Shifting colours while flying above planets

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Deleted member 182079

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Something I noticed before on occasion, but much more so last night in the current CG system is how the planet's colouring seems to change around you (roughly a radius of a few hundred meters around your ship).

Say you approach a planet that's dark red, and grey. Looks lovely until about 500m and below - where ground textures below and around you change from dark red to grey. Beyond the aforementioned radius the colour remains as it should (red/grey mix). This happens a lot on planets with distinctly different colours, but I also noticed it on icy planets where it's less obvious because of the less distinct contrast between colours (usually white, grey, light blue, etc.).

I feel it's aligned with the LoD pop in range roughly, i.e. rocks etc. appear in the same distance as the colour 'shifting' occurs, beyond that it's fine (but also no visible LoD). Am thinking if this is because the more detailed textures load in at a certain point, and those are in one particular colour only?

Before anyone asks, I don't have screenshots (you wouldn't be able to see it as clearly) and don't do videos so don't have any evidence, but it's easily reproducable (at least for me).

I'm just wondering whether others have noticed this and whether it's by design or a known issue? I can't unsee it now and it's really putting me off the new planet tech (which has grown on me since the last couple of patches).

Edit: added an example (with bonus bugs) below:

A) darker coloured circle below ship that moves with the ship
B) lighter colour that should be the actual surface colour as seen from higher altitude
C) some really bizarre, unrelated ... bug. All the while the rest of the terrain morphs and moves around weirdly. It's freaky stuff.

Screenshot_0040.jpg


EDIT: added issue tracker link courtesy of @Arioch

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42712
 
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Something I noticed before on occasion, but much more so last night in the current CG system is how the planet's colouring seems to change around you (roughly a radius of a few hundred meters around your ship).

Say you approach a planet that's dark red, and grey. Looks lovely until about 500m and below - where ground textures below and around you change from dark red to grey. Beyond the aforementioned radius the colour remains as it should (red/grey mix). This happens a lot on planets with distinctly different colours, but I also noticed it on icy planets where it's less obvious because of the less distinct contrast between colours (usually white, grey, light blue, etc.).

I feel it's aligned with the LoD pop in range roughly, i.e. rocks etc. appear in the same distance as the colour 'shifting' occurs, beyond that it's fine (but also no visible LoD). Am thinking if this is because the more detailed textures load in at a certain point, and those are in one particular colour only?

Before anyone asks, I don't have screenshots (you wouldn't be able to see it as clearly) and don't do videos so don't have any evidence, but it's easily reproducable (at least for me).

I'm just wondering whether others have noticed this and whether it's by design or a known issue? I can't unsee it now and it's really putting me off the new planet tech (which has grown on me since the last couple of patches).
I’ve just experienced this exact thing today - a reddish icy world suddenly started going a sort of dark grey colour as I got to low altitude. Definitely in a circle around your position and looks like a LOD issue to me, or possibly an illumination issue; Gliding into a planetary base (different planet, same system), the base was in darkness and looked to be over the terminator until, at a similar altitude to the colour change, the landscape lit up again - the local star was still over the horizon.

Seeing as I quit out in the same system I’ll pop back tomorrow and grab some screenshots. I can’t see any similar bugs on Issue Tracker so I’ll submit one after I’ve got the evidence.
 
I've experienced it, too.
I have to say that it has improved a lot through the updates, as initially even the System Map colour of a planet was different to what one saw when landing, but the shifting colour has moved progressively closer to the surface, so I only experience it every now and again, and one my final approach.
It irks me a bit, but I never bothered to check the altitude or other telemetry. 😥
 
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Deleted member 182079

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I've experienced it, too.
I have to say that it has improved a lot through the updates, as initially even the System Map colour of a planet was different to what one saw when landing, but the shifting colour has moved progressively closer to the surface, so I only experience it every now and again, and one my final approach.
It irks me a bit, but I never bothered to check the altitude or other telemetry. 😥
I'm trying to remember but I don't think I noticed this before the patch that changed the planet colours (6 wasn't it?), perhaps it only further highlighted the issue due to the more diverse planet colours that it introduced. I may have read someone else here bring it up before, but it's not mentioned much at all which made me wonder if it's just a very localised issue (in terms of the planets where it's more noticeable) or I'm being nitpicky here.

Have to say it kind of ruined taking in the views (I enjoy flying above surface at low altitude), and the A1 planet in the CG system (forgot the name) has some pretty neat topography and visuals otherwise. Until you get low enough when the colouring gets 'overridden'. Also noticeable when you approach a settlement in your ship, at a certain altitude the ground colour changes completely right in front of your eyes.
 
I have noticed the ways the lighting shifts in different circumstances, meaning colours that looked bright from Orbit are dull on the ground.

This always happened in Horizons, always - made it very disappointing, but it's much better in Odyssey - you can now get to the ground in Odyssey and find the same colour landscapes. I see the shifts in Odyssey mostly when landing at Space Ports especially when the sun is low in the sky.
 

Deleted member 182079

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I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing here @CMDR Sheehy - this doesn't look like a lighting issue to me but a simple colouring problem. I've observed this at "noon" light i.e. nowhere near the dusk/dawn section of the planet, although I wouldn't say it's not also possible in other light scenarios also (I presume it would be).

It's as if the ship has a huge imaginary paintbrush below it that paints the ground below and around it in one of the (usually) two colours of the planet, so far it's been the darker one in my experience - as if the higher level low-altitude texture detail isn't considering the fact a planet might have more than one colour tone.

Can't say I've ever noticed this effect in Horizons, and not even in earlier versions of Odyssey; only really a very recent thing, and given how noticeable it really is I don't think it slipped by my eyes in the past as I'm quite anal about these things normally.
 
This is something that came in along with the planetary improvements in update 6. It got rid of distant terrain blockiness and some other issues but brought in suddenly changing surface tints and a weird velvet effect in the middle distance.

Hopefully fixing these is the "finishing touches" to the update 6 surface improvements mentioned in the progress report.
 
Well this is a weird one.

I’ve just sneaked in a quick fly back to the problem planet from this morning, aaaand…I can’t get the issue to occur again 😅 I’ve dropped into several different areas of the planet and the surface has acted fine every time.

The only difference from earlier is that I was on a scav mission to a crashed ship this morning - hopefully there will be mission spawns to the same planet tomorrow, so I can replicate conditions and try again.
 

Deleted member 182079

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Well this is a weird one.

I’ve just sneaked in a quick fly back to the problem planet from this morning, aaaand…I can’t get the issue to occur again 😅 I’ve dropped into several different areas of the planet and the surface has acted fine every time.

The only difference from earlier is that I was on a scav mission to a crashed ship this morning - hopefully there will be mission spawns to the same planet tomorrow, so I can replicate conditions and try again.
Hmm, weird indeed.

Were you flying at a high enough altitude, just out of interest? The lower I was flying last night, the less visible it was (because the darker colour simply "took over" all the visible ground textures).
 
It's an issue that was introduced in Update 6 when more planet colour variety was added to ice worlds, etc...

It happens when the game overlays a more detailed texture to replace a lower detailed texture, and the colours of the textures don't match.

The solution is to update the texture appearance so that they more closely match at different levels of detail.

Another one for FDev's issue tracker I'm afraid...
 
Hmm, weird indeed.

Were you flying at a high enough altitude, just out of interest? The lower I was flying last night, the less visible it was (because the darker colour simply "took over" all the visible ground textures).
I went up to a couple of hundred kilometres each time. This morning I was seeing the transition at much lower levels, like the last several hundred meters. When I was in the SRV I could see areas of landscape coloured red around my landed Cobra that were dark grey by the time I reached them, so it’d guess the issue was occurring at around 1 - 2 km distance.

I’ve tried several different areas of colouration and also differing illumination levels, but no joy.
 

Deleted member 182079

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Odd. If I log in later I'll take another look myself. It is true that I haven't noticed on every planet, but last night it did happen on each that I landed on (3-4 iirc).
 
I've had this, especially on red planets. (Might just be concidence it's the red ones, or more noticeable. I landed on a vibrant yellow world yesterday and the colour stayed the same all the way down. Pics of the latter here, orbit to ground level: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...reenshots-thread.568114/page-191#post-9508248)

But yeah, they can be vibrant red from a certain distance, and as I approach there's a big circle of duller colours all around me.

Here - it's extremely obvious in this shot, which includes the system and body:

(You'd think it was rendering some kind of shadows, but the mountain slopes facing us are the same colour.)

As you fly along the ground the dull colours follow you.


20210901211937_1.jpg




Same place from 4km up (slightly different heading, same glide to surface. Star is to the right in this one.)

20210901211902_1.jpg
 
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Can confirm, observed that behavior as well. On the planets with the new color palette this issue seems to be occurring a lot more frequently. Had a red and a green surface shift from their beautiful colors to a dull grey upon landing. From high altitude everything seems normal.
 
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I recently came back from a trip with over a 100 first footfalls, I have seen this often enough unfortunately. And not just on the really colourful planets, I've also seen it on ice and desert planets with more neutral colours.
 

Deleted member 182079

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Uff .. thanks for all the feedback and evidence shots... seems I'm not alone seeing this then. I wonder how high up this is on FDev's radar, probably not much given the rest of the issues, so probably have to live with it. Balls.
 
Uff .. thanks for all the feedback and evidence shots... seems I'm not alone seeing this then. I wonder how high up this is on FDev's radar, probably not much given the rest of the issues, so probably have to live with it. Balls.
My very conservative estimate would be that I've seen this at least on 1 out of 10 atmospheric planets (probably more, but let's stay positive). If FDev indeed does independent playtesting (which a CM confirmed recently in another thread), then this should surely be on their list already.
 

Deleted member 182079

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My very conservative estimate would be that I've seen this at least on 1 out of 10 atmospheric planets (probably more, but let's stay positive). If FDev indeed does independent playtesting (which a CM confirmed recently in another thread), then this should surely be on their list already.
Fingers crossed... but given how few threads pop up here that mentioned this so far, I figured it might not necessarily be something as easily noticeable as it is for you or me. Cynical me even thinks they might be aware but hope it stays one of the quieter topics so they don't have to look at it :/
 
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