100% Proof Planets have lost their colour. [UPDATED with official Dev reason and plan to improve]

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
CMDR Ofan said:
Shouldn't change when you get closer either, airless planets are eroded, granular and dusty they tend not to be made of solid blocks of material to have masses of colour variety. Tend to be sand of one colour and rocks of another, sound familiar? Have you looked at surface shots of Mars?

There are planets that exibit colour variance in game at that kind of level but they are rare, just like in real life.
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Odd that you chose to point out that something would look a certain way "from thousands of KM away" when you really meant to say it would look the same at any distance. Assuming that's actually what you meant from the start? I guess what I'm saying is that from thousands of KM away*, it looks like you're talking nonsense.

* by which I mean "from any vantage point at any distance"
 

GG7

G
CMDR Ofan said:
Is there something fundamental I'm missing here?
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YES!

The issue is with this one specific type of planet. The Metal Rich World variety which makes up a large percentage of the planetary bodies found in the game. Where we once had dozens of variations in color, landscape and surface detail, we now have just ONE!

As in...

1

All the planets in this category look nearly identical. This is why many explorers are stating that there is little point in bothering to land on this type of planet now regardless of where you find it. For all intents and purposes, they are all clones, and because these make up a large percentage of the planets found across the galaxy, we have lost a great deal of diversity through this change.

It is a pretty big deal to those of us with an attention to detail. ;)

And NO! This isn't realistic! Compare Pluto to Mars and tell me they look the same. ;) And that is comparing just two bodies in our own system.

Solar system diversity is far more extensive and wide ranging than anyone ever imagined. How ironic that as this discovery is breaking open past theories and conventions in the real world, Frontier is running in the complete opposite direction as their game is now failing badly in regards to accurately modeling planetary diversity.
 
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Stinja

S
24,000 Ly out and I found a purple planet. I was amazed because it wasn't beige like pretty much everything else i'd seen so far.

Let me repeat that. Purple. Not anything different textures, or craters or ravines, just purple. And it was still a sight to ponder on. Definitely sad it just a colour pallet swap makes something "unique"...
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
Some1else said:

Could we please stop with the "Realism" part of this discussion? That word implies the idea that there is some kind of evidence to back up the claim. There is none.

I did find a beigie beigie system with some rather beige rocky moons.

http://i.imgur.com/IPz4rp8.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/X6oAB6U.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/LZP5xXC.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/LoLGDav.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/sj9U4sH.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/rNgf2xG.jpg?1

S1E
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There is in fact evidence to back up the claim that dirt is brown. Your eyes for one. But the flatness of the planet color eg the lack of variation seems to be a byproduct of technical issues. An individual planet should have the capacity to be a rainbow of brown, black, grey, yellow, red, and white depending on the top soil. Maybe some blue and green under the right conditions.
 
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Banana's_Are_Good_For_You

Banana's_Are_Good_For_You
If every moon or rock looks different when it has the same core makeup, then it would be inconsistent. There will always be humdrum planets / moons / rocks out there.
This is also the same when their makeup is different.
If FD are upgrading how these work then it probably a good thing so when an explorer finds one that does look different, it's something that rewards the explorer. This gives value to the process of exploring.

What would be even better would be that specific rocks or moons with say, a high Iron content, had a reddish tint to them in certain areas, same with other metallic resources on these things or other variables. Again with the consistency.

However, just having different coloured planets just for the hell of it makes no sense whatsoever.
Exploration, by definition, should be about finding stuff.
Experienced Explorers should be better at it because they understand what makes up an interesting planet before they get in visual range.

That would work in my mind but I'm a Banana so...sighs.
 

DullingWine

D
Please keep this campaign up Obsidian Ant (and community).

+1 for this petition:
- More colour variety (lot's more)
- Wider spectrum of texture/colour on planets

How about it Frontier?
I've been doing a fair few settlement type stuff recently to get materials, and its just depressing that every planet is precisely the same colour.
This is for the LOVE OF THE GAME
 

Obsidian Ant

Obsidian Ant
Ziljan said:
There is in fact evidence to back up the claim that dirt is brown. Your eyes for one. But the flatness of the planet color eg the lack of variation seems to be a byproduct of technical issues. An individual planet should have the capacity to be a rainbow of brown, black, grey, yellow, red, and white depending on the top soil. Maybe some blue and green under the right conditions.
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I haven't really commented one way or the other on the "realism" subject.

What I do find odd however, is the moons in Orrere are rocky moons, and they were previously white, and are now brown/beige. Whilst I am sure there is an underlying reason for this...we do know that white / grey moons do in fact exist in reality...
 
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Some1else

Some1else
Ziljan said:
There is in fact evidence to back up the claim that dirt is brown. Your eyes for one. But the flatness of the planet color eg the lack of variation seems to be a byproduct of technical issues. An individual planet should have the capacity to be a rainbow of brown, black, grey, yellow, red, and white depending on the top soil. Maybe some blue and green under the right conditions.
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I am sorry Commander, but that is not evidence for the true color of terrestrial exoplanets. Dirt is brown mostly because of organic material. As one of the two scientific papers I have linked to and quoted in other threads on this subject. To actually know what the color of terrestrial exoplanets is will require knowing how much of the surface is from the actual body itself, or comprised of material from asteroids, meteors, and comets. The other paper made it clear that from the data we have gathered on terrestrial exoplanets in the inferred part of the spectrum showed that there is a fairly wide spread of metals and minerals. To me this would make a much better argument for a variety of colors, then dirt is brown. No offense Commander. Just doing what I can to debunk this myth.:)

LLaP

S1E

 

mojonaut

mojonaut
Cosmos said:
Its also getting a bit tiresome that the look of the game changes on a whim every five minutes, often for the worse.
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...and they do it time after time.

Some may remember:

The asteroid fields graphic downgrade (they weren't going for realism then bland and flat looking roids).
The star fields with four point stars everywhere (diffraction spikes), because that's how stars appear in (refractor) telescopes.
The 'bluing' of the starfield background .

Now the beiging and even icy worlds only seem two have a two colour pallette with a ridiculous soft altitude blend.

Who at FD is driving these decisions and why doesn't someone on the team notice it's worse than before and do something about it before release?
 

Gypsy12

Gypsy12
Lord Braben.

Much as we love you... What in seven hells are you doing? You produce a game of 400 billion suns and don't concentrate on that?
Are you sure you are in the correct forum? The correct game?

Have you woken up yet? Do you understand that this game isn't really about pewpew but rather exploration?

Its like a Porsche salesman pushing lada's.

Here's a collective biatchslap to you. Enjoy. Seriously. What are you at?
 

fus roh potato

fus roh potato
They thought they were taking a realistic approach by assigning planet surface color to match the color of their parent stars.

However:
  • The color of stars in ED are WAY off. Most are shown as dark orange but in reality emit wavelengths that project a mostly white sum. This is why the planets shown as beige in our solar system are actually mostly light grey in true color, with hints of other exotic colors showing through.
  • The brightness of stars in ED is not just way off, but magnitudes off. You should never be able to get remotely close to one without some serious sci-fi level window tinting technology. You're not supposed to be able to stare directly into it from earth's distance. No gameplay would be sacrificed in pushing brightness visuals closer to reality, it would simply be more captivating.
  • Before their lighting fix, they were actually closer to realism than they are now. They need to understand that projecting color onto a surface doesn't mean that same color gets returned on reflection. Stars may bias for emitting a particular wavelength but they still project a lot of power in a wide spectrum. This is why our orange sun lets us see green grass and blue skies.
 
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Gypsy12

Gypsy12
fus roh potato said:
They thought they were taking a realistic approach by assigning planet surface color to match the color of their parent stars.

However:
  • The color of stars in ED are WAY off. Most are shown as dark orange but in reality emit wavelengths that project a mostly white sum. This is why the planets shown as beige in our solar system are actually mostly light grey in true color, with hints of other exotic colors showing through.
  • The brightness of stars in ED is not just way off, but magnitudes off. You should never be able to get remotely close to one without some serious sci-fi level window tinting technology. You're not supposed to be able to stare directly into it from earth's distance. No gameplay would be sacrificed in pushing brightness visuals closer to reality, it would simply be more captivating.
  • Before their lighting fix, they were actually closer to realism than they are now. They need to understand that projecting color onto a surface doesn't mean that same color gets returned on reflection. Stars may bias for emitting a particular wavelength but they still project a lot of power in a wide spectrum. This is why our orange sun lets us see green grass and blue skies.
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!00% agreeing with this.
 

CMDR MadRaptor

CMDR MadRaptor
fus roh potato said:
They thought they were taking a realistic approach by assigning planet surface color to match the color of their parent stars.

However:
  • The color of stars in ED are WAY off. Most are shown as dark orange but in reality emit wavelengths that project a mostly white sum. This is why the planets shown as beige in our solar system are actually mostly light grey in true color, with hints of other exotic colors showing through.
  • The brightness of stars in ED is not just way off, but magnitudes off. You should never be able to get remotely close to one without some serious sci-fi level window tinting technology. You're not supposed to be able to stare directly into it from earth's distance. No gameplay would be sacrificed in pushing brightness visuals closer to reality, it would simply be more captivating.
  • Before their lighting fix, they were actually closer to realism than they are now. They need to understand that projecting color onto a surface doesn't mean that same color gets returned on reflection. Stars may bias for emitting a particular wavelength but they still project a lot of power in a wide spectrum. This is why our orange sun lets us see green grass and blue skies.
Click to expand...

Except our sun isn't really orange is it? ;) haha but I get what you are getting at. Just like to point that little tidbit out when I can.
 

DoctorDanny

DoctorDanny
I propose that frontier goes back to the V2 colour and levels of detail on the planets.

We can allways say that the planets look a bit unrealistic because of the holo-filter that has been installed in our canopy glass.
It makes everything a little unrealistic, but provides easy access to good looking planets.
 

Zambrick

Zambrick
Panzertard said:
If I recall correctly, this started to happened when they tried to improve the lighting system wasn't it?
The updated effects seems to have really removed a lot of the vibrant planets indeed.

I'm not sure whether FD think it's a problem due to realism, and hence they tried keeping all the planets more true to the real world.
We the players are still in a game, flying around in the galaxy for sightseeing.
Besides, we do have the cockpit windows which auto-adjust our outside view anyway (polaroid effect), it wouldn't hurt if it is allowed to ramp up the vibrancy.

Old Orrere in video: Wallpaper instahit
New Orrere in video: ... sorry, not cutting it.

With the new Camera in 2.3, people who's going to tweet & tube Elite Dangerous would appreciate a bit more of the Wallpaper-quality backdrops.
Certainly, we don't want a cascade of beige tweets, do we?

Please, FD bring back the vibrant planets. I can't take any more *beige* :(
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The problem is that their lighting system star color doesn't effect the surface of the planets. The light from the star is just a light source and carries little to no color with it. Otherwise the planet would change color near star sets and rising areas. The light would diffuse even further at a steeper angle and would make the area near those points on the planet look different. Instead it just makes them darker.

That means they had to create an algorithm to change a planets actual surface color texture based upon the stars stored class. It doesnt actually reflect the star itself in any way. The change itself was little more than an artificial attempt at making it look more realistic. However if realism was the point then most planets without atmosphere would reflect white light as they do in the real galaxy.

Either way I miss the old planets and wish they would turn them back.
 
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Clicker

Clicker
I am somewhat torn.

I really do not know if I want the colouring to be realistic (ie what you'd see with your own eyes if you actually went there), or "tarted up" to give variety and manufactured eye candy....if the latter, how far should FD go?

I love the fact that ED is a gamified simulator.

There is a balance here somewhere and unfortunately FD won't please all the people no matter what's done.

Clicker
 
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