New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

Erei

Erei
Ricodelgado said:
I still don't understand how the game could have changed so much from the alpha version to the release version. I enjoyed the planets so much in the alpha....

I especially remember a poi of a crashed ship, where suddenly 6 or 7 enemies would appear. I didn't like the combat at all, but getting to that place was incredible. First approaching the planet, in its orbit, it looked beautiful and realistic, then looking for a good landing place near the poi was a challenge, with all those rocks here and there, and the realistic geometry of the planet. And once I landed, driving the srv, looking for the best route among the hundreds of rocks, enjoying every slope, every corner of that place. It was all as realistic as being on our real moon.

I remember, in contrast, my last poi on a planet in the launch version, and the lack of immersion. This is not what I saw and enjoyed in the alpha, it's as if the alpha was the launch version, and vice versa. In fact, the evolution seems to have been the opposite: Launch--Alpha--Prealpha, and I do not know if it is a degradation of the technology to gain a few fps, if it has really been an unintended error, or what could have been. I would like an explanation beyond "it's not working as it should" because I already know that, what I would like to know is why, and if it's really going to be fixed.

How many times did they say during the alpha that this was not the definitive technology... every time I remember it...
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If I'm not mistaken, the planet in alpha were not using the planetary tech, or only a part of it. We didn't have the complete version until release.
 

[PS4] Filthymick420

[PS4] Filthymick420
Erei said:
A videogame is a magic trick. It works by hiding the mirrors and the strings. Not by not having them.
I don't ask for no repetitive patterns, I ask for them to be well hidden so I don't notice.

Horizon probably had the same stuff, but I never noticed. That's good for me.
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If you don't know it's there it doesn't bother you. It's like mind over matter lol

I'd be cool with this, since I wouldn't know anyways
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
Erei said:
I never said it was new thing. I was very clear that's it's a common technique. And I didn't say it was dishonest, just that they were aware of the problems, and used that technique to hide them.
You did the conclusion.
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Even if you watch things like RDR2 trailers (which are sort of my favourite thing) they're nearly always backlighting everything.

I think ED struggles because the textures often seem to be lower-resolution than they're meant to be. And I'm not sure if there's any ambient occlusion going on, although that won't help you on a big flat plain. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed.

Also they don't have all the vegetation that most of the best-looking games have, which breaks everything up visually. They just have the rocks. And now I think they have less rocks.
 

Linnunrata

Linnunrata
-NO VR- Frillop Freyraum said:
I don't know where the idea that a screenshot is trying to prove something or be some sort of statement comes from. I'm pretty sure that's not the case in the screenshot thread at least, maybe with a few rare exceptions (trolls are everywhere).
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I don't think it needs to taken as an angry criticism that that is the case (at least I didn't intend my comment as one). I just always found it an interesting notion that for example in Reddit, there were tons of images portraying ring systems with "this game looks so awesome". And while that is okay and ring systems sure are cool, I don't think that it is entirely wrong to say that other astronomical phenomenons in the game could use some visual love.

But it's more of a humble hope for me, not a salty "this game is crap and looks like crap, FDev" point. 🤷‍♂️
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Slightly OT, but the conversation about lighting made me remember. You guys should see the giant flustercluck that was the 1.40 lighting update in ETS2 and ATS :D People complaining that light behaves like.. light, and that it is blinding during midday. Oh and how dare nights be dark. It was popcorn worthy.
 

Linnunrata

Linnunrata
hunvagy said:
People complaining that light behaves like.. light, and that it is blinding during midday. Oh and how dare nights be dark.
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Darkness being dark is of course okay (though it was funny to be stuck into perpertual night when driving west, since geographically the truck goes very, very fast), but I can see how blinding light can be tricky. People play games in different lighting conditions and it's a bit troublesome if lights burn the environment through in situations where IRL you would use sunglasses.
 

Chankk Saotome

Chankk Saotome
BlackMaze said:
Literally all terrain features both from high orbit to low orbit are repeating, hand crafted, and break every little bit hunger for exploration. There is absolutely no desire to go down and explore since all you're looking at is the "randomly" organized set of hand crafted height map bits the developers have made.

Horizons gives a REAL sense of wanting to go and explore. Find planets with unique features.

Planets in Odyssey are no longer unique. They are just reorganised sets of the same features.

These planets were designed with one goal: look acceptable from an on-foot perspective or when looking from a twilight perspective with a setting sun for the atmo effect.
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The Reverend

The Reverend
Valorin said:
That's pretty dramatic. :D
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But sadly true.

The Horizons stellar forge has its issues and quirks, but it is/was a wonderful thing. Players enjoyed it for 5 years (putting the beige plague aside!). In comparison, the odyssey stellar forge just seems so artificial and shoehorned in to make leg mode work, more or less. The randomness, or perceived randomness, of Horizons has gone.

Still, its early days. We're only 3 weeks into the beta. Lets see how it looks by the time consoles are released, as we know the bar needs to be raised considerably for those :censored:
 

Valorin

Valorin
The Reverend said:
But sadly true.

The Horizons stellar forge has its issues and quirks, but it is/was a wonderful thing. Players enjoyed it for 5 years (putting the beige plague aside!). In comparison, the odyssey stellar forge just seems so artificial and shoehorned in to make leg mode work, more or less. The randomness, or perceived randomness, of Horizons has gone.

Still, its early days. We're only 3 weeks into the beta. Lets see how it looks by the time consoles are released, as we know the bar needs to be raised considerably for those :censored:
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I'm still not really convinced that Horizon's tech didn't have a lot of similar issues and was just better at hiding it.
I always found it all looks pretty much the same with a few outstanding planets inbetween. The fog and atmosphere at many places just muffled that a lot and made it more atmospheric somehow.
I also saw very, very few of those re-used patterns in Odyssey so far. I am sure there were some I didn't notice, but at least I saw one of them and after that I was just trained to spot them whenever they appeared.
They did appear, but not a bit as frequent as these examples and the drama makes one believe.

Not saying it's not there. It's there, okay... Just to be sure no one jumps at me here. :D
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Valorin said:
Not saying it's not there. It's there, okay... Just to be sure no one jumps at me here. :D
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I think the new wave of "panic" is from a quote(?) from another post I read, that FD now wants to avoid planet rerolling. Which would be really bad if the tiling and duplication is still present. I mean even if it is just a small percentage, why not try to properly fix it.

Also I still think it is more Horizons planets and less EDO. It is almost as if all care was given to the atmo worlds, because I rarely see those go PS1 textures.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Valorin said:
I'm still not really convinced that Horizon's tech didn't have a lot of similar issues and was just better at hiding it.
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Horizon's terrain was generated entirely mathematically as part of the procedural generation, so no, it didn't have these terrain tiling issues.

I also saw very, very few of those re-used patterns in Odyssey so far. I am sure there were some I didn't notice, but at least I saw one of them and after that I was just trained to spot them whenever they appeared.
They did appear, but not a bit as frequent as these examples and the drama makes one believe.
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The terrain tiling occurs on EVERY Rocky and HMC planet. The only reason I don't include other planet types is that I haven't looked at enough of the others to make a statistically significant sample size.

Not saying it's not there. It's there, okay... Just to be sure no one jumps at me here. :D
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Not wanting to jump at you, but it's disappointing that so many people want to downplay this issue or try to give the impression that it's infrequent.
 

[PS4] Filthymick420

[PS4] Filthymick420
children-of-the-gods-jack-salute.jpg
 

AdriánGuth

AdriánGuth
Merkir said:
Horizon's terrain was generated entirely mathematically as part of the procedural generation, so no, it didn't have these terrain tiling issues.
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If I had those horizons problems. I have already shown several captures in this thread with repeating patterns.

New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

I made a post showing the pattern repetition on the screenshot provided. The fact you don't see the issues doesn't mean nobody else do. I have some suspicion, that old Horizons had repeating patterns too. But because "tiles" were bigger and with less details, people did see them as easily.
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