4 ms·

You are making it sound good... I can't imagine playing any FPS at 40FPS. And 40sec of load time on an SSD? That's a lot if you ask me. Fortnite loads in <5sec

You are making it sound good... I can't imagine playing any FPS at 40FPS. And 40sec of load time on an SSD? That's a lot if you ask me. Fortnite loads in <5secs, CS:GO also in <5secs. Just few days ago I installed Quake Champions and the game needs 30+secs to load and it's really frustrating, considering matches are quite fast + their menu forces you to look at all achievements and all the crap I don't care about. Waiting is horrible. It's great hat they are making improvements, but as another commenter said it seems like they haven't polished core gameplay enough -at least not enough for me to care.

wlesieutre 8y ago
One thing to note about Star Citizen is that you load into the universe once and that's it. Assuming no crashes (it'll happen someday) you can play for hours across multiple space stations and planets without another loading screen.
- ponyous 8y ago
  That's a good point about loading times. I haven't played it yet and was just assuming it needs a load screen from system to system.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    If Elite is anything to go by, they 'hide' the loading by showing you flashy 'jump' animations. IMO it takes far too long to get anywhere - and I've traveled in a similar way in Eve Online.
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      Yes, travel from one place to another isn't instantaneous, and they "hide" the loading while you travel. But the game's not supposed to be a fast paced space shooter (check out Everspace for that!), and I don't think they'd take out the travel times even if they could. Trips between moons are maybe 10 seconds, and trips between planets will be longer. But it's very pretty, and the visual effects make it feel fast. Canonically I believe quantum drive around a system is moving about 0.2c. If you don't want a "quantum drive" scene going from one place to another, you're also free to make a seamless flight using regular engines! Port Olisar to Daymar takes a bit under 10 hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iXlgxsEVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iXlgxsEVc (timelapse of that trip condensed to 15 minutes) And if you're in something bigger than a single seat fighter, you can get up and do other stuff around your ship while it's traveling, but it's not a good idea in areas with pirates. Still, more options than a Mass Effect elevator. Flying around a planet/moon all the way down to the surface, getting out of your ship and walking around, and going inside the various outposts happens completely seamlessly. I've only fired it up a couple times since beta 3.1 came out, but my first trip down to Yela was pretty mindblowing.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    For a bit of SC terminology, there are two separate fast travel modes: "jump drive" for long distance FTL between systems and "quantum drive" for zooming between planets within a system. We don't know a ton about the final design for system-to-system jumps yet, but the original concept is that you have to actively fly your ship through a somewhat twisty "jump point" wormhole thing and come out the other side. That would be long enough to cover the loading time, but it's all active gameplay instead of loading screens. It also won't need to load the whole system when you jump in, only the "low poly" versions of planets and moons and whatever large scale spacescaping objects (gas clouds, etc.) are visible from where you come out. The more detailed versions of planets and moons only need to stream in once you pick where you're going within the system spool up your quantum drive to get there.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  I hope they do stream assets on the fly and loading is masqueraded by stuff like travel time. 99.99% of the universe will be invisible at any given time conservatively speaking, likely more. Loading the whole thing doesn't seem the right direction.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    I believe that falls under the "object container streaming" system slated for 3.3 (end of Q3), which a new engine system for efficiently nesting containers. Situations like a room in a ship in a hangar in a space station in a planet's orbit in a star system, such that the parts you need can load in and out seamlessly. There's also related work with getting things like ship spawning off the main thread and improving the networking so that it only sends you data that's relevant to areas you're in. Hopefully this stuff doesn't get pushed further down the schedule because it should make a big difference to performance. You can see their development roadmap online: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citi...
erinaceousjones 8y ago
30 seconds of initial load time is nothing for a game where you can spend hours floating around a galaxy. It's not a "load game -> play 5 minutes -> do something else" type of game. As for not being able to imagine playing any FPS at 40hz -- I grew up playing FPS on computers which really couldn't handle playing FPS, pushing "entry level" $25 nvidia cards past their limits because I wanted the pretty graphics, 40 frames per second sounds amazing when you got accustomed to 15 ;)
- ponyous 8y ago
  About going from 15 to 40 I can totally relate. Been gaming on my laptop for past few years and have finally decided to buy a new rig. ~25->120FPS in Fortnite. I wasn't really enjoying it at 25FPS, but I'm living quite far away from friends so I used it to hangout. I wouldn't play otherwise, it's frustrating when everybody else is twice as good just because of FPS.
mulletbum 8y ago
Overwatch has wait times, not just load times, and it is beloved by FPS players.
- ponyous 8y ago
  Wait times alone do not degrade my gaming experience much, just wanted to say that 40seconds does not sound good. It makes me a bit more frustrated, helping me quit the game sooner than I would otherwise. FPS are the true killer of joy.

wlesieutre 8y ago

One thing to note about Star Citizen is that you load into the universe once and that's it. Assuming no crashes (it'll happen someday) you can play for hours across multiple space stations and planets without another loading screen.

ponyous 8y ago
That's a good point about loading times. I haven't played it yet and was just assuming it needs a load screen from system to system.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  If Elite is anything to go by, they 'hide' the loading by showing you flashy 'jump' animations. IMO it takes far too long to get anywhere - and I've traveled in a similar way in Eve Online.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Yes, travel from one place to another isn't instantaneous, and they "hide" the loading while you travel. But the game's not supposed to be a fast paced space shooter (check out Everspace for that!), and I don't think they'd take out the travel times even if they could. Trips between moons are maybe 10 seconds, and trips between planets will be longer. But it's very pretty, and the visual effects make it feel fast. Canonically I believe quantum drive around a system is moving about 0.2c. If you don't want a "quantum drive" scene going from one place to another, you're also free to make a seamless flight using regular engines! Port Olisar to Daymar takes a bit under 10 hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iXlgxsEVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iXlgxsEVc (timelapse of that trip condensed to 15 minutes) And if you're in something bigger than a single seat fighter, you can get up and do other stuff around your ship while it's traveling, but it's not a good idea in areas with pirates. Still, more options than a Mass Effect elevator. Flying around a planet/moon all the way down to the surface, getting out of your ship and walking around, and going inside the various outposts happens completely seamlessly. I've only fired it up a couple times since beta 3.1 came out, but my first trip down to Yela was pretty mindblowing.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  For a bit of SC terminology, there are two separate fast travel modes: "jump drive" for long distance FTL between systems and "quantum drive" for zooming between planets within a system. We don't know a ton about the final design for system-to-system jumps yet, but the original concept is that you have to actively fly your ship through a somewhat twisty "jump point" wormhole thing and come out the other side. That would be long enough to cover the loading time, but it's all active gameplay instead of loading screens. It also won't need to load the whole system when you jump in, only the "low poly" versions of planets and moons and whatever large scale spacescaping objects (gas clouds, etc.) are visible from where you come out. The more detailed versions of planets and moons only need to stream in once you pick where you're going within the system spool up your quantum drive to get there.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
I hope they do stream assets on the fly and loading is masqueraded by stuff like travel time. 99.99% of the universe will be invisible at any given time conservatively speaking, likely more. Loading the whole thing doesn't seem the right direction.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  I believe that falls under the "object container streaming" system slated for 3.3 (end of Q3), which a new engine system for efficiently nesting containers. Situations like a room in a ship in a hangar in a space station in a planet's orbit in a star system, such that the parts you need can load in and out seamlessly. There's also related work with getting things like ship spawning off the main thread and improving the networking so that it only sends you data that's relevant to areas you're in. Hopefully this stuff doesn't get pushed further down the schedule because it should make a big difference to performance. You can see their development roadmap online: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citizen https://robertsspaceindustries.com/roadmap/board/1-Star-Citi...

erinaceousjones 8y ago

30 seconds of initial load time is nothing for a game where you can spend hours floating around a galaxy. It's not a "load game -> play 5 minutes -> do something else" type of game. As for not being able to imagine playing any FPS at 40hz -- I grew up playing FPS on computers which really couldn't handle playing FPS, pushing "entry level" $25 nvidia cards past their limits because I wanted the pretty graphics, 40 frames per second sounds amazing when you got accustomed to 15 ;)

ponyous 8y ago
About going from 15 to 40 I can totally relate. Been gaming on my laptop for past few years and have finally decided to buy a new rig. ~25->120FPS in Fortnite. I wasn't really enjoying it at 25FPS, but I'm living quite far away from friends so I used it to hangout. I wouldn't play otherwise, it's frustrating when everybody else is twice as good just because of FPS.

mulletbum 8y ago

Overwatch has wait times, not just load times, and it is beloved by FPS players.

ponyous 8y ago
Wait times alone do not degrade my gaming experience much, just wanted to say that 40seconds does not sound good. It makes me a bit more frustrated, helping me quit the game sooner than I would otherwise. FPS are the true killer of joy.