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

Holy ... What a disaster of a game. The procedural generation was what made exploration interesting. An entire galaxy of unique planets. Now this. Refund and roll back this absolutely crap excuse of a DLC which forever ruins exploration. Not only does it look crap thanks to the broken lighting of space, but even if you could see it, it's just an entirely galaxy of a handful of reused assets. This is so much worse than I thought it was with just being unable to see anything.
Its actually same algo as was in Horizons. Just less polished.
 
You have no idea whether or not this is the case. Don't make stuff up :D
Horizons uses an assortment of pre-generated procgen surface features ("patterns") too, as a calculation shortcut, and some level of pre-generated shapes are basically required to not kill everyone's CPU (as rendering 1:1 scale planets entirely from scratch using only CPU cycles would do). Procgen placed "set pieces" were just used in a much more inconspicuous manner in Horizons. The devs need to use equivalent tricks to those that Horizons employs in order to fool our human eyes/brains into not noticing these recurring shapes and patterns on Odyssey planets as well.

Also the planetary textures, colouring and lighting system when viewed from orbit needs a serious working over to convey more depth and more blended colour transitions under all lighting conditions, including when the planet's surface is lit directly from above.
 
Its actually same algo as was in Horizons. Just less polished.
No, in Horizons terrain was procedurally generated. Features added onto that were done via heightmaps. Which gave you an infinite variety of possible planets, since the same heightmap pasted onto different terrain gave you a different result. This new system gives a much more limited variety, as the heightmap is not applied to terrain, but to a flat surface, so every part with the same feature is identical. It removes any impetus to explore planets whatsoever. You will NOT find any unique features, anywhere.
 
Yeah, Horizons did the same, but hid it better. After 2 years of fixing it. Originally in the beta Horizons was beautiful, and very resource intensive. Then it got optimized, and we had the beige invasion for years.
 
No, in Horizons terrain was procedurally generated. Features added onto that were done via heightmaps. Which gave you an infinite variety of possible planets, since the same heightmap pasted onto different terrain gave you a different result. This new system gives a much more limited variety, as the heightmap is not applied to terrain, but to a flat surface, so every part with the same feature is identical.
Dude, just read my post above... Also theres a screens from Horizons with patterns that prove that too.
 
Dude, just read my post above... Also theres a screens from Horizons with patterns that prove that too.
And read why I posted. Of course the same heightmap is going to generate the same result if it ends up on two even terrains. When it does. But when the underlying terrain is procedurally generated, you have a much reduce chance of this happening, and the potential for infinite variety. That you may occasionally come across the same heightmap that you can recognise from elsewhere, says nothing of all the times that heightmap is applied to completely different terrain and you don't recognise it at all. It worked in Horizons. There was plenty of potential to find completely unique features. It doesn't work here, and there's not that potential. Every feature is going to be identical in every place it appears.
 
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The lead man himself basically said everything, including detailed gameplay description of what it would be like to fly in gas giants.

When there is a game that is unique in its lore, flight dynamics and procedural content, I'd think its devs will try their utmost to build upon its core traits.
Instead we got a generic fps with generic hand crafted locations, and hand placed content. But yeah, that was what people wanted in the forums, so FDev went for it.
Since getting out was planned at its inception then that feature is also a core pillar. You don't get to decide what this game is.

The flight dynamics are in a fine position, and having the ability to get out - like you can in the SRV by the way - should no way impact that, and they don't.

NO-ONE wanted procedural content to be hurt by on-foot gameplay, and they didn't expect it because well, SRV gameplay is not much different in scale, and you are practically as close to the ground and in space terms don't move all that much faster than walking.

They tried to improve the fidelity of planets, and in my opinion it was needed. They have actually accomplished that in many ways if we just want to consider pure assets - WHEN THEY WORK PROPERLY not all those clearly broken screenshots. I think it's rather more likely the reason for all the problems is because of this, and yes they may or may not have made some poor choices with asset re-use (some thigs now hint it's a bug).

Also the sameyness of planets is not a direct question of fidelity, rather it is again a matter of asset distribution and how the procedural code is telling planets how to put the blocks together.

Generic loations? Well anything that's artificial is going to be generic isn't it? Well, like anything man-made since Elite Dangerous launched like starbases for instance. They all look the same, why aren't you complaining about that?

It is a base to build on, and it ain't really a generic FPS because how many let you bring some friends in spaceships to help you out. Just for the same reason it ain't a generic space game, it ain't a generic FPS-- because there's an entire galaxy available.
 

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Oh 42 pages...

Isn't it clear that the new planetary tech is not ready yet?
that the cake was pulled too soon from the oven?

what i see is a lot of placeholders filled with whatever-was-available on May 19th.
Some planets seem to be ok, others have a lot of placeholders filled with repetitive textures. 🤷‍♂️

Guess it will be fixed until Autumn
And i do hope the height maps will be fixed too so we have canyons deeper than a ship height
 
Oh 42 pages...

Isn't it clear that the new planetary tech is not ready yet?
that the cake was pulled too soon from the oven?

what i see is a lot of placeholders filled with whatever-was-available on May 19th.
Some planets seem to be ok, others have a lot of placeholders filled with repetitive textures. 🤷‍♂️

Guess it will be fixed until Autumn
And i do hope the height maps will be fixed too so we have canyons deeper than a ship height
It was the same with Horizons. Why are you surprised?
 
And read why I posted. Of course the same heightmap is going to generate the same result if it ends up on two even terrains. When it does. But when the underlying terrain is procedurally generated, you have a much reduce chance of this happening, and the potential for infinite variety. That you may occasionally come across the same heightmap that you can recognise from elsewhere, says nothing of all the times that heightmap is applied to completely different terrain and you don't recognise it at all. It worked in Horizons. There was plenty of potential to find completely unique features. It doesn't work here, and there's not that potential. Every feature is going to be identical in every place it appears.
If whole planet isnt generated from scratch and use predefined patterns (Horizons and Odyssey) then its not unique at all. I imagined the stellar forge as more advanced tech than this.
 
Since getting out was planned at its inception then that feature is also a core pillar. You don't get to decide what this game is.

The flight dynamics are in a fine position, and having the ability to get out - like you can in the SRV by the way - should no way impact that, and they don't.

NO-ONE wanted procedural content to be hurt by on-foot gameplay, and they didn't expect it because well, SRV gameplay is not much different in scale, and you are practically as close to the ground and in space terms don't move all that much faster than walking.

They tried to improve the fidelity of planets, and in my opinion it was needed. They have actually accomplished that in many ways if we just want to consider pure assets - WHEN THEY WORK PROPERLY not all those clearly broken screenshots. I think it's rather more likely the reason for all the problems is because of this, and yes they may or may not have made some poor choices with asset re-use (some thigs now hint it's a bug).

Also the sameyness of planets is not a direct question of fidelity, rather it is again a matter of asset distribution and how the procedural code is telling planets how to put the blocks together.

Generic loations? Well anything that's artificial is going to be generic isn't it? Well, like anything man-made since Elite Dangerous launched like starbases for instance. They all look the same, why aren't you complaining about that?

It is a base to build on, and it ain't really a generic FPS because how many let you bring some friends in spaceships to help you out. Just for the same reason it ain't a generic space game, it ain't a generic FPS-- because there's an entire galaxy available.
A "base to build on"? This new generation just removed ED's USP.
 
It was the same with Horizons. Why are you surprised?

I am not, and i was not here when horizons dropped *()
But i'm not the one getting all emotional about this and i'm not throwing my toys out of the pram - even tho my Carrier is named Pram One 😂


*()
I got the game in november 2018, some 3-4 weeks before 3.3 :)
 
My two penneth and wild, pointless speculation. At the macro/planet-scale level, they probably got something really nice working vaguely on PC, but don't have a chance of getting it working on any of the last-gen consoles, so need to revert to 'Plan B' for the time being.

At the micro/ground level, things also seemed to be too noisy in alpha, and the rock generation algorithm too dense, for either on foot or SRV gameplay to be comfortable - so both of those got dialled back to minimums.

But yeah - the repetition is noticeable and disappointing. (As an aside, anyone remember the planet images from Braben's TED talk on procedural generation, or the various gas giant procedural cloud techs (animated swirls!) that have been shown? I wonder how many iterations of planetary tech there have been?)

Edit If you haven't seen the TED talk, it's here: "Rules can be beautiful" - it's from 2013 and examples of planets towards the end (7m 30s+) show nicer colouration than those we see in Odyssey IMHO.
 
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I am not, and i was not here when horizons dropped *()
But i'm not the one getting all emotional about this and i'm not throwing my toys out of the pram - even tho my Carrier is named Pram One 😂


*()
I got the game in november 2018, some 3-4 weeks before 3.3 :)
Horizons took 2 years to be fixed. If that's the timeline we are looking at again, people might get a wee bit miffed, when Horizons is nuked from orbit this fall.
 
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