But you can clearly see in the post by @Frankymole that the coloured overlay can look different depending on the filter used, even over the same patch of terrain.
How do you understand the "heatmap" for planet exploration?
- Thread starter Trowa Deathwind
- Start date
But you can clearly see in the post by @Frankymole that the coloured overlay can look different depending on the filter used, even over the same patch of terrain.
and the post from the actual frontier developer is hazy or blurred...?
The classic "Experiment contradicts theory". In which case you should repeat the experiment to see if the discrepancy is consistent. I have done the experiment, I have posted pics in some other thread about the heatmap. The discrepancy is consistent, different species in the same area can have different overlay colors. Ergo, there's more to that than just "it's the terrain". Might be intentional by Fdev, might be a glitch, doesn't matter, the discrepancy is real.
EDIT: Wording
I am sure the dev comment was in good intent to simplify down to average user brains that is isn't worth chasing causalities where there are none.
Yes, it's probably one of those cases where an oversimplified statement just causes more confusion, rather than allaying it.
I am fully prepared to accept the likelyhood that the colour tone variations do not reflect commensurate variations in the density or assured appearence of filtered scatter objects, but I would not call them reflecting "topology", as the CM did; Topology would absolutely, to my mind, be unchanged for same common areas, with different filters.
...so a poor choice of word, IMHO, of the: "lies to children" kind... Wildly misleading in stretching its semantics waaaay too far, but sufficiently close-ish to save you having to provide the long answer, as long as nobody thinks about it (...deferring that, along with having to stamp out the inital planted misconception, to future teachers
).
I would assume each filter collates a subset of the bitmaps that go into terrain generation - never all of them, like when you see a conspicuously defined squiggly shape, without any fringes, encircling a wet area, cutting a border straight through a crater and across a hill, with 0% ice on one side of it, and 100% on the other, and this same shape coming out starkly in the filter overlay.
I am fully prepared to accept the likelyhood that the colour tone variations do not reflect commensurate variations in the density or assured appearence of filtered scatter objects, but I would not call them reflecting "topology", as the CM did; Topology would absolutely, to my mind, be unchanged for same common areas, with different filters.
...so a poor choice of word, IMHO, of the: "lies to children" kind... Wildly misleading in stretching its semantics waaaay too far, but sufficiently close-ish to save you having to provide the long answer, as long as nobody thinks about it (...deferring that, along with having to stamp out the inital planted misconception, to future teachers
).I would assume each filter collates a subset of the bitmaps that go into terrain generation - never all of them, like when you see a conspicuously defined squiggly shape, without any fringes, encircling a wet area, cutting a border straight through a crater and across a hill, with 0% ice on one side of it, and 100% on the other, and this same shape coming out starkly in the filter overlay.
Last edited:
theory is what you make. what devs tell you usually tends to be facts...
just because you cant fathom how someting works doesnt meant it doesnt work that way.
i dont need to know what each shade of blue represents. i just know from someone perhaps a bit more knowledgeable about the game that its not a heatmap, it doesnt have "higher chance areas".
The Dev post was incomplete. The texture is dependent on terrain, but not directly. It signifies the terrain's affect on the biological that is currently filtered. There's plenty of evidence proving this.
There...is...no...heatmap. It's gone for good.
It's like conspiracy theories, isn't it? No matter how much you use rationale - there is a bigger secret picture someone knows all about it but can never explain.
The two seemingly contradictory statements:
and
could perhaps be reconciled if the blue "area" is not simply an area, but a volume covering the planet surface, but with a minimum and maximum elevation depending on the specific bio, so that which topography is underneath, and which intersects with the volume, could cause different "slight shadings" according to which bio.
On this theory, the shadings would differ, but also would be strictly related to terrain features, which seems to be the case in the screenshot evidence in this thread.
Myself, I'm pretty sure that on rare occasions at the end of a descent glide, I've seen cases where the blue area/volume is above the terrain and the planet surface appears to peep out from underneath it, or the it starts to look translucent and washed out like you're seeing through it to the uncoloured surface beneath (in contrast with most cases where the surface itself appears coloured.)
That's my working theory for now.
and
could perhaps be reconciled if the blue "area" is not simply an area, but a volume covering the planet surface, but with a minimum and maximum elevation depending on the specific bio, so that which topography is underneath, and which intersects with the volume, could cause different "slight shadings" according to which bio.
On this theory, the shadings would differ, but also would be strictly related to terrain features, which seems to be the case in the screenshot evidence in this thread.
Myself, I'm pretty sure that on rare occasions at the end of a descent glide, I've seen cases where the blue area/volume is above the terrain and the planet surface appears to peep out from underneath it, or the it starts to look translucent and washed out like you're seeing through it to the uncoloured surface beneath (in contrast with most cases where the surface itself appears coloured.)
That's my working theory for now.
The dark patches are the echoes of the tortured souls of imaginary numbers of the heatmap feature that was ripped out of the game.
I haven't have gathered rigorous enough data to claim whether different shades of blue have different chances of finding the species, and I never made a claim about this.
What is demonstrable and a rather easy to reproduce fact, is that different shades of blue do occur for different species in the same area. Which means that the claim "it's just the terrain" is not a complete fact. Terrain can play a role, no doubt, but is not the only factor to the specific shade of the overlay. That's the only claim I make, can make with full confidence, and shall stand by.
There are two ways to say with certainty whether it is a heat map, or whether the shades do not signify anything:
1. Do a statistical analysis about the frequency of occurence for every genus. A long and tedious undertaking, though Canonn could do it in about a year if they deemed it important enough.
2. A developer involved in creating the overlay coming forth and explaining precisely, with formulas used and maybe even code snippets, how the overlay and its colors are calculated.
There is one way to do it and it is taking a dev statement for what it is instead of insisting something is there that isn't.
There's a demonstrable contradiction between the developer statement and what can be observed in-game. That means, at the very least, that the developer statement is at best incomplete.
Never insisted that the different shades indicate the frequency or chance of finding a species.
The facts:
1. Different shades of blue exist
2. Different species in the same area can have different shades of blue
Based on these two facts I am refuting the widespread claim that the different shades of blue are only the result of different terrain under the overlay.
Nothing more, nothing less.
OK, what use have these facts for a player?
Assuming that what's in-game isn't bugged, which might easily be the case.
There have been several instances of exploration bugs related to lighting issues, and the longest-standing one took seven years to fix, so personally, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the DSS colour overlay turned out to be bugged too.
In any case, there is one certain use for the map: don't look in areas that aren't coloured. Can't expect to drop down somewhere and immediately find what you're looking for, after all - and the solution is pretty much always to fly (/ travel) over to different-looking terrain anyway.
You're speaking from the perspective of a self-confessed non-player. If you did play, you'd see for yourself how all the information presented here is helpful to some extent.
IMO, all you're doing is muddying an otherwise clear and helpful conversation.
What is the demonstrable, tangible effect that this contradiction has on the gameplay? In what way is the gameplay affected by the perceived incompleteness of the dev statement?