Planets grapihics quality leaves a lot to be desired

Hahaha, I wrote that post in jest. It's sarcasm :D

You are absolutely right though, people have no idea about the living and working conditions of software developers. Everyone thinks of them as multi-billionaires swimming in pools of money they made by charging an arm and a leg for scraps of code they wrote on a napkin in a fancy bar.

Ludicrous ... I've been in similar situations. You're not a speaker for anyone but yourself.
 
...and who's up for a canyon run?
canyon.jpg
..mmm! Canyons :)
 
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Most jagged features on planetary surfaces happen through either violent events (impacts, seismic activity, vulcanism - not necessarily the terrestrial kind, I include enceladus' water geysers in this) or from processes that depend on atmospheric dynamics. Broad steep-sided valleys, aretes, moraines, hanging valleys are features of glaciation, which only happens in an atmosphere. Jagged-sided deep canyons are usually the product of a river flowing over a relatively soft rock for millenia, Outcrops of jagged rock appear where the softer surrounding medium has been somehow eroded etc.

Look at the airless worlds we've already got decent high-resolution imagery of in our local system - they ALL have largely rounded features apart from relatively recent (in terms of the timescale of the life of the solar system) impact craters. On rocky bodies, solar radiation and micro-impacts tend to break the surface down into dust and it settles under gravity since there's no wind to blow it around (think lunar regolith) or it fails to be captured and becomes space dust. (Ceres was probably a little more jagged when it originally formed) When considering an icy surface, ice is relatively malleable compared to rock and over time will round off under the influence of gravity where a planetary mass is concerned with the possibility of pressure ridges etc forming, but again over time these will round off. Once again the only really sharp features will be the lips of relatively recent impact craters.

So no, it doesn't look too rounded off to me. For airless worlds it looks about right. When worlds with atmosphere are introduced in a future expansion I'll gripe if THEY are as smooth as the airless ones but right now with what we've got they don't look wrong.
The picture I referred to had multiple impact craters. None of these had any sharp edges. They all look like a soap bubble popped. A large meteorite hitting the ground is a violent impact event. The picture also has an extensive canyon all of which is rounded. This is an airless world so what created the canyon and subsequently, what rounded off its edges if there is little or no erosion factor?

The simple action of heating and cooling as it revolves and orbits the local star would probably cause sections to break off. There should be at least some jaggedness to stop this looking so uniform and computer generated.

Everything slopes. There are no overhangs. It is simply a 2d surface deformed into a 3d surface by adding height or depth. Where are the outcrops or overhangs?
 
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The picture I referred to had multiple impact craters. None of these had any sharp edges. They all look like a soap bubble popped. A large meteorite hitting the ground is a violent impact event. The picture also has an extensive canyon all of which is rounded. This is an airless world so what created the canyon and subsequently, what rounded off its edges if there is little or no erosion factor?

The simple action of heating and cooling as it revolves and orbits the local star would probably cause sections to break off. There should be at least some jaggedness to stop this looking so uniform and computer generated.

Everything slopes. There are no overhangs. It is simply a 2d surface deformed into a 3d surface by adding height or depth. Where are the outcrops or overhangs?

Actually, you are misunderstanding how failure in materials occur.

Solids that make up celestial bodies are made up of solidified mixtures of minerals. They were all liquid once and then solidified by radiating heat into space. Since the bodies have very little to no gas phases surrounding them, heat loss due to anything other than radiation is negligible.

When liquid mineral mixtures solidify on their own, solid nuclei start to form at a critical temperature and after they reach a critical radius, they start to grow. They are now called grains of a solid material. These grains grow until they touch each other and when there is no more liquid left, we have a solid body made up of grains connecting at what we call grain boundaries. Grains are made up of either a single crystal or crystallites which join at sub grain boundaries.

These crystals are not perfect crystals, they have lattice mismatches, dislocations, vacancies where an atom is missing where there was supposed to be one...

After solidification, temperature changes cause these grains to expand and contract as defined by their thermal expansion coefficients. Since there are sub grain boundaries, micro cracks start to appear along these and after a number of cycles, the grains break into smaller pieces.

As the celestial body is exposed to such extreme temperature changes (there is no gas to insulate them against the vacuum of space, if they are getting direct radiation from the star, they heat up extremely quickly, then once they are in the shadow of something, they cool extremely rapidly too), the grain boundaries will break much earlier than a large crack to propagate enough to break off a huge chunk of rock, which will happen much more rarely.

So the science on the subject says, unless you have something with really pure, huge single crystals with nearly perfect microstructure, which would be extremely rare to occur on its own, you'll get rounded edges on bodies without atmospheres.

So everything will slope, as the particles breaking off will settle at the skirts of whatever they are breaking off of. The canyons on non atmospheric bodies are fault lines on the crust. They are due to tectonic activity. Edges are rounded rapidly because of the mechanism I explained in the beginning.

Overhangs require special circumstances too, the most common of which is some mineral to be chemically etched away while some other mineral on top of it survives, which requires some liquid solvent present. Another way to form overhangs is to freeze water, put soil on top, pack it tight and melt the ice, which not only requires an atmosphere but also water and also life because soil is organic material left from dead things.

So... Celestial bodies of ED are scientifically accurate.

Oh, I have some more to add that I have forgotten. The sand which forms by grains breaking through their lattice faults result in a kind of sand which is not found on places with atmospheres, such as earth. This sand usually has extremely sharp edges and is highly abrasive, unlike the mostly silica based sand of our world, which is constantly rounded and polished by movement by water.

In conclusion, atmospheric planets with flowing liquid chemicals (such as water) will usually have sharp edged canyons with rounded sand, non atmospheric ones will usually have rounded canyon edges with extremely sharp sand. Such is life.
 
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Everything slopes. There are no overhangs. It is simply a 2d surface deformed into a 3d surface by adding height or depth. Where are the outcrops or overhangs?

No games with generated terrain using polygons have overhangs, because of reasons I cant remember. I think you need to use voxels to do it.
 
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No games with generated terrain have overhangs, because of reasons I cant remember.

It's because they start with a plane lattice of vertices laid out on the x-y plane of the coordinate system. Then they use a generated map projected on this plane to move these vertices in the z direction only. think of it like getting a bed sheet and pulling on some parts of it with strings and attaching them to the ceiling.

Overhangs require the movement to be in all three directions which cause a lot of extra calculations and more than triple the amount of work done by the computer in order to prevent edges clipping through each other in ugly ways. After each movement, you'll have to check for collisions and rework the parts that need it. It's an exponential increase in computing time. With the current model ED uses, you don't check for collisions and intersections because it's not possible for them to occur.

One can always design a set of overhangs and distribute them after the terrain is generated but it will still look artificial since you'll start to recognize the limited number of shape after a while however you rotate them around.

Another possible solution is to do the first map and lay out the first round of displacements in the z direction. Then you have to create new, independently oriented coordinate systems with their x,y plane sitting on portions of the terrain generated in the first round, so they are sitting on the face of mountains with the z direction parallel to the normal of this face. Then make a second displacement map and use it on the mountain face so it will bulge outwards in the new z direction which is at an angle to the first one.

See how it suddenly becomes infinitely more complex?

This is of course only the geometry. To generate textures, you need additional algorithms for the color map, normal map, occlusion map and if possible a displacement map to simulate roughness levels which is not possible with normal maps.
 
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Most jagged features on planetary surfaces happen through either violent events (impacts, seismic activity, vulcanism - not necessarily the terrestrial kind, I include enceladus' water geysers in this) or from processes that depend on atmospheric dynamics. Broad steep-sided valleys, aretes, moraines, hanging valleys are features of glaciation, which only happens in an atmosphere. Jagged-sided deep canyons are usually the product of a river flowing over a relatively soft rock for millenia, Outcrops of jagged rock appear where the softer surrounding medium has been somehow eroded etc.

Look at the airless worlds we've already got decent high-resolution imagery of in our local system - they ALL have largely rounded features apart from relatively recent (in terms of the timescale of the life of the solar system) impact craters. On rocky bodies, solar radiation and micro-impacts tend to break the surface down into dust and it settles under gravity since there's no wind to blow it around (think lunar regolith) or it fails to be captured and becomes space dust. (Ceres was probably a little more jagged when it originally formed) When considering an icy surface, ice is relatively malleable compared to rock and over time will round off under the influence of gravity where a planetary mass is concerned with the possibility of pressure ridges etc forming, but again over time these will round off. Once again the only really sharp features will be the lips of relatively recent impact craters.

So no, it doesn't look too rounded off to me. For airless worlds it looks about right. When worlds with atmosphere are introduced in a future expansion I'll gripe if THEY are as smooth as the airless ones but right now with what we've got they don't look wrong.
Amazing post have some rep for your knowledge.
 
Actually, you are misunderstanding how failure in materials occur.

Solids that make up celestial bodies are made up of solidified mixtures of minerals. They were all liquid once and then solidified by radiating heat into space. Since the bodies have very little to no gas phases surrounding them, heat loss due to anything other than radiation is negligible.

When liquid mineral mixtures solidify on their own, solid nuclei start to form at a critical temperature and after they reach a critical radius, they start to grow. They are now called grains of a solid material. These grains grow until they touch each other and when there is no more liquid left, we have a solid body made up of grains connecting at what we call grain boundaries. Grains are made up of either a single crystal or crystallites which join at sub grain boundaries.

These crystals are not perfect crystals, they have lattice mismatches, dislocations, vacancies where an atom is missing where there was supposed to be one...

After solidification, temperature changes cause these grains to expand and contract as defined by their thermal expansion coefficients. Since there are sub grain boundaries, micro cracks start to appear along these and after a number of cycles, the grains break into smaller pieces.

As the celestial body is exposed to such extreme temperature changes (there is no gas to insulate them against the vacuum of space, if they are getting direct radiation from the star, they heat up extremely quickly, then once they are in the shadow of something, they cool extremely rapidly too), the grain boundaries will break much earlier than a large crack to propagate enough to break off a huge chunk of rock, which will happen much more rarely.

So the science on the subject says, unless you have something with really pure, huge single crystals with nearly perfect microstructure, which would be extremely rare to occur on its own, you'll get rounded edges on bodies without atmospheres.

So everything will slope, as the particles breaking off will settle at the skirts of whatever they are breaking off of. The canyons on non atmospheric bodies are fault lines on the crust. They are due to tectonic activity. Edges are rounded rapidly because of the mechanism I explained in the beginning.

Overhangs require special circumstances too, the most common of which is some mineral to be chemically etched away while some other mineral on top of it survives, which requires some liquid solvent present. Another way to form overhangs is to freeze water, put soil on top, pack it tight and melt the ice, which not only requires an atmosphere but also water and also life because soil is organic material left from dead things.

So... Celestial bodies of ED are scientifically accurate.

Oh, I have some more to add that I have forgotten. The sand which forms by grains breaking through their lattice faults result in a kind of sand which is not found on places with atmospheres, such as earth. This sand usually has extremely sharp edges and is highly abrasive, unlike the mostly silica based sand of our world, which is constantly rounded and polished by movement by water.

In conclusion, atmospheric planets with flowing liquid chemicals (such as water) will usually have sharp edged canyons with rounded sand, non atmospheric ones will usually have rounded canyon edges with extremely sharp sand. Such is life.

Not really misunderstanding it. Simply saying that not everything has to be rounded. We need some sharp bits for it to feel a bit more realistic. Everything is just too slopey and to those pointing out the limitation of the tech, yes there are limitations, that doesn't excuse the fact that it limits the 'realnessness' of the surfaces too.

Some things have edges, some things don't. At the moment, in Horizons, nothing does.

Whether it becomes complex or not, the end result is it is not particularly realistic. At a distance it's nice but a bit 'soft' up close it just feels a bit too uniform even if for the most part smooth would be the case. Not all rock is created equal.

What's going to happen when we get access to planets that do have atmospheres and water and weather systems? What happens when the lack of erosion factors can't be used to justify everything being rounded off? If the tech is limited now, they either have to change the tech or we get the same thing later on.
 
Not really misunderstanding it. Simply saying that not everything has to be rounded. We need some sharp bits for it to feel a bit more realistic. Everything is just too slopey and to those pointing out the limitation of the tech, yes there are limitations, that doesn't excuse the fact that it limits the 'realnessness' of the surfaces too.

Some things have edges, some things don't. At the moment, in Horizons, nothing does.



Whether it becomes complex or not, the end result is it is not particularly realistic. At a distance it's nice but a bit 'soft' up close it just feels a bit too uniform even if for the most part smooth would be the case. Not all rock is created equal.

What's going to happen when we get access to planets that do have atmospheres and water and weather systems? What happens when the lack of erosion factors can't be used to justify everything being rounded off? If the tech is limited now, they either have to change the tech or we get the same thing later on.

I think this is one of the reasons we don't have atmospheric planets yet. They can't do sharp edges on terrain satisfactorily besides they probably don't have something to generate infinite types of flora and fauna.

When they are satisfied themselves with what they can generate, they'll be added to the game. The fact that we don't have sharp edges does not mean we'll never have anything resembling them and also it doesn't mean it's not already on their minds.

I understand the desire of people to have more familiar, earth like features in their planets. I do too. I don't mind unrealistic features either, scientist or not, I really don't care one bit as long as they look cool. What I don't understand is the assumption that nothing good will ever happen if we ask for features, speculate on future updates and state the current shortcomings in a civilised and educated manner.

Crying 'everything is rounded! I don't want everything rounded!' will not make everything chiseled overnight.
 
I think this is one of the reasons we don't have atmospheric planets yet. They can't do sharp edges on terrain satisfactorily besides they probably don't have something to generate infinite types of flora and fauna.

When they are satisfied themselves with what they can generate, they'll be added to the game. The fact that we don't have sharp edges does not mean we'll never have anything resembling them and also it doesn't mean it's not already on their minds.

I understand the desire of people to have more familiar, earth like features in their planets. I do too. I don't mind unrealistic features either, scientist or not, I really don't care one bit as long as they look cool. What I don't understand is the assumption that nothing good will ever happen if we ask for features, speculate on future updates and state the current shortcomings in a civilised and educated manner.

Crying 'everything is rounded! I don't want everything rounded!' will not make everything chiseled overnight.

Bo' chisel
 
for me lod is good, detail in some world very good. but colors... only 3 or 4 atm. when we see green or purple planet in system map, and beige when we land on it, why ?
i am not game dev, but more color with a filter in shader perhaps ?
 
for me lod is good, detail in some world very good. but colors... only 3 or 4 atm. when we see green or purple planet in system map, and beige when we land on it, why ?
i am not game dev, but more color with a filter in shader perhaps ?

They haven't made all the textures yet.
 
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