Any guesses on when we might get to land on planets with atmosphere?

DanGriswold

DanGriswold
I am sure that at some point early on I heard David Braben mention that landing on planets with atmospheres was on the to-do list. Ever since then I have been foaming at the mouth in excitement over the possibility of admiring beautifully coloured alien skies and clouds from my SRV or cockpit. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to simulate something like that accurately, especially since there are so many possible combinations of gasses and atmospheric phenomena that could affect the visuals of something like that, not to mention the complexities of weather; so I'm really not expecting it any time soon (nor could I complain about a lengthy wait since they game we have at the moment is so darn good). Frontier seem to be keeping mum about a timeline on that, so I was wondering if anyone from the community had any educated guesses to throw out there.

Any thoughts?
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
I believe the announced (or it may just be presumed) timetable for new planetary effects is something like:
- Airless Volcanoes
- Gas giants
- Lifeless atmospheric planets (Mars-like/Venus-like)
- Water/Ammonia worlds with more lifeforms
- Earth-likes
- Earth itself

They haven't attached version deadlines for hitting these targets - they'll be ready when they're ready. But if I had to guess, my utterly uneducated guess would be:
2.4 - Airless Volcanoes
3.0 - Gas giants
3.2 - Lifeless atmospheric planets (Mars-like/Venus-like)
3.4 - Water/Ammonia worlds
4.0 - Earth-likes
4.5 - Earth itself

Given the "two years to a season" timetable currently being worked on, that would mean:
July 2017 - Airless Volcanoes
July 2018 - Gas giants
July 2019- Lifeless atmospheric planets (Mars-like/Venus-like)
July 2020 - Water/Ammonia worlds
July 2021 - Earth-likes
December 2022 - Earth itself

This timetable would also suit FD marketing, since "having a new planet type to land on" isn't much of a buzz, so they'll keep those for the non-Holiday updates, saving the Christmas updates for more exciting, marketable things like aliens. Earth, of course, will be big news, so they can put that in a Christmas launch.
 

Cmdr Frawd Digger

Cmdr Frawd Digger
Well they definitely say its in the future plans but have given nothing definitive about time-line. Almost certainly not in season 2 (since that has been roughly mapped out and we are half way through it). Season 3 maybe, but possibly only on non-ELW/WW (this is pure speculation on my part BTW) since those types of worlds would pose extra challenges like life and water simulation.

I believe they are developing the code for simulating atmospheric worlds with their game Planet Coaster. Simulating physics in atmosphere is a step towards ED...hopefully they drag it into season 3 :)

Frawd
 

Mengy

Mengy
I'm guessing two years for atmospheric landings.

They are waiting for PC tech to advance enough to give them the horsepower to make it work. :D
 

marx

marx
The only thing that Frontier have definitely stated so far is that landing on water worlds is not coming in Season 2. Other than that, there's only speculation.
Also, if memory serves, in one of the streams (during the 2.2 beta?) the developers mentioned that the main thing that takes long to solve isn't atmospheric flight itself (it's not like that would be breaking new ground), but actually having a good variety of things to do planetside. Especially on non-barren worlds.
 

DanGriswold

DanGriswold
Thanks, Mengy. I'm guessing my Xbox is not going to have the horsepower necessary for that. I'd better start looking at PC, I suppose.
 
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Objectum

Objectum
marx said:
The only thing that Frontier have definitely stated so far is that landing on water worlds is not coming in Season 2. Other than that, there's only speculation.
Also, if memory serves, in one of the streams (during the 2.2 beta?) the developers mentioned that the main thing that takes long to solve isn't atmospheric flight itself (it's not like that would be breaking new ground), but actually having a good variety of things to do planetside. Especially on non-barren worlds.
Click to expand...

Though this is true it doesn't match previous game implementations i.e. the bodies we can land on right now. What you can do is up to you and is the mentality of the game, isn't it? Blaze your own trail and all that. Sure we would be happy with beautiful but empty atmospheric planets, at least to start with.
 

[VR] optimal_909

[VR] optimal_909
I'm also scheduling my PC upgrades accordingly. :)

I think there is a long way to go to further refine the current airless worlds, including proper volcanoes (there are already volcanoes in-game, just without caldera and volcanism) and loads of other missing features, caves or more exotic stuff like ice on the caps or whatever they learn -for example- from recent discoveries on Pluto.
Also I wish to see more Kuiper-like objects, proper irregular shaped bodies.

It may sound odd, but I do hope they will wait as long as they can with life bearing worlds. Given the high level of execution of what we've already got, I think FDev will fail at the impossible task of procedurally generated life. It is already close to impossible to make hand crafted alien life that is believably different yet not ridiculous.
Some things are best to be left under veil, and I think ED would be better off without alien worlds.
 

DanGriswold

DanGriswold
optimal_909 said:
I'm also scheduling my PC upgrades accordingly. :)

I think there is a long way to go to further refine the current airless worlds, including proper volcanoes (there are already volcanoes in-game, just without caldera and volcanism) and loads of other missing features, caves or more exotic stuff like ice on the caps or whatever they learn -for example- from recent discoveries on Pluto.
Also I wish to see more Kuiper-like objects, proper irregular shaped bodies.

It may sound odd, but I do hope they will wait as long as they can with life bearing worlds. Given the high level of execution of what we've already got, I think FDev will fail at the impossible task of procedurally generated life. It is already close to impossible to make hand crafted alien life that is believably different yet not ridiculous.
Some things are best to be left under veil, and I think ED would be better off without alien worlds.
Click to expand...

Considering some of the alien life I saw in No Man's Sky (not that they didn't give it a great try, kudos for that), there's a good chance that they'll end up looking awfully cheesy. Yes, I would certainly be pleased with atmospheric worlds sans procedurally generated aliens.
 

Galactic Fork

Galactic Fork
marx said:
The only thing that Frontier have definitely stated so far is that landing on water worlds is not coming in Season 2. Other than that, there's only speculation.
Also, if memory serves, in one of the streams (during the 2.2 beta?) the developers mentioned that the main thing that takes long to solve isn't atmospheric flight itself (it's not like that would be breaking new ground), but actually having a good variety of things to do planetside. Especially on non-barren worlds.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure why they need more to do on atmospheric barren worlds, it'd be largely little different than what we have now. And they can fine tune it later. Maybe add a glider type SRV.

I really want to fly into gas giants though.
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
The main difference between barren atmospherics and barren non-atmospherics, apart from things like haze and whatnot, is "weather". Clouds, wind, perhaps even rain. Right now, these worlds have "clouds", but they're just painted on as part of the seen-from-a-distance surface texture; they don't actually move, as can be clearly seen by shots of atmospheric planets taken days or weeks apart. This, I expect, would have to change, as it wouldn't be very realistic if it was, say, rainy in San Fransisco all day, every day. They'd use atmospheric barren worlds to practice generating realistic weather patterns, before giving us the rest of the things they need for an Earth-like simulation, one step at a time - besides weather, they also need water (water/ammonia worlds) and abundant lifeforms.

At some stage, they will also have to work out exactly what levels of surface pressure our ships can land at. They'll need that to set a "lower limit" on gas giants, and to determine landable from non-landable atmospheric planets. Will our ships be able to land on 90-atmospheres Venus? Or on a hyper-venus with thousands of atmospheres pressure? Our ships are spaceships, not submarines, they are designed to keep the air pressure in, not resist air pressure pushing in from outside.
 

CMDR Stebus

C
optimal_909 said:
It may sound odd, but I do hope they will wait as long as they can with life bearing worlds. Given the high level of execution of what we've already got, I think FDev will fail at the impossible task of procedurally generated life. It is already close to impossible to make hand crafted alien life that is believably different yet not ridiculous.
Some things are best to be left under veil, and I think ED would be better off without alien worlds.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that one. I actually hope those will never come. Creating some barren world can be done by the procedural generator, but a planet with plants? animals? No matter how many assets they create for the generator to work with, at some point things are bound to get repetetive. Soon you have players asking why the earthlike they just landed on looks just like the one they found 1000ly away. Also the problem that randomly generated stuff tends to look stupid. I mean if we take anything from no mans sky, it should be that some things are indeed best left under the veil. This game is about space, lets keep it there.
 

DanGriswold

DanGriswold
Sapyx said:
The main difference between barren atmospherics and barren non-atmospherics, apart from things like haze and whatnot, is "weather". Clouds, wind, perhaps even rain. Right now, these worlds have "clouds", but they're just painted on as part of the seen-from-a-distance surface texture; they don't actually move, as can be clearly seen by shots of atmospheric planets taken days or weeks apart. This, I expect, would have to change, as it wouldn't be very realistic if it was, say, rainy in San Fransisco all day, every day. They'd use atmospheric barren worlds to practice generating realistic weather patterns, before giving us the rest of the things they need for an Earth-like simulation, one step at a time - besides weather, they also need water (water/ammonia worlds) and abundant lifeforms.

At some stage, they will also have to work out exactly what levels of surface pressure our ships can land at. They'll need that to set a "lower limit" on gas giants, and to determine landable from non-landable atmospheric planets. Will our ships be able to land on 90-atmospheres Venus? Or on a hyper-venus with thousands of atmospheres pressure? Our ships are spaceships, not submarines, they are designed to keep the air pressure in, not resist air pressure pushing in from outside.
Click to expand...

Good thinkin'. I imagine FD has all of those points in mind as well.
 

Henkka77

Henkka77
Im stepping out of my comfort zone and try being extremely optimistic and say:

2.4 is all about landing on atmospheric planets.

The name of the Season 2 says it all, Horizons. ;)
 

duckofdeath

duckofdeath
I think they indicated at the Horizons launch that we should expect to get lava worlds within this season. Nothin else. Hopefully arid atmospheric planets and gas giants will be the 3.0 launch.
 

Pirin

Pirin
My best bet is season 3... whenever it comes.


That said i am much more concern if we will ever be capable of coming out of our beautiful ships. No, SRV doesnt count :) I want to walk on planet's surface, in the space stations, etc. To meet other cmdrs and do other stuff. There is no point in landing on earth-like planet if i am stuck in that buggy and cant walk out
 
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