Horizons SO, is the planets surface (watched from <100 km above) bugged or not ?

[Sterlino]

I just need a clarification.

Obsidian Ant said that the observable surface of the planets, while you are flying with ship, is now worse than the previous 2.0 version of the game.
And basically i agree with him, it looks to me worse than before.

but is that true ?
there is a bug or a setting not efficent ?
or not ?

 

[CMDR B. Schmidt]

I just need a clarification.

Obsidian Ant said that the observable surface of the planets, while you are flying with ship, is now worse than the previous 2.0 version of the game.
And basically i agree with him, it looks to me worse than before.

but is that true ?
there is a bug or a setting not efficent ?
or not ?

You mean the visuals?
Hell no, far much better than in the previous version. Mine is so cool on the same graphical level I didn't even belive my eyes at first.

 

[Shadowdancer]

I'm under the impression that it now takes a bit longer before the next better detail level is showing as you descent towards the surface, and also in some situations when you are flying over the surface at a few kilometres height.

 

[Pville_Piper]

Not what I'm seeing... In 2.1 the planets seem to increase in detail naturally as you get nearer to them. In 2.0 they the went from craggy ball to pocked marked moon in one abrupt change.

 

[Tikigod]

It all depends on the planet type. With 2.1/1.6 Frontier re-did all the materials for the planet surface types in a lot of cases for huge improvements not just in perceived texture quality and detail highlighting but in how the surface becomes defined as you close in and how things like local light sources interact with the surface. Some surface types such as Ice planets have materials that Frontier have acknowledged in Beta to still need tuning because the way the material handles certain things like light is not quite where they want it.

 

[Privata]

The very far away lod of planets is still wrong , but you will only notice it if its a very big world.
Like the very far away lod will be green but the actual planet will be yellow.

I think its just an artifact to how the lods are generated... I hate lods in all games.
One of my worst nightmares was making custom lods for skyrim...

 

[Arry]

I just need a clarification.

Obsidian Ant said that the observable surface of the planets, while you are flying with ship, is now worse than the previous 2.0 version of the game.
And basically i agree with him, it looks to me worse than before.

but is that true ?
there is a bug or a setting not efficent ?
or not ?

I turned off the Ultra setting to the planet graphics and it looks much better now.

 

[MikeMart]

Flying at low altitude is disappointing too....the terrain loads very late, even with the Terrain rendering slider to the max... ??? I will try to tweak the gameconfig file or do what Arry just said and turn off Ultra setting...

 

[Whiteball]

Not sure as I haven't really played about with the settings since but when I had to re-install, Ed had set the default 'planet work' slider to minimum and I didn't notice any difference when I was playing.

Once I had spotted it though in the settings, I increased it back to max and actually think things looked a little worse. Maybe it's broken and proper settings are not being applied in this build?

 

[adrinker]

Mine feels worse, running on a 980ti i've never had issues with planets, but right now landing on a standard dirt/rock mars-like moon, it looks more like a ball of clay than a planet.

 

[Insomnia]

A wee bit worse but I was flying with Terrain Quality at medium in 2.0 so for me I don't notice much difference now in 2.1. The performance gain is quite good for my very old GPU.
Though I understand that you guys with betetr hardware are pretty upset.

 

[MarikMonika]

Actually yes, the quality of planets from a certain distance has dramatically reduced. Well, glad to hear I'm not the only one noticing this issue, I was worried the problem was my hardware.
I've done some test and ironically certain things looks better in High settings rathern than ultra.

 

[Tikigod]

I turned off the Ultra setting to the planet graphics and it looks much better now.

Yep, that's what many were reporting in Beta. That Ultra appears worse, which is when the comment from Frontier about some materials still needing tuning cropped up if memory serves.

 

[DAOWAce]

I'm seeing awful quality on planets and broken lighting (due to SLI) right now.

Planets seem to have a severe LOD now, or lack anisotropic filtering (don't really know what the option does ingame, but it's 8xAF max). Probably the former unless the planets are rendered differently, 'cause I have 16xAF forced in my drivers. It just makes them generically low-resolution/detail and/or blurry. "a ball of clay" like adrinker stated.

Couple that with not seeing the improved lighting I've seen posted about and it felt like my game was just drab and ugly in comparison.

I reset my graphics to Ultra thinking it was my customized med-high (for less GPU usage; they were screaming on planets especially around stations and dropping below 75FPS), but I didn't see any improvement.. and now reading this thread people are saying it actually looks better on high?

Well, I guess I'll try that then.. but unfortunately so long as I use SLI, my lighting is staying bugged. Won't change until the aftermarket 1080's are available, which is another month or so.. or until Frontier fixes it of course.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

I just need a clarification.

Obsidian Ant said that the observable surface of the planets, while you are flying with ship, is now worse than the previous 2.0 version of the game.
And basically i agree with him, it looks to me worse than before.

but is that true ?
there is a bug or a setting not efficent ?
or not ?

The bug report that OA raised is here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=252978

So it is not clear if some small changes did make it in to the live build or not. Either way it looks like we will have to wait until 2.2 for bigger improvements.

 

[OriginalBadBoy]

I think it depends on the GPU and planet type in question, as I see some differences between my main rig and my gaming rig.

Rocky planets for the most part seem fine to me on my main AMD rig however on my Nvidia laptop some can still look a little dodgy from distance. Icy planets still look a little odd though from distance on both rigs. Both rigs have the same settings for terrain etc.

 

[hab5000]

Yes, the detail at low to medium altitudes has definitely diminished. Used to love cruising above planets;not so.much now. The lighting also seems flatter/less dynamic . Don't know what's going on here, but I hope they fix it. All planets are affected as far as I can see.