It would truly be a delight for the eyes, in the colonization space, to reach planets with these kinds of improvements. Planets with starry skies are certainly beautiful, but a layer of fragmented clouds, or cumulus clouds with the reflection of the system's main star, would, I think, add sublime detail to the Elite immersion.
Is it just me, or is FDev changing something in E.D.?
- Thread starter TLY400
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Well, sometimes you do get quite beautiful atmospheres on landable planets in the actual current release version of Odyssey, but it needs to be just the right combination of atmospheric characteristics and lighting...
This was from Ody beta 
The depth of the haze from pre-release, then beta, to release changed.
Some people myself have included have seen it bugging in some circumstances giving the impression of deeper atmospheres but it's a temporary bug, and it's continuous across the whole planet. The pre-release had this which we have never seen in game. Compare the two, the post above and this. Anyway, sounds like I'm whining, I'm quite happy with the planets but feel something went wrong by release and it was toned down. like the rock scattering, but not lets get into that, as that was our - the players - fault for complaining about it being too good. Anyway.
Some people myself have included have seen it bugging in some circumstances giving the impression of deeper atmospheres but it's a temporary bug, and it's continuous across the whole planet. The pre-release had this which we have never seen in game. Compare the two, the post above and this. Anyway, sounds like I'm whining, I'm quite happy with the planets but feel something went wrong by release and it was toned down. like the rock scattering, but not lets get into that, as that was our - the players - fault for complaining about it being too good. Anyway.
True, no argument. But we don't get this, the concentration and variation, it's a continuous single haze in Odyssey.
I totally agree with the answers about Elite and atmospheres, I love the style of the planets, and what can I say about the ships, apart from the mechanics and that you can play with the depth that people want to give it... with novels, lore videos, etc. So far, Elite is my favorite title, there are incredible scenes like the ones in the published images. In fact, the ones I uploaded are in medium resolution, because the size doesn't let me upload the ones I have with DSR 6K HDR factors. Elite already has the board and pieces of a good chess game, and they must be congratulated, but as I said, any improvement that doesn't break the title would be more than welcome.
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Cmdr Obsidian art just released a video talking about atmospheric planets which I highly recommend watching...
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V08frvLTsSg
Why all these planets that you can't land on? Hmmm, me thinks something is going on under those clouds!
The next big upgrade surely is ELW we can land on and build player homes. Home Sweet Home!
The next big upgrade surely is ELW we can land on and build player homes. Home Sweet Home!
But first you’ll have to jump through some illogical hoops to obtain a housing permit. Then you need to provide the materials yourself for the construction too. Oh, and you need a separate construction permit that nobody told you about too.
On the one hand, there is a lore reason of the big powers making it illegal to land on them because they don't want another accidental xenocide of indigenous life.
On the other hand, murder is also illegal but all you get for doing it is a fine and some notoriety... and also everyone is obsessed with xenociding the Thargoids ever since they had the audacity to tell humans to get off their lawn.
On the third hand, being able to land on ELW means people will want to land on Earth and fly to their home town and see what is there now, and that is tricksy.
Yeah, I've thought about that. However, it's 3311, nearly 1300 years in the future, so Earth could be in any number of conditions. I'm quite sure their house on Main St. is LONG gone.
It could be that humans said enough is enough, we got to change this place, leveled it, and built something else.
In any case, it's a LOT of 3D content to make it about as populated as it is now. Who knows, maybe some mass illness killed off most humans, some fled to space, those left behind now live scavenger lives in the rubble of history.
"tricksy" indeed.
It's less 'see my exact house' and more 'Do we model Everest so people can drive an SRV up there or walk up in a suit? Do we model a bunch of fjords? Is the Chunnel just waiting to be rediscovered under the waters of the Channel?'
World War 3 did happen, so there is reason to wipe things that currently exist. But Sol still has 18 billion people living in the whole System... sure, a bunch of stations and settlements, but Earth is almost certainly where a plurality live, given future farming techniques being able to sustain more than our current 8 billion.
Edit: which is to say, biiiig cities. Lots of modeling. This isn't a settlement and then hundreds of kilometers to the next settlement we see on other planets. Earth, and other ELW in the bubble, have a whole ecosystem to keep them alive... nothing is keeping them focused on a local settlement to prevent them from spreading stuff out.
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Mars is also habitable/terraformed in Elite (no exact details given on how they managed it) so a bunch of people probably live on that planet too. Possibly more than on Earth because that terraformation of Mars was inspired by Earth not becoming such a fun place to live.
I'm not sure where I read it (tourist beacon, possibly) but I think there is also a tidbit about Earth being mostly nature reserves at this point, so it might look much less populated outside major cities. And you'd have to cover for mister "I want to shoot this thing" going down there which would result in either a lot of blocked areas (drawing complaints) or places where you're simply spawned on the ground without guns (also going to draw complaints, though perhaps less so).
The trick with Mars is you gotta have a shield for the solar winds to not power wash the atmosphere away, but I think that takes millions of years, so if you replenish it faster than it gets blown away, you might be able to stabilize it, but I am not an astro...climatologist? So I dunno how accurate that is.
Mars is geologically dead so no magnetic field. Sometimes I wonder how hard it'd be to kick the core back into life enough to start a magnetic field.
I have read Ray Bradbury.
I would be as suspicious as heck and would be trying to get back on my ship to escape before it was too late.
If they included it as an integrated mechanic in a DLC, for example, and we finally saw planets with their cloud formations, storms, rain, etc., but on minimally compatible planets, from my point of view... Elite would go to the next level in terms of immersion. As for including larger structures, megacities, I don't know (the Sol system rebuilt after the Cocijo attack)... that would also be good, but better step by step I would love the first one in terms of improvement.
Or even J. G. Ballard?