Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Gets Its Second Major Update, Addressing Bugs And Performance Issues

Elite Dangerous has received another large update for its Odyssey expansion, which has been plagued with bugs and performance issues. Since its launch, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey has received tons of player complaints, causing the DLC to have a "mostly negative" rating on Steam with over 4,500 reviews The CEO of Frontier Developments, the studio behind Elite Dangerous, has since apologized for the issues and said that fixing them is of the utmost priority for the developer.

This is the second big update since Elite Dangerous: Odyssey released on PC on May 19, with both updates mainly focused on bugs and performance issues. The DLC was highly anticipated among fans of the series as it introduced the ability to step outside of your spaceship and explore the galaxy in first-person view. While this isn't the last update for Odyssey, the comments of the Steam post with the patch notes seem generally positive, so it's a step in the right direction.

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey is currently only on PC, with console versions coming later. The patch itself addresses stability, rendering, and optimization issues, in addition to adjusting the out-of-ship UI. You can read the full patch notes on Steam or below:

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey Update 2 | Horizons Update

Elite Dangerous: Horizons [PC & Console]

• A number of stability improvements have been made.
• The Alphekka system has been updated to contain an eclipsing binary of Class A and Class G stars.
• Corrected erroneous planet names in Sharur and Tau Ceti.

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey

AI

• Ranged AI will now draw their pistol when investigating, rather than their rifle.
• An issue has been fixed whereby AI would be watching the player for an extended time after reckless discharge warning.
• AI reinforcements will no longer appear at Offline settlements if the power is restored and the alarms raised.
• An issue has been fixed whereby turrets were functioning improperly.

Audio

• Organics ambiences have been fixed so they attenuate correctly over distance.
• Mix tweaks for Helmet radio comms effect and suit voice have been made – softened harsh high frequencies
• Mix improvements and fix for impressionistic layers being audible outside of the concourse have been made – Will only be audible when in a Concourse.
• A reduction to reverb for self-hit notification sounds has been made.
• Mining rigs audio now switches off correctly when a settlement is unpowered.
• In game music will now dip when close to a grenade explosion.
• A reduction to how much the tutorial voice over dips in relation to the in game music has been made.
• Mix tweaks on ship launch/land have been made.
• Mix tweaks to radio chatter when on foot have been made.
• SRV scanner sounds now remain audible when in turret mode.
• A fix for missing ambience when hovering over a metal planet in the System Map has been made.
• Improvements to landing audio have been made – when docked, the powering down audio will synchronise better with touching down.
• Taxi pilots will now say ‘goodbye’ at more sensible times instead of 15 seconds of awkward silence prior to being able to disembark.
• A fix for suit sudio which informs you that 'recharge is complete' when you run out of suit energy has been made.
• A fix for engine landing sounds not playing as a passenger in a wing after being in supercruise has been made.
• Some foley has been added when switching tool mode for Powerlink and Scanner tools.

Character

• An issue has been fixed which caused third person reload and melee animations on certain weapons to never complete.
• An issue has been fixed which was present when firing the shotgun in ADS.
• An issue has been fixed whereby an incorrect emissive value was present on certain NPC shoulders.
• An issue has been fixed whereby certain suits were missing a backpack and torch.

Controls

• Bound 'Select Next Grenade Type' for presets that use keyboard inputs ( Tab ).New controls with bindings for presets that use keyboard inputs have been added:
• Use Medkit ( 6 )
• Use Energy Cells ( 7 )
• Select Frag Grenade ( 8 )
• Select EMP Grenade ( 9 )
• Select Shield Grenade ( 0 )
• Clear Stolen Profile ( - )

Cosmetics

• Emissive paintjobs have been re-balanced for ships, to bring them closer to how they looked before the Odyssey update.
• Emissive paintjobs have also been balanced for the SRV.
• Mining decals for ships (CG rewards) have been visually improved.
• Various inconsistencies have been fixed with some paintjobs for the Federal Corvette.
• Cockpit string lights have been rebalanced to make them appear to glow in light and dark environments.
• Added fixed items for flight suit helmet.
• Fixed issues with decals not working on shoulder pads.

Crashes/Stability

• Fixed an issue seen with saved games and flight suit livery.
• Fixed user crashes associated to mission object location spawning.
• Fixed quitting on foot tutorial for an existing Horizons player, causing the main menu to get stuck and unable to enter the game or tutorial.

Exploration

• Players will now be able to plot hyperspace routes involving neutron boosts.
• Fixed an issue whereby the genus filter would show when a planet has nothing to filter.

Interactions

• Fixed an issue whereby Landing Pad lights did not turn off at offline and offline damaged settlements.
• Fixed an issue whereby AI were being spawned incorrectly at offline and offline damaged settlements.

Lighting & VFX

• A fix has been made for the brightness discrepancy of the galaxy background when the Player is in the cockpit vs when they are viewing it externally (e.g. 3rd person/vanity camera)
• A fix has been made for the prismatic shields displaying as the wrong colour (they were previously blue, and will now appear green once again)
• Lights now correctly turn off on the landing pad when a Settlement is offline.
• A fix has been added for Lagrange clouds sometimes appearing black.
• Additional improvements and fixes to all fog volumes including Megaship, Thargoid, Thargoid Barnacle, Guardian Listening Post and Planet Port Fog have been made.
• A fix has been made for incorrect steam VFX placement in a room.
• A fix has been made for odd visual trails that could appear when breaking a motherlode asteroid.
• The addition of a de-pressurisation VFX has been made for when the Player de-pressurises a building or room.
• Visual improvements to floodlight cones in hangars have been made.
• Visual improvements to the Thargoid Imprint Lighting have been made.
• Visual improvements to the Lighting at Legacy Elite Bases have been made.

Menus

• Fixed humanoid outfitting store saying 'select vehicle'.
• Added rotate, zoom and cycle controls to livery.
• Fixed crime icons persisting after the fine is paid off.
• Fixed issues with the contacts pop-up being active on returning from outfitting, accessed via tech broker and it not providing functionality. Now on returning you are taken to base station services.
• Fixed the quick access wheel being usable while using the Camera Suite.
• Fixed an issue where the transaction panel wouldn’t update when opening it.

Missions

• Fixed a number of instances where missions wouldn't display some of their useful information. This primarily affected Horizons missions. This information should now be present once again.
• Information that is generally similar across the same type of mission, such as the tips and hints on how to complete it, will now be found in the dedicated help pop-up. This can be accessed via the question mark button in all mission contract views, or accessed via a keybinding when talking to a mission provider.
• More robust mission settings for menus, to ensure that settings that should not persist, do not.
• Fixed an issue preventing players from handing in missions
• Mission providers will stop requesting missions, unless you are on foot.
• Fixed an issue whereby the second player to join an instance would be unable to start their mission.

Multicrew/Wings

• Fixed an issue whereby if the host player created/joined a wing while in an SRV or Fighter, they would be have an extra multicrew power pip when they returned to the mothership.
• Fixed an issue whereby if a guest player deployed into or boarded an SRV, they would get a power pip in the mothership.
• Powerpips are now only granted to guest players in the mothership or fighters and are rescinded when players leave the ship by any means.

Organics/Geologicals and Scatter

• An addition has been made to the Electricae shader to ensure it has an emissive core.
• Microresource and rock shaders have been updated to new PBR ones.
• A fiix has been made for Crystalline Shard mineable assets not spawning.
• A fix has been made for Mineables on Legacy organics/geologicals spawning in incorrect locations/with incorrect rotations.
• Visual improvements have been made to the Electricae organic and it's emissive core.

Optimisation

• Optimisations for Vendors and NPCs in Social Spaces have been made.
• Optimisations for Miner and Scientist NPCs in Settlements have been made.
• Optimisations for hair styles for all characters have been made.
• Optimisations for suits for all characters have been made.
• Optimisation of fire VFX in rooms has been made.
• A small optimisation pass has been made to remove unused fog volumes.
• Additional fixe and improvements have been made to the occlusion culling system.
• Fixed the station body schematic being misaligned with the station.
• Updated culling for interior spaces improving performance around settlements and stations.

POIs

• Improved LOD popping on some wreckage props at POIs.
• Fixed missing medium and high threat difficult values for the abandoned SRV salvage POI, which would prevent the salvage mission from being completable.

Rendering

• A fix has been made for sorting issues seen with glass and character hair
• A fix has been made for SRV dust appearing black - correct colour is now applied
• A fix has been made for the occlusion volumes not processing correctly in the social space at certain times
• A fix has been made for the occlusion volumes on assets, such as the airlock not updating correctly at certain times
• The ability to create softer blends between surfaces has been added
• An update has been made to long and thin rectangle lights, to have specular highlights that are more consistent with their shape
• A fix has been made for some particle effects occasionally obtaining a visual hard edge
• A fix has been made for the Player flashlight flickering in varying degrees based on graphics setting
• A fix has been made for "puddle" material at the Thargoid Imprint not displaying correctly
• Visual improvements and shader updates to the cockpit lights have been made
• A fix has been made for incorrect lighting of some planets in the system map

Server

• A fix has been made for players being able to take shuttles to ports on high gravity planets
• Added stricter checks for validity of shuttle destinations to prevent players becoming stranded
• A fix has been made to allow reaching Soldier or Exo-Biologist Elite rank to grant permit access to Shinrarta Dezhra
• FA fix has been made to address an issue with some conflict zones prompting a relog error
• The faction impact of NPC on foot murder events has been adjusted to balance against other player actions
• A fix has been made for missing helmet options for flight suits
• Suit packs will now all show the overview icon rather than specific components
• Rank unlock suit components will now have the correct icons
• Shuttle names will now persist when relogging
• An issue has been fixed which was causing some players to be unable to hand in missions at mission boards
• Certain settings were previously not including players sat on the CZ respawn screen within the BGS event at the end of a conflict zone, which may have been affecting people's ability to unlock the engineer Hero Ferrari
• Additional telemetry for disconnections to assist with diagnostics have been added
• Faction conflicts have been fixed so that control of the asset at stake is correctly awarded to the faction that won the conflict.

Settlements (new for Odyssey)

• Fixed a gap present on the exterior of a Research building
• Fixed a gap present on the exterior of a Power building, and a LOD issue on the PWR decal
• Fix for collect missions at Human_Small_Extraction_02 sometimes requiring the player to enter an authority 1 building making it impossible to complete it lawfully
• Removed unnecessary trespass volume at the large mining rig
• Removed the '02' decal from drill rigs at Mining Settlements, so that not all drills are labelled 02
• Further occlusion improvements around doors
• Corrected Room Geometry around the exterior of Industrial buildings that caused errors with culling

Settlements (legacy)

• Fixed offset ramps at Legacy Settlements
• Engineer bases now have scatter rocks spawning nearer to them (but not intersecting with buildings/structures)
• Added emergency stairwells to the Engineer Base landing pads, so players cannot get themselves trapped
• Fixed a building intersection issue at Colonel Bris Dekker's Engineer Base
• Fixed a wall texture issue at some hangars in various Engineer Bases
• Fixed a black cube appearing at Zacariah Nemo's Engineer Base
• Removed errant rock from Felicity Farseer's Engineer Base
• Rebalanced materials for INRA sites
• Fixed z-fighting present on the building next to the generator in the SRV training mission

Ships

• Fixed emissive values on Alliance ships engines causing them to turn black
• Fixed a typo on the back door of the Cobra MkIII and Cobra MkIV
• Various hitcheck improvements have been made for the Type-9 Heavy
• Fixed low resolution textures present in the Viper MkIV cockpit
• Camera suite camera orientation fixes have been made for the Viper Mk IV

Social Spaces

• Core Dynamics/Federation Corvette and Gutamaya/Imperial Cutter now only advertise in their respective superpower social areas
• Fixed graphic alpha issue with the vertical Santi advert

Terrain & Planets

• Fixed an issue that would cause some distant planet terrain to get darker and shinier

Thargoids

• Thargoid probe shaders have been updated to new PBR ones

UI

• Map UI - A new panel to display Organic Data has been added. This is available in the System Map and Planetary Map.
• In the outfitting UI, when equipping a stored module into an empty slot, the transactions pop-up does not now show (except when installing a clean module onto a hot ship's empty slot).
• In Loadouts UI, old stats which were wrongly being left visible when the stat data changes has been fixed.
• In Loadouts UI, we have changed the way that engineer mod information is updated, to avoid flickering when browsing mods.
• The humanoid mod stat ranges for jump assist stats have been changed to reflect the actual maximum values.
• Exhaustion time multiplier value into rate [0,1] for "exhaustion rate" mod stat has been converted.
• Map UI - Fixed misalignment and jitter issues of the focused/current/selected object markers
• Loadout UI - The title in the respawn flow can now fill the screen, so will not go multiline and prevent the loadout from being cutoff.
• Mission UI - Added "showIllegal" to the mission board mission listings, which tints the icon purple.
• An issue has been fixed whereby the setting for the rolepanel was not being read and so would always appear, even when it was not intended to.
• Boarding Panel - Storage status now displays new strings and icons.
• Boarding Panel - Added a third button to be used for restocking supplies.
• Map UI - Fixed ab issue which stopped the faction state from updating with the selected system's info.
• Mission UI - Fixed the header always using the mission board header.
• Mission UI - Fixed an issue whereby the starport service will remember the last board selection, so you could open passenger lounge / community goals in the social space.
• Map UI - Selecting a bookmark and then plotting a route will now plot a route to that bookmark location, instead of just the system it is in.
• Map UI - Selection and Quick Select input scheme has been updated to allow targeting with mouse, then using controller/keyboard held input.
• Map UI - Added ability to hold down on a location button (bookmarks, mission, ships) to plot a route to the location. This only works on normal galaxy and system map modes (not apex/conflict/carrier)
• Map UI - Updated the bookmark empty state.
• Map UI - The bookmark empty state will no longer change position based on the category title.
• Map UI - Players can now hold down left click on lists (filters, marker display etc) in the map modes to quickly toggle them on/off. This only works with mouse control.
• Map UI - When a filter is updated, the datastore is updated instead of recreated, fixing a visual bug when selecting them.
• Map UI - Fixed issue with commodities closing the LHS if the player would pick an option that is too far down in the list.
• Cargo Transfer - Fixed text truncation in German version of the cargo transfer popups.
• Fixed avatar in On-foot Commander panel, so that it now displays a full body image of the Commander instead of an incredibly uncomfortable close-up mugshot.
• The 'Back' input button functionality will no longer be missing from various UIs
• The player should now be able to use the Back/Cancel button (B on gamepad) to back out of power contact and fleet carrier vendor contact in the station services UI.
• Fixed an issue with large combat bond voucher values not displaying properly because of uint32 cap
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect markers were being displayed in the terminal facility list
• Added UI data store properties to create the extra column in the humanoid inventory panel to display storage values
• Fixed text strings for replacing vehicle filter with suits/weapons in store UI
• Fixed icons for item filter/owned item for humanoid store so that it doesn't display the ship vector icon
• Fixed the clock icon misaligned with estimated departure in fleet carrier navigation menu
• Fixed missing icons states indicating that the player Commander was muted/talking/unmuted
• Removed watermark icons from the dropship information in the 'Conflict Zone Vendor Summary Panel' and centered the faction name text.
• Removed icons from pick up and drop off location for Apex Shuttle in the Access UI to match those of Frontline Solutions.
• Fixed alignment issues with background visuals for mission hub UI popup
• Planetary Level Organics UI is now functional.
• Fixed the no-battery warning message text to be more in line with humanoid terminology. Power Limit Exceeded -> Battery Depleted
• Fixed the DSS view to use the same camera transform as the probe launcher, so that the UI does not go out of sync
• A fix for the Gamma slider not updating in-game gamma values has been implemented

Known Issues

• An issue with chest, upper arm and shoulder suit parts not appearing for female avatars is currently being investigated.
• An issue with some environmental assets being culled incorrectly around the exterior of 2 specific buildings is being investigated.