This has been a problem forever I think, at least I always had that impression in X games, dating back to Reunion. At least they mitigated the fisheye effect with X:R, and presumably X4 now as well.
Our old friend Obsidian Ant posted his summary from playing the beta. Its positive (he was sent a review copy so like all pro reviews who dont pay for something you should keep that in mind). I should note Obsidian comes from Elite where I think its fair to say he has a very good reputation.
So actually, as far as the gates go, even though they’re called “superhighways” and have the appearance like Rebirth, so far it seems they function mostly like jump gates, where there’s just a quick burst and then you’re in the next area.
However… it seems most of the important objects are way far away from the gate, which is partially compensated for by having a large exit velocity from the gate to let you “glide” to the location. But then when I want to go back to the gate, it’s really far away and my ship is slow. And the time compression button doesn’t seem to do anything. Am I missing something?
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently I wanted “Travel mode” not “time compression”.
Thanks for the heads up. I just booted it and mucked around for 2 secs. gonna dive in more tonight. According to ObsidianAnt the “highways” dont have a mini game now which is good. There are also Gates and Anomalies as travel items as well apparently.
Downloading now. I can’t wait to see what crashes and glitches I experience on release day of an Egosoft game. :)
No time for me to order tonight so I’d appreciate any first impressions from those who have ordered it already. Thanks.
So far the little i played has been wandering around doing some missions and apparently stumbling upon some plot mission. (i started the explorer career)
I can say that that’s pretty (like always), the UI is confusing (like always), and the controls are confusing (like always). I have been having some weird bug that teleports me around the place sometimes but so far its too early to complain.
Not even out of the Settings menu and already with my first major issue. :) I have a GTX 1080 with a gsync monitor and for some reason the game won’t let me disable Vsync, which is greyed out. The tooltip for Vsync Off is “this is not supported by your hardware”, which is rather amusing. Vsync + Gsync does not play well together, and a quick Google search shows I’m not the only one having this problem. Thankfully it looks like they’re saying they were able to get Vsync forced off via the Nvidia control panel, so I’m going to try that.
A very Egosoft launch thus far!
EDIT: Turns out, to turn off Vsync with a Gsync display you must select “Triple Buffering Vsync”, because reasons! But now I’m moving about glossy smooth instead of that 15fps horrorshow a moment ago!
Also OMG THE MAP CONTROLS.
The UI sure doesn’t seem any better - now with an obsession with right clicking! But the game so far feels a lot closer to X3 release than X:R release. I flew around, did some missions, pissed off the cops, ran away from the cops, and didn’t have any major bugs to that point. Autopilot randomly turns off and still (after 20 years!) sometimes suicidally rams something. It also doesn’t automatically engage travel mode, so it suddenly switches to super slow when you’re not looking.
But the only thing that was unexpected rage was when I captured a small fighter off a pirate and couldn’t order it to do anything because it wants a captain. (Seriously? It’s like a thousand years in the future and a computer can’t handle basic fly and dock?) So I go to a nearby station I need for a mission anyway and pick up some crew, then I fly back to my new ship. Nope, sorry, my crew can’t handle spacewalking a few meters. So I have to go into the new ship, manually fly it to the nearest station, order my old ship to fly to the same station, then finally transfer crew around until I have two piloted ships. Who on earth thought this was a good idea?
Good bad?
Also, what if someone has never played the series. Will the tutorial help you? Or is it super dense and tosses you off a cliff?
Not perfect, but still decent (there was none in the other games)
The tutorials are barebones and mostly provide answers to specific tasks. Combining those tasks into actual gameplay is left to the user. They’re useful and get the job done for the most part, but they’re a long way from the hand-holding guidance you’d expect from most polished games.
The tutorials are also SO FRAGILE. I can’t complete the Ship Modes or Basic Map tutorial. In the latter, am I supposed to get a 2nd ship or anything? If I try to skip to the next, it tells me I can’t do it because I need a second ship to command.
My first issue was to nullify all the mappings from joysticks to mouse inputs. So the mouse was moving on its own volition somewhere past the upper right corner of my screen. Fortunately EGOSOFT allows to navigate the menus with the keyboard, otherwise this would have been an insta refund.
Why Egosoft thought it would be a good idea to leave those mappings active… perhaps only playing with a game controller? HOTAS setups generate very small inputs all the time.
So the first tutorial was setting up one’s joystick/HOTAS.
FINE, I’LL PLUG IN EVERYTHING.
I follow the tutorial, THINKING I set everything up properly.
Undock and hit a wall. Throttle is set to zero, yet I’m moving forward.
Keyboard and mouse it is!
Sorry this is off topic but apparently the best performance with a gsync monitor is to keep vsync on, so I read somewhere anyway.
Agree with this, the tutorials are basically semi broken mini quests. Happily it seems like you can restart them easy enough but they do seem needlessly fragile.
Edit
Ugh the task of learning’s a new sims particular brand of hidden hotkeys/modes and other assorted arcana.
To be expected in a game that has flight, ground , fleet control, base building, ship management and ship outfitting + a full dynamic economy sim but still. This is a lot. I may have to make a keyboard overlay old school.
Yeah, looks like I may not be able to blame Egosoft for the Gsync issues.
Can confirm that the suggested settings work much better.
It was already set that way when I launched it. Running fine.