While the planet surface generation got better since launch of odyssey it is still extremely bland and tasteless; unlike horizons, where every planet looked unique and the surface was unique with canyons, craters, and mountains of various sizes all over the surface, to the point where you could pick then out from the system map screen and figure out if you were interested enough. The last few days i have flip-flopped between live odyssey and legacy horizons with further enjoyment in exploration of legacy horizons with incredible vistas I have found to land at and drive around. I have yet to experience this in 17 thousand light years of jumping from the bubble to sag a. Are they still working on bringing planet generation back up to the level of uniqueness that horizons had or did the dev team become lazy. If, there is no further work, I fear the time for star citizen has come and that the abandonment of this game is inevitable in my case.
Planet feature generation
- Thread starter Progen Dom Rosa
- Start date
Planet generation in the old Horizons was extreme to the point of unrealistic in many cases, the earth for instance is effectively as smooth as a billiard ball, seeing huge valleys and mountains from orbit or further out is something you just wouldn't see in reality, yes the extremes were fun sometimes, but what Odyssey actually has now is far more likely the sort of things you will see in the galaxy if you could get out there.
I personally think it's better this way even though we can no longer plunge down the vertical wall of a 30km seep crater or drive off the planet on huge mountains. There are still some amazing sights to be seen if you look, they just aren't the bizarre unrealistic landscapes we had in the old planetary generation system.
I personally think it's better this way even though we can no longer plunge down the vertical wall of a 30km seep crater or drive off the planet on huge mountains. There are still some amazing sights to be seen if you look, they just aren't the bizarre unrealistic landscapes we had in the old planetary generation system.
I don't think the planetary generation was ever touched once the galaxy was rerolled on the Odyssey release; what might have changed is the rendering quality, so you get a bit less morphing when you skim the surface. But the planet generation in principle is what it is since Odyssey released.
Personally, I like the new planets much, much more. The Legacy planets often are extreme to the point of silliness (like the testicle moon Pomece 2C or Mount Neverest), Legacy pretty much either has flat boring plains or silly high mountains with deep ravines. I get that there are cases of gameplay that are fun on these silly places, but visually it was... meh.
I've had much more breathtaking moments exploring the surface of especially atmospheric bodies in Odyssey. The planets now make sense, the different terrain type flow into each other rather than "now it's flat - now it's not". I prefer the sense of realism very much to the choice of either blandness or silliness Legacy provides. Take a look at the various screenshot threads - Odyssey provides some incredible vistas.
As a side note: Nice balanced opinion, well spoken presented, calling the developers "lazy" because you don't like the visuals of their work. Makes one really want to listen to your opinion and take you seriously. You can say you dislike something, that's your prerogative, but maybe refrain from opinionated name calling just because you don't like something.
"That Picasso dude was really a crappy lazy painter, he didn't even bother trying to paint pretty looking faces!"
Personally, I like the new planets much, much more. The Legacy planets often are extreme to the point of silliness (like the testicle moon Pomece 2C or Mount Neverest), Legacy pretty much either has flat boring plains or silly high mountains with deep ravines. I get that there are cases of gameplay that are fun on these silly places, but visually it was... meh.
I've had much more breathtaking moments exploring the surface of especially atmospheric bodies in Odyssey. The planets now make sense, the different terrain type flow into each other rather than "now it's flat - now it's not". I prefer the sense of realism very much to the choice of either blandness or silliness Legacy provides. Take a look at the various screenshot threads - Odyssey provides some incredible vistas.
As a side note: Nice balanced opinion, well spoken presented, calling the developers "lazy" because you don't like the visuals of their work. Makes one really want to listen to your opinion and take you seriously. You can say you dislike something, that's your prerogative, but maybe refrain from opinionated name calling just because you don't like something.
"That Picasso dude was really a crappy lazy painter, he didn't even bother trying to paint pretty looking faces!"
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While the game mostly generates and renders planetary surfaces extraordinarily well, one thing that has always bothered me is that I have never seen extremely high mountains and extremely deep valleys. There are mountains and valleys, but they all seems to be quite shallow. The tallest mountains I have seen are like maybe 1-2 km high and that's it. (I haven't actually measured them. Should be very possible using the ship's altimeter. Maybe I'll do that one of these days.) If they are actually higher, they don't look like it. Have never seen an Everest-sized mountain anywhere. Not even close.
Of course 99% of planets I have landed have been very small, which certainly has an effect. But I don't remember seeing really big mountains even on Earth-sized (landable) planets.
Maybe I'll do some measurements one of these days to see how tall the mountains actually are, on about-Earth-sized planets.
Of course 99% of planets I have landed have been very small, which certainly has an effect. But I don't remember seeing really big mountains even on Earth-sized (landable) planets.
Maybe I'll do some measurements one of these days to see how tall the mountains actually are, on about-Earth-sized planets.
The planets look a little better in the Odyssey Alpha.
There were more details (clouds, more rocks, etc.).
Everything was always dirtier in Horizons.
But even in Horizons, most of the planets were rather boring.
It was a good step with Odyssey, but it still needs some polish.
There were more details (clouds, more rocks, etc.).
Everything was always dirtier in Horizons.
But even in Horizons, most of the planets were rather boring.
It was a good step with Odyssey, but it still needs some polish.
this is only anecdotal, but I've come across a few largeish mountains - certainly more than 2 km. Certainly not the (edit: sorry, I'm bad with numbers - it's not 17) 50 km of Mount Neverest, but somewhere in the 5 km region, I'd estimate. But again, no real hard data. What I can say is, the mountain peaks seem to fit the rest of the planet structure. Which is nice, in my opinion.
Clouds
?
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this is only anecdotal, but I've come across a few largeish mountains - certainly more than 2 km. Certainly not the 17 km of Mount Neverest, but somewhere in the 5 km region, I'd estimate. But again, no real hard data. What I can say is, the mountain peaks seem to fit the rest of the planet structure. Which is nice, in my opinion.
Clouds
Yes, not like here on Earth, but it existed in the beginning
5.5km free standing mountain
It's a bit odd imo. Looks more like an anomaly.
Someone in the comments claims a 12km is their max.
It's a bit odd imo. Looks more like an anomaly.
Someone in the comments claims a 12km is their max.
Yeah this looks weird. My guess is, the large mountains don't stick out in the "new" planet generation, because they are surrounded by matching terrain. I mean, the Mont Blanc doesn't stand out 4 km from its surrounding, because it surrounding is the Alps. This is what always bugged me in Legacy: Those silly free standing peaks with hear-90 degree slopes rising out of flat planes all over sudden. Terrain changes gradually in real life. But my gut says there's probably loads of planets with a quite a few km difference between its highest peaks and lowest plains.
Nerverest had 50km.
I seen few, I think, little more than 20km mountains in ody tho.
But I still miss this "bad unrealistic" canyons.
20km deep canyons through whole planets, even if unrealistic were much more interesting, than current "unrealistic" planets, where few patterns go through whole planet.
There is a discrepancy between the demand for realism and fun.
It will never please everyone.
It will never please everyone.
As an explorer since day one, I strongly disagree. EDO planets are much more diverse, and athmospheres add a lot. From the orbit, yeah they look plain, no more dramatic lanscapes like we used to (and for a very good reason: being more realistic), but on the ground, which is what matters, EDO has much more variety and looks much better. People who want to complain always complain about canyons...because it is the only thing they can come up with. And In EDO they exist too actually, simply they are much more difficult to find. BTW, as I went through that already, wish you good fun exploring in depth the unique system in SC.
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Personally I blame the critics, you see them doing it today on a satellite arts channel competition saying they want to see something new all the time.
Extreme peaks and canyons are a delight to find but too many of them or too extreme can ruin one’s suspension of disbelief, on a large higher gravity world you wonder what is supporting that and on a small world what caused it.
I know very large mountains, cliffs and canyons can exist as we have examples of two of them on Mars and the third on Miranda but they are exceptions not the norm.
I prefer the planet generation in Odyssey overall, however Legacy does something better (as in "more realistic"): craters.
The old ones look much better and realistic, and include complex craters, which do not exist in Odyssey.
Edit: complex craters are those with the little mound at their centre.
The old ones look much better and realistic, and include complex craters, which do not exist in Odyssey.
Edit: complex craters are those with the little mound at their centre.
This is the issue with space in general all those NASA nebula/planet photographs that are color graded and not how they would really appear has really shaped how people think of and represent space in other media.
In games especially I think the heightened reality aspect of it is important since you can't recreate it at a high enough quality and you want to give the players the awe-inspiring experience of walking on another planet instead of just a barren desert wasteland or black empty space. I initially disliked the more cinematic color tinting in Horizons when it was added but it certainly achieves a better effect than the PBR stuff that just looks boring.
Not having an usable planetary scanner that breaks apart the biomes for you to entice you into dropping from orbit and checking out some cool terrain features (I mean like telling you "hey the thing you're pointing at is a 5km high mountain or a 30km wide crater or whatever geological feature").
I also wonder if a lot of the disappointment of "it looked cool from far away but when I landed and looked at it up close was flat and boring" is caused by the terrain sinking effect when replacing low quality terrain with more detailed versions. It's obviously not implemented well when you can see it, but in those cases maybe the more jagged low poly version was actually more interesting to players than the smoothed out high detail one.
Odyssey should have gotten players to land on more planets to check them out up close to find the supposed smaller cool terrain features that now exist without needing the exaggerated mountains, craters and canyons of Horizons. However exobiology just wasn't implemented well enough to achieve that with many of the plants spawning in boring flat areas and not requiring enough travel to really give you enough of a shot at finding the cool terrain stuff. The cool rare stuff players have found in odyssey is still large scale (Ice mordor).
Ultimately everything is still based on heightmap based terrain and that's just not interesting or impressive enough on it's own anymore, especially if you're limited to barren lifeless planets. Even if it looked better, was more polished, didn't have performance problems and lighting/shadow issues.
The meshes remained the same but the coloring was changed a bit so canyons and such stood out more. The performance slightly improved may have caused people to turn up their graphics settings that makes more details show up from distance or even when in orbit so they notice it, but that's about it.
There are high mountains, but the issue with that is that the ones that most stand out to most people are usually the ones with incredibly sheer drops.
Really big mountains could actually look pretty flat from the surface (Olympus Mons) and I don't think the odyssey terrain engine allows for features that big organically - craters and canyons spanning multiple tiles are probably added after picking the tiles on a different pass over the generated terrain and and the tiles themselves aren't big enough to have massive features like that.
Confirmed no, from here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/issue-tracker-planetary-tiling.602191/
I saw 30 kms needles twice on 3G+ planet. That looks really cool - small hills all around, almost flat, and 1 huge needle bias.
In the end it comes down to personal preference, like others here have said. As for me, I liked some of the typical Horizons features, but overall I prefer Odyssey. Bodies in Ody looks less sugarcoated (if that's the right word) and more like actual astronomical objects.
Besides, there is a real-world physical limit to how tall mountains can be on any given planet. You don't have to put that into a game, of course, but it seems that FDev chose to do it anyway in some form or other.
No.
No. I assume you don't know much about how hard, time consuming and demanding game development is. I've never met a single "lazy" person within the games industry in the last 30 years. I did meet some lazy gamers, though.
Lets' hope that for the next batch of planets (assuming there are any), in addition to their adding their inherent features, also see the library of prefabricated shapes bolstered for them (even though for current planets, its current state has been set in stone -- can't keep having them changing around every week), so that every fractured network of plateaus in the galaxy does not have to be stamped out using the one, single same cookie-cutter (no matter how much modulated with other, overlapping heightmaps). As for colouring, I tend to think that Horizons planets were monochrome, and Odyssey adds one bitplane, for a whopping four colours! (EDIT: Something about the respective looks seen next to one another honestly tickles my eyes in almost the exact same way as looking at Speccy48k and c64 graphics.)
(EDIT: Something about the respective looks seen next to one another honestly tickles my eyes in almost the exact same way as looking at Speccy48k and c64 graphics.)
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