That's nonsense, they were entirely what the team at the time meant to do and they spent a lot of time working on the maths to generate it.
I recall it from some video, as well, where it was uttered. It could have been a marketing line, but you obviously dont think they saw the new planets, and thought "oh perfect, this will upset the community", do you? The planets as they are now, is what they wanted for planets. Dr K Ross didnt leave before the release. She left after they realized the planets, she produced, and
they approved, didnt sit well with the community. No?
I dont see the big deal in why that had to change things so much, other than they did not like how the planets turned out before. Im not talking of how sharp they can get edges to work, I mean shouldn't the planets be similar, and the only difference is ridges are more "rolling" instead of edgy? There's no reason to change them, otherwise. I dont mean the tech involved to walk around, Im saying some locations where you can walk around now are just as ludicrous as those on the old planets, yet we're still able to walk around on them, so why the bulllore about it having to change for that ability? They changed them, because they this is how they want them to look.
What I find rather revealing
(sorry) is the fact that F D knew that the EDO planetary stuff was horrendous. So much so that they physically moved the site of Dav's Hope to be in permanent darkness to hide how awful the planet looked.
Yeah, this sort of thing makes absoulutely no sense to have to do, to me, other than this is how they really wanted it. Why not leave it where it was? "oh, the terrain generator blah blah blah" What? The terrain is bland enough now that you can stick any settlement anywhere, so why not leave it where it was? So it's literally just a matter of final choice. They chose all this. Why not change it back? Re-roll it, and pop out a galaxy closer to what was before? Obviously I have no idea about the complexities of galaxy development.
[EDIT]
and the relevent bit from Dr Ross's making a galaxy:
Source: https://youtu.be/Vz3nhCykZNw?t=2692
Edit: there are real features in Horizons the mathematics produced which are entirely missing from Odyssey's manually created terrain stamps.
Thanks for those links, by the way. That brings up another couple of things, that are present in all versions of Elite. You notice when they go past a planet, or get close to a surface, deformation happens at the edges. If it takes 2 seconds to load a view, facing you, as you're flying by, why not render the full planet? Lets say that take twice as long, so 4 seconds. But as you pass the planet, then it's all loaded, not tearing up the textures. But lets say its because the image to generate the planet is a square with a highly detailed circle, but from that circle to the edges, its less detailed. So possibly, for each planet it generates 6 of those images. Why not load them all, or at least the ones in your direction of travel, so there's no tearing?
Next is as you approach a surface, some parts are subdivided more than others. How about making it so all parts in the cameras field of view subdivides equally? Dont tell me, they're worried about frames per second? That's on the low side, anyways, no?
And since Dr K's vids, I keep hearing of planets all start as cubes. How about trying spheres? Probably takes a bit more to compute, but at this point...try anything?
[/EDIT]
.
