I'd ask devs but I assume they're almost all NDA'ed.

How much do you reckon random IO matters to pop in? Random read is "only" 30 MB/s compared to sequential speed that is literally 100+ times faster. So which one is the limiting factor?

As HDDs are removed as a bottleneck for asset streaming to the screen, how far do we get before the APU becomes the bottleneck, if it's not already the case.

 

[Ether_Snake]

Actually they are currently heavily working on storing information about all objects in the game (its called iCache) on global DB, so every server has access to it, as server will be 'unified' into one mega structure they call Server Meshing. Basically you will be able to take any pick-able object and place it anywhere on planet or moon and all other players that visit that spot will see it and be able to pick it up and move somewhere else.

I dont think there ever will be a simulation of snow accumulation on ship instead of ground and passing it via server to other players, but its not really that hard to do.
They just need to track where the ship stands, which they already do, and how long the ship was on the ground. Then they pass that information to other clients in vicinity and engine calculates how much snow is on the ship and how less snow is on the ground and adjust shader for both ship and the ground underneath based on 2d representation of ship geometry (like ship shadow map directly from above).

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It's great that they are working on this because in the end this is something other games will face down the line.

For the snow though, it's more complicated than that. You need to store where the snow has fallen, not some history, and just save that. What can be done then is degrade some of that information according to its importance. So if snow accumulation had a low importance, it might get discarded outright when no one is around after some time, or just a loss-compression is applied.

Over the longer term I could see a use in storing a lot of history so that an AI can determine the history's importance and modify the present when it wants to discard some of said history. For example burning a forest down might be important if it's a high-traffic area, whereas it could be of low importance if almost no one goes there.

Or you could store a chain of actions, to know who or what is important or not to the universe; an NPC no one knows of but who controls a giant farm everyone eats from is more important than an NPC no one knows of and who is doing nothing because the later's impact on the world is lower than the former.

Curious to see where things are in 10 years, Star Citizen will be ahead of everyone when it comes to open world persistent worlds.

 

[mutantmagnet]

Hey, we don't review games. This isn't buying advice. These videos are designed to educate and entertain. This is not telling you to buy Star Citizen. Nobody cares. The degree to which people get offended over this never ceases to amaze me.

There's just too much negativity around the internet these days - so many videos made that are designed to make people ANGRY. We're trying to do the opposite. To help people appreciate the medium.

So what is it that you want critiqued then? What is the problem with Red Dead 2, for instance, as it relates to technology?

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Kadath attacked the character of your team. I get why that will get a rise out of you but it's not worth it when borntoulouselautrec brought up a more relevant point. You guys are talking about tech but don't really get into the challenges of implementing that tech. I've seen enough of your past analysis to know this isn't beyond you but Alex hasn't squared away how effort to bring this all out is extremely taxing even for modern systems. The only time he did get into the difficulties when talking about how much ram would have been required if CiG did it the old way in this video and the SSD requirements in the other just as briefly.

Happy to reply. Tech videos should not just be showcases, that's the role of PR.

The video/article enumerates all this high end stuff only to say that at the moment, servers only support up to 60 players at the same time because server meshing is not implemented yet. And it's fine but what it doesn't mention is that it's been in development for at least 8 years now and server meshing is still not in sight. That might, for some people, be a worrying thing. It talks about the tech but not how well the implementation of it is going.

Of course no developer will want to talk about the negatives of their own game in their own studio. That's why the in-house reports are so dodgy and difficult to pull off. Thats's why Konami got all that free PR from their Boot Camp event in 2015 and no one could know that the game had huge dev problems and was unfinished.

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[Jtrizzy]

Downloaded the launcher to check this out, but there is no button to download in the launcher. I bought a ship back in 2014...any idea what the issue might be? It's been a few years since I've tried playing...

 

[Amauri14]

Damn the technology that they are using for this game is so incredible!

 

[trugc]

I'm reading through CE/Crysis 3's implementation of merged mesh for grass recently. It's like an early iteration of the modern prevailing GPU driven pipeline approach. A whole group of meshes is submitted directly at IB/VB level and managed through transient-buffer-like method on GPU.

So I'm wondering how the tech has evolved in Star citizen, as the author is working for CIG right now. Since everything is now procedurely generated on GPU, do they run simulation on GPU completely or still do the simulation on CPU after readback? Will this get covered in the following episodes? Dictator

 

[GhostofWar]

One question: How much improvement can we expect with pop-in with next-gen's SSDs? Now that lighting, aliasing and tearing are essentially solved, the biggest (non-framerate related) eyesore becomes pop-in. I'd ask devs but I assume they're almost all NDA'ed.

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texture pop in faster storage will fix, it can improve lod pop in but lod generally isn't used because of storage performance. Its to reduce gpu load of further away assets so you can use more gpu on closer assets. It's why one of things pc versions normally have is better draw distance, it's an easy way spend the extra gpu power.

 

[Deleted member 15227]

Damn, these Digital Foundry Star Citizen videos are a godsend. Perfect summaries of progress made and future features.

 

[TheUnseenTheUnheard]

Honestly it's fucking insane how far they've come from a hanger. I remember just walking around that hanger hyped as fuck for what was to come. I'm glad they're still going at it. Very impressive stuff.

 

[Aztechnology]

Awesome video Dictator just finished it. Cool they finally got you in there.

 

[KKRT]

For the snow though, it's more complicated than that. You need to store where the snow has fallen, not some history, and just save that. What can be done then is degrade some of that information according to its importance. So if snow accumulation had a low importance, it might get discarded outright when no one is around after some time, or just a loss-compression is applied.

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Nah you are too ambitious :) No game actually simulates the snow accumulation based on real snow particles falling on the ground, it would be too expensive. In games its just shader that is generated based on time of snowing weather being active over some terrain and then calculating how much of this shader needs to cover the terrain.
Also Star Citizen cannot simulate objects where players are not around, it unloads those zones. This is a reason why they had to finish (they did in December) Server-side Object Container Streaming (SOCS).

Simulations of fire propagation or building settlements or growing plants etc in games, in zones where players arent present, is being done via calculating how much those simulation would progress in time when last player left and new player arrived.

 

[Darkstorne]

Thanks Dictator for the great video, and for braving the Youtube-level commenters that Star Citizen threads always dredge up here.

 

[sandweed]

The amount of work that goes into tools and systems that are completely unrelated to level streaming tech is immense. You both think it would have been faster to create an entirely new engine, all of it's tools and pipelines, than to retrofit a modular engine for their needs?

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SC original release date was 2014, I can't say for sure that they would have been further along by now if they had developed their own tech but it's very likely.

 

[fourfourfun]

I thought it was weird that I kept seeing people wearing an inordinate amount of STAR CITIZEN swag around Wilmslow, now I know why!

Weird little tiny place for a dev studio, I cannot even picture where they would be set up.

 

[Kwigo]

Thanks for the vid Dictator , can't wait to watch this later today.

I hope my Shadow PC is unlocked soon to jump back into Star Citizen!

 

[Galava]

Was hesitant to comment on this thread just by seeing all the usual comments, but I think Dictator and the DF team deserve some praise for their work.

Keep it up! Looking forward to the next videos!

As a note, CIG is working to completely transition from Dx11 to Vulkan this year, they've been working on that for a long time now, and I think that could make for a great video analysis for the Vulkan API and how SC will perform on that. (please? :P)

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

You have your answer already.

Since it's basically a new genre with no proven engines, you won't get away by simply licensing something someone else made. Either you have a HUGE experise to make your tech brand new, or you'll keep struggling.

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Yeah, I don't know... It's almost like they decided to hire half of the former Crytek employees for a reason.

They've been basically building up the Lumberyard engine for Amazon in the last two years.

 

[KKRT]

SC original release date was 2014, I can't say for sure that they would have been further along by now if they had developed their own tech but it's very likely.

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They wouldnt be further along and not only because making a new engine is enormous undertaking, but also because they didnt have people to do it for almost 2 years.

Btw they reworked or improved their tools multiple times already, because its iterative process and there are no examples that they can base it on, so even if they would created their own engine from ground up, they would iterate and rework it as many times as CryEngine.

A good read about creating new engine for something that was never done before is Media Molecule's presentation about their engine for Dreams:

http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/AlexEvans_SIGGRAPH-2015-sml.pdf

It took them 4 years and 4 complete start overs to get to the base of the engine they have today.


---

As a note, CIG is working to completely transition from Dx11 to Vulkan this year, they've been working on that for a long time now, and I think that could make for a great video analysis for the Vulkan API and how SC will perform on that. (please? :P)

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I think this could be hard, because CIG will probably disable DX11 when they implement Vulkan. Nothing concrete was said about it though, so its just my speculation.

 

[Dennis8K]

Interesting video.

 

[Galava]

I think this could be hard, because CIG will probably disable DX11 when they implement Vulkan. Nothing concrete was said about it though, so its just my speculation.

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Yeah, they did say that they will be dropping Dx11 after Vulkan, but I hope that for a short while we have both options in case Vulkan is too buggy in the beginning.

 

[Observable]

I've seen some harsh criticism in the last few DF threads, which I'm not sure is justified?

I actually really liked this video. I think the tech behind this game is really interesting and for an outlet like DF, that should be what it's about. I fully understand people's problems with SC's business model. I find it predatory to an extent and won't buy into the game until its a fully functional product, which for me will be when the single player releases (if it turns out to be good). But not every video or thread has to be about that aspect. They're doing amazing things on the tech side which also deserve to be highlighted.

So to Dark1x Dictator , don't let the criticism stop you or get to you too much, I think there's a large audience out there that appreciates the work that goes into these video's.

 

[Galava]

I've seen some harsh criticism in the last few DF threads, which I'm not sure is justified?

I actually really liked this video. I think the tech behind this game is really interesting and for an outlet like DF, that should be what it's about. I fully understand people's problems with SC's business model. I find it predatory to an extent and won't buy into the game until its a fully functional product, which for me will be when the single player releases (if it turns out to be good). But not every video has to be about that aspect. They're doing amazing things on the tech side which also deserve to be highlighted.

So to Dark1x Dictator , don't let the criticism stop you or get to you too much, I think there's a large audience out there that appreciates the work that goes into these video's.

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There is no problem in discussing CIG's management and/or SC's business model, but do it on a thread about that specific topic, not on a thread about a third-party doing a tech analysis video. That's the problem we all have. Of course people are allowed to criticize the game/developer, but there are places to discuss that.

It's also sad that on every other thread, derailment is punished, while on SC threads it's not.

 

[Observable]

There is no problem in discussing CIG's management and/or SC's business model, but do it on a thread about that specific topic, not on a thread about a third-party doing a tech analysis video. That's the problem we all have. Of course people are allowed to criticize the game/developer, but there are places to discuss that.

It's also sad that on every other thread, derailment is punished, while on SC threads it's not.

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Yes sorry if it wasn't clear from my post, but that's exactly what I meant.

Trying to go back to tech discussion: to what extent would it be possible to implement Ray Tracing on a game with a scale like this. It's not using it at the moment right?

 

[Galava]

Yes sorry if it wasn't clear from my post, but that's exactly what I meant.

Trying to go back to tech discussion: to what extent would it be possible to implement Ray Tracing on a game with a scale like this. It's not using it at the moment right?

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Yeah, I was just elaborating or adding to your post, not contradicting anything you said :D

Regarding ray tracing, last year someone asked about it on SC's forums, and a dev said this: (white(black) text = player, yellow text = CIG developer)

RTX - Star Citizen Spectrum

Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?

www.robertsspaceindustries.com

Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?

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Not in the slightest. I expect, if we use it, it'll be a massive headache and time-sink but might give us some subtle improvements in looks or performance if we get it right.

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Do you plan to try it or make some research anyway?

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I'd love to, it looks like fun, but at the moment we have other high priority tasks on the roadmap

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I assumed it would be less work due to the whole "...add a light and Viola! No need for environmental lighting!" thing.

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It's more likely to be a case of
"We've got a test-bed scene for a ray-based environment lighting technique, it works for one type of light so far, here's a list of things you can no longer safely have in a room without it breaking, with rough probabilities of how likely we are to work out a solution"
The added headache is that whatever we offered would have to be an "as well" feature rather than an "instead", developing a feature for a single manufacturer's top-end cards means also maintaining feature parity for everyone else's hardware.

Personally I'd like to use it to make the shadows crispier.

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So basically, not a priority, the game does not need it right now and it would be a huge time sink to implement and make it properly work with everything that's in place right now.

imo it's not happening until the game is "complete"

 

[Carmelozi]

Dictator thank you for this video, do you know how Beyond Good & Evil 2 technology compare to Star Citizen? I know their scales are different but they seem to have an ambitious engine/technologies.

 

[Iron Eddie]

Cool insight to the tech involved. Makes me want to play the game even more but I would have to use my Steam controller. Playing with keyboards especially for movement is not something i am either good at or fond of.

 

[Vitamin_B_Complex]

I don't know why this game doesn't impress me visually. Maybe it's the art direction or whatever so while the tech might be impressive, what they are doing with it just doesn't do it for me. But I'm glad people are enjoying their hard work.

 

[Observable]

Yeah, I was just elaborating or adding to your post, not contradicting anything you said :D

Regarding ray tracing, last year someone asked about it on SC's forums, and a dev said this: (white(black) text = player, yellow text = CIG developer)

RTX - Star Citizen Spectrum

Do you, as I, believe that RTX tech will save you devs so much work farther along and look absolutely spanking?

www.robertsspaceindustries.com

So basically, not a priority, the game does not need it right now and it would be a huge time sink to implement and make it properly work with everything that's in place right now.

imo it's not happening until the game is "complete"

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Ah yes I understand; as long as it's not feasible as a complete replacement it just means extra work. Thank you.

 

[More Butter]

This game is beautiful

 

[Raticus79]

Cool insight to the tech involved. Makes me want to play the game even more but I would have to use my Steam controller. Playing with keyboards especially for movement is not something i am either good at or fond of.

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I found the Steam controller worked well for it, but I had to use an overlay/launcher (GLoSC) since the usual method to add a non-Steam game didn't work with their launcher. Not sure if that's still necessary, but could be handy in case you run into the same problem with the command line.

 

[KKRT]

Dictator thank you for this video, do you know how Beyond Good & Evil 2 technology compare to Star Citizen? I know their scales are different but they seem to have an ambitious engine/technologies.

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The problem with BG&E 2 is that you cannot play it yet, so its hard to compare only based on very few videos from developers.

 

[Sidebuster]

Love these videos you do on SC Dictator. I have a question though, will you be talking about the server meshing they're planning on implimenting or is the video series going to be exclusively about graphical tech?

 

[LCGeek]

Good video. I enjoyed it as a next-gen showcase.

One question: How much improvement can we expect with pop-in with next-gen's SSDs? Now that lighting, aliasing and tearing are essentially solved, the biggest (non-framerate related) eyesore becomes pop-in. I'd ask devs but I assume they're almost all NDA'ed.

How much do you reckon random IO matters to pop in? Random read is "only" 30 MB/s compared to sequential speed that is literally 100+ times faster. So which one is the limiting factor?

As HDDs are removed as a bottleneck for asset streaming to the screen, how far do we get before the APU becomes the bottleneck, if it's not already the case.

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OS are becoming our own bottlenecks. Some were made for an age in which this tech didn't exist. Besides cpu stacks how IO works especially if we talking windows should be redone. It's not bad in unix, bsd, or linux environment where you have more options how to leverage your power. No os is perfect in a cpu scheduler or how IO is handled.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I've seen some harsh criticism in the last few DF threads, which I'm not sure is justified?

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The short of it is that they weren't console-centric videos so people were MAD and salty about it.

 

[fanboi]

The sort of it is that they weren't console-centric videos so people were MAD and salty about it.

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Really? That is juvenile.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Really? That is juvenile.

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I mean, the two "highly controversial videos" were about RTX (an openly sponsored one, too) and about Star Citizen.
And the complaints all had a... certain peculiar flavor, so to say.
I see a pattern.

 

[Iron Eddie]

I found the Steam controller worked well for it, but I had to use an overlay/launcher (GLoSC) since the usual method to add a non-Steam game didn't work with their launcher. Not sure if that's still necessary, but could be handy in case you run into the same problem with the command line.

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Ok thank you for that.

 

[DealWithIt]

I reiterate, if ERA wants to keep industry people here, they need to moderate the conversation better, then have user say this is ad for the game and so on.

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Mostly agree. DF threads have been nightmares over nothing lately. We have access to these super incredible people, and posters are just harassing them.

 

[bell_hooks]

Can anyone fucking acknowladge that in video Alex clearly says it's Part I focusing on scale? There will be more videos and if he sees fit to critique this game he will, if not he doesn't have to. DF in not governmentall institution payed from your taxes to look into video games. It is a Youtube channel (and website) that focuses on interesting technology. Often on shortcomings, but never on stupid drama. Did GamerGate boys get hold of this threads or what happened?
I am not DF fanboy, if ever they produce something I do not find enjoying then I do not watch it. But I can see John as a creator getting frustrated with hate, I know that is not healthy for him or anyone who enjoys his content. If you have feedback it is great place to post it but be understanding that what you are talking about is entertainment videos. They usually have supreme production value and are informative, however they are not investigating corruption in your country or whatever, so you call them "biased".

 

[Karlinel]

I don't think you have that much money.

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To be fair, not even Michael Bloomberg has that kind of disposable income.

 

[SleepSmasher]

I reiterate, if ERA wants to keep industry people here, they need to moderate the conversation better, then have user say this is ad for the game and so on.

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I seriously think that ship has sailed already - Era's reputation is quite bad out there. Not sure if moderation (excessive or in some cases lack of) are the sole reasons for this. User base plays a large role and for some reason Era has some very shitty individuals.

 

[GTAce]

Thanks for the amazing in-depth look! Educational and fascinating.

 

[Falchion]

I hope it can release before too many more years because it would be cool to play this.

 

[Hyaku Shiki]

I have a question! If my two friends and myself all buy a ship and whatever to be able to play (I think $45 USD), can we fly anywhere in this world and just explore. Can we all choose to all get into one of our ships and go check out some planets?

What is the extent of the game so far? Is it just a star system with a few planets to explore? We are very interested in just playing around and checking it out but not sure what we can do in it.

Can one of us buy a ship and the others just pay the $15 (I think) to get in, and then we all use one ship?

Thanks for any guidance.

 

[laxu]

I have a question! If my two friends and myself all buy a ship and whatever to be able to play (I think $45 USD), can we fly anywhere in this world and just explore. Can we all choose to all get into one of our ships and go check out some planets?

What is the extent of the game so far? Is it just a star system with a few planets to explore? We are very interested in just playing around and checking it out but not sure what we can do in it.

Can one of us buy a ship and the others just pay the $15 (I think) to get in, and then we all use one ship?

Thanks for any guidance.

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Instead of buying anything, wait for a free weekend to try the game. Usually goes together with new features as well.

 

[Cmdr Krunch]

Man, I loved the video. SO disappointed to see all the immature whinging and derailment happening in this and the other DF thread. I'm starting to understand why I've been seeing less industry people bothering to post here over time. It's funny, the entire premise of this site and it's strict user creation and moderation standards was to lower toxicity yet this is one of the most toxic forums I've lurked/participated in. Can't even have a thread about game technology or hardware without being derailed by pissbabies and console wars.

Shoutout to DF, keep making excellent tech videos. I'm excited for part 2 of your Star Citizen analysis.