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Newcomer / Intro Biological heatmap - help please!
- Thread starter Frankymole
- Start date
I'm in
If it helps at all I've never seen any colors of "heat map", so to speak, as everyone calls it different. But I have found that there are only 3 different shades of blue. (Light Blue, Blue, and Dark Blue). Most of the time I find Bio stuff in the Light blue areas. The Regular Blue areas are kind of like a presentation of all, just kind of very sparse. I find Geo stuff in Dark Blue areas most of the time around mountain areas.
If the entire planet is blue for everything, well, good luck I suppose....
These are just my findings and observations so they may be incorrect to most other opinions or observations.
I hope this helps you out a little bit, I hope.
Good hunting Commander... o7
Well, with apologies to our authority - Zac, I just can not see how the shading variations could "only" be the topography, when they are often entirely different for the same area, for each filter that covers that same area; If is was, that topography should be visually identical for all filters.
I can imagine that it could e.g. be the result of interaction between a certain subset of layers that overlap, none of which need necessarily be to do with elevation at all. One could e.g. relate to a certain chemical composition in the "soil", which would affect the coloration of of the area it covers - not topography, in addition to how hospitable it is to a particular plant, and another could say e.g. "sandy", without any combination of these necessarily meaning a greater chance of discovery...
I can imagine that it could e.g. be the result of interaction between a certain subset of layers that overlap, none of which need necessarily be to do with elevation at all. One could e.g. relate to a certain chemical composition in the "soil", which would affect the coloration of of the area it covers - not topography, in addition to how hospitable it is to a particular plant, and another could say e.g. "sandy", without any combination of these necessarily meaning a greater chance of discovery...
I think what he meant by "topography" was simply "surface colour". I.e. darker surface creates darker shade of blue and lighter/more leflective surface creates lighter shade of blue, giving off an illusion of heat map.
The problem I have with that, is that if this surface colour is the "final" visible colour, which you see in "combat mode", after all layers have been composited together, then the exact same thing applies as with topography: If a certain hill is blue for both, say, frutexa and tussock, then the pattern of variations of blue on that hill should be identical with both filters, which it can be in some cases, but by no means all.
If, on the other hand, e.g. only a subset of layers produced the blue and its variations, there could be different patterns.
If one took this to the absolute extreme, and imagined there being a dedicated layer for each and every element (which I can not imagine to be the actual case, to be clear), and you had e.g. a discrete, one-shot, shape "stencil" for sulphur somewhere, imparting a yellow tint, interacting with a tiling global texture that imparts red for iron, and a certain plant would only grow where it can have both, that could produce a two- or three tone map, depending on what one do with one's truth tables. There could even be NAND terms, e.g. ruling out proliferation where there is copper.
(A strict truth table producing a single boolean would of course only produce blue, without any variations...)
Height does seem to play a part in many filters, often producing sea-like blue regions, where mountains poke up out of it, above a certain threshold, but that does not stop the map from blue-ing huge tracts of land which are entirely the wrong elevation for the filtered plant, and where it will absolutely not grow; Quite possibly this could just be a side effect, rather than elevation actually being an influencing term, caused by procgen rules mimicking geological factors favouring certain elevations, such as a crater-producing meteor impact exposing and ejecting matter from deeper strata, or mountains being bare rock.
Another thing that could explain the difference, is of course simply that the procgen could at any given moment pull different mipmap levels for each filter...
Is it, though? If that's the case, why does it show different colours in the same areas depending on what plant you have selected (when both types grow there)?
Don't know how you can find anything with those graphics.
Yes the underlying topography is what causes the variation - switch modes as you descent or cruise and you can see this clearly. (Well your patchwork might not. )
I wish it was still a heatmap, it is a bit frustrating at times.
Yes the underlying topography is what causes the variation - switch modes as you descent or cruise and you can see this clearly. (Well your patchwork might not.
)I wish it was still a heatmap, it is a bit frustrating at times.
Erm, it's not the topography because both those shots are seconds apart at the same height, just different plants selected. They're different. Tussock is at the bottom, top grab is aleoida - they cover the same parts of the planet, the heatmap however is different on the same topography.Don't know how you can find anything with those graphics.
Yes the underlying topography is what causes the variation - switch modes as you descent or cruise and you can see this clearly. (Well your patchwork might not.
I wish it was still a heatmap, it is a bit frustrating at times.
With some plants it stays the same, then it changes as you cycle through the plant types, so it's clearly not topography that alters the shade.
It gets more detailed as I get lower but still varies by plant type. Not topography. Can't you see a difference in the two screengrabs?
Not sure why you think the patchwork can be changed - even on ultra it's there. Depends on ship height. What setting do you suggest changing?
OK I am going to have to disagree again (BTW I have no idea what setting you can change to get rid of that patchwork effect) ... see the following sequence of images:
So you see (if you click one and then page through them) uniform except for changes in distribution, not for bio type.
I sometimes wonder if the altitude that they are found at causes any difference (see the lower left corner's underlying crater really noticeable in Aleoida) but I have not experimented to find out.
Later edit: I was fiddling with the file that OBS saved (weird picture-in-picture sort of thing, made it unusable) - and I noticed that the crater I refer to above actually came into the clarity in the Aleoida shot but then was just as clear in the other selections as the video played on - so it was the altitude I was at that determined the clarity / sharpness / definition of that feature, nothing to do with the bio type. Here is a grab from the video showing that, it is smaller image due to the weird OBS issue I had:
I wonder if your patchwork effect / loading is causing your perception?
(BTW - RTX 3070ti - 2560x1440 - Ultra)
EDIT:
P.S. I was going to do a video but OBS is mucking me about again - sorry.
P.P.S. If you are going to disagree with one of the developers (@Zac Cocken ) telling you what the situation is then I doubt you will win that argument.
So you see (if you click one and then page through them) uniform except for changes in distribution, not for bio type.
Later edit: I was fiddling with the file that OBS saved (weird picture-in-picture sort of thing, made it unusable) - and I noticed that the crater I refer to above actually came into the clarity in the Aleoida shot but then was just as clear in the other selections as the video played on - so it was the altitude I was at that determined the clarity / sharpness / definition of that feature, nothing to do with the bio type. Here is a grab from the video showing that, it is smaller image due to the weird OBS issue I had:
I wonder if your patchwork effect / loading is causing your perception?
(BTW - RTX 3070ti - 2560x1440 - Ultra)
EDIT:
P.S. I was going to do a video but OBS is mucking me about again - sorry.
P.P.S. If you are going to disagree with one of the developers (@Zac Cocken ) telling you what the situation is then I doubt you will win that argument.
Last edited:
Well if you don't believe me, then here is the official post right from the Devs -->
Newcomer / Intro - Biological heatmap - help please!
Hi all, are there any experts who can tell me what the different shades of blue / green mean on the planetary surface biological heat map? They don't seem related to terrain features, height etc as they either appear, or don't, at certain altitudes with colour varying a lot at the same altitude...
No help has been offered. Only denial of the facts.Some people are hard to help.
You clearly didn't read my post above where I was replying to Zac's.Well if you don't believe me, then here is the official post right from the Devs -->
Newcomer / Intro - Biological heatmap - help please!
Hi all, are there any experts who can tell me what the different shades of blue / green mean on the planetary surface biological heat map? They don't seem related to terrain features, height etc as they either appear, or don't, at certain altitudes with colour varying a lot at the same altitude...forums.frontier.co.uk
yeah...
Then the whole mapping of the planet to find likely areas of specific Bio/Geo sites are located is just a waste of time and doesnt really show anything of value to the player, since when fully mapped, a planet is shown as plain light blue and if we then ignore any slight 'shading' due to the topography underneath we are left with the same light blue colour. I was under the impression that the slight shading of the darker blue areas was where I should start my searches.
On a newly mapped planet, what changes to the original light blue colour are we suppose to look for?
You are not supposed to look for variations in the blue colour. The blue only indicates that an organism can be found there in a regional sense. For the nitty-gritty, look for landscape features where the organisms may exist. For example: bacterial mats tend to be on flat plains with few other features; fungus tend live in steep terrains; other organisms are found in shady hollows or in clusters of small hills. Then there are the organisms associated with volcanic vents: They seem to be scattered with wherever the vents are likely to occur, which can be somewhat random at times.
So if a planet is covered completely in a blue overlay for whatever you are looking for, just switch out of analysis mode and read the landscape instead.
SSo mapping a planet/moon is only for extra Cr's since we are to ignore this blue effect and switch out to topography view that showis us plains/hills etc.
So I could, if I wanted to, skip the mapping and go and land on the planet and search for Geo/Bio sites as normal?
You may want to map first, which will also give you credits. You won't get a 100% blue coverage every time you map either, so the "heat map" still has its uses. Also, when cover is less than 100%, the heat map will change distribution when you flick through the different types of organisms or features you are looking for. The organism types you won't know what will be until you have run the scanner. What they are won't be a surprise, however, as there aren't that many different main types and they tend to depend on atmosphere types.
Technically you can just go down there and map as we did back in the past when the game gave us a 17th century survey experience (but without the sextant or compass). But if you want credits, run the detailed surface scanner. For more credits and if you want to make your survey efforts vastly more efficient, use the overlay to see overall organism distribution.
SYou may want to map first, which will also give you credits. You won't get a 100% blue coverage every time you map either, so the "heat map" still has its uses. Also, when cover is less than 100%, the heat map will change distribution when you flick through the different types of organisms or features you are looking for. The organism types you won't know what will be until you have run the scanner. What they are won't be a surprise, however, as there aren't that many different main types and they tend to depend on atmosphere types.
Technically you can just go down there and map as we did back in the past when the game gave us a 17th century survey experience (but without the sextant or compass). But if you want credits, run the detailed surface scanner. For more credits and if you want to make your survey efforts vastly more efficient, use the overlay to see overall organism distribution.
Many thanks for taking the time to clear this matter up