More interested in the instancing side, are they looking at new tech for more players in an instance? Not had a chance to keep up to date this week!
Not sure if you mean in the long term, or next few months to improve on 24 slots, but i think it was 10FTC where CR was talking about the tech that they're currently working on, they're expecting MANY hundreds of people to be in an 'instance', possibly THOUSANDS.
Their are still visual limitations for that, because if 500 people all congregated at ArcCorp in the G-Loc bar, that aint happening. Thats where the system will try to instance you with relevant players to you. It was brought up on the [Redacted] podcast the other day, and it'd need to be a somewhat complex system, recognising who your friends are, others relevant to you (people you're looking for etc), but also friends of friends. Its no good me having Halfmad on my friends list, but not Humbug, and i cant see Humbug, but Halfmad can. Hopefully the system will be capable of building a complex '6 degrees of separation' like solution to who you do see and who you dont. So i'd see friends of Humbugs, because they are a more relevant match to me than some random guy in NZ or my next door neighbour if i dont know he's in SC etc.
The other thing that sounds like it has changed, is how instances work. I believe the old system of instances within instances, like inside multicrew ships, is gone. Possibly too complicated or maybe the tech they're developing is more mature and the industry is already working on, where bubble instances they could be out in the cold on their own.
So an Idris with 50 people inside it is 50 slots, not 1 slot with 50ppl in it.
If you meant tech which is incoming... i dont know
I dont think they'll introduce new tech beyond the above. Maybe they'll find ways to expand slots to 32-40ppl, but the point where 'servers' are merged into 1 global instance, is the long term tech mentioned above.
I dont know whether this visible selection means if one of those people leaves the room, and someone else comes in, you'd now see them, because that previous person is no longer as relevant, or maybe if they've been gone for 2/5/10min then the 'instance' reassesses, i'd imagine it probably has to reassess and perhaps people will oddly fade away... it'll be interesting though, because if you're all on a landing zone, everyone with weapons, if i can see you by my selective process, and you cant see me, because you have more higher-relevant people on your list, i can kill you and you cant do anything... so does that mean you can only see people that can see you? meaning if i can see 50 people, we can all only see the same 50 people.
If 4 parties of 20 friends unique to them, we cant have 80 people, so does Party A see B, and C sees D? assuming 50 was the renderable limit.
Its not an easy challenge, but whats worth remembering IMO is that we're talking about many hundreds, possibly thousands in an instance being tracked and interactable together. We were previously looking at 100, and the same questions above applied then, it had to make the decision on who to cut and who to keep still even then.
btw, if its not obvious, the 50 limit figure is just for examples.
