Planetary Surface Improvements in Beyond Chapter One?

[Ambroza]

* Lighting improvements (multiple star as light sources, etc).

That bit in parenthesis hasn't actually been confirmed.

 

[CMDR Yates]

Until the chat in the stream I hadnt even heared anyone suggest there would be any surface improvements at all this round. Kinda puzzled, but at least it means my 'hype' is exactly non-existent.

The quality of the new large-scale planetary textures we've been shown has been so high, and they are so effective at tempting you to want to go down there, that it almost feels like they are making an implicit promise about the surface-level experience when, in fact, no one has promised anything about that in this update.

Almost certainly, the large-scale changes will affect the surfaces a little bit, but only insofar as retaining the colouration and shape of the ground as seen from orbit; the beige version won't suddenly pop in when you get close, but nor will we see new boulders, or scree, or overhangs, or any other new types of surface feature. The tiniest flecks of varying colour we see from space are actually kilometres in size, so from the SRV most locations will still look fairly uniform (until the Q4 update, at least).

 

[Ambroza]

I've seen multiple requests about surface landings and the new surfaces in close-up view. The way how they stubbornly ignored these (more than obvious!) questions gave me a strange taste...

They actually addressed this directly on the stream, and said that they aren't hiding anything, it was just a time constraint.

 

[Mengy]

Lol! I will - after the update - if I am not seeing a proportionate amount of beige I'm gonna be well put out.

 

[Enderby]

Don't believe what they said lol

 

[Cosmo]

The planetary surface looks noticeably better in the Chapter One Content Livestream. Check at 1:04 hours.

There's more detailed terrain variation and such.

[video=youtube;zHSUTzZ9jGA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHSUTzZ9jGA[/video]

 

[SentineI]

It is highly possible that they didn't prioritize over other things because of still ongoing improvements during internal testing. I personally see it as no big deal breaker considering we will see them ourselves soon enough.

And I suppose the original Kickstarter alpha/beta was only a vertical slice? Hint: No, they showed us the vast majority of what's changes. If we didn't see it, it's because they didn't have anything to really show. (Yes, they'll be different colours than beige, but they'll still be about the same textures, surface features, etc.)

No point in getting everyone's hopes up (claiming things that FDev themselves never claimed), only for them to be dashed cruelly.

OTOH, FDev have set the bar very high for the final (Q4) update of Beyond. Artists representation of what an icey moon should look like (close up) is mouth watering. Hopefully they live up to this.