I'm wondering just how different the use of procedural generation will be in the two games, and how this will affect the level of detail etc that we see on planets.
ED is dedicated to modelling a galaxy as well as they can with available technology. It's a given with them that the entire surface of a planet should be reasonably convincing and follow natural laws in its generation, and that players should eventually be able to land anywhere that it is physically possible. Gameplay etc follows after that, but the modelling is very important to them. Realism is everything.
SC, however, I believe may use PG more as a "filler" to lend a sense of realism to the handcrafted areas of the game by making seamless approach and landings possible regardless of direction. Essentially, as a way of avoiding the landing "rings" that were used in Freelancer as a gateway to the planet. It could be that avoiding any sense of transition or instancing is their main goal, and PG surfaces are just a good way to make this possible. Consequently they are less concerned with making their PG planets look highly convincing. It doesn't matter if the landform is pretty basic and repetitive under all that atmosphere haze and cover, because that's the only way most players will ever see it. Remember that all this is being done in modified Cryengine, which is essentially designed to handle small areas, not space or whole planets.
I could be quite wrong about this and all we have seen so far is a very early WIP, but the focus of SC is very different. The playground will probably only ever be a few hundred planets, all handcrafted and intentionally designed to keep a huge population of players within a small area. There will certainly be no complaints about "I never meet other players" in SC. Regions might be opened up as DLC over time, but it will never be a "whole galaxy is your oyster" type of game like ED. So given that you have to wonder - why are they doing PG at all.
To me it looks very much like it is being used as a way to implement generic landforms in between the handcrafted areas on planets, which is kind of the opposite to what ED are doing. I would not be surprised if this feeds into the sensor system in SC so that players can identify planetary POIs from far out in space and will be highly motivated to go straight to combat zones, bases and mission targets. There could well be very little, if any, gameplay that requires or encourages them to just touch down and take a look at a random area.
