I understand what it means exactly. I know the planets are barren with not much to do on too.
What I mean is, why go to a planet if you don't plan on doing anything? Sarcastically calling it 'driving around in dust bowls' to make a point won't get anywhere.
The planets aren't barren because someone thought it would be awesome to drive around on them. They are barren because those types of planets surely exist and they are the easiest to push out in terms of development efficiency. They had to have barren planets because otherwise it wouldn't be realistic. It makes sense to make them first because non-barren planets are barren planets with stuff on them. Since they have barren planets covered, why not release them? Because some people will find it boring? I'm sure the developers themselves find the notion of driving around on deserts aimlessly for hours boring as hell too.
What I'm saying is, why do that while no one is forcing you? I adore the driving model and the way planet surface physics work. Both in the SRV and in the ship. Still, I go planetside only when I have a mission there, either self created like seeing a particular place or the sky from a particular place, or game generated like the many surface missions. Both cases are really fun to do while driving the SRV.
That's what I mean by 'why do you do that?'.
I totally agree.
Airless planets are the bases to how planets work, in-engine, in-game and background sim influence.
It's not like MNS where random number generator is pressed per planet.
Elite is simulated, calculated and is using Procedural generated art (baesed on actual modular art assets) to visualize that data.
There is a ridiculous amount of work that went into the simulation aspect to get just "these" planets up and running.
Atmospheres (even on dead worlds), will be just "scientifically" accurate, atmospheres are a mixture of gasses so each planet will havea different chemcial mixture to make blend the sunlight. (mars has blue sunsets, so of course they will model that kind of details).
Gas gaints will have clouds, as will atmoshperic planets. clouds denote weather, weather denotes more simulation, computation and presentation.
These will of course need to be networked, as will volcanic erruptions (so every graphical asset wlll need a network pass). So when a dust storm hits the facility you are attakcing, it's the same for all players.
I find there is plenty to do, even if I land without a blue circle, 20 minutes of ore-x hunting for an engineer mod usually lands me cargo to filch.
But with a 2 cargo hold support of the scarab, even breaking into mining installations and shifting lots of expensive ore isn't time/cr rewarding as many of the ocupations in the game.
(new vehicles please).
2.2 will bring more ruins and relics into the game, embelishing the story and the galaxy.
Horizons 2.0 was jus the first step to No Man Sky in Elite, and it might take them 4 years to finish it off.
Season3 will bring in space legs, and that will probably take 3 years to fiinish off in parallel.
As one youtube said, why did passengers take too long, it's not as if they are doing the internal art assets for the cabins. I think that is precisely why they HAVE taken this long, we are close enough to space legs to insist on the internal art assets be made alongside every asset in the game (just like the internal art pass in every ship and floor plan since the beta).
An on paper stat-change for the diamondback, required an entire new model, due to those stats affecting the internal layout (and this new art pass) of the ship.
Love it driving on the planets.
