But yeah, I must admit did little trick here, I took about dullest Horizons pics I had in my ready pic folder. There are way more nicer screenies.
I do remember a period when a whole bunch of planets seemed to have unnaturally linear patterns in their crater distribution, in many cases much worse than the examples posted above. Some were virtually grid-like, as though someone had strafed the planet with a series of machine-gun passes. It's one of the reasons I was careful to use the word "rarely" rather than "never" in my longer post, regarding the number of times
Horizons had broken its own believability. I had thought this was prior to 2020 but maybe there were a few left after the bulk got patched away.
But even those planets were easier on my eye than the repeat patterns in
Odyssey. Even though the distribution of craters was clearly artificial, the craters themselves were sufficiently different in size, composition and surroundings that they only ever gave me a sense of artifice, never of
duplication. Sure, I was looking at an improbably long straight line of craters stretching to the limb, but not the same crater repeated. I can't speak for anyone else, but that seems to be key to me. I can deal with the odd quirks and edge-cases, especially the really exciting stuff like improbably spiky mountains, but the second something significant
repeats in the same frame it's much worse. If it repeats more than once it's jarring.
And one of my worries is that even if FD can reduce this effect so it only happens rarely on individual planets, it may still be enough to serve as a constant reminder that it's likely to be happening
between similar worlds as well. It's even possible I'll start to recognise certain patterns and be subconsciously looking out for them, which would be awful. It's one of the reasons I'm sticking to bubble activities for the time being, rather than heading into the black, so hopefully I'm not exposed to too many "copypasta" seeds before FD has a pass at fixing it all. It's also giving me a chance to gather materials for suit modifications, which is a bonus.