It would be nice to have details on islands (i.e. animals, chests, crates) more noticeable from further away. Oftentimes when I'm scanning islands through my spyglass, things don't "pop" into view unless I'm very close. I would like to be able to sail by and only stop on random islands if I see something interesting.
Also, is there a way to have a zoom adjustment on the spyglass while still maintaining its authenticity in a pirate era?
Aye, it often bothers me at Sanctuary/Golden Sands outpost, when I'm spy glassing the outpost to see which side the pier with the merchants on, but it remains a blobby mess, until way past the point I should be turning for a clean dock. I mean I could probably commit it to memory the number of times I've now docked there, but still, it just feels it needs to pop a little earlier.
It’s been nerfed since launch. You are not alone in wanting it reverted back to how it was - when you could actually see items on an island from your ship and not noticeably see them “pop” - or worse look like spotty shadows as is the case now.
Edit* I won’t stop banging on about this until the issue is at least acknowledged by Rare - at most - resolved by being reverted back to how it was. I will again say: the spyglass is redundant, it’s not just the aesthetics - it’s game altering!
@goodcleangamer this is probably the thing I want most right now. I'd happily wait a bit longer for new content just to get it back to how it was to improve the current gameplay experience. Let's make the current content great first and add content after.
@tyburn-ketch said in Draw Distance / Island Details:
It’s been nerfed since launch. You are not alone in wanting it reverted back to how it was - when you could actually see items on an island from your ship and not noticeably see them “pop” - or worse look like spotty shadows as is the case now.
Edit* I won’t stop banging on about this until the issue is at least acknowledged by Rare - at most - resolved by being reverted back to how it was. I will again say: the spyglass is redundant, it’s not just the aesthetics - it’s game altering!
Me too mate, me too. The pop-in is horrible now, even at Mythical settings. I used to be able to use the spyglass to see the Trader Merchant (or whatever she's called) when approaching an outpost and line up my ship for a perfect approach. Now I have to wait until the ugly, ugly, ugly low polygon blobby mess pops into higher detail. However, once that pops, I'm close enough to see where I need to be without the spyglass, but too close to make any manoeuvres for an easy approach.
Also, the sea looks worse, both up close and through the spyglass. The polygons are far more obvious, so the rolling seas of pre 1.01 patch are gone to be replaced by a bunch of obvious triangles.
And also, the dark areas. Something changed in the dark areas, something to do with the lighting. The dark areas are just flat, black, inky smears, and holding aloft the lantern doesn't illuminate the area like it used to. I can't really describe the effect, but the dark areas are somehow less dynamic, flatter, with no depth, as if the my monitor has had the brightness and contrast turned right down.
@macdoland said in Draw Distance / Island Details:
Aye, it often bothers me at Sanctuary/Golden Sands outpost, when I'm spy glassing the outpost to see which side the pier
This is how I remember.
Golden Sannnnnnorth
SanctuarEast.
Ancient SpirEast
Galleon'South
Daggersouth (this one is a bit dubious)
You'll just have to remember that plunder is the only one on the west (or sort of points to plunder valley).
@macdoland said in Draw Distance / Island Details:
Aye, it often bothers me at Sanctuary/Golden Sands outpost, when I'm spy glassing the outpost to see which side the pier with the merchants on, but it remains a blobby mess, until way past the point I should be turning for a clean dock. I mean I could probably commit it to memory the number of times I've now docked there, but still, it just feels it needs to pop a little earlier.
Hot tip: Zoom in super close with the ship map. you can usually work out which pier has the merchant cause you'll see a square chunk.
Still i agree it would be nice to have some decent indication on which side of the island most of the quest givers are. We often derp and land on the wrong side, that's why we use the map now haha
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/48888/streaming-and-island-lods/36
This is a closed insider thread on the subject.
What we have now is not the game I purchased and I want to know if Rare are going to look into this issue further and make the needed adjustments. I will say again: It’s not just the aesthetics. The downgrading of draw distance has actually affected gameplay. The actual tools and mechanics of the game have been altered. The spyglass for instance is now practically obsolete because the draw distance is such that you have to wait for items to “pop” before you can see them and the distance this happens at can be seen by eye! Surely this is not what Rare wants. Where are the answers to this? Actual answers?
Both the animals and player models load in way too late and should be visible from at least twice the distance.
Yesterday one of our crew mates wanted a pick-up from an island and we could not see him standing on the beach. Only after he came a few meters closer he suddenly popped up.
This was both weird and annoying.
@tyburn-ketch They decided to respond to this in the Insider category for whatever reason; probably just need to update the forums so the 'Developer Updates' section can be seen by everyone. Probably not what you're hoping for but here is what they had to say.
@mr-fellblade said in Streaming and Island LODs:
Hi, I'm the Technical Director on the Engine Team at Rare.
Firstly, I wanted to address a few key points:
- The optimisations we’ve made in the patches have been non-destructive algorithmic improvements made by our Rendering Wizards. We’ve not made any changes to intentionally degrade graphical fidelity, on any platform.
- Our streaming system has always loaded the high detail versions of the islands at the same distance on all platforms. This avoids any gameplay imbalance caused by players on higher-specification PCs being able to see things that players on some dual core laptop with a couple of gig of RAM can't. The screenshots on this thread are either far-off islands with their lower-fidelity LOD (level of detail) loaded or higher-LOD islands where the view is not close enough to display the highest-detail terrain. The second scenario is one where we are investigating a potential improvement for platforms running a higher detail level.
- The rate at which an island streams in is variable and hardware dependent. If the game is installed on a mechanical disk then the fragmentation of that disk and the layout of the game files on the disk will have an impact on the speed of loading. Differences in loading speed due to this or other I/O work the system is doing will cause the higher detail LOD to appear at different distances.
However, we take any reports of issues from the community seriously, and we've taken a little time to look into the data around this.
This is the distance in meters from the island at which we make the high detail LOD available – this example is Devil’s Ridge, and the data is taken from Xbox One players on the retail game. There’s no change in the average distance at which we make the island visible across the title’s lifetime. This consistency is the same for all islands on the game, and across all percentiles. The distance you see in game will not always be this value - there is considerable variance dependent on what other loading the I/O system is doing at the time - but any trends would be visible.
The optimisations we’ve made should not cause any change to the appearance of the game. If you notice any significant changes for the worse, then it’s definitely unintentional and we’d want to fix it! For any specific problems, we’d appreciate any detailed information you can give us! Submit a support ticket with screen-shots, and what hardware/quality settings you’re running with.
Thank you for posting this. I had read it already somehow but couldn’t find it again.
Frankly it’s nonsense. How can so many people notice the difference since the first patch? The problem exists. It really must be looked into further.
My system and settings have not changed since launch. The draw distance has been nerfed. Unintentionally or not.
@tyburn-ketch @Inflickked
Yeah, the dev is talking about island LoD, which is different to detail LoD. While the island terrain LoD might not have changed, the fact that the skeletons/chickens/players/pigs/crates etc has is the problem
@tyburn-ketch We've been pressing them to be more communicative on the issue in the other topic, but who knows when we'll get a proper response that isn't just some PR nonsense.
This is as bad as LOD has been for awhile. My guess is it was a change they made to fix the massive screen tearing on the Xbox One X that was introduced shortly before launch, which was the big fix in the same patch where this issue arose. Although that could just be coincidence too; who knows with how little Rare shares with us.
If development continues on like it has the past year we'll just see them ninja some changes between patches, while keeping us largely in the dark, until they find a balance they're happy with.
I have to say that if they ninja this change back on us for the better I will be delighted to have been ninja’d! But as you say ... some communication from them on the subject wouldn’t go amiss.
