I really do sound like a whiney beeotch, don't I?
New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)
- Thread starter BlackMaze
- Start date
There's not no way to fix it, the way to fix it is simply several (hundred?) thousand times more assets, and some kind of cool bit of code to help blend and modify them.
It's a massive load of work, and it'd be a lot more download size, but that is technically a solution.
![[VR] Merkir](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
Already covered this territory. You say they need several (hundred?) thousand times more assets. I agree, which puts it at terabytes or hundreds of terabytes of extra data. A lot more download size indeed, or stream it on demand - already discussed. And even those are only partial solutions at best. It should have been done entirely with procgen.
You could proc gen onto the assets to modify them enough to be unrecognisable. Be some clever code but that's what pro game devs do
Terrain stamps are probably just alphas, so nothing more than a black/grey/white image. That's why it blows my mind that these are even pre-made in the first place, as believable terrain alphas aren't hard to generate procedurally.
Many planets and moons look like terrible in Odyssey when you get closer.
The funny thing: if you post those issues, a lot of 'smart people' go there and say:
1 - It's your GPU
2 - I don't have this issue
3 - Stop complaining
4 - I see no issues
5 - I don't care
Sometimes I think that people responsible for this MESS create accounts in this forum to say that everything is ok.
It's hard to believe that there are people dumb enough to defend a mess like this.
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You also forget :Source: https://youtu.be/YFtLVLfi0P0
Many planets and moons look like SH** in Odyssey when you get closer.
The funny thing: if you post those issues, a lot of 'smart people' go there and say:
1 - It's your GPU
2 - I don't have this issue
3 - Stop complaining
4 - I see no issues
5 - I don't care
Sometimes I think that people responsible for this MESS create accounts in this forum to say that everything is ok.
It's hard to believe that there are people dumb enough to defend a mess like this.
-posting a singular "good looking planet" as proof that all the other planets having issues actually don't. Magically.
-claiming that it's "ReAlIStiC". Perhaps add some 70's blurry pic of the moon.
-take a screenshot at dusk, very low on the horizon and claim they don't see the problem. Obviously hidden by the dark, shadows and all that.
-will refuse to look at your stuff. Will refuse to even participate in the "study". Still claim you're wrong
-say you are misleading, lying.... Will not provide any proof that you are.
-will claim you took the picture in another version of the game. Even though planet gen was barely touched in the 5 patches, and you took the picture literally hours ago.
-will talk about the planet appearance when you talk about the quality of the texture, noise, and stuff like that. Saying "bland planet exist yo !", while you talk about PS2 texturing and "melted ice cream" issue.
-will cherry pick a good picture, and say you are cherry picking anyway.
I'd say you get used to it eventually, but you don't.
Not necessarily. We're not talking about textures here, but the heightmaps for the planets. Instead of hand-making them, procedurally generate them.
Kind of like what Horizons did.
I can understand why they wanted the terrain generation to use pre-made height maps, that way you can make things like the Moon which were not possible with Horizons planet generation. But (well, apart from a bunch of coding hours of course) there's nothing stopping someone from procedurally generating these elsewhere. A technical challenge for sure, but it's one that needs to be grasped otherwise the exploration part of Elite Dangerous is pretty much dead.
I strongly suspect the render team underestimated just how good the human brain is at pattern matching. The moment I heard about "hand made height maps" in the dev stream before the alpha, I knew repeating patterns were going to be a problem. What upsets explorers is that you know you're looking at a mostly unique set of planetary features (moutains, valleys etc.) in Horizons, but you're just seeing one of a pretty small set of pre-made features when you explore in Odyssey, and that's kind of what kills Odyssey for explorers.
Hey...You also forget :
-posting a singular "good looking planet" as proof that all the other planets having issues actually don't. Magically.
-claiming that it's "ReAlIStiC". Perhaps add some 70's blurry pic of the moon.
-take a screenshot at dusk, very low on the horizon and claim they don't see the problem. Obviously hidden by the dark, shadows and all that.
-will refuse to look at your stuff. Will refuse to even participate in the "study". Still claim you're wrong
-say you are misleading, lying.... Will not provide any proof that you are.
-will claim you took the picture in another version of the game. Even though planet gen was barely touched in the 5 patches, and you took the picture literally hours ago.
-will talk about the planet appearance when you talk about the quality of the texture, noise, and stuff like that. Saying "bland planet exist yo !", while you talk about PS2 texturing and "melted ice cream" issue.
-will cherry pick a good picture, and say you are cherry picking anyway.
I'd say you get used to it eventually, but you don't.
We're not smart enough!
We need to 'get a life' (like a read from a player ahhahahahah).
Hand made or not matters little if we had the original planet gen. It was generating so much noise, you couldn't see any repetition or apparent hand made stuff.
Remember, this is what planet were supposed to look like :
Can you spot any repetition or pattern ? No, you can't, unless you really, really look hard. There is simply too much noise and detail. The result is stunning.
This screenshot was taken today, same planet :
And now this. Little noise, plastic look... it sure is easier to spot repetition, since there is nothing else to see really.
I don't think there are any pattern on those 2 picture. But they were intended as comparison and examples. One have too much noise to see anything, the other is so poor quality, that's all there is to see.
Remember, this is what planet were supposed to look like :
Can you spot any repetition or pattern ? No, you can't, unless you really, really look hard. There is simply too much noise and detail. The result is stunning.
This screenshot was taken today, same planet :
And now this. Little noise, plastic look... it sure is easier to spot repetition, since there is nothing else to see really.
I don't think there are any pattern on those 2 picture. But they were intended as comparison and examples. One have too much noise to see anything, the other is so poor quality, that's all there is to see.
They changed a lot of thing because... they changed.Hand made or not matters little if we had the original planet gen. It was generating so much noise, you couldn't see any repetition or apparent hand made stuff.
Remember, this is what planet were supposed to look like :
Can you spot any repetition or pattern ? No, you can't, unless you really, really look hard. There is simply too much noise and detail. The result is stunning.
This screenshot was taken today, same planet :
View attachment 249331
And now this. Little noise, plastic look... it sure is easier to spot repetition, since there is nothing else to see really.
I don't think there are any pattern on those 2 picture. But they were intended as comparison and examples. One have too much noise to see anything, the other is so poor quality, that's all there is to see.
Look their answer:
Source: https://youtu.be/YFtLVLfi0P0
Many planets and moons look like SH** in Odyssey when you get closer.
The funny thing: if you post those issues, a lot of 'smart people' go there and say:
1 - It's your GPU
2 - I don't have this issue
3 - Stop complaining
4 - I see no issues
5 - I don't care
Sometimes I think that people responsible for this MESS create accounts in this forum to say that everything is ok.
It's hard to believe that there are people dumb enough to defend a mess like this.
The pop-ins in that video bother me even more than the ugly textures.
Not only does it not look much better than Horizons, it runs like 100 times worse.
And there are people saying that's fine...
Like I said up there, or you're a completely dumb consumer (to accept something like that), or you're a fake account hahahaha.
That was for atmo.
For the record, atmo was changed from volumetric to shader. So a big downgrade.
Heck, even without star being obscured, I would have taken volumetric any day of the week.
I think they never talked about the massive downgrade from the trailer to the release, for all the planet gen. Or the massive downgrade that occurred between alpha and release either.
If they did, please share.
Please Frontier, release the pre alpha! hahahahahha
Apparently it was released during alpha. I took screenshots today to compare to an alpha planet that was posted on reddit. The difference is night and day still.
But sometime between alpha and release, they said "f*** it" and downgraded the engine massively. I assume trying to fix the performances issues (volumetric for example is very hungry compared to a boring skybox).
Leading to day one reddit thread saying they made a mistake when applying the planet gen. Well, they didn't. It was on purpose apparently.
I have multiple screenshot comparing alpha and pre alpha planets with today engine, taken over the past days. I might get a new thread to stop derailing that one.
I didn't know that. It's even worse than I thought. :/
Please, open a thread about that.
Hand made or not matters little if we had the original planet gen. It was generating so much noise, you couldn't see any repetition or apparent hand made stuff.
Remember, this is what planet were supposed to look like :
Can you spot any repetition or pattern ? No, you can't, unless you really, really look hard. There is simply too much noise and detail. The result is stunning.
This screenshot was taken today, same planet :
View attachment 249331
And now this. Little noise, plastic look... it sure is easier to spot repetition, since there is nothing else to see really.
I don't think there are any pattern on those 2 picture. But they were intended as comparison and examples. One have too much noise to see anything, the other is so poor quality, that's all there is to see.
I saw repetition instantly on that pre-alpha ss, but I agree there is something about that image that gives the impression that it's better. Note it's more difficult to see repetition at such an acute angle. Easier when looking down almost perpendicular to the surface.
Totally agree. Again I hate to harp on the point as the devs might be reading this, but these issues can't just be swept under the carpet. Just look at the examples I highlighted in the post above. There's been no attempt to hide them, no rotation, no additional fractal noise, no affine transforms, no proximity rules. In the Hello Games GDC vids we see the love and attention they put into their procgen. I see no such love in Odyssey. (Sorry devs, I love this game and it hurts to have to say this).
