But only if the lit side of a planet is facing the observer. The outer planets (beyond Earth's orbit) are always showing their lit sides, whereas Venus has phases like our Moon, and is barely perceptible by the naked eye at "New Venus" and then only if one has remarkably good visual acuity. The always-visible starlike dot in Elite is not physically accurate but helpful as a navigation aid, I guess. There are many objects in Elite not visible at all until dropping out of SC, so I see no problem with an empty reticule until a visible disk can be rendered.
Anyone experiencing invisible planets in SC until you get very close to it?
- Thread starter ferus
- Start date
Yes you would see it as a star (like Mars, Jupiter, Venus or any other planet viewed from Earth) - even though it’s light reflected from planet surface.
But in ED it was always displayed the same as stars.
Up until Update 11 that is.
Actually none of the planets show up in SC until I am very close to them. No matter if it’s a lit up side or the dark side.
Unless it’s an intended optimization feature…
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Ok been doing some screenshotting and experimenting and this is what I have;
I have targeted this planet in this system, as you can see it is 81,000 ls away, but it's a gas giant so it's quite large;
Then I swapped to take a screenshot of the target circle with the planet centered, you can just see the planet, I have an enlarged and cropped versions here, I tried uploading the full picture but the spot was lost in compressions artifacts but you can see it clearly here, so it seems something may have changed for closer and smaller bodies, but you can still see gas giants from a long way away!
So what's going on I don't know, but you can still see at least some planets!
Keep in mind FSR is activated by default with U11 for many. When rendering at lower levels the starting point for a single pixel representing a planet will be later.
I definitely noticed this last night...thought maybe I had a little too much lavian brandy. I suspect, as others have said, it's something to do with "checkerboards" or "optimization." It seems to be with landable planets, only, though....or at least those were the only ones I targeted and it could well be happening with any of them. They definitely are not there and then "pop" into existence.
Yes, I noticed that FDev likes to enable graphic degradation by default
But it’s not what it’s causing it. I don’t use FSR.
Oh God, they stole Jupiter ! I hope they didn't steal Uranus to !Spot the difference time!
What can you see in Horizons that you can't in Odyssey?
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Yeah definitely an issue. My experience, now that I think about it, was pre patch 11.
Good, at least I’m not the only oneSpot the difference time!
What can you see in Horizons that you can't in Odyssey?
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Spot the difference time!
What can you see in Horizons that you can't in Odyssey?
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Also, look at that crispy HUD and the not-so-broken lighting.Spot the difference time!
What can you see in Horizons that you can't in Odyssey?
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Spot the difference time!
What can you see in Horizons that you can't in Odyssey?
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Wrong question: the correct one is "What can you see in Odyssey until U10 that you can't in Odyssey in U11? Distant bodies and stations have always been rendered as a dot of light "placeholder" right until the actual rendering of the asset kicked in, U11 seems to be missing that, so planets appear to pop into existence a few ls away. Even if that had been related to a visual option (it's not, always been like that from low to ultra, since 2014), considering I haven't changed mine between U10 and U11 it's definitely some kind of "optimization" or issue on their end. One thing's for sure, it doesn't look good at all. Worth a shot for the tracker.
Planets appear starlike to the naked eye except for one aspect -- they do not twinkle due to atmospheric turbulence the way stars do. This is because they have a measurable angular extent (size) while stars are true point sources. Our eyes can't fully perceive this, they're limited to about 1 second of arc, but the comparative constancy of their light is very noticeable. But planets will fade from view at greater and greater distances because they are not, as you say, light emitters, and the reflected light they shine by is not intense enough to be visible for very large distances. Even some stars are too dim to be seen at many light years distance. So the minimum dot representing planets prior to U11 isn't truly accurate, especially for planets that are inherently dark (low albedo), but I guess the designers felt it better to show something while on approach to a planet.
How about: “What can you still see in Horizons that you now can't in Odyssey?”
Hopefully it’s like when we got the destination star in hyperspace tunnels - it then went AWOL for a bit before that particular bug got stomped.
Actually most of the stars are, and we are to be thankful for that or we'd be living under an overwhelmingly bright white paste of a sky. There's 13 billions years worth of universe in every direction, it's quite a number.
How about: “What can you still see in Horizons that you now can't in Odyssey?”
Oh I got this, it's "A lot more frames in the same span of a second"
This is know as Olber's Paradox, and the answer came only in the last century or so -- most stars' light is red-shifted out of the visible range due to the expansion of the Universe, so even extremely bright stars are greatly dimmed, hence no "bright white paste."Actually most of the stars are, and we are to be thankful for that or we'd be living under an overwhelmingly bright white paste of a sky. There's 13 billions years worth of universe in every direction, it's quite a number.
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Back in the early days of the game I had a limited range scanner and a couple of times needed to find planets using the parallax method. Good job we didn’t have this issue back then!
I’m not crying in my VR headset, honest!Oh I got this, it's "A lot more frames in the same span of a second"
Exactly that. No less of a reason to be grateful.