You know, you’re comparing a finished project to a barley finished one. Obviously the finished one would be better because it’s finished. It feels like some people here is just ignoring the fact that this is phase one or just didn’t read that part. Phase 3 should look something like this or even better. These pictures are from rdc 2020
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That’s not the point, though.
The point of what I said is, that they’ve had well over a year to plan out and develop these features with a plethora of at least to my knowledge, well paid engineers and staff members. Phase 1a came out months ago, and there has been (to my knowledge) nothing that has been said about it since.
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You’re forgetting that Roblox Staff are spread thin making these new updates and still doing maintenance on Roblox. Not to mention that they are working within the EXTREMELY tight restrictions of the engine, and still somehow making it work. They need to balance optimization with quality and doing that is far from easy. Just because they had a year to make this update doesn’t mean it should be out by then; If anything a year is too short! Also, the video you provided is barely applicable to this situation. What I understood from your reply is that you expect to see clouds in Roblox to be of similar quality to that of the video, but there are many reasons that you’re not looking at that would make Roblox never implement those kinds of clouds as an actual feature.
For starters, the clouds in that video are volumetric and volumetric objects (lighting, fog, clouds, etc.) are very expensive to render which would screw compatibility.
Second, Roblox needs to make sure that all the other platforms can run this update fine as well. You can’t expect mobile devices to render volumetric clouds at a respectable frame rate.
Third, you’re comparing a project, completely centered around clouds, from an indie developer, who has the freedom to make it as performance demanding as he wants without any strings attached, to Roblox, who on the other hand has to work with multiple restrictions and has to make the update with the potential to benefit a multitude of games.
You’re expecting too much out of a Phase 1 beta, and frankly, I’ve done the same as well with the IndoorEnvMaps beta, and I don’t blame you. This update is really cool, and everyone would like to see this advance and get better, but it’s really difficult to to these type of things when Roblox has many roadblocks in their way, that they either have to find workarounds, or smash through and possibly sacrifice performance.
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Then what about future is bright? My computer isn’t the best but it’s not horrible as well. When I try putting more than five light sources in a room with future is bright with only a few objects it gets SUPER laggy and it starts flashing as well. You don’t need to learn astrophysics to learn how to simulate volumetric clouds in a game engine such as roblox. I know little to nothing about their engine, but from the looks of it it seems pretty similar to the one Sebastian Lague is using. Furthermore, roblox still has a plethora of employees to work on this project. It’s not like they have another 100 projects to work on simultaneously. And one year IS A LOT. They’ve even had more than one year to plan this out and work on it too, Sebastian Lague had roughly 1 week to plan this out, code it, and even write a script for it for a YouTube video.
Roblox could have at least made it better than just a few alpha noise textures stacked atop each other which didn’t rise the more you went up to it which didn’t make a weird line on the horizon which didn’t appear more the closer to the player rather more the farther out you got which didn’t have 3 properties which didn’t use 1 single noise texture.
Roblox could have used another method to render clouds on mobile devices. Roblox can’t just care all about mobile even if it makes them the most money out of microtransactions, us PC users are sitting here waiting for them to do something cool for once in a while.
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That’s mainly cause roblox hasen’t optimized it enough for its standards. And you know any other game outside of roblox uses the same tech fib3 uses on lowest and highest settings. Fib was just a dificult project and esspecially even more difficult because roblox has to make it stupid optimized because roblox has VERY low end players. Theres a reason why they made fib3 show up on higher settings and at a certain radius. Also on platforms like steam, the average pc has a 1060-1050, which is much more reasonable to optimize for and still reasonable to optimize for anything a little more worse
Yes but it doesn’t mean it’s not complicated and not difficult. There’s so much that can just go wrong. There could be a bugfix which could lead to other bugs and more bugs that they have to fix up. They still have to make it performant for very low end devices while trying to not make it look terrible.
Yes roblox has a lot of employees. But it’s not like theres 100 employees working on one project. Depending on the project obviously it could be probably like 20 or 15. Dont take my word on this obviously it’s just a guess, it could even be lower then that. Just cause roblox has a lot of employees it doesn’t mean it wont take time.
So what if it took him a week? You shoulden’t downplay how hard a project can be, are you a rendering engineer working at roblox? No. So dont sit here and say “iT’S jUsT cLOuDs hOW hArD cOUlD iT bE” It’s just disrespectful and seem like you’re implying that you’re calling them bad even though you probably dont even understand how hard this can be. You know the fib hackweek? It was orginally a hackweek project then roblox green lit it for production. It took him like 4 or 5 days to make it. But it took roblox like 4 YEARS to ship it. It’s not because they were lazy, it’s just because it simply was difficult. And it’s not like every hackweek is production ready and can just be shipped just like that if you just fix some bugs. There are so many issues that have to be solved, and bugs that have to be fixed, and a bunch optimizations that have to be made because it eats up so much performance. Just cause someone made it, doesn’t mean its production ready or barley has any problems.
Ikr look how terrible it looks
Please dont forget that the current beta we have right now is phase 1. Not phase 3. It’s a very big difference. Phase 1 is obviously gonna look bad, it’s just supposed to be barebones. The current clouds we can play right now isn’t even gonna be available for the client and probably will when all the phases are finished.
If im correct your bassicly saying for roblox to use a completley different system for mobile devices. You know that would of taken a lot more time rather then them just optomizing it or finding a implementation for both which benfits everyone because it impacts performance less.
But they kind of have to, if everyone on mobile goes away then their buisness bassicly dies. I heard like 60 or 50% or even more of players are on mobile.
Also dont forget that the clouds you showed us were inefficient. He knows this. I’m pretty sure he makes these videos to learn more, not to make it production ready to be used in full games. Also he says himself theres still a lot to be worked on. And the clouds you showed us doesn’t support different type of cloud shapes like how roblox clouds will once fully finished.
In conclusion, you shoulden’t say how hard a project could be, you dont work at roblox nor you’re a rendering engineer at roblox. You dont understand how many issues they could face and how hard these could be and I don’t either, but I know it’s difficult. Sure they can get a demo in a week but its far from being production ready. It’s just disrespectful. And do you think roblox is not trying? Roblox probably prefers features to not take too long and wants to work on more features as well while making sure their employees arent overworked. And projects that take a long long time to make and have been delayed a lot just shows that roblox really cares on trying to make this good and not buggy. I’d perfer waiting 5 years rather than getting a buggy and laggy mess because it was rushed.
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Nice. now you made us realize that why its taking so long for Roblox to release phase 2 or at least phase 3 after it. or announce it after they work on it. (Talking about Dynamic Skies on why its not still announced at next phase or something about it. not FIB Hackweek.)
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Future is bright was to push realism on the Roblox. It’s mostly used for showcases, and most of the top games on Roblox don’t use Future lighting. Since the only difference is that light sources other than the sun can cast shadows, it doesn’t affect gameplay which is why it’s not on mobile or on most front-page games.
Considering all the restrictions and limitations the Roblox engine has, and the fact that Roblox has to add some quality control and make it as least performance consuming as possible, you might want to rethink that statement. Also there’s no need to over exaggerate, calm down, this is supposed to be a discussion not a full-blown argument.
I’ve got 2 problems with this:
- If you don’t know anything about the Roblox engine, then why are you asking for such a profound and very performance heavy update? Why aren’t you asking if this is possible within the engine rather than demanding that volumetric clouds are added? I encourage you to ask around for answers rather than just assuming that certain things are possible just because they exist elsewhere.
- The engine Sebastian Lague is using the Unity engine. Roblox runs on OpenGL. Also judging by this statement, I feel as though you are talking about the Roblox Studio editor. It’s pretty obvious that most companies who make game engines don’t use their own product to made to make new features, because it’s inconvenient and I doubt that Roblox Studio, Unity, or Unreal, could edit their own code within the engine.
I hope you read my post, which you replied to, because I stated that Roblox Staff are spread thin because they have a multitude of tasks like updates, bugfixes, betas, etc. that they need to roll out, which include but aren’t limited to:
- Website security
- Future is Bright: Phase 4 (Global Illumination)
- Engine management
- Cage deformation / mesh deformation updates
- TorsionSpringConstraint update
- CSG part updates
- Studio UI
- Pivot points
- New textures and materials
I could go on and on.
I’m cringing at your reply. This quote alone just screams, “I think that game deving is easy!” You’re completely forgetting why the video was made so quickly. Sebastian has no reason to optimize clouds, therefore he needs to spend little time on it; He also didn’t need to meet a certain deadline, he could spend as much time as he wanted to work on it, he had leftover resources that he used to help with the project, and didn’t have to add any extra features because it’s only a demo about clouds. You’re being unbelievably ignorant to what the rendering engineers at Roblox have to accomplish within the limitations of the engine.
bruh
- You say you have a laptop that isn’t powerful yet you’re asking for features like this to be added? Do you not realize how resource consuming this is?
- The horizon line is a bug. Did you already forget that this is a Phase 1 beta?
- The clouds aren’t meant to be interacted with. That will come in a later phase.
Ok, then please state the method you’re talking about. Coming up with new ways to render isn’t as easy as you believe.
Roblox on mobile accounts for most of Roblox’s revenue. Without mobile Roblox wouldn’t be where it is now. Also, I’m a PC user and I’m not really waiting for anything “cool” to come to Roblox seeing as I can already make things like this:
(Yes I made this, no this is not a flex, I’m just using this to help prove a point.)
To wrap things up, you are being unbelievably ignorant to the amount of hurdles like optimization and bugs the staff at Roblox are faced with to make updates like this happen. You think that just because you’ve watched a few developing videos that you know all there is to know about developing and software engineering. The fact that you’re acting as if you’re entitled to something better than this, is snobby and pretty disrespectful. Just be happy with what Roblox has put out for now and provide feedback RESPECTFULLY and help let the staff know what to change for future iterations.
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if you guys don’t have patience, make some codes and start making your own clouds, and then share it in here, not only beneficial to you but 80% of people in here that been waiting for ages for this update
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Making custom clouds just because someone isn’t satisfied with this update seems like a lot of wasted time and effort seeing as this update will inevitably surpass any custom cloud generation script, we just have to be patient. Unless you want clouds that are more “stylized”, I don’t see the benefit of making custom clouds when this is already in the works.
Yeah, you can’t go wrong with Sebastian Lague’s clouds. Honestly, Roblox could literally just go into his GitHub repository, grab his cloud code, modify it to support Studio / Roblox Client, and boom, working, amazing clouds in less than a week. That simple.
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Well they need to rewrite the entire code because it’s written in c#, then rewrite the way lighting is done because its not really performant, then add different clouds because once fully finished theres gonna be different cloud types, and then add a lot more optomizations and a lot more bug fixes, and probably more features. And probably a lot more other things needed to sort out. You know, at that point it’s just better to write it from scratch then take someone else’s work that is far from production ready for a huge platform.
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Do you have any updates on the timeline for this? I’m making a game with realistic weather, and these clouds don’t work well with it. I’m aiming for a late-2021 release, I hop there’s an update before then.
Honestly with all due respect I think they’re going to release it in early 2023. I mean look how long they took with future is bright
Thats how long they took with FiB P3.
And they had already had P3 lighting in development 3 years prior. They had it released in a closed studio thats now broken.
P1 Of Dynamic clouds I’d assume to be released Early or Late Q4 or Late Q3.
Wrong. It was a beta feature. I had been using it from the moment it was Beta on June 23rd.
I wasn’t talking about when It got released into studio beta. This version was branched off in a separate studio file just like how the Avatar Evolution is and the upcoming updated materials.
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Remember when animated skies were gonna be a thing?
Well not anymore
Of course It will be still a thing. you just dont know when will it release.
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It was a joke incase you didn’t know…
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