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

BlackMaze

BlackMaze
UPDATE: Planetary terrain prefabs are now also being discovered to be reused between planets:

01cPX9u.png


UPDATE:

Looking at the high number of reported planets. I have gone ahead and created an issue tracker for this one. I urge everybody to go ahead and tick "can replicate" with as many examples as they can provide.


Thanks everyone!

ORIGINAL:

What I'm about to show you will be the final straw in cementing the new planetary tech system into a failure.

I remember Dr Kay Ross stating on stream that their procedural heightmap system made use of handmade terrain that would then be randomized across. I was worried when I heard this.

Check this out - I'll let the images speak for itself:

Gq7qNhg.png


6D2HQvV.jpg


HKTq6Dh.jpg


W27eoYU.png


upKait2.png


Literally all terrain features both from high orbit to low orbit are repeating, hand crafted, and break every little bit hunger for exploration. There is absolutely no desire to go down and explore since all you're looking at is the "randomly" organized set of hand crafted height map bits the developers have made.

Horizons gives a REAL sense of wanting to go and explore. Find planets with unique features.

Planets in Odyssey are no longer unique. They are just reorganised sets of the same features.

These planets were designed with one goal: look acceptable from an on-foot perspective or when looking from a twilight perspective with a setting sun for the atmo effect.
 
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[VR] Merkir

[VR] Merkir
I have to agree. That is totally unacceptable. In fact now that it's been pointed out, I find it nothing short of shocking. ED's main claim to fame were unique procedurally generated planets. That's gone, replaced by procedurally placed tile planets.

Still shaking my head. Can't believe this. And btw, this is what Star Citizen does, and no doubt many other space games. (n)
 

MantaRay

M
BlackMaze said:
What I'm about to show you will be the final straw in cementing the new planetary tech system into a failure.

I remember Dr Kay Ross stating on stream that their procedural heightmap system made use of handmade terrain that would then be randomized across. I was worried when I heard this.

Check this out - I'll let the images speak for itself:

Gq7qNhg.png


6D2HQvV.jpg


Literally all terrain features both from high orbit to low orbit are repeating, hand crafted, and break every little bit hunger for exploration. There is absolutely no desire to go down and explore since all you're looking at is the "randomly" organized set of hand crafted height map bits the developers have made.

Horizons gives a REAL sense of wanting to go and explore. Find planets with unique features.

Planets in Odyssey are no longer unique. They are just reorganised sets of the same features.

These planets were designed with one goal: look acceptable from an on-foot perspective or when looking from a twilight perspective with a setting sun for the atmo effect.
Click to expand...
Top right one and the one right below it are the same, just top one is scaled up.
 

galahad2069

G
BlackMaze said:
These planets were designed with one goal: look acceptable from an on-foot perspective or when looking from a twilight perspective with a setting sun for the atmo effect.[/SIZE]
Click to expand...

Interesting find.

I'm not much of an explorer, but can someone explain what might have possibly been their problem with the Horizons version of planet surfaces?

What do you think they meant by "looking good from on-foot perspective"? I've always hated the SRV with passion, but planetary surfaces looked okay from it. It certainly couldn't have been that different from spacelegs perspective. Honest question.
 
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