 This is a Witchspace News Odyssey Supplemental, I'm CMDR Buur. In this special report, Odyssey Alpha Phase 4 goes live and Frontier livestream a double whammy of interviews with two key Odyssey developers. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, click the little bell icon and remember to select all notifications and to further help support the work of this channel, you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. As we record this video, Phase 4 of the Alpha test for Elite Dangerous Odyssey has just gone live. Phase 4 of the Alpha is primarily a test of Frontier's ability to migrate the oodles of existing player data into the new version of Elite so that that process has hopefully as few surprises left in it as possible when the time for Odyssey's full release comes. You may remember that Frontier took a snapshot of everyone's account and status a week or so ago and that data is being used as the subject to inject into the Alpha after moving everyone's characters to the 50 light year bubble around Nervy that we've been locked into for the Alpha so far. As of recording there are some problems with a number of commander's accounts in Odyssey with ships or in some cases commanders themselves not being available. Frontier are aware of the issues and it is being looked at. This is exactly what this stage of the Alpha was designed to be testing so it's better that this happens now than on the release of Odyssey. We've linked in the description below this video to the issue tracker at Frontier whilst Frontier are looking at the problem it is worth registering your issue if you are one of the unlucky ones. We've also linked below to the forum post detailing this stage of the Alpha there are a significant number of known problems listed there which is worth familiarising yourself with before you jump in just in case you encounter a problem that is already known about. As I've mentioned this stage of the Alpha uses a snapshot of your commander taken from the main game and we will be restricted to the 50 light year bubble that we were in previous versions of the Alpha. In addition to what was previously available this new version of the Alpha also adds wing missions and the ship depo system 4 missions, power play, text brokers, search and rescue contacts and research station contacts. The current plan is for the Alpha to run through to the 5th of May with the full game becoming available on the 19th of May. So to kick off the duo of interviews last night community managers Bruce and Zach were first joined by Piers Jackson who is Odyssey's game director. After describing his role at Frontier with regard to Odyssey specifically Piers then went on to talk about the challenges of dealing with multiple teams all working from home due to the Covid pandemic and then described how the different phases of the Alpha thus far had played out and what they were expecting from phase 4. Piers was at pains to underlie again something that we've heard from Frontier on numerous live streams now that even phase 4 of the Alpha does not represent the full Odyssey experience and that numerous features are being held back for the full release. He also went on to describe in layman's terms the system of software development that Frontier employs whereby there is a main trunk of development for the game and the version that we currently have access to is just a branch off of that trunk that is further developed and added to completely separately to the main trunk of development which still has development going on in it. And in actual fact since the branch we're seeing was created the two builds have diverged quite significantly with just specific experience breaking bugs being targeted for fixes in the Alpha branch. The main branch of development has actually seen, in Piers words, thousands and thousands of fixes since the two builds diverged. The main trunk actually has a much wider range of content in it, the examples that Piers listed specifically were weapons, settlement types and the finalised planetary tech, more on that in a moment. Piers then went on to talk briefly about some of the improvements that were already being addressed in Odyssey as a result of the Alpha. NPC's swarming behaviour has been tinkered with, NPC's use of grenades has been adjusted to allow them to throw grenades tactically when the player goes into cover or is on a rooftop and they're looking into the issue of combat zone drop troops being run over by opposing factions player ships. So occlusion of players by walls etc has been improved indoors so that player actions are less detectable by AI allowing for greater use of stealth and he also spoke about tweaks to the crime and punishment system in the Alpha and how theft from installations in particular was treated in the Alpha and following on from initial observations the system was tweaked to make theft of objects from installations a little less risky. Piers then spoke about the 9 new engineers coming to the Elite Dangerous Odyssey that will all be able to make modifications to your weapons and suits and as examples he spoke about a modification that would make weapons switching faster and another that would auto reload your weapon when it was stowed on your backpack. He also highlighted two types of suppressors that can be fitted to enable silent takedowns one for use in an atmosphere and one for use outside of atmospheres. Before wrapping up his contribution to the stream Piers detailed the new tutorial system that will ship with Odyssey which will see new players taken on a mission that steps them through a settlement based scenario and an NPC encounter as an introduction to the new mechanics. For anyone who already plays early the new tutorial will appear in the style of a flashback memory before the player is put back into their SRV or ship which seems like a really cool idea. For the second half of the stream the team spoke with Dr K Ross the principal render programmer it's known for her and her team's work with the stellar forge system that creates and maintains the galaxy that we play in and planetary rendering technology that creates everything we see on the ground in horizons and of course now Odyssey. Dr Ross kicked off her portion of the stream talking about how nerve-wracking it was seeing people interacting in Odyssey for the first time after she and her team had spent multiple years working on it in the background. She was also keen to reiterate that the game absolutely had not been fully optimised yet and that covid driven work conditions had made that process harder as they ordinarily have access to a dedicated lab at frontier specifically for rapid testing of different hardware configurations and she was at pains to underline that we will see significant improvements to optimisation for the full release. She then went on to discuss the new planetary rendering tech and at this point previously unreleased images of the finalised planet tech was shown on screen and you can see those images on screen now. Just discussing how the alpha we're playing right now shows prototype and place holder terrain and object scattering, Dr Kay went on to describe how the final system will allow players to identify terrain that might be of interest from space just by looking at it such as the detail that Odyssey is able to display at distance. Dr Ross also pointed out that whilst Odyssey's terrain is constructed from a blending of procedural and handcrafted terrain features the team have pushed to create more canyon features to cater for the hooning and canyon running community within elite which was great to hear. The team then went on to discuss the scatter system and again she was keen to underline that the scatter system seen in the alpha currently is a prototype and that in the last few weeks it has been significantly improved upon to ensure that the placement of rocks as well as organics etc is much more realistic all of these features are being brought to existing horizon planets as well meaning that the placement of existing organics for example will again be more realistic but also that the introduction of Odyssey will mean that they are not necessarily in the same spot on a planet that they used to be. Dr Kay was also at pains to offer reassurance to the SRV community that the current terrain noise and scatter generation system seen in the alpha should not be taken as final and that they should see significant improvements in terrain navigability where appropriate in the final release. The interview then progressed on to talking about the multiple different flavours of terrain that can be present on one planet what Dr Kay has referred to as geomes in a previous stream and then she went on to address the use of physically based rendering in the update that should significantly improve the quality and depth of the visuals and colours that Illy is able to display. The issue of atmospheres and their appearance in the game was then addressed and the stream displayed the images you can see on screen now showing different colours of starlight being affected by the chemical composition of different atmospheres. Then the team at pains to point out that what we are seeing in the alpha is not the final product and the light scattering features being discussed simply aren't activated in the alpha which results in most of the atmospheric worlds having the same generic hue to them. The final light scattering tech in Odyssey will display numerous different colours and hues based on the chemical make up of the atmosphere present. After that pretty much sums up everything that was said overall two very interesting discussions the overriding theme being reiterated and underlined again from frontier the alpha is not the final build of Odyssey and doesn't include anything like all the features of the final product. There is still yet more to come when Odyssey finally launches on the 19th of May. That's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then 07 commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack we very much look forward to seeing you next time.