Planet Diversity

Ever since the reveal of Horizons I've seen some comments about how fdev is lazy/"milking it" and well I decided to check out just how diverse the rocky worlds are... holy crap those alone are a massive undertaking for planetary landings.

The below is just some rocky worlds I took screenshots of. The last row is with atmosphere but still. I'm guessing the weather/atmosphere system is something that will be built independently and then applied with tweaks to the respective planet to reflect its atmosphere.

rockyworlds_lowquuda.jpg


Full resolution: http://abload.de/img/rockyworlds_hightou71.jpg

I've begun to catalog all planets I scan during exploration by taking up-close screenshots of them. If anyone is interested I could set up a flickr group and we could just dump it all there.
 
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Rocky-ice planets, too. They're gorgeous when you get up close to them.

I think I misunderstood when they listed these planets, but I found exactly ONE on my trip to Sag A. They are currently quite rare and look very different from rocky, icy, or metal rich worlds with ice caps. Kind of like a ball of dark chocolate caramel.
 
Most planets are procedurally generated so although they will seem similar, all should look different. I'd be honestly surprised if we find any identical bodies at all once Horizons is in full swing. I will eventually be putting together one of these for all of my ELWs, WWs and AWs as I always screenshot them. :)
 
Fortunately I am old and unobservant, so if I passed the same mountain range time after time I probably wouldnt notice anyway.
 
I've seen conflicting reports - is Horizons only rocky/rocky-ice, or is Horizons everything without an atmosphere? i.e. will we be able to go down to HMCs and Metal Rich that have no atmosphere?

A lot of folks keep saying Rocky, but the few Dev posts I've seen only refer to "airless planets and moons", which doesn't have any reference to the type of planet or moon.
 
Ever since the reveal of Horizons I've seen some comments about how fdev is lazy/"milking it" and well I decided to check out just how diverse the rocky worlds are... holy crap those alone are a massive undertaking for planetary landings.

Well, people who complain about how every planet looks the same probably expect something along those lines (New Detroit from Wing Commander: Privateer):

145345-wing-commander-privateer-gemini-gold-windows-screenshot-take.jpg

as opposed to the generic "it's a planet"-model used in 95% of the other systems:

screenshot-7-tarsus-helen.png

Meaning: Something hand crafted with obvious, unique features instead of something generated that always looks different yet the same. In ED the problem is that EVERY planet you discover is, within certain boundaries, unique, so it doesn't feel special anymore.
 
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Of course, if you look at pics of Mercury, Luna, Phobos, Deimos, Ceres, Ganymede, Lysithea, Enceledas, Rhea, Dione, Mimas, Iapetus, Tethys, Miranda, Titania, Ariel, Oberon, Triton, Proteus, and Charon, you might accuse nature of lazy development, too. :)
 
When planetary landing arrive , are we all just jumping out hitting random systems looking for moons?
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Or will we eventually decide to team up in groups of 5-6 and do whole systems at a time .:S
 
I'm not so concerned with how planets look from space/orbit. They're already quite beautiful and realistic and that shouldn't change. I'm more concerned about content on the surface. Things to do - profits to be made, interesting stuff to find, mysteries to discover, new mechanics to explore, etc. Fortunately, it seems FD has the right idea there, but we'll see.
 
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