New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)
- Thread starter BlackMaze
- Start date
Because some people instead of discussing the topic seem rather like to discuss their existential crisis...
I dont feel the topic should be stopped I do hoe ever feel it should be put on hold as fdev have noted the problem if at the end of patch 5 things are not working the pitch forks can come back I might even pick one up
They didn't noted all the issues, only the repeating pattern and a few others. Perhaps more that I do not know. The issues I can remember, currently :
-Repeating patterns (acknowledged)
-LOD issues (acknowledged)
-Similar formation (IE the "crater" being the most obvious). Might be related to the repeating pattern, or not.
-Heightmap issues (very sudden change in height, canyon being like that : ^^|___|^^, stretched texture, "smooth" mountain, "melted ice cream" appearance...)
-pop in issue
-some planet having extremely flat land (like unnatural flat), with random cluster of mountains
-"loading" terrain issue, which make it change wildly as you get close, as in a wave moving back
-very low quality textures at times
-seams between textures
-"fake" terrain feature, like cracks, that are only 2d drawing on a texture
-"rough" terrain texture being applied seemingly at random, with no respect of where you'd expect rough terrain. Participate in the "camo" appearance you might see at times.
-invisible rocks (acknowledged, being worked on)
-ground terrain texture being limited to 2 (?) different ones, a "fine dust" and a "rough" textures. Colors changes, but it feel very similar. There is a 3rd "ice" texture (and perhaps rough ice), which I seen on screenshots, but seem buggy because not all the ice planet have it.
-Canyon following no logic at all, or being a straight curve with very similar walls on both side, with no branching, cracks... or anything you'd expect from them
-some bugs with craters walls
That's from the top of my head.
Which is why it's important to have this thread. The purpose is not to "riot with pitchforks" but to simply note the issues as they come. If people resort to name calling, they should be reported and moderated. Yes, even myself when I'm a dumbdumb. If it doesn't interest you, then don't post. It's entirely optional.
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The sad thing is that at a large scale, i.e. when you're looking down from orbit, I really can't see any need to use such repeated landforms. The only ones big enough to really notice would be craters, which can be generated procedurally (a crater's a crater so they'll all look similar, a bit seen one, seen them all, but they don't have to be identical).
The only type of landform I've seen in Odyssey that I can't see could've been generated procedurally very easily are the rock-filled gullies on hillsides. Everything else looks like it could've been produced by procedural generation anyway, so I just don't see the point of it. Granted, if you can ignore that (and I certainly agree with the points about the brain's ability to spot patterns) the surface view from an Odyssey planet somehow often feels more like landing on somewhere real to me - can't really explain how, but the pregenerated height maps really do seem unnecessary, and that would be true even if there were a lot more of them.
On the "feeling" aspect, I feel the odyssey planet are smaller than horizon. I feel like I'm landing on a space engineer/empyrion planet, which are 20km diameter or something.
I don't know why though.
who knows what is the truth in times when CEO defames his own playerbase claiming to play this awesome expansion in release state on his 2014 rig he bought from your kickstarter money
Although I'll stick with what I said in general there have been some like that - the overall flat ones but with ludicrously spikey mountains sticking out of that flat plain all over the place locations by any chance?
Didn't notice any pattern for it. I know that the outposts seem to be seen from much further away, which lead to a feeling of small planet. I don't know for whatever else give me the feeling.
I mean, very big mountains planet on Horizon made the planet feel smaller, so it would be the same on Odyssey, but I don't remember seeing one.
You always have a certain thread....
I think this is related to the heightmap issues. My theory is that the "noise generator" the game use breaks at time, and let the map as is. I've seen mountain range with "normal" mountains, and next to them an smooth spike with stretched texture.
I think what you mention is what I called the "melted ice cream" appearance.
True. I dare say he can still see this tho so if there's any message you want to convey I can always ping him on Discord so he doesn't miss it.
Thank you. It's a shame, he seemed quite cool headed, so I'm surprised. Anyway, what's done is done.
I do not have a message for him, it was more in appreciation of his effort in gathering all the issues in one post, for the devs to see. And being disappointed than the first post will not be edited further.
No work has been done to the planet generation. At least nothing big so far that we can see.
Let's hope that the fix is in one of the "many bug fixes and improvements" coming up before the end of June.
Or at least by the end of July.
![[VR] Enexemander](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/119/119036.jpg?1621636716){kind=avatar}
It's annoying to me how every planet seems to have some weird uniform speckling.
![[VR] Merkir](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
If your reply to Vi7ER's Ganymede image was meant to show that EDO has just as much chaos, then your definition of chaos is very different to mine.
I've seen these "mozaic" tiles dozens of times. Like most of EDO, the first few logins I was in awe - new terrain, shiny, pretty, beautiful, dazzling. We've been given new mozaics, pimply hills, crowded hills, crazed ice - all wonderful. And then... after dozens of planets you realise there is little variation. It's using the same types of terrain, differing mainly by colour and region shape/sizes, and of course much of it repeated tiles.
Given how little variation there has been, it really would have been so much better to execute those few terrain types exclusively by procedural generation, as extensions to the Horizons algorithms. This would have allowed for infinite variation.
And just as importantly, the fact that EDO places these few terrain types on what in most cases is a completely flat heightmap makes for a bland impression, IMO with very little chaos, as they've dumbed the tech down to use more conventional methods of terrain generation - ie. pregeneration, streaming assets, repeating tiles.
