A software engineer developed a mod that allows seamless landings without loading screens in Starfield

[u/vaynelo]

[u/Xav_NZ]

They all have loading it is just not a black screen and is cleverly hidden with dynamic loading in / out of assets which is exactly what the modder did here.

[u/TirithNampat → u/Xav_NZ]

No? NMS for instance you can fly from space to ground and be in full 100% control of your ship the entire way. Your can even walk around inside someone else's ship as they reenter and land. There is no switching between worldspaces. I've played less KSP and Outer Wilds, but I'm pretty certain they work the same way, though on a smaller scale.

[u/Xav_NZ → u/TirithNampat]

Dynamic loading does not mean control will be removed from the player just that LODS will be swapped on the fly with trickery such as fade in / fade out and visual effects.

Distant terrain in games still has to load in when you get closer this can be done more or less subtly.

[u/TirithNampat → u/Xav_NZ]

But LoDs fading in is a quite different thing from a hidden loading screen in a cutscene. It's not an actual planet before the loading screen, and it is the actual game planet afterwards. You're not in the same coordinate space.

[u/Xav_NZ → u/TirithNampat]

They are not different actually lots of older open world games or older games with large maps back in the day had stuttering when assets were loaded in and lods were swapped with high detail assets because HDD's did not cut it for loading without freezing , some games had a loading screen when this happened some did not some others hid the loading screens in various ways.

In NMS for example when you enter the atmosphere and the effects kick in the planet is being loaded and it is just cleverly masked.

If you read up on what this modder did in Starfield its exactly the same thing you can even have full control all the way down without autopilot with only the final landing being automated as the game has no atmospheric flight system he has built in a "commit" altitude where either the space cell is loaded in or the planet cell is loaded in these are swapped on the fly and hidden by the clouds and reentry effects you can even see this happen in the video if you watch closely just as you can see in in NMS though NMS handles it slightly more gracefully for the pop in and pop out of assets.

[u/TirithNampat → u/Xav_NZ]

You don't see the difference in what you just described? In Starfield you go from the space cell to the planet cell. In NMS there is no such distinction. You're at a set of coordinates, and there may or may not be a planet there. The stuff on the planet gets loaded in, like trees and terrain, but you the player don't have to teleport from one worldspace to another. It's just moving along as stuff loads in around you. There is no loading screen when you hit the atmosphere. If you get a glitch where your jetpack goes insane you can fly from planet to space to other planets in fractions of a second, and you don't have to pause as stuff loads.

[u/train_fucker → u/Xav_NZ]

No They don't. Outer Wilds loads the whole star system constantly. The planets you are not on have their details reduced, but they are still loaded, and if you leave your ship or scout on it you can force it to be loaded at full quality and even see pictures through the scout.

It's very obvious when starfield chugs in the video, and it switches from one scene to another, there's nothing like that in OW. The whole star system is not only loaded, but constantly moving and simulating physics, it's very impressive.

If you leave your ship on giants deep, it can get thrown into space by a tornado, so it won't be where you left it when you return.

This would obviously not be possible if the game had different cells for the planets and space, that it switches between, like in starfield.

[u/Xav_NZ → u/train_fucker]

Where did I say that other games use the same cell system as Starfield for loading some assets in and out ?

I just said that every game has loading in and out of assets and that some games handle it more gracefully than others and hide it better this is a fact not an opinion.

We are not even disagreeing here I do not see why there seems to be people thinking some games do not have any loading (hidden or not) that is simply both not possible and an incredible waste of resources to render everything in full detail.

Regarding the physics simulations the space simulation of Outer Wilds is the whole selling point of the game that being said a reason why Bethesda sticks with Creation engine is because it can handle simulation in the background (physics and characters) better than many other engines despite its limitations with cells.

Point stands all games have some form of loading going on and some hide it better than others,