New Planet Tech is KILLER of Exploration (all terrain is tiling/repeating/not procedural/random)

Ah, that curious form of "erosion" known as "adding material to".


Definitely smooth rounded mountains on the moon:

596px-Apollo_15_LM_on_surface.jpg


This is an entertaining and informative read:

 
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Dunes form wherever sand blows, into hollows etc, so would it be possible to factor that into the proc gen? I guess it would be rather similar to placing it where liquids like water would pool.

I don't know anything about Proc gen unfortunately, I did intend to study geology at Uni until life stuff got in the way and have forgotten most of what I learned at A level as it was four decades ago. Still keep up a purely amateur interest though, and a deep appreciation of the sheer beauty of natural forms.
I think the thing with the procedural generation in ED is that it has to work basically instantaneously. It can't really go away and think about things for a bit. So you have to find a noise function that looks a lot like sand dunes. And if one can't be found, using a repeating texture instead. I think as you get closer to atmospheric worlds, where things are created through processes over time, noise functions are going to look more and more crude.

With Odyssey there are quite a lot of lovely areas, but also a few areas where it doesn't look very good (the individual mountains mostly). So I'd basically just like them to try to improve things where possible.

And I'd say a problem with procedural generation more generally is that it inevitably creates things that are a bit generic looking. And a lot of the landscapes on Earth that astonish us are places where very non-generic oddball things are happening.
 
I think the thing with the procedural generation in ED is that it has to work basically instantaneously. It can't really go away and think about things for a bit. So you have to find a noise function that looks a lot like sand dunes. And if one can't be found, using a repeating texture instead. I think as you get closer to atmospheric worlds, where things are created through processes over time, noise functions are going to look more and more crude.

With Odyssey there are quite a lot of lovely areas, but also a few areas where it doesn't look very good (the individual mountains mostly). So I'd basically just like them to try to improve things where possible.

And I'd say a problem with procedural generation more generally is that it inevitably creates things that are a bit generic looking. And a lot of the landscapes on Earth that astonish us are places where very non-generic oddball things are happening.
That all sounds very plausible, if a tad depressing.
 
I think the thing with the procedural generation in ED is that it has to work basically instantaneously. It can't really go away and think about things for a bit.
It does for star system evolution. See the videos on shared/emptying orbits, mutual eccentricity effects, asteroid beelt location generation etc - all evolved during the loading screen.
 
I've just worked out what's wrong with them to my eyes. Yes without a doubt, unplayable.

They're all texture and no features. Sure i've seen some bodies where the heights could be considered features, but even those never shake looking like textures. These bodies can look attractive, but are certainly not my understanding of planets.
 
So I paid a visit to HD 175876 (Heaven's Lathe). I arrived to the ringed Neutron star lightened from an 'O' type star. I took out my dSLR (in-game camera suite) and started taking pictures (screenshots). Then i got out of Supercruise in the asteroids or the ringed Neutron star and saw the graphics artifacts. So this is my system:

I've got Intel Core i9, 64Gb DDR4, nVidia RTX 3090, SSD, Very fast Internet connection. Playing the game set with max quality, Ultra+

I attached a screenshot for you to compare, as follows:

A and B are the screenshots taken from Horizons (nice pictures, no glitches, perfect and the best)
C and D are the same screenshots but taken from Odyssey
C, D and E are screenshots taken with nVidia Experience Game filter (as taken in Horizon) on set to Detail.
F is the same screenshot taken without any filters (standard Odyssey graphics)

Note in D, E and F the graphics artifacts, clearly visible.

I tried this on another (older computer) with a low end nVidia GTX 1060 card and same results. Horisons is perfect, Odyssey with artifacts.

I also tried different quality settings but resulted the same.

aa.JPG

bb.JPG
 
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Now i have od working.. i think this is pretty much the gross outstanding issue.

  • Decided to do a direct comparison to horizons, for planets, its a bit of rose goggles definitely. The planet surfaces in od are much better, and space perspective from one point of view are even more attractive.
  • Unfortunately, they just don't look like planets.
WTH is this? Its not a planet.
EliteDangerous64_2022_01_08_20_59_48_629.jpg


This is better, but as my previous post, screws it up by having too much chaos around the edges. You can see what its trying, but all its achieving is a texture, not a planet. You could suggest its using the wrong tool for the job..?
EliteDangerous64_2022_01_08_21_00_23_248.jpg

So all they have to do is make these oddball defective limbo computer graphics artifacts look like planets and.. thumbs up.

ps. As a tanget, the od content itself is so laughable. How did it escape that we only did the horizons stuff to pretend to be in space. They put in the same gameplay loop without the fundamental hook, and its naked and empty. Having said, ody as a replacement for horizons, or beyond 4, just a qol iteration.. its pretty amazing. Slowly but surely i can't go back for the space game side as well. Just forget about the cost and the fact they marketed doing something that is in fact epic nothing.

pps. Once the smoke bug has been handled, you can turn all the settings back up again...
 
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It does for star system evolution. See the videos on shared/emptying orbits, mutual eccentricity effects, asteroid beelt location generation etc - all evolved during the loading screen.

But in the case of things like sand dunes, you can't generate those in advance based on some sort of physics simulation because it would take forever and you'd have a billion terabytes of mesh data. When you enter a system it might know whether there are sand dunes on a planet but it won't know the shape of those dunes. It really has to generate it when you look at it. As far as I can make out, it's doing it by clever layering of noise functions and textures based on planet data. But it's not running simulations.
 
I've been tootling around out in the black, keeping an eye out for decent mountains. I've just come across this one on Blu Euq HC-L b54-0 1 at about 10/140. Flying straight out from the peak I got a height of about 11km compared to the surrounding terrain. This is still a fair way from what has been found in Horizons, but about double the commonly-claimed maximum Odyssey height of 5-6km.

lMmnIbQ.png


Nearby on the same moon is a 6km high escarpment - a geological form I don't think I ever saw in Horizons.
 
So playing elite more regularly again, the loop has got back to exploration.

Sadly its a pretty firm conclusion, having the choice and playing one client over the other, both the planet views and planet surfaces are much better in horizons. Its not just a small difference, its huge. The skybox is also still much better in horizons depending on where and how close to the star(?) you are.

Its dealbreaker bad.

.....

What more is there to say?
 
What more is there to say?

"In my humble opinion"

I mean in all seriousness, no intention to be overly sarcastic or snarky, though it probably comes forward a bit like that. I get you don't like it, tastes are personal and vast majority are equally valid, but as much as I like some of Horizons terrain feature that aren't there anymore, not to mention the performance and a terrain that doesn't morph under your wheels, I get vastly, vastly more awestruck by Odyssey terrain materials and atmospheres, where there's one.
 
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