My idea regarding landing Earth-Like planets in the future Odyssey DLC.

[RiggedBottle]

I want to start a suggestion on this, I've talked with a few people about it and I would like to share my idea here.
So we all know that the Odyssey DLC is going to come out soon and one of the first things besides being able to walk around on your own so called Space-Legs, you will be eligible to land on atmospheric type planets.

Excluding "Gas Giant class planets" where landing is impossible due to the conditions you have to go through thousands of miles deep within the violent clouds only to reach a small rocky surface (Except if they decide to do surface stations), I would like to talk about Earth Like planets. The name says it all, a planet that is extremely similar to Earth which means that it has oxygen, plantations, water, and overall a planet where the human species can habitat without any issues, I am looking forward to seeing these kinds of planets landable and maybe they would add weather like rain and all of that good stuff as well.

My doubts, they are all coming downwards onto these:

(Not my photo).

These kinds of planets where city lights are clearly visible all around the surface of the planet. Now I am not sure if these kinds of planets will ever be landable all due to how the game will render such full cities when getting closer to the surface of the planet, it's too much workload not only on the engine of the game but on the computer's GPU/CPU as well, some computers won't handle this at all especially that they are in a 1:1 size so if the planet is 12000 kilometers it will actually take you as much time as it takes in real life to go around it and let's not forget that it's all randomly generated.

In my opinion Gas Giants have more of a chance to be landable than these populated planets and that's my idea on why. If you have any other ideas and stuff don't hesitate to talk about it, it's a free discussion.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I would expect flying in upper gas giant atmospheres to come before landing on ELWs ... and also to come before landing on uninhabited planets with thicker atmospheres than the "tenuous" ones which Odyssey allows.

The reason is not the cities - procedurally generating cities across a planet surface isn't conceptually that much more difficult than generating all its terrain, you can get some pretty massive no-atmosphere planets already (and yes, people have driven all the way around them), and it doesn't have to render the bits a long way from you at all (in fact, inside a city where your lines of sight are fairly short in most directions is probably easier than on a mountaintop already)

The weather is the big deal, I think - getting weather systems which:
- look at least vaguely plausible (no snowstorms in an equatorial desert, or square-edged clouds, etc)
- evolve at least vaguely plausibly over time (no permanent hurricanes over the same island for two years, basic day/night temperature effects, etc)
- are in the same place from orbit or the ground
- are in the same place for multiple visitors to the planet who might be viewing them from positions thousands of kilometres apart
- can be generated without the super-computer-sized effort required to simulate our planet's weather with only moderate accuracy
... is a really complicated problem. So far they've avoided this by not having atmospheres in Horizons, and not having atmospheres thick enough to have noticeable "weather" in Odyssey.

Sooner or later they're going to have to address it to open up more types of planet, and the upper atmosphere of a gas giant is perhaps the simplest place to do that because the lack of underlying terrain (and the lack of Elite Dangerous players who've been inside a real gas giant atmosphere) means they could probably get away with simplifying a lot more. But I'm not expecting even that any time soon...

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I like gas giants in bespin style. Real world life would turn into no mans sky or not be believable more spread out that what it currently is?

Also storm structures have the possibility for some epic vistas... think of subnatutica when you first get off the starter island and go deeper for the first time. That effect but in clouds.

Guessing anyway.

 

[RiggedBottle]

I would expect flying in upper gas giant atmospheres to come before landing on ELWs ... and also to come before landing on uninhabited planets with thicker atmospheres than the "tenuous" ones which Odyssey allows.

The reason is not the cities - procedurally generating cities across a planet surface isn't conceptually that much more difficult than generating all its terrain, you can get some pretty massive no-atmosphere planets already (and yes, people have driven all the way around them), and it doesn't have to render the bits a long way from you at all (in fact, inside a city where your lines of sight are fairly short in most directions is probably easier than on a mountaintop already)

The weather is the big deal, I think - getting weather systems which:

• look at least vaguely plausible (no snowstorms in an equatorial desert, or square-edged clouds, etc)
• evolve at least vaguely plausibly over time (no permanent hurricanes over the same island for two years, basic day/night temperature effects, etc)
• are in the same place from orbit or the ground
• are in the same place for multiple visitors to the planet who might be viewing them from positions thousands of kilometres apart
• can be generated without the super-computer-sized effort required to simulate our planet's weather with only moderate accuracy

... is a really complicated problem. So far they've avoided this by not having atmospheres in Horizons, and not having atmospheres thick enough to have noticeable "weather" in Odyssey.

Sooner or later they're going to have to address it to open up more types of planet, and the upper atmosphere of a gas giant is perhaps the simplest place to do that because the lack of underlying terrain (and the lack of Elite Dangerous players who've been inside a real gas giant atmosphere) means they could probably get away with simplifying a lot more. But I'm not expecting even that any time soon...

I completely agree with the gas giant part, upon reaching the planet you can start entering its atmosphere and dive into fast moving clouds to reach a station, which in my opinion shouldn't be too hard to make, and of course if the player decides to dive more inside the giant well, it would be suicide since most likely he will get hull damage and heat damage if he ventures too deep in where the temperatures will start to get really hot. I am sure something can be done.

ELWs on the other hand, yes terrain is not as simple to generate aswell and the problem is, not generally the weather, but they will need to generate forests and all types of vegetation on the planet aswell, as you said and I agree that terrain is the hardest thing to randomly generate because of its complexity and overall diameter, if they don't put a crazy amount of detail on cities and maybe they'll make them a little smaller I am sure something can work out, there's a bunch of other factors on why Earth Like planets are going to be on hold for the time being.

In my opinion, after the release, they should constantly update the content of Oddysey and add or change features, and maybe in the close future make weather and all of that stuff a possibility.

 

[Helvellyn]

Liquid might be the problem with thicker atmospheres. Making sure your rivers all run downhill and eventually in to the sea. Probably not too hard if you precalculate the entire planet (which doesn't sound practical) but much harder if you're generating the bits you need on the fly. I ought to have a look around and see if anyone's done it, the algorithms for it might be interesting.

 

[Maolagin]

I like gas giants in bespin style. Real world life would turn into no mans sky or not be believable more spread out that what it currently is?

Also storm structures have the possibility for some epic vistas... think of subnatutica when you first get off the starter island and go deeper for the first time. That effect but in clouds.

Guessing anyway.

Oh yes, please! I've been saying for a while, floating "cloud cities" would be a great way to add some activity to bodies like gas giants and thick-atmo HMCs that would never realistically be landable otherwise. Especially if they were to serve as a vehicle to highlight new volumetric cloud tech.

 

[Kzak]

Gas mining stations floating in the upper atmosphere of gas giants, if possible, would be great. Depends on if the human technology in the Elite universe supports this, though.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

I want to start a suggestion on this, I've talked with a few people about it and I would like to share my idea here.
So we all know that the Odyssey DLC is going to come out soon and one of the first things besides being able to walk around on your own so called Space-Legs, you will be eligible to land on atmospheric type planets.

Excluding "Gas Giant class planets" where landing is impossible due to the conditions you have to go through thousands of miles deep within the violent clouds only to reach a small rocky surface (Except if they decide to do surface stations), I would like to talk about Earth Like planets. The name says it all, a planet that is extremely similar to Earth which means that it has oxygen, plantations, water, and overall a planet where the human species can habitat without any issues, I am looking forward to seeing these kinds of planets landable and maybe they would add weather like rain and all of that good stuff as well.

My doubts, they are all coming downwards onto these:

(Not my photo).

These kinds of planets where city lights are clearly visible all around the surface of the planet. Now I am not sure if these kinds of planets will ever be landable all due to how the game will render such full cities when getting closer to the surface of the planet, it's too much workload not only on the engine of the game but on the computer's GPU/CPU as well, some computers won't handle this at all especially that they are in a 1:1 size so if the planet is 12000 kilometers it will actually take you as much time as it takes in real life to go around it and let's not forget that it's all randomly generated.

In my opinion Gas Giants have more of a chance to be land-able than these populated planets and that's my idea on why. If you have any other ideas and stuff don't hesitate to talk about it, it's a free discussion.

[/QUOTE]
Gas planets such as the ones we have in out solar system have no surface to land on, on would need the ability to float. As one gets closer to the center of a gas planet, the various gases become more and more dense. Just like on Earth where the closer to the center you go from the top of our atmosphere, the gas becomes dense, we refer to it as water.

 

[RiggedBottle]

Gas planets such as the ones we have in out solar system have no surface to land on. However as one gets closer to the center of a gas planet, the various gases become more and more dense. Just like on Earth where the closer to the center you go from the top of our atmosphere, the gas becomes dense, we refer to it as water.
[/QUOTE]
I do believe that some theories say that Gas Giants, like our ones, they do have a small rocky core in the middle, but afterall they're all theories as we can't exactly know how it actually is in those planets since none of human's aparatus made it, like the attempt from 1995 to land a small craft in Jupiter but failed due to the extreme conditions.
But a station around the clouds within the surface can do!

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I do believe that some theories say that Gas Giants, like our ones, they do have a small rocky core in the middle, but afterall they're all theories as we can't exactly know how it actually is in those planets since none of human's aparatus made it, like the attempt from 1995 to land a small craft in Jupiter but failed due to the extreme conditions.
But a station around the clouds within the surface can do!

I think the current understanding is, while they might not have rocky cores, as in made up of the elements we identify as rocks, because of the pressure from the immense gravity hydrogen start behaving in this special super pressurised state. It doesn't strike me as a lesser class of thing as you can easily read from mainstream science media saying its doesn't have a rocky core. Forgot all my anton pretov or astum lessons. Im not sure how far you have to go down into the atmosphere before you're going to hit a wall.. think its only a few hundred kilometers. 75 says google. Yeah jupiter radiates more heat than it receives so there's something going on inside.. whether that's a remenant of its formation or something else..

Okay im beyond my expertise here.

But i think the correct way of thinking about gas giants is they're in the same league as stars but didn't end up big enough to start fusion. I think its 40 jupiter masses and the same thing ends up being a star. Definitely not inferior rocky planets.

 

[Maolagin]

Gas mining stations floating in the upper atmosphere of gas giants, if possible, would be great. Depends on if the human technology in the Elite universe supports this, though.

It's on the very edge of technological feasibility in the 21st century, so I'd imagine it's quite straightforward in the 34th. In certain circles the idea of building a floating colony at Venus is quite popular. At 50 km altitude (about the height of the Venusian cloud tops) the temperature and pressure are quite similar to the Earth's surface conditions, and breathable O2-N2 works as a lifting gas in the mainly-CO2 atmosphere.

A cloud city at a Jovian gas giant is a tougher proposition. In the case of Jupiter, Earthlike pressure also occurs at about the cloud top level (the highest deck of ammonia clouds in this case) but at a rather less agreeable -70°C. Also, because the atmosphere is mainly hydrogen, there are no lighter gasses you can use for buoyant lift - you have to run some kind of active lift engines full time. You probably also need some active steering, because Jovian storms can and do reach this high in the atmosphere. But in the ED galaxy there are human outposts in plenty of less hospitable locales than that. And overall, given that hydrogen fuel is a very cheap and hugely abundant commodity, one suspects that it is sourced from facilities something like this where it could be collected in huge bulk quantities.

Gas planets such as the ones we have in out solar system have no surface to land on. However as one gets closer to the center of a gas planet, the various gases become more and more dense. Just like on Earth where the closer to the center you go from the top of our atmosphere, the gas becomes dense, we refer to it as water.

I do believe that some theories say that Gas Giants, like our ones, they do have a small rocky core in the middle, but afterall they're all theories as we can't exactly know how it actually is in those planets since none of human's aparatus made it, like the attempt from 1995 to land a small craft in Jupiter but failed due to the extreme conditions.

The Galileo Entry Probe didn't fail! It descended into Jupiter's atmosphere and returned previously inaccessible data until it was crushed by the pressure, exactly as designed.

More broadly, the interior structure of gas giants like Jupiter isn't totally mysterious. Besides the Galileo entry experiment, orbital probes have mapped the internal density profile of Jupiter and Saturn via gravity measurements. There have also been decades of computer modeling and high pressure chemistry experiments to inform things, too. We know that Jupiter has a relatively dense core, although it is diffuse enough that the core probably isn't solid - the currently favored theory is that an early merger with another protoplanet disrupted a solid core and left the heavy elements mixed throughout the lower layers of the liquid metallic hydrogen mantle. However, there is no realistic hope of sending a probe or ship significantly into the Jovian interior - the pressure and temperature become extremely large rather quickly.

 

[Cmdr Nemo]

Gas planets such as the ones we have in out solar system have no surface to land on. However as one gets closer to the center of a gas planet, the various gases become more and more dense. Just like on Earth where the closer to the center you go from the top of our atmosphere, the gas becomes dense, we refer to it as water.

I do believe that some theories say that Gas Giants, like our ones, they do have a small rocky core in the middle, but afterall they're all theories as we can't exactly know how it actually is in those planets since none of human's apparatus made it, like the attempt from 1995 to land a small craft in Jupiter but failed due to the extreme conditions.
But a station around the clouds within the surface can do!
[/QUOTE]
the Earth is 4.54 billion years old give or take a few million. In all that time a crust which we live on has formed which only measures three to five miles thick. It is assumed that the close proximity to the Sun in addition to the constant bombardment of asteroids is the chief cause in the creation of our crust. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is thought to have been or was either a planet in flux basically caught at a distance to far for the Sun to assist in heating and the extremes cold temperatures beyond. Jupiter and the other gas planet beyond Jupiter are too far for any dramatic assistance from the sun which would be needed in the formation of liquid to solid aka crust.
Basically the same reason why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Because of its orbit being so much different than the eight other planets. Not to mention the size, it's orbit comes close enough to the Sun to assist in its outer surface becoming a crust.
Pluto's orbit cross's a couple of the other planets orbit, come a day when Pluto will collide with one of them. Though it won't happen any time soon, it's a pretty safe assumption that man will no longer exist and if so, not here.

 

[Helvellyn]

the Earth is 4.54 billion years old give or take a few million. In all that time a crust which we live on has formed which only measures three to five miles thick. It is assumed that the close proximity to the Sun in addition to the constant bombardment of asteroids is the chief cause in the creation of our crust. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is thought to have been or was either a planet in flux basically caught at a distance to far for the Sun to assist in heating and the extremes cold temperatures beyond. Jupiter and the other gas planet beyond Jupiter are too far for any dramatic assistance from the sun which would be needed in the formation of liquid to solid aka crust.
Basically the same reason why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Because of its orbit being so much different than the eight other planets. Not to mention the size, it's orbit comes close enough to the Sun to assist in its outer surface becoming a crust.
Pluto's orbit cross's a couple of the other planets orbit, come a day when Pluto will collide with one of them. Though it won't happen any time soon, it's a pretty safe assumption that man will no longer exist and if so, not here.

Heating from the Sun doesn't help form a crust. Asteroid bombardment might melt an existing crust (this is believed to have happened to the Earth), which then re-forms. The further you are from the sun the more likely you are to have solids - the outer planets' moons, and other bodies like Pluto have solid ices on their surfaces that would be gases at the temperatures you get on the Earth. So you're more likely to get rocky cores covered in ice out there (and enough material in the early Solar System for large rocky cores to form and enough gas to accumulate around them to form gas giants; it's also easier to keep gases at low temperature - if the Earth was a lot colder there might well be more helium here).

The total mass of the asteroid belt is much less than any planet.