Horizons Are volcanic activity bugged or is it nearly impossible to find?

[Cmdr Aeries Hunter]

I have spent the past 4 days doing 4 hour stints scowering planet surfaces. I looked for a system that had land-able planets that had volcanic activity listed. One planet had iron magma listed while the other said water geysers. So I flew to the water geyser one and flew down to between 2 and 6 km above the surface looking for the blue POI to pop up on the scanner. I kept to canyons and crevices, especially any that where discoloured. couple of hours later didn't see a thing. I then decided to fly down as close to the surface as possible flying under100m above the surface trying to see if I could spot them that way. couple more hours later and still nothing. Tried both dark side and sunny side of the planet. No sign of any activity. Even tried the border between dark and light in case they activate as they heat up....nope nothing. Repeat the next day with same futile results.

Next I tried the magma planet, hoping that bright glowing magma would be easy to see in the dark. Two days of searching and no sign of any volcanic activity. I heard the some people in a group could see them while others in the exact same spot at the exact same time, couldn't see anything at all. Could I be flying over dozens of sites and have missed every one due to a bug? It would be extremely annoying if that where the case and Frontier didn't say. I would not have wasted 4 days looking if it doesn't work. Or maybe I am doing everything totally wrong. How many people have found their own? Not talking about going to a place stated in the forum that another CMDR found, but actually looked and found your own. Then it makes me wonder if a common feature is so hard to find what about things more "exotic"?

If they are just very rare, then maybe Frontier might need to tweak the numbers a little to make them not quite so rare that so few can find them. Reminds me of the old days when I spent a week looking for polonium and came up empty handed.

 

[varonica]

I have spent the past 4 days doing 4 hour stints scowering planet surfaces. I looked for a system that had land-able planets that had volcanic activity listed. One planet had iron magma listed while the other said water geysers. So I flew to the water geyser one and flew down to between 2 and 6 km above the surface looking for the blue POI to pop up on the scanner.

They don't show as POI's, only mineral deposits associated with some of them, and that's not that common, only one of the ones I have found had a POI.

I kept to canyons and crevices, especially any that where discoloured. couple of hours later didn't see a thing. I then decided to fly down as close to the surface as possible flying under100m above the surface trying to see if I could spot them that way. couple more hours later and still nothing. Tried both dark side and sunny side of the planet. No sign of any activity. Even tried the border between dark and light in case they activate as they heat up....nope nothing. Repeat the next day with same futile results.

Took me six days of game playing once to find some geysers, yes they are that hard to find, and sometimes you fly down the there they are, it's all luck atm.

Next I tried the magma planet, hoping that bright glowing magma would be easy to see in the dark. Two days of searching and no sign of any volcanic activity. I heard the some people in a group could see them while others in the exact same spot at the exact same time, couldn't see anything at all. Could I be flying over dozens of sites and have missed every one due to a bug? It would be extremely annoying if that where the case and Frontier didn't say. I would not have wasted 4 days looking if it doesn't work. Or maybe I am doing everything totally wrong. How many people have found their own? Not talking about going to a place stated in the forum that another CMDR found, but actually looked and found your own. Then it makes me wonder if a common feature is so hard to find what about things more "exotic"?

Common? COMMON!?! No not common, the current number per planet is, I believe, a maximum of three sites, if your planet or moon is 1000klm in diameter that gives you a surface area of 3,141,592 square klms, somewhere on which are located 3 sites some 20 to 30 metres across, I wouldn't exactly call that common. I have found five sites, I am currently on Colonia 3 A looking for a second to add to my first find there.

If they are just very rare, then maybe Frontier might need to tweak the numbers a little to make them not quite so rare that so few can find them. Reminds me of the old days when I spent a week looking for polonium and came up empty handed.

No, according to what I have heard there is some reason why they are limited to around three per active body, they need to tweak the search tools a bit to make them easier to find. I would suggest reading through the fumarole and geyser thread in the elite exploration sub-forum. Oh yes just a note, I have gone back to visit t couple of sites and they have always popped up as expected, it may be an issue flying in wings but I don't so I wouldn't come across that problem.


It's quite likely that you have simply never flown over one, or were flying to high to spot them, with the geysers it's easy to spot from a distance, but the ones with less active effects they can be invisible from only a few kilometres away. There is a list of them in the geyser and fumarole thread as well as many pictures, I suggest flying to a few of the sites listed and getting a good idea of what you are looking for.

 

[Cmdr Aeries Hunter]

Thanks for you help. Much appreciated. At least I know its not a bug and just need to look further.

Yes they really should either add an engineer mod to the scanners or change the function of the detailed surface scanner to at least give the three areas those things might be found on a planet. Even a generalised area would be better than what info we have now.

 

[TinyPwny]

Earth has geysers and still 99.9% of us never get to see one. They're quite rare, even if there are more than 3 sites on earth where they occur.

Map source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geyser

Even though the current spread of geysers might be pretty realistic, it's absurd that we have no way to find them other than sheer luck. Planetary surface navigation and finding geological formations, surface features and POIs are a joke at the moment but I'm pretty confident that'll change in future updates.

 

[Daish]

Madness begets madness, why do frontier make things so few and hard to find... they did this with materials so hard to find FDev please change this c'mon some of us would like to actually find things and salot of us dont have hours and hours or days of game play to try locate these things arggggggghh

 

[Cmdr Aeries Hunter]

Google maps kind of proves that we should be able to see far far more detail on the planet surface from a distance. We can in real life see volcanic activity from space. Not just on earth but on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We study the surface of mars and Pluto from space. We can see the great wall of china from space. Heck you can see my house from a satellite image on Google maps. Surly we should be able to see volcanic activity and other things as we get closer to the planet. Not just under 2km above ground but see it from orbit. It would also be super useful if the latitude and longitude where superimposed (could be switched off like orbit lines) onto the planets surface. At the very least on the closeup in the map area. or plotable waypoint on the planet surface.

Maybe add a surface mapping limpet to the game that could get ultra detailed surface data, or sniff out interesting objects. The planet could be divide up into sectors and the one limpet would scan one sector. These limpets could be synthsied from metrials so deep space explorers can make more. Just a thought.

I just spent a week looking for geysers on a planet that said it had volcanic activity and didn't find a thing. I wonder how long it would actually take for me to find one if I kept going. Days? weeks? months? longer? There needs a revamp in how objects can be seen/found on planets. It was a main feature mentioned in the pre 2.2 blurb at gamescon etc, yet it is something most will never find on their own. A little disappointed but hope it will be resolved in future update

 

[Eros]

Volcanism is nearly impossible to find and is sort of the first time iv ever been extremely disappointed in a feature, there is almost zero point in having it implemented should it be in this way.

TinyPwny - this is irrelevant, some geysers on those lists are extremely easy to find if you are going to fly anywhere near them even argubly from orbit given that geysers tend to deposit fresh material on the planets surface. THUS we would expect if we look at a differently shaded region on a planet, boom, we should be in luck... As it stands, I dont think they are pretty realistic. The page there shows about 30 something spots. current implementation says like 2 or 3 sites... thats 10x less at least. not only that but the Earth exhibits geysers and volcanism, the number of active or periodically active volcanoes on the Earth is significantly higher than 30.

The Earth is not under huge gravitational sheer in comparison to some of the others in our own solar system. Take IO for example, from orbit, you can clearly see many sites of active volcanism caused by gravitational stress... its easy.

In Elite the implementation should follow scientific pattern as observed thus far, so far... its not what iv seen. Example, iv investigated many mountain areas, no volcanism at the base nor the tops, Nearby fracture zones, no volcanism. Iv looked for surface spots of different colours denoting fresh material, Nothing either. Iv explored for hours like the OP, and not found a single site, despite following the many pages of advice during beta. Iv been to a site, thanks to that thread, but as for finding my own... Not a single site, Exploration doesn't need to be easy, but this is a little..... silly

Do we honestly think that about 200ly from the nearest populated world, it would be more common to find crashed ships randomly... or volcanism?

fingers crossed fro improvements to this, or a response from the Dev Team as to the technical reasons for this.


It isn't to be totally negative, I hope they overcome the limit and can get them in places which are realistic or reasonable.

 

[Mercury7]

I spent about 3 hours looking, and saw nothing. I flew down a canyon that was red-colored (planet was largely ice with magma volcanism) but NOTHING.

These things should be very visible, as mentioned. On planets/Moons with low gravity the jets extend hundreds of kilometers into space (IRL) so should be eminently visible, especially if <50 km above the surface.

From orbit, they're visible as what looks like a small crater, with the volcanism in the center.

FD are a little contradictory - they want scientific accuracy, then fail at the science part.

As can be seen from Io, 2 or 3 are not enough. If we only allow for volcanism on the sunlit side, we need about 14 active at a time, and about 28 overall, given the body size.

I understand the concern about performance, but there is no reason why volcanism can't be visible in a realistic way, and not hit performance as well.

Hopefully FD will increase the incidence and conspicuity of volcanism.

Io:

Left image is a photograph of Europa volcanism, taken by the Cassini probe:

 

[Brownshortz]

Volcanic activity was a feature I had definitely been looking forward to....like just about everyone else though I've had zero luck finding anything as yet. As someone else alluded to...if there is a technical limit of 3 per world then its no wonder they are so hard to find....it would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Very disappointing.....and makes me think that atmospheric worlds must be a hell of a long way off (probably 3 or 4 years). I mean if the engine has trouble allocating 3 geysers per planet, how much trouble will it have rendering countless rivers and oceans?? Not to mention clouds and stuff.

 

[Eros]

If i was to guess, and I could and may very well be 100% wrong in this, is that the way the planets are generated doesn't give you (at the moment) a good handle on a few of the surface feature parameters.

With a base, or manual POI it is probable there is some overiding smoothing that basically tells the engine, base is here, smooth the terrain out and plop it down. Iv seen it from a couple of the more interesting bases that are placed into the sides of mountains, its like hillside, with a flat shelf on it. Those look awesome admittedly even though the description sounds bad.

It is probable (based on the beta thread) that the engine selects locations of certain negative depth that coincide with a known feature such as a canyon. Thus far iv not seen any that are not located in canyons or within europa lines. Which makes me think FD didnt want to identify every mountain region as a volcanic feature (because they aren't always) and the engine probably has issues with worlds that are not mostly spherical since some of the more flat sided ones would appear to always give volcanism all in one place.

So the limit is likely database size issues along with engine placement for it to be persistent.

This is just spitballing, but id just love to understand the reasons why and if any effort is being made to overcome it

 

[GG7]

I've pretty much given up on this until such time that Frontier decides to actually give us a viable way of finding not only these new features, but anything else down on a planet's surface. Considering the SRV scanner is also currently in 2.2.1, we are flying even more blind than normal! And that is saying something!

Speaking as another player who had been really looking forward to this feature, the level of disappointment with how it has been implemented in this latest build is beyond words. [sad]

I just hope we see a long overdue point update tomorrow that will at least get our SRV scanner back up and running normally, not to mention hopefully patch some other rather nasty bugs in the passenger missions.

What we really need for the volcanic planets is a much improved surface navigation system complete with user placeable WAYPOINTS that can be saved within the Galaxy Map for later retrieval in order to find these surface discoveries quickly once they have been found. Until then, this is all just too tedious to bother with in my opinion.

 

[Eros]

Yeah I had this image in my mind of rolling over a hill in my SRV and being presented with a couple of Geysers venting mist into a field of mist, wouldn't have to be lots of geysers but just that imagry that makes the surfaces seem quite alive in certain locations. Doesn't have to be everywhere, but would be nice to be able to say for sure that if a planet is listed with volcanism... then it is possible with a little searching to find it.

Not flying over a surface for 12 hours and still not turning anything up lol

 

[MarikMonika]

I've pretty much given up on this until such time that Frontier decides to actually give us a viable way of finding not only these new features, but anything else down on a planet's surface. Considering the SRV scanner is also currently in 2.2.1, we are flying even more blind than normal! And that is saying something!

Speaking as another player who had been really looking forward to this feature, the level of disappointment with how it has been implemented in this latest build is beyond words. [sad]

I just hope we see a long overdue point update tomorrow that will at least get our SRV scanner back up and running normally, not to mention hopefully patch some other rather nasty bugs in the passenger missions.

What we really need for the volcanic planets is a much improved surface navigation system complete with user placeable WAYPOINTS that can be saved within the Galaxy Map for later retrieval in order to find these surface discoveries quickly once they have been found. Until then, this is all just too tedious to bother with in my opinion.

Exactly this.
Take some rep

 

[GG7]

Exactly this.
Take some rep

Thanks man! I appreciate that.

And I see upon just firing up the Launcher that there is NO UPDATE TODAY! [down] [sad]

I was on Deciat 3 last night "trying" to find some Arsenic and a few other mats that I ran out of during some new ship upgrades, and MAN! Talk about a bug fest! The scanner is beyond useless right now on any planet where you must rely on it's feedback alone to find Outcrops!

I'm now relegated to ice planets where I can actually SEE the Outcrops standing out black against the white surface and normal white rocks. Aiming my SRV directly at an Outcrop I found by sight on Deciat 7B yields a totally BLANK scanner display!

Come on Frontier! I'm not even talking about better ways of finding Geysers now! How much longer before we can find anything with the SRV again?

 

[JetJaguar]

Yep, I spend a lot of my Elite time wandering around on planet surfaces and looking for interesting worlds. But I still haven't seen squat, regarding these fumaroles, vents and lava etc. I get they are not going to be everywhere and its not like you are going top be tripping over them where ever you go. But it would be nice if there was a way to use intelligence and investigation to find them rather than blind luck. Like being able to see different soil colour gradients etc from orbit/high Alt from the material left by the geysers.


I also wanted to confirm.... Is it actually possible to see these features with out going into your SRV? Eg the game isn't requiring you to be in a SRV for these features to "spawn" is it?

The reason I ask this is that I was performing a test the other day on a planet surface trying to see if I could spot Surface Materials sites whilst flying really low and slow across a planet surface in my DBX. I could not. It seems (at least from my initial tests) you have to be in the SRV for the game to spawn these Material deposits...which is kind of annoying.

 

[Mercury7]

I also wanted to confirm.... Is it actually possible to see these features with out going into your SRV? Eg the game isn't requiring you to be in a SRV for these features to "spawn" is it?

The reason I ask this is that I was performing a test the other day on a planet surface trying to see if I could spot Surface Materials sites whilst flying really low and slow across a planet surface in my DBX. I could not. It seems (at least from my initial tests) you have to be in the SRV for the game to spawn these Material deposits...which is kind of annoying.

Great question!

 

[Wylie28]

Yep, I spend a lot of my Elite time wandering around on planet surfaces and looking for interesting worlds. But I still haven't seen squat, regarding these fumaroles, vents and lava etc. I get they are not going to be everywhere and its not like you are going top be tripping over them where ever you go. But it would be nice if there was a way to use intelligence and investigation to find them rather than blind luck. Like being able to see different soil colour gradients etc from orbit/high Alt from the material left by the geysers.


I also wanted to confirm.... Is it actually possible to see these features with out going into your SRV? Eg the game isn't requiring you to be in a SRV for these features to "spawn" is it?

The reason I ask this is that I was performing a test the other day on a planet surface trying to see if I could spot Surface Materials sites whilst flying really low and slow across a planet surface in my DBX. I could not. It seems (at least from my initial tests) you have to be in the SRV for the game to spawn these Material deposits...which is kind of annoying.

No. Ive visited many geysers and fumaroles. You can see them without the SRV. Usually from pretty high up too depending on how active they are when you visit.

 

[varonica]

I have suggested before that people with questions visit and have a read of the exploration thread for geysers and fumaroles where all these issues are discussed, here it is;

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Fumarole-Location-Catalog-and-Data-Collection

 

[JetJaguar]

No. Ive visited many geysers and fumaroles. You can see them without the SRV. Usually from pretty high up too depending on how active they are when you visit.

I have suggested before that people with questions visit and have a read of the exploration thread for geysers and fumaroles where all these issues are discussed, here it is;

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Fumarole-Location-Catalog-and-Data-Collection

Thanks!