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

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Erei said:
Nope. Lots of dull planet in Horizon, sure. Boring, bland, whatever. But nothing that felt repetitive. I mean, bland means repetitive by itself, but for another reason entirely.

I have been playing only for a few months. I'll need a bit more to develop any sense of nostalgia.
And if I can play a few months without noticing a pattern, I can safely say even if there is one, then it's entirely ok. I played a few hours in Odyssey before noticing patterns. The crater, for example, is pretty much everywhere.
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Yep, that crater, just like the crater in Horizons, is over used.

Take a trip to Beagle point, in Horizons, in a 35LY jump ship, FSS every system... (with no star class filtering)
Before you have got 20 KLy you would have seen the same body, with the same crater, sufficient times to notice it, honestly!

There are times when having a few thousand hours more exploration behind one permits an observation such as mine - repeating assets certainly exist in Horizons, which wasn't allegedly 'broken', but not in the same scale as in the 'broken' Odyssey.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Rat Catcher said:
So you never, ever, saw the same crater in Horizons, despite your ingrained pattern recognition ability?
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On this point, in all the thousands of km's I travelled, in all honesty no. Similar yes and I defintely grew familiar with the patterns thrown up by the maths of Horizons planet tech, but the same crater? No. That's not to say they weren't there, just that I find it fascinating how the brain's pattern recognition works and how Odyssey tech is tiriggering it where Horizons didn't ... for me at least.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Alec Turner said:
On this point, in all the thousands of km's I travelled, in all honesty no. Similar yes and I defintely grew familiar with the patterns thrown up by the maths of Horizons planet tech, but the same crater? No. That's not to say they weren't there, just that I find it fascinating how the brain's pattern recognition works and how Odyssey tech is tiriggering it where Horizons didn't ... for me at least.
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From space, rather than the surface?

My main account is almost at 1 million LY travelled (as it is back out looking for a couple of elusive WD classes for a couple of days a week, it won't be long!) and the same icy/rocky ball, with a crater around 12 o'clock, is a familiar sight in the FSS for me.

Odyssey has issues on a much greater scale with repeating assets - and it is very noticable everywhere I have been (yes, I do see the same patterns) - it is just odd that memory appears to be very selective when it comes to criticism on this forum.
 

djadjok

djadjok
Alec Turner said:
On this point, in all the thousands of km's I travelled, in all honesty no. Similar yes and I defintely grew familiar with the patterns thrown up by the maths of Horizons planet tech, but the same crater? No. That's not to say they weren't there, just that I find it fascinating how the brain's pattern recognition works and how Odyssey tech is tiriggering it where Horizons didn't ... for me at least.
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Oh, yes, "similar", not "identical" (even I'm not so sure if we cut off skybox and other scenery). Alec, I do think that the landscapes we do see in Horizons give us "unique" feeling mostly due to our own imagination, "the adventure" thing and friends we make along the way - rather than theirs proper "uniqueness".
 

Erei

Erei
Eventually, there will be pattern. Even if it's entirely random generated. Simply because computer (and in fact reality) have no knowledge of true randomness. It's just an algorithm. The more complicated the algorithm is, the less pattern you get.
The whole idea is not to eradicate repetitive pattern entirely, even though that'd be nice, but to hide them better. Right now, that crater, and others features, are just plastered everywhere. Identical.
 

Sunyavadin

Sunyavadin
Erei said:
Eventually, there will be pattern. Even if it's entirely random generated. Simply because computer (and in fact reality) have no knowledge of true randomness. It's just an algorithm. The more complicated the algorithm is, the less pattern you get.
The whole idea is not to eradicate repetitive pattern entirely, even though that'd be nice, but to hide them better. Right now, that crater, and others features, are just plastered everywhere. Identical.
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Noise, overlaps, inversions, distortions, there are plenty techniques which can be drawn upon to manipulate prefabs in such a way as to implement the same one but have it less recognisable. It's a matter of how many variations you can pull from the seed for each planet based on how you have implemented your procgen system.
 

[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
Rat Catcher said:
So you never, ever, saw the same crater in Horizons, despite your ingrained pattern recognition ability? That surprises me.
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Also honestly, no, never in Horizons. Whereas that one big crater with its (quite frankly, ridiculous) rays in Odyssey is obviously the same.

Also, that's backed up by Dr. Ross when she says that terrain in Horizons is "generated entirely mathematically."

(Edit: For the record, like you, I've also traveled 1 million Ly, in case you think I'm new and wouldn't know)
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Rat Catcher said:
it is just odd that memory appears to be very selective when it comes to criticism on this forum.
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Probably not that odd really. When we got Horizons there was nothing to compare it to so we didn't really analyse it in anything like the depth of scrutiny that Odyssey is receiving. In some ways the scrutiny is justified tho - we've been presented with Odyssey as a significant upgrade to Horizons (and at great cost, the loss of every surface feature thus far mapped by the Galactic Mapping Project, the planetary circumnavigation club, the racing groups and untold others). Imagine if someone replaced your wife/husband/partner with someone else and said here, take this one, it's better. I think I'd be taking a long hard look before accepting that deal. :LOL:
 

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
Merkir said:
Also honestly, no, never in Horizons. Whereas that one big crater with its (quite frankly, ridiculous) rays in Odyssey is obviously the same.

Also, that's backed up by Dr. Ross when she says that terrain in Horizons is "generated entirely mathematically."
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Can we please, have an answer from developers in this thread as to whether planets will be remade to be unique once again, or whether they will continue to use this repeated tile-set method. I know they've said planet tech is currently not working as intended but that doesn't answer the question so many exporers want to know. I don't want to rant or rave at the answer, i don't even want to comment on it once it arrives and makes things clear, i'd just like to know so that i can either wait for a while before coming back, or just forget about ED and stop wasting my time looking for news. I haven't refunded Odyssey and i'm not going to, because i understand i took a chance on entertainment as if i went to the cinema and didn't like a film, but i do feel i and others deserve an answer on this issue, instead of vague 'we'll make it better' or radio silence.

Please let us know.
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
Alec Turner said:
Imagine if someone replaced your wife/husband/partner with someone else and said here, take this one, it's better....
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I don't know, I've never been married to a game - but maybe that is just me 🤷‍♂️

Odyssey has issues with planetary tech, which appears to have been confirmed - shame about the changes, but the game has to evolve, surely? As for the 'loss' of data & locations, maybe once the bugs are ironed out there will be new extremes, maybe not, but the game is evolving, maybe not in a way that some players like, and change is a product of that evolution.

We are less than 4 weeks into a bugged release, allegedly things will change in the future ;)
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
Merkir said:
Also honestly, no, never in Horizons. Whereas that one big crater with its (quite frankly, ridiculous) rays in Odyssey is obviously the same.

Also, that's backed up by Dr. Ross when she says that terrain in Horizons is "generated entirely mathematically."
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Dr Ross said quite a lot of things in the pre-launch streams, which gave the impression that Odyssey terrain generation was based on specifics of the body involved, its own gravity, density and formation history from Stellar Forge. None of that tallies with an identikit tiling system.
 
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