 This is Witchspace News for Friday the 15th of April 2022. I'm CMDR Buur. In Elite Dangerous News this week, there's pre-engineered modules and free paint jobs to grab in-game. There's a special focus on the audio effects within Elite. A new release onto the Arc Store sends some nicely retro vibes through the community. We summarize the latest fdev live stream and more. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe and remember to click the little bell icon and select all notifications and if you'd like to help directly support this channel you can also join our Patreon via the link in the video description. We start the news this week with word from Galnet that three mega ships owned by the definitely not evil and completely trustworthy mega corporation Sirius have been moved to some of the more thargoid intense zones outside of the bubble in which alliance interests are most threatened by the caustic cabbages. Those zones being one in the colsack nebula and two in the witch head sector. The Galnet article states that the mega ships will be selling pre-engineered heat sinks to pilots drawn to the region to aid in any weed killing exercises. The pleiades panic pansies being particularly sensitive to heat signatures when in combat. As of this recording the heat sinks were not yet available on board the mega ships so if you're planning on picking them up maybe wait to hear confirmation that that issue has been resolved before heading out. A new haulage community goal was started on Thursday in the game with the stated goal of building the marlinists up to six new star ports to call their own. As well as the usual credits the CG is also rewarding two paint jobs spread across four ships for the top 100% and the top 50% of contributors. The paint jobs being the tranquil and lush paint jobs respectively for the phantom dbx t9 and anaconda. The paint jobs are of a similar style to those currently being given away as seasonal twitch drop rewards on frontiers live streams. If you've some arcs burning a hole in your pocket and like us have been somewhat frustrated by the lack of variety available on the store of late then today could be your lucky day. Frontier released a new commander outfit onto the store today and rather than the recolours of existing suits that we've been seeing fairly consistently this new very welcome attempt to deprive you of your hard earned is actually pretty original and altogether on point. The retro themed vintage intrepid gear that you can see on screen now is themed towards a sudo 60s space race era astronaut vibe and sports three available colour flashes red blue and yellow and if you're still in the mood to buy stuff then do be aware that frontier are having a publisher sale on steam right now all frontiers titles are included at varying levels of discount and that includes the elite dangerous base game and elite dangerous odyssey those titles getting a 75% discount and a 40% discount respectively the sale on steam will be a time limited thing so don't hang about if you're in the market the funky retro future spacesuits however are not so feel free to indulge at your leisure a fascinating video emerged on reddit this week that shows the view of a gas giant taken from a tidally locked moon in orbit the video shows one screenshot taken every 12 seconds over a period of 18 hours and beautifully demonstrates the real-time orbital mechanics that permeate the elite dangerous universe as created by the game's stellar forge system you know it goes on but rarely get to see it shown so obviously the movement of planets generally being much more subtle to the human eye well worth a look you'll find the video by max uk bg linked in the description below the head of game audio at frontier developments Matthew Florians posted a fascinating video this week to his personal youtube channel that breaks down how the much revered audio in the original game works and how and why it achieves what it does focusing particularly on the noises generated by the engines and weapons on the venerable sidewinder and the very recognizable imperial clipper the video pulls apart the separate elements of each sound and then plays them with accompanying footage to better highlight the noises you hear but don't necessarily know that you hear the footage used is from the original game release and is therefore quite old at this point but the audio is no less spectacular for it and most players of the game will always tell anyone who'll listen how good the audio environment created for the game has always been as well as the regular reactive and ambient noises generated by the ships the video that comes in at just under 14 minutes in length also demonstrates the incredible effects that kick in during a canopy breach when the ship takes damage in combat well worth a look and a listen you'll find Matthew's video linked in the video description below in frontier news this week community manager Bruce Garrido took to the forums early in the week to report back to the community on one of the hallmark issues from the early days of odyssey that being the terrain tile repetition on planet surfaces when viewed from space if you're unfamiliar with the issue then here's a quick bit of background odyssey changed the way planetary surfaces in the game were rendered in odyssey major features on a planet surface like mountain ranges and valleys etc are made up from a number of pre-baked tile sets which can be resized and arranged differently to give a natural appearance annoyingly humans are particularly adept at recognizing patterns in seemingly random noise and this can lead to some very unnatural and somewhat jarring planetary approaches and in some instances significant repetition has been observed of the same tiles being used on a given planet surface with the same features being seen over and over again in several places here at the burpit although we have noticed the tile repetition issue on a couple of occasions whilst obviously less than ideal it hasn't been a constant problem for either of us here and honestly I can't remember the last time I noticed it in game with all that said it is undoubtedly a shame that fdev doesn't have the internal resources to address it further to summarize bruce's post the dev team is not returning to the issue as fixing it would mean fundamental changes to the way the galaxy is generated and doing so would have significant knock on effects that would impact further work on performance bug fixes and new content the issue is therefore being closed and removed from the bug tracker the post finishes by saying that they are continuing to strive for the best possible experience for the highest number of players which is what their current focus allows them to do if this issue with the terrain isn't being looked at then we think it a safe bet that other terrain rendering issues associated with the tileset system are likely not going to be addressed either such as the overall general flatness or indeed in some cases the extreme weird pointy peaks on planetary surfaces and the lack of any significant extremes that used to be found in the galaxy as a whole if that is indeed the case we'll likely never find a mountain like never rest again or ever see the planetary canyons and mountainous features needed by the hooning community to practice their own particular brand of flight assist off extreme flying which although probably peculiarities of the previous procedural generation system did create whole genres of gameplay it was originally planned that at some point horizons would be merged into the new odyssey terrain generation system if that is indeed still the plan then when that happens all those player developed activities and discoveries from the last several years will indeed be gone forever and that will absolutely be a sad day the new galaxy tech without a doubt has brought a new level of realism to the game and this quality really is to be applauded perhaps it is just a case of horizons terrain was more fun and odyssey terrain is much prettier on the frontier thursday livestream the tile repetition issue wasn't mentioned or addressed further and again the team didn't deliver any further development news with regard to console account transfers or any ongoing development of the game aside from the twitch drops which are now an ongoing bonus all other content in this week's show once again came from the community community manager arthur did mention that community frustration with both the account transfer issue and the ongoing lack of any kind of development roadmap from the company with regard to elite dangerous was being passed back into the company and expressed again that as soon as the cms are given something they can share they will do so from Arthur's comments last night it's clearly evident the cm team are hearing the anxiety from the community and that anxiety is being passed back up the chain sadly whomever that feedback is being sent to as yet seems reticent to allow even the merest hint of a timeline or roadmap for this new content and thus there remains this slightly intangible disconnect in frontiers expression of its plans for elite and this in turn constantly leaves the community feeling somewhat disheartened it's worth underlining and remembering that in arthur's post to the forums on the ninth of february he did state that quote the whole team are excited to share all of the upcoming content for this year including new updates content expansions and the next major phase in the ongoing narrative following the azimuth saga finale unquote however since the third of december last year when we were last promised a quote full development update in january 2022 unquote the only solid development news frontier of delivered is what they can't do most notably odyssey on consoles and now the fixing of the terrain repetition issue and whilst that's undoubtedly a valuable part of the development news mix thus far it remains the whole mix we remain hopeful that whomever holds the strings on the flow of information within frontier before it reaches the cms is listening and understands the frustration that the current policy is causing are you grabbing your commander a retro spacesuit or are you heading to the fargoid hotspots for some cool down heat sinks let us know in the comments below that's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then oh seven 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