Greetings Commanders.
Elite Dangerous servers are now offline, ready to accommodate Update 8 for Odyssey today.
Servers will be back online with the update available at approximately 15:00 BST (14:00 UTC).
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Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Update 8
Updates Of Note
• The Alliance Crusader, Anaconda, Beluga, Federal Corvette, Imperial Cutter, Type9 and Type10 now support multicrew of 4
• Added the 4 new Engineers (Baltanos, Eleanor Bresa, Rosa Dayette, Yi Shen) to the Colonia region.
o More info in the Engineers section of the update notes below.
• You can now disembark into the internal concourse on Wells-Class Megaships.
o Be sure to check out more info in the Megaships section of the update notes below.
• Emotes and the the Emote Marker System have been added into the game o7.
o Salute, Wave, Applaud, Disagree, Agree, Point, Stop, Advance/Go
o More info in ‘The Emote and Marker System’ section of these notes (It’s right below us actually).
• Added new missions to meet and interact with characters at settlements.
• Added new Delivery and Smuggling missions.
• Added bounty hunter and assassin ships to some Odyssey missions.
o More info in the ‘Missions’ section of these update notes.
• Updated cosmetics from Horizons to integrate properly with the Odyssey version of the game.
o More info in the ‘Character’ section of these update notes.
The Emote and Marker System
Commander Emotes and the 'Emote Marker System' have been added into the game o7.
Commanders can activate the wheel via the binding in-game under "emotes" for on-foot controls. You also have the ability to bind the individual emotes to keys of choice.
The Emotes available as part of Update 8 are: Salute, Wave, Applaud, Disagree, Agree, Point, Stop, Advance/Go
• The Emote Wheel has been added to all control schemes.
o Works much like the on foot wheel works,
• Added the ability to bind other emotes directly, allowing all emotes to be triggered without the emote wheel.
• The Point emote also prompts a marker in-game as well as an appropriate message in the comms panel.
o The Point emote has also been bound to all default control schemes.
AI
• Dropship obstacle avoidance has been improved.
• Enforcers are now better able to maintain a line of sight on targets when fighting in undulating terrain.
• AI ships above settlements will no longer get stuck circling each other.
• AI Pilots have been taught how to better chase targets across planetary surfaces to stay hot on that tail.
• Thargoid scavengers should no longer clip through the ground.
• AI will now perform some emotes back at the player.
• Conflict zone anti-aircraft turrets can now target ship launched fighters.
• Ships auto-landing on terrain now pick better landing spots and are better able to execute landing manoeuvres smoothly.
• Settlement skimmers can now attack players positioned above them.
• Ships using Supercruise assist should now avoid applying undue roll.
• AI no longer prevent the settlement alarm from turning off if they see a neutral player.
• Vendors and Mission Givers now have lipsync animations
o So there may be some instances where potentially taxi Pilots or other really niche characters might still be broken – we have separate logs for these guys. For example: The pilot at the end of the on foot tutorial doesn't have lip sync for his audio.
Audio
• Fixed some issues with NPC voice audibility when a full-screen menu exists, like the engineers, and the ship vendors.
• Fixed the retrodrive audio emitter positions being a bit off on the Type-10.
• Fixed some cockpit audio emitter positions being a bit off on the federation corvette.
• Fixed the cockpit role panel triggering the wrong UI sounds.
• Improved the mix on the very loud mining lasers at some surface settlements.
• Fixed some odd audio anomalies on the holo-screens in settlements and social spaces.
• The ambiences in the turbolift area will sound more varied now.
• Fix for SRV turret movements not being audible to other players in your instance.
• Fixed the music above the apex counter in outpost settlements. It was accidentally muted and silent discos aren’t all that fun.
• Fixed announcer voices inside landing pad hangars. They were often not working properly.
• Fixed the very loud player breathing sounds (awkward) in ships when life support is disabled.
• Improved ship launch and land sounds.
o Most notably, if you land and then disembark immediately the landing spooling down sound should no longer cut off abruptly.
• Added a slight delay on a couple of the Apex vendor lines so you don’t hear them fade in when you exit the Apex map.
• Fix for the “Oxygen Depleted” COVAS line always being cut off during asphyxiation. The timing is better now.
• Fix for your Commander audibly gasping when disembarking from a vessel for the first time in that session
• Fixed some incorrect NPC crew lines occurring when both player and crew are deployed in and swapping between fighters and mothership.
o For example, oddities like the NPC in a fighter saying “the ship is mine” when a player swaps from helm into a 2nd fighter.
• Fix for suit voice line “A member of your team has been killed”. It wasn’t hooked up correctly.
• Fix for on foot music system not correctly identifying when player is no longer trespassing.
• Fix for the energy recharge sound not resuming after you discharge your energy link tool while in the ship boarding circle.
• Fix for turbolift door sometimes being silent on arrival.
• Fix for crash in the dialogue system sometimes caused by NPCs having a conversation in a multiplayer situation (rude).
• Fix for insight markers triggered by terminals not playing the correct ping sound.
• Fix for room ambience audio hard snapping between room entrances, when a room has multiple doors.
• Fix for social space adverts and announcers attempting to play at the same time.
• Improved some energy-related suit voice cooldown times.
• Fix for the GUI sounds in the shipyard being incorrectly silent.
• Fixed various reverb, audio propagation and render culling issues in some of the smaller settlement structures that include inside areas.
Character
• Updated Existing Horizons cosmetics to have Odyssey Variants.
o The existing Horizons Cosmetics now have Odyssey counterparts included in their packs for no additional cost!
o Each piece of the existing gear has been split up into a torso and a legs section, allowing for compatibility with already existing Odyssey attire!
o The torso section also supports under suits allowing players to customise the base suit with existing cosmetics and have it appear underneath the jackets from the horizons packs.
• Rectified some erroneous balance values with Jump Assist on different suit types.
o With a recent update, some of the abilities to jump swayed from their original designs, we set the values back to the new scaling.
Conflict Zones
• An issue has been fixed which would cause conflict zones to occasionally spawn too close to starports.
Commodity Trading
• Fixed a Yellow Adder error when selling mission-linked cargo to a black market or Fleet Carrier.
Engineers
Welcome!! Engineers Baltanos, Eleanor Bresa, Rosa Dayette, Yi Shen are now available in the Colonia region.
Baltanos
• Real Noise Suppression (Pressurised/Atmosphere)
• Accuracy
• Handling
• Jump Assist
• Improved Life Support
• Sprint Duration
• ADS movement
Eleanor
• Clip Size
• Reload Speed
• Backpack reload
• Increased Ammo reserves
• Armour rating
• Shield Regen
• Increases melee damage
Rosa
• Range
• Scope
• Stability
• Backpack Capacity
• Improve Radar
• tool battery
• Battery capacity
Yi
• Synthetic audio suppression
• Headshot damage
• Quieter footsteps
• Night vision
Megaships
Social spaces have been added to the standard Wells-Class Megaships!
• These social spaces include some or all of the following services:
• Inter Astra
• Apex Interstellar
• Vista Genomics
• Pioneer Supplies
• Bartender
• Frontline Solutions
• Escape Pods
o Escape Pods are available at Megaships to cover any rare situations whereby players might find themselves trapped on a Megaship and are unable to get back to their own ship.
o When you choose to use a friendly, ever supportive Escape Pod (they need a nice name) It basically sends you through the "deathflow", where you'll eventually wake up at a safe location instead.
Fleet Carriers
• When modules are added to the fleet carrier, the capacity limit increases equal to the module.
o You can read more about exactly what this fix tackles (because it's lots of info) over at the following post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-update-8-to-include-fleet-carrier-capacity-values-fix.592123
• Prevented a case of items sometimes getting duplicated via Fleet Carriers.
• Fleet carrier UI Interactivity fixes:
o Following Update 7, the Fleet Carrier and Carrier Services screen failed to load properly and could not be interacted with. This has now been fixed.
o Fixed an issue where suspending fleet carrier services would cause the station services UI to softlock.
Interactions
• New “damage decals” for glass and metal surfaces when using the rocket launchers have been added.
• Fix for decals appearing incorrectly on turrets:
o Bullethole effects wouldn't rotate with the turret itself.
o Explosion decals could look a bit odd.
• Fix implemented for an issue where turrets occasionally failed to self-correcting their alignment.
• The cuttable panel on the Atmospheric Processor unit should always fall outwards, and shouldn't get stuck within the recess.
• A fix has been implemented to combat an invisible wall that could appear and block the Player from accessing the engineer Liz Ryder.
• Ship-launched-fighters no longer contribute to Conflict Zones at settlements.
o Relieves the chance of exploit.
• The Thermal Conduit experimental effect now provides a subtle change to the laser intensity to reflect how active the effect currently is.
• A fix has been implemented for an issue whereby players could become unable to retrieve their ship with cargo aboard, after dying on foot.
Lighting & VFX
• The Recharge Tool now has VFX that is visible when viewed by another player in the same instance.
• Various light fixes at Horizons settlement locations.
• The Cockpit overheating VFX will now consistently trigger when appropriate.
o In addition, visual improvements have been made to the cockpit overheating VFX.
• Improvements made to the Thargoid “Portal” effect.
o The portal is the cool, swirly effect that goes with Thargoids coming and going.
• The Guardian Gauss Cannon explosion VFX has been rebalanced to be more compact.
• Damaged station VFX has been rebalanced.
• Lighting has been boosted in Fleet Carrier hangars.
o This will also boost the lighting in the livery when previewing items
Livery
• Further visual improvements to vehicle paint jobs to closer match their appearance in Horizons:
o Gladiator, Military and Tactical for the Taipan
o Ember & Taxi for Beluga, Dolphin, Hauler and Orca
o Asemic for Beluga and all other supported ships
o Emissary & Messenger for Beluga, Cutter, Dolphin, Courier, Cutter and Orca
o Military for Beluga & Federation Dropship
o Prestige for Beluga, Dolphin and Orca
o Pirate Faction for all ships
o Sheer Line for all ships
o Green United for Beluga and Orca
o Tactical Ice for Beluga
o Metallic SRV Paintjobs
o Chevron, Chrome, Gladiator, Iridescent, Military, Tactical & Vibrant for F63 Condor
Missions
Added mission contacts!
• These are characters that Commanders will meet during missions to fulfil various mission objectives.
• Added new mission types and a new mission variant to utilise mission contacts:
o Delivery
o Smuggling..
o Collection (from Contact).
• Added AI bounty hunter and Assassin ships into some Odyssey missions.
o If you are detected undertaking a mission against a faction, they may send a bounty hunter or Assassin after you.
o These AI will try to interdict you to claim the bounty or enact revenge.
• Added flight risk targets to Assassination and Takedown missions.
o These characters will attempt to flee via a ship if commanders trigger a settlement's alarms or begin attacking the target.
o Failing to stop the target from reaching hyperspace will fail the mission.
• Covert Heist missions from mission providers should now appear more commonly.
• Larceny missions have been adjusted to appear more commonly.
• Fixed Passenger Missions displaying the wrong rewards in alternate routes.
• Fixed guaranteed target fleeing to a point of interest during Professional Takedown missions given by mission boards.
• Fixed Covert Espionage missions sometimes not displaying objectives correctly.
• Fixed Clean Assassination missions sometimes not displaying objectives correctly.
• Fixed Restore missions sometimes causing a disconnect upon Commanders being critically injured
• Fixed Commander inventories not updating when handing over items for delivery or collection missions
Multicrew
• The Alliance Crusader, Anaconda, Beluga, Federal Corvette, Imperial Cutter, Type9 and Type10 now support 4 players in multicrew.
o The 4th seat will appear automatically, there is no need to purchase a new ship.
Organics & Geologicals
• Ice-type spouts now have emissive properties.
• Visual improvements to Geysers and Ice fumaroles.
• Fix for multiple floating fumaroles, lava spouts and geysers on planet surfaces.
Optimisation
The team have been working hard on optimisation as part of this update 8 delivery, with extensive work carried out on Odyssey’s light and shadows, optimisation of glass, skin and particles, along with render layer optimisations and further improvements to the Navmesh.
These have delivered significant performance improvements to the on-foot experience during internal tests. We ARE continuing to investigate where further optimisation can be made and will continue to take feedback on player experiences on case by case basis.
Ok so for the notes below, it's really hard to use less technical language but I'm going to run with it anyway for your interest.
I hope by including GPU or CPU callouts might help a bit with this to provide more of that honed in insight.
• Switch made from tiled to clustered lighting lists which improves the performance of lighting in areas with lots of lights, especially when there is an abundance of semi-transparent materials
o Allows for GPU performance improvements to lit effects such as glass, skin, particles, as well as the GPU light culling.
• Various improvements made to shadow prioritisation to help with performance.
o Allows for CPU performance improvement.
• This was primarily to fix the visual flickering around shadows.
o We have a more refined way of choosing the priority of shadows that display that prevent them appearing. Instances are only fixed on a case by case basis so further reports will be addressed individually.
• Various optimisations to lighting systems and light rendering
o Irradiance shader and memory bandwidth optimisation (GPU performance improvement)
o Textured light shader optimisation to avoid the use of inverse trigonometry (GPU performance improvement)
o Replace a resolve pass with a typed UAV load on supported hardware (GPU performance improvement)
o Shadowed/textured spotlight instancing for less drawcalls (both CPU and GPU improvement)
o Removing unused lighting paths (GPU performance improvement)
• Shader scalarisation optimisations.
• Fix the ordering of terrain rendering to be more optimal around structures.
• Fixed performance drops when on-foot with a number of ships flying above your head.
• Various feature and mission optimisations.
Ship/SRV/Fighter Outfitting
• The transition effect that would play when selecting between ship or SRV paint jobs has returned.
Planets
• Additional set of fixes for the aliasing seen on planet surfaces.
o Otherwise known as: Visual improvements should be seen when peering close up on a planet surface.
• Fixes for hard seams that could appear in the planet on-foot textures have been made.
o Line lines across the floor. Instances of those should no longer be visible.
• Fix implemented for a hard line that could occasionally be seen when blending between textures on planet surfaces.
• Fix implemented for sections of the planet surface disappearing when flying low to the ground.
• Fix implemented for black triangles that could appear on planet surfaces when the Camera Suite cameras were positioned close by to it.
Rendering
• Fix implemented for flickering and jagged looking shadows on multiple objects, including the SRV cockpit glass.
• Fix implemented for glass materials on weapons not rendering in the correct FOV, meaning they could appear offset from the model.
• Fix implemented for the glass on plasma weapons, so it will now render correctly when directly lit.
• Improvements to multiple decals/impact effects including:
o SRV tyre tracks
o Laser trais
o Large explosion marks
• Items, weapons and accessories will now also fade along with your Commander model if another Commander stands within close range of your Commander model in social spaces.
• Improvements and fixes made to mining decals/impact effects on asteroids.
• Fixes implemented for the ship cockpit glass so that dirt, ice and condensation are more visible.
• Re-balances for cockpit glass dirt and scratches have been made.
o These effects have been re-connected to the wear and tear of the ship.
• Increased the depth of room clip volume checks to prevent objects in distant rooms sometimes being erroneously hidden.
Server
• Fixed an issue that prevented combat bonds and bounty vouchers from being awarded to team members after they have boarded another player's vessel.
• Fixed a Black Adder disconnect when boarding an SRV after another team member disembarks from it.
• Fixed an infrequent Scarlet Krait error when controlling a team member's fighter.
• Fixed an internal server error when fetching journal data from the companion API.
Settlements (Odyssey)
• Fix for recharge points being in the wrong position on a terminal at smaller research settlements.
• Workspace lab holograms will now correctly turn off when the settlement loses power.
• The anti-ship turret platform should no longer have rocks clipping through it.
• Fix for some landing pad details disappearing at certain distances.
• Fix for a flickering effects on a glass windows at Engineer Bases.
Settlements (Horizons)
• Fix implemented for materials sometimes spawning under the ground at Dav's Hope.
• Fixes implemented for various clipping and floating objects in various settlements.
• Fixes implemented for overlapping/clipping objects at various settlements.
• Fix implemented for tower bases clipping with terrain.
• Fix implemented for gas tank hitcheck and stretched textures at Industrial settlements.
• Fix for backface culling and LODs on multiple container props.
• Fix implemented for an incorrect collision mesh with ladders at certain settlements.
• Fix for backface culling found on some Horizons biodomes.
• Fix implemented for a number of hitcheck and alignment issues at an abandoned settlements.
• Fix implemented for some floating vents on wrecked Anacondas.
• Fix implemented for backface culling on wrecked objects in some Horizons site locations.
• Fixes for multiple pieces of geometry at Horizons settlements.
• Visual improvement to ground materials at Thargoid sites.
• Fix implemented for some floating rocks at the Jameson crash site.
• Fix implemented to address some visible artefacts seen on some installation sites.
• Hitcheck fix on Thargoid barnacle.
Ships/SRV
• Fixed a Black Adder error when docking a fighter when the ship's owner is controlling another fighter.
• Weapons with a non-legacy plasma slug modification no longer retain premium ammo benefits after refuelling.
• Beluga Camera Suite cameras will no longer clip into hangar walls.
• Corvette cameras as part of the Camera Suite will no longer clip through hangar walls.
• Fix implemented for the Railgun 2B and a variety of smaller weapons from not being able to fire when equipped on certain hardpoints.
• Fix implemented to the physics of the Imperial Clipper landing gear.
• The communications panel in the SRV should now overlap with the schematic UI less.
Tutorial
• Corrected an issue where the AI trainer ship attempts to dock instead of carrying out his scripted task.
• Reduced the likelihood of Dylan getting mad at you for looting when picking up consumables.
• Removed the ability to disembark inside inappropriate tutorial stations
UI
• Fixed the interdiction UI not being visible.
• Suit HUD: Added a new wheel to select emotes.
• Suit HUD: Fixed top right objectives display so it no longer has blank space on mission objectives.
• Station Services: Hiding the main content of the UI when the loading spinner is being displayed.
o This makes sure the spinner will appear over an empty UI when the player's ship is being transferred to the hangar after choosing the Outfitting/Livery options.
• Livery: Amended the timing of when standby audio events are fired off to better match the appearance and disappearance of the loading spinner.
• Transfer Panel - Fixed an issue whereby if there was no image to display, it would use the last used one (often the player's ship).
• Comms Panel: Fixed a variety of issues, including side panel focusing issues, icon alignment and formatting and layout issues when opening and closing some side panels.
• Comms Panel: Fixed an issue where opening the comms panel when using the quickcomms option would cause some layout problems.
• Backpack: Added descriptions and titles to the empty states for the different sections.
• Odyssey Engineers: Added pin blueprint functionality
• Bartender: Added a pin icon for resources needed for pinned blueprints.
• Map Bookmarks: After editing or deleting a bookmark in the manager popup, the focus will remain on the position in the list instead of reverting to the first button.
• Map Bookmarks: Fixed an issue where the numbers for bookmarks being sent to the UI were incorrect.
• Map Bookmarks: Fixed an issue where player and squadron bookmarks weren't counted together in some instances.
• Horizons Engineers: Fixed an incorrect mission audio sound when opening the modules pop-up.
• Role Panel: Fixed an issue related to the panel triggering the wrong audio events.
• Item Wheel: Updated the way the ItemWheel UI handles resizing images so that we can have larger images for Emotes as they do not have item counts.
• Mission Board: Improved formatting for missions with long titles.
• Cockpit: Added in-world Capture Points marker for on foot Conflict Zones
• Codex: Fixed an issue where the middle segment of the archive screen could not be navigated to by controller or keyboard.
• Mission Board: Fixed the planetary icon so it no longer overlaps the superpower icon.
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Known Issues:
Please remember that it's impossible to list out every issue currently known and open in Elite Dangerous right now here in the notes, however I'd like to share a few of the heavy hitters which hopefully help with any concerns from recent reports.
We will of course continue to work through additional feedback and legacy issues moving forward where possible.
• Issues with Atmospheric Lighting:
o We've heard your reports on issues around Atmospheric Lighting, namely those included in the following Issue Tracker report: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42691
o Internal investigation is ongoing.
• During on-foot combat at a conflict zone settlement, the player camera visibly recoils and shakes when taking damage (i.e. taking fire from enemy gunfire, grenade blasts) however sometimes this camera shaking continues after taking said damage, and becomes quite aggressive and uncontrollable.
• The cockpit of the Python does not show cracked glass and iced over effects at the moment.
• A Crash occurs when opening an inbox message from Professor Palin.
o This will affect those switching between Horizons and Odyssey / opening Odyssey mission contracts in Horizons.
o High priority to address and under investigation. Will update on progress asap.
• Commanders should be able to kick other players out of their Wing/Team, and currently cannot.
• Starting Frameshift makes the game freeze/lock (Horizons reported).
o This doesn't happen all of the time, but we want to acknowledge that we're aware it does happen and it's internally logged and being investigated at earliest convenience.
• Players are taking multiple of the same mission to a destination and are sometimes hitting an error. This is under investigation.
• Naming Bookmarks On Creation In The System Map Does Not currently Work
o When navigating into the System Map and selecting a location to bookmark (i.e. a settlement, planet, starport etc.) you are given the option to name the bookmark before confirming its creation. Despite entering a custom name into the field however, after confirming it a UI prompt appears displaying the location's default name (e.g. the name of the settlement) rather than the custom name you just entered.
• Rarity of Settlement Defence Plans.
o Still very much known and tracked.
• Thermal conduit too strong and gives incorrect damage increase.
o Still under internal investigation and tracked.
• Planets and Moons orbit lines not visible in the FSS when in VR.
o Still under internal investigation and tracked.
• Parts of the first person UI are visible when in the Camera Suite free cam, while in the 2nd or 3rd seat of a Type-10.