Mighty Morphin’ Terrain Ranges - or, can I reduce undulating ground generation?

[Arioch]

This is something that’s been bothering me recently while doing missions to an ice world with rough terrain - while I’m pootling along in the SRV, the terrain height in the middle-distance (approx 10-15m away or so, I’m guessing the first LOD level step down) is very obviously doing its final adjustment, the result of which is like driving along an undulating liquid surface that freezes just before you drive over it.

Maybe it’s because I’m driving in VR that it’s more noticeable, but it’s a bit weird to see. My settings are all at their highest levels and changing the terrain generation options doesn’t seem to have any effect on this last bit of terrain alteration.

Is there anything I can do to stop Odyssey looking like I’m driving over non-Newtonian fluids?

 

[Morbad]

I'm not aware of any way to reduce the prominence of that terrain morphing. It's plenty visible even outside of VR, whether on foot, in an SRV, or flying a ship. It's not limited to long ranges either. On foot there is a clearly visible terrain LOD shift at around 30-50m.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I think its an unavoidable quirk of how surfaces are rendered.

 

[Arioch]

Bugga, I was hoping it was an incorrect setting or something.

It’s the near LOD shift while driving the SRV that’s bothering me - generally while flying my ship I’m high enough that I don’t really see it, and while walking I’m not going forward fast enough for it to be massively obvious (plus my on-foot time is usually in flat areas anyway).

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

What bothers me even more than the morphing is terrain and assets not loading in if I skim the surface too fast. I have literally landed and logged out in frustration over finding (or better: Not finding) a certain organism, only to log in the next time being parked literally in the middle of a field full of the damn things.

 

[Arioch]

After a quick trawl on Issue Tracker there’s this Acknowledged report that’s just reached its second anniversary:

Issue Tracker

issues.frontierstore.net

Perhaps it’ll get improved in the future please please please

 

[NikNargon]

I really hope they get around to addressing this - I have a 3090 and run on high/ultra and I see lots of terrain morphing directly in front of the ship, particularly in mountainous areas. As others have mentioned lowering graphics settings doesn't seem to help (and it's not like my PC is struggling for frames anyway).

I feel like FDEV may be vastly underestimating how much this sort of thing detracts from the player experience and undermines the hard work they're doing in other areas to try and build player numbers again.

 

[Jack Winter]

It's also somewhat disconcerting to watch rocks spawn and then fall into place when you approach..