It's always a trade off between quality and computer power. And you can only get so detailed if you want to have the proc gen running on a normal PC.
That remembers me that in horizons when I turn on the lights of the SRV the FPS reduce in 10
RTX suxx and actually slow down progress of photorealistic graphics. Because it took too many resources to make lighting like 2% better. Umm, thanks, but no.
Have to say I do find the idea of predefined height maps being used a big disappointment. You need some handcrafted features that you can then scatter, like boulders, but on the overall geography? You'll need specific features that the base procedural generation won't come up with alone, like craters, but I assume a procedural crater generation algorithm is perfectly possible for those. Ditto with mountains with specific features; even less need to use it for them, unless you're going for features like long broken escarpments, which might be tricky to generate in any other way (not seen any of those).
Engine can do it I bet, but your gfx card cant. It can too, but at low fps lol. Any game where youve seen 2 global shadows, huh?
Actually that's what Odyssey does:
The problem is that I can't see it using the handcrafted ones where there's any obviously clear need for them. Whilst I've seen individual bits of terrain that "feel" a lot more convincing as a hilly but not particularly exciting average planetary location are handcrafted maps necessary for that? Perhaps they are to get some of the nicer features (collections of boulders accumulated in the bottom a small valley for example), but not for the same mountain which looks like it's something that could be produced procedurally anyway.
I bet - just ansumption extrapolating from my experiences in Horizons - the old proc gen only variant looks really not up to 2021 if viewed from a players avatars perspective. So they had to do anything and rising the bar on the proc gen they used would probably not have worked out.
The on foot perspective is pretty similar to the SRV one, and when are most players going to be on foot? Hopping out for a quick genetic scan, or wandering around setllements, which are handled separately anyway (predefined is understandable for settlements). I don't see the need for handcrafted heightmaps for either of those. Better ground textures, sure, and we've got them.
), but I feel this predefined heightmap method was the wrong way to go about it. On the basis of no experience designing such algorithms of course!EDO is halfway there I'd say. The low fps part is already working, they totally nailed that I hear.
As "Legs" was the main selling point of the whole DLC, one might think they would make that part look as good as possible.The on foot perspective is pretty similar to the SRV one, and when are most players going to be on foot? Hopping out for a quick genetic scan, or wandering around setllements, which are handled separately anyway (predefined is understandable for settlements). I don't see the need for handcrafted heightmaps for either of those. Better ground textures, sure, and we've got them.
Advancements in the planet tech should be welcomed - I believe procedural generation should now be able to do more than Horizons did, I agree it's not up to 2021 (even though in the world in general "not fit for the modern day" usually means "not ridiculously OTT", but I'm getting distracted by my non-game opinions there
Its not even a release build, that I heard. Think it is as early beta, and everything will be fine.
( Off-topic so hidden: )
Ultimately, if/when we get atmospheric worlds they're going to want to do better than (cleverly used) perlin noise style height maps. If you look at Earth height data you can't avoid noticing the paths of rivers/glaciers carving through things -- there's a sense of flow to stuff. Although I believe there's a mention of the Odyssey maps being twisted and distorted, that might give you a nice rough version of that.
Well spotted
Because the engine is basically creating a planet from scratch 60 times a second, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of clever trade-off in the terrain shaders to make this possible. Like if you only have one main light source it renders 10x quicker or something silly. But I don't really have a clue.
Yes, those are a challenge. You can either seriously cut back on the rivers (make them very rare, with few or no tributaries), or have the same sorts of patterns, which will be obvious very quickly. I don't know what the solution will be there. But if predefined heightmaps are the only way for that, well, use them there. Don't use them where you don't need them.
Is that a gas giant?Pretty obvious tiling here, looks crap
