Improved object loading.

[Daniel L.]

I know the game prides itself upon the whole "no Loading screens" thing but it gets even more annoying when i jump to a planet and it sloooooooooowly pops into existence one chunk at a time, Same with stations and large ships. So my suggestion is that the game do two things:

1# Any objects that the player will encounter on his/her present course within a certain distance will be preloaded into ram so that it will seamlessly appear when the player is in range of it.

2# The no loading screens problem means that when you jump into a system the aforementioned problems will appear. That could be fixed by having the destination load into ram while the Jump drive effect is running, If necessary make the effect take longer for really large objects.

I hope this idea would work and i do sincerely think that a loading screen should not be done without, You may hide it but you cant live right without it :P

 

[starhaiden]

It a good idea

 

[Ithirahad]

I agree fully. Nobody likes those annoying concept art screens with game tips and a progress bar, sure, but literally having "no loading screens!" is nothing more than a cute dream with the level of computing hardware that is available to most people. This sounds like a great way to avoid a lot of the issues we've been having with planets loading in segment-by-segment, which kills immersion.

 

[Groovrider]

I assumed starmade has no loading screens for the same reason Minecraft has none. A loading screen would imply and instance of some sort, as when you journey to the nether or the end. Now, if your talking about making planets instances... That's a whole different argument. Also, what would it look like on a server for an observer on an orbiting station (which is loaded for them) and an incoming ship (for whom it is not loaded) gets a loading screen? Does that player's ship simply freeze? If it does, will it be vulnerable to enemy fire and other hazards?

 

[Ithirahad]

I assumed starmade has no loading screens for the same reason Minecraft has none. A loading screen would imply and instance of some sort, as when you journey to the nether or the end. Now, if your talking about making planets instances... That's a whole different argument. Also, what would it look like on a server for an observer on an orbiting station (which is loaded for them) and an incoming ship (for whom it is not loaded) gets a loading screen? Does that player's ship simply freeze? If it does, will it be vulnerable to enemy fire and other hazards?

We're not talking about instanced planets, that's a discussion for somewhere else. He's talking about extending the jump effect to act as a sort of sector load screen; a thing to mask the loading of the sector you are jumping into so that you don't have to see all those bits of the station or planet you're headed to popping up slowly. (Additionally, preloading things that you are flying towards manually from outside of visual range to prevent the same problem when flying there slower-than-light)

 

[Daniel L.]

We're not talking about instanced planets, that's a discussion for somewhere else. He's talking about extending the jump effect to act as a sort of sector load screen; a thing to mask the loading of the sector you are jumping into so that you don't have to see all those bits of the station or planet you're headed to popping up slowly. (Additionally, preloading things that you are flying towards manually from outside of visual range to prevent the same problem when flying there slower-than-light)

Couldnt have explained it better myself

 

[shadowulf]

Good idea, but might take a bit more RAM to use. Shouldn't be a problem though.

 

[GaeasSon]

Here's a bizarre idea that might help... It's a very different way to achieve the intended effect. What if we could speed-load planets by making them easier to render in stages? We've already got spheres a LONG way off, and stand-in dodecahedrons a bit nearer. Then we approach to render distance and our graphics cards herniate themselves trying to fill everything in. What if we had more layers of distance abstraction? Let the first real render treat all blocks as opaque colored cubes. Closer, and the shaped blocks are re-rendered with their shapes. Closer, and transparent blocks are re-rendered with transparency. Half a sector away, does my client really need to be figuring out the difference between grass and leaves? Sure the machine will wind up doing more total work... but less of it will be all at once.

I do like the idea of the client "warping" while it renders in the background though.