Companies ALWAYS show their game looking at its very best in trailers and preview shots. I mean of course they do.
Sure, but it was running still in Alpha. It's not a trailer only. It was part of the game itself, but downgraded.
We are not speaking Ubisoft "pretty trailer that doesn't look like the game", we are speaking an alpha that doesn't look like release. Except for some rare planet, were it was seemingly preserved.
Essentially, it's half working but not completely, for some reason. And it begs the question : why ?
I've mentioned before that a big issue is the gulf between the game when it looks its best, and when it looks its worst. I'd say a factor people don't consider is precisely because it can at times look so impressive means the fairly common sight of ugly or broken terrain stand out so much more than in Horizons. It is quite hilarious the extent to which the fidelity in Horizons has been blown way out of proportion-- it nearly always look mediocre compared with the average Odyssey planet, and often looks like toffee apple worlds with the one-off lottery win in making a stunning planet.
People who say the texturing in Horizons I'd say are just plain in error. The textures and materials are vastly inferior in Horizons, with extremely primitive reflective and depth qualities.
Textures were improved for sure. Except for above orbit planet, they can look blurry in Odyssey, less than before patch 6, but still.
Noise generation is mostly trash in Odyssey. I'm sorry. A lot of cliffs are smooth like never before. Most hill-mountain chain are extremely basics and smooth. A lot of mountain noise is basically black dot on heightmap, it's the most basic half ellipse mountain with no details, and sometimes with texture stretching.
Now, a lot of planet have good noise generation. Some have it mixed, and some have it generally bad.
What many people don't understand, or refuse to understand, is that I fight for consistency. Not because it doesn't exist. A lot of planet are bugged/broken/have issues. Doesn't mean some parts aren't good, it just mean that it's 50/50 on whether I'll get a buggy place or a good one. I want a near 100% good ones, which apparently, is too much to ask for.