Devs Please ad some extra planets to land on....

[Nejamai]

Devs Please ad some extra planets to land on, volcanic planet should not be a problem as it does not have an atmosphere also some other planets that have almost no atmosphere, why wont you activate those, it wont have any impact on the ships as there is just a 0.0001 atmosphere there on those planets, so why why why wont you activate them the ice planets and rock planets well we know them by now and its getting sooo boring not be be able to land on the other planets.

why wont you let them out bit by bit, lets say volcanic first etc etc

and you know what, why not let us land on all types of planets already, add the atmospheric effect on the ships later, at least we can have fun and you can see what effect it will have. unless you have nothing yet.

release them with the new patch that comes now, would be great together with the new planet looks.

thx in advance
and happy new year btw

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

Devs Please ad some extra planets to land on, volcanic planet should not be a problem as it does not have an atmosphere also some other planets that have almost no atmosphere, why wont you activate those, it wont have any impact on the ships as there is just a 0.0001 atmosphere there on those planets, so why why why wont you activate them the ice planets and rock planets well we know them by now and its getting sooo boring not be be able to land on the other planets.

why wont you let them out bit by bit, lets say volcanic first etc etc

and you know what, why not let us land on all types of planets already, add the atmospheric effect on the ships later, at least we can have fun and you can see what effect it will have. unless you have nothing yet.

release them with the new patch that comes now, would be great together with the new planet looks.

thx in advance
and happy new year btw

There is no way there would be enough time to implement a feature like that in the short time between now and when the patch comes out. Let them finish this series of updates before they worry about anything else.

 

[varonica]

Devs Please ad some extra planets to land on, volcanic planet should not be a problem as it does not have an atmosphere also some other planets that have almost no atmosphere, why wont you activate those, it wont have any impact on the ships as there is just a 0.0001 atmosphere there on those planets, so why why why wont you activate them the ice planets and rock planets well we know them by now and its getting sooo boring not be be able to land on the other planets.

Would it help to understand that there aren't actually any planets there to land on? All the gas giants, earth like worlds, ammonia worlds, lava worlds etc, with or without atmosphere, don't actually exist. All they are is a 2d bitmap wrapped around a spherical mesh, if you were to try and land on them you would just pass right through, so it's not just a process of "activating" them, a huge amount of work would need to go in before they even exist, let alone become landable.

happy new year [up]

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Would it help to understand that there aren't actually any planets there to land on? All the gas giants, earth like worlds, ammonia worlds, lava worlds etc, with or without atmosphere, don't actually exist. All they are is a 2d bitmap wrapped around a spherical mesh, if you were to try and land on them you would just pass right through, so it's not just a process of "activating" them, a huge amount of work would need to go in before they even exist, let alone become landable.

happy new year [up]

That said, my hope is that the Planetary Tech guys have been using the time they've spent updating the overall *look* of land-fall planets to also expand the number of planets that we can actually land on, as well as potentially improving the look of Gas Giants too.

 

[varonica]

That said, my hope is that the Planetary Tech guys have been using the time they've spent updating the overall *look* of land-fall planets to also expand the number of planets that we can actually land on, as well as potentially improving the look of Gas Giants too.

Yes that would be nice. Don't get me wrong, I am all for more planets, and indeed I would be most pleased if one of the surprises of Beyond is being able to land on some of the currently inaccessible bodies, but it's certainly not just a matter of activating them, there's way more involved. I'm not even sure how effectively they can portray a continent sized lava lake such as we see on many hell planets, but it would be fun seeing how close we can actually land without melting our ships.

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

Yes that would be nice. Don't get me wrong, I am all for more planets, and indeed I would be most pleased if one of the surprises of Beyond is being able to land on some of the currently inaccessible bodies, but it's certainly not just a matter of activating them, there's way more involved...

Yep. Quite a bit more, which people don't seem to realize. I'm pretty sure there's also considerable programming necessary for an accurate flight model for atmospheric flight/landings, and probably a whole new UI element to add, like they did for non-atmospheric planetary landing. Then there's the matter of weather...

 

[Eidolon]

I seem to remember FD saying something about a rolling introduction of new planet types.
It was around the release of 2.0 horizons but I'm on mobile and get get a link up.
The plan IIRC was to add no atmosphere planets first (we have these) then planets with volcanism, then more distantly the atmospheric worlds and gas giants. Then finally the life worlds and earth likes.
No idea of time scale though, but it's something I have always wanted in game!

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

I seem to remember FD saying something about a rolling introduction of new planet types.
It was around the release of 2.0 horizons but I'm on mobile and get get a link up.
The plan IIRC was to add no atmosphere planets first (we have these) then planets with volcanism, then more distantly the atmospheric worlds and gas giants. Then finally the life worlds and earth likes.
No idea of time scale though, but it's something I have always wanted in game!

There's going to be a huge overhaul of planetary surfaces and variety thereof, very soon. Q1 update will largely change how most planets look, and Q4 update will enhance it further.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

I would hope that since 2.0 dropped FD have been working on this. When they are ready it will happen. How soon that'll be I have no idea. Would I like it soon? Of course

 

[seko]

Would it help to understand that there aren't actually any planets there to land on? All the gas giants, earth like worlds, ammonia worlds, lava worlds etc, with or without atmosphere, don't actually exist. All they are is a 2d bitmap wrapped around a spherical mesh, if you were to try and land on them you would just pass right through, so it's not just a process of "activating" them, a huge amount of work would need to go in before they even exist, let alone become landable.

happy new year [up]

I follow a lot of what you say with interest. Are you a dev ? - Happy 2018

 

[Nejamai]

Hi all, well if at least they can show some progress perhaps, this way we players would know how and what right? id like to see the progress on this

 

[Lucifera Danzig]

Hi all, well if at least they can show some progress perhaps, this way we players would know how and what right? id like to see the progress on this

They did show progress. They showed video during the FrontierExpo, and they showed more during the charity livestream they did recently. We've seen part of the progress already.

 

[Nejamai]

hmmm im looking at the charity live stream skipping trough it a bit but what time line they talk and show about this??

i know where on the frontier expo

thx

 

[varonica]

hmmm im looking at the charity live stream skipping trough it a bit but what time line they talk and show about this??

i know where on the frontier expo

thx

Watch the dev talk rather than the livestream, they did a long talk all about how they generate the galaxy including the planets, it's very interesting. While I am not part of the dev team I have done some 3D game modelling and it would surprise you how much you see in a game doesn't actually exist. Basically if you can't actually go to something then there's no point in putting a huge amount of work into it because that's something that's going to be thrown away some time in the future. You can use ray tracing to track exactly what parts of the inaccessible landscape will be visible to players and that's the only bit you do anything with. So with the planets they aren't accessible at all, you can't get close, all you need is a bitmap that looks ok from the exclusion point and leave it at that.

 

[bicarbon8]

So with the planets they aren't accessible at all, you can't get close, all you need is a bitmap that looks ok from the exclusion point and leave it at that.

using a bitmap would require that a bitmap actually be generated first (either manually or procedurally). The entire set of planets, moons and stars in a system are procedurally generated based on certain rules in Stellar Forge (with the exception of certain systems where FDev have manually gone in and tweaked things for some purpose like modeling of the Sol system). Each of the planets, landable or not would be generated procedurally and aren't just bitmaps, but instead are more of a heatmap with certain heights, colours, and textures applied based on the procedurally generated pattern. When you get close to a planet the texture is first rendered to make it look like it has depth, and then as you get closer, the mesh is deformed to match the pattern such that you can actually see the mountains and valleys

 

[varonica]

but instead are more of a heatmap with certain heights, colours, and textures applied based on the procedurally generated pattern. When you get close to a planet the texture is first rendered to make it look like it has depth, and then as you get closer, the mesh is deformed to match the pattern such that you can actually see the mountains and valleys

Look seriously, the devs state in the dev talk that the non-landable planet are just bitmaps and nothing else. For landable planets the above holds true, but for the non-landable planets it doesn't. This is a fact as stated by the devs, what you see of the non-landable planets are just bitmap placeholders and nothing else. They simply don't generate the height maps for non-landable planets. Go and watch the dev talk, I have watched it, but I have no intention of watching it through again just to bookmark the relevant bit to prove a single point, it would be educational for you to watch it rather that me watching it twice just to get the same information I already have and that you insist on denying is true.

 

[bicarbon8]

Look seriously, the devs state in the dev talk that the non-landable planet are just bitmaps and nothing else. For landable planets the above holds true, but for the non-landable planets it doesn't. This is a fact as stated by the devs, what you see of the non-landable planets are just bitmap placeholders and nothing else. They simply don't generate the height maps for non-landable planets. Go and watch the dev talk, I have watched it, but I have no intention of watching it through again just to bookmark the relevant bit to prove a single point, it would be educational for you to watch it rather that me watching it twice just to get the same information I already have and that you insist on denying is true.

maybe your definition of Bitmap placeholders is different than mine. To me, it means that the planet is not a 3 dimensional object in the game (like a sprite), but I am quite certain that the non-landable planets are 3 dimensional as I fly around them all the time and can see different "sides". I think you are defining "Bitmap placeholder" as a 3 dimensional object with a bitmap image mapped to it, in which case I'd say all the planets in Elite are essentially this.

at a certain distance from the planets I believe they are probably represented by simple sprites, but that isn't what either of us are talking about here.

 

[Nejamai]

i just gave up on exploring, as all planets that we can land on are the same booooooring rocks not to mention the things to find on planets is just boring, nothing special and finding a lava volcano lol just makes me laugh how small they are hahahahaha, common devs make some big volcanos, hope to see that patch soon with the extra detail of the planets, i just dont understand why not activate the other planets also and add the same stuff on them like on the current ones on which we can land now, not the earth type planets or water ones but the ones wich says freon, or argon atmosphere heh i mean should not give a big difference in landing your anaconda on it lol that ship does not even have aerodynamics hahah many ships dont actually in Elite sooooo whats the big deal with ** we need to make the physics work ** ships of elite are not even aerodynamic lol so what good does the physics do, just good thrusters do the job, hah the atmosphere should even help reducing the ships speed soooo, all the extra goodies with physics you can ad on later, not??

 

[varonica]

maybe your definition of Bitmap placeholders is different than mine. To me, it means that the planet is not a 3 dimensional object in the game (like a sprite), but I am quite certain that the non-landable planets are 3 dimensional as I fly around them all the time and can see different "sides". I think you are defining "Bitmap placeholder" as a 3 dimensional object with a bitmap image mapped to it, in which case I'd say all the planets in Elite are essentially this.

at a certain distance from the planets I believe they are probably represented by simple sprites, but that isn't what either of us are talking about here.

it's a spherical mesh with a 2d bitmap wrapped around it, I stated that clearly in one of my earlier posts. It appears not only haven't you watched the dev talk, you haven't bothered reading the rest of the thread either.