It would be much better if after doing a detailed surface scan all the points of interest on the surface show up on the surface map. It's really time consuming to have to orbit the planet to visually determine an optimal location for landing. Being able to see if a geological site is in a relatively flat spot from the map would significantly reduce the time waste involved. I would probably land at more sites on a planet if I didn't have to waste so much time trying to guess which sites I can land at with minimal issues finding suitable terrain or avoiding areas where the SRV will have issues.
Surface Planet Map Fix/Update
- Thread starter avarusbrightfyre
- Start date
It's very difficult to determine exactly what the surface is going to be like from the surface map, you can get a general idea, no mountains or craters etc, but small terrain is impossible to see. I have landed in areas that look flat from a distance but end up almost impossible to drive across once you get there. The thing is, I believe the bio and geo markers in your HUD are actually part of the HUD and not the planet. The locations of the sites on the ground are generated after the planetary terrain generation is finished when you focus in using the FSS, but the images you see on the system map are generated as you enter the system, so they are two entirely separate process that occur at different times, I'm not at all sure they can be easily merged! This is why you see settlements and sites marked, because they are part of the system generation, and not bio and geo sites.
I guess that makes sense, but that just means they need to work on an update for how it all meshes together. Once the planetary scan is done, the surface map should update with accurate terrain and exact markings for each of the points of interest. They can slap on generic images for discovery and FSS scans, but once you scan the planet surface the surface map should be updated with accurate terrain that can be zoomed into with reasonable detail. Our comparatively primitive satellites today can see crystal clear down to a few square meters, and that's just glass and basic cameras, so our centuries advanced starships should be far better. And if the geosite location can appear on the actual planet, it doesn't seem reasonable that the coordinates can't be transferred to the surface map so it shows up there too. I understand programming difficulties, but they should still be solved...especially when it's directly related to one of the major career paths.
You misunderstand, the surface map is generated during the hyperspace jump as the system if created from the procedural seed, to do what you want they would need to rerun that entire process, which means everytime you map a body you will be sitting there for 5 or 10 or 20 seconds or more depending on your systems specs while the entire system is regenerated from scratch. It's not a matter of meshing them together, the bio/geo layer and system generation are two entirely different layers of procedural generation, I very much expect they can't be just "meshed" together.
Based on what you're telling me, it sounds like it's even easier than I originally thought then. If they start the entire process with a procedurally generated complete planet surface, then all they have to do is swap out the generic 3D model that shows up before you scan it with the existing 3D model that they already generated upon entrance into the system. The current version of the surface map shows a manipulatable globe you can spin around to look at, so just changing the model shouldn't be that big of a deal if the resources are already there and loaded. And since the geosites from space are just coordinates and are already set either during initial generation or after the surface scan, it shouldn't be that hard to get done what I'm asking here.
No, that's not how it works, the planets are generated using the procedural seed that generates the system, there is no generic 3d model, every model is unique and generated on entrance to the system, to get a copy of the 3d model you need to regenerate it from the seed. The coordinates for geo sites are genereated based on surface features and topography after the surface is generated, you can't mix and match the two, they are entirely different processes.
That doesn't make sense. If an asset is created upon entrance to the system, it should be possible to simply call that existing asset in a separate instance inside the surface map. Coordinates are just a set of numbers, so importing that information shouldn't be that big of an issue either. I'm not seeing why this is so difficult.
Or maybe it can be as simple as a new camera mode that allows you to just rotate your point of view rapidly around the actual planet and zoom in and out as you like. The in game explanation for it could be that you already fired satellites into orbit for the scan, so you now have devices in place for getting close up looks at whatever you need. That way there's no extra rendering needed but you still get the effect I'm looking for.
Or maybe it can be as simple as a new camera mode that allows you to just rotate your point of view rapidly around the actual planet and zoom in and out as you like. The in game explanation for it could be that you already fired satellites into orbit for the scan, so you now have devices in place for getting close up looks at whatever you need. That way there's no extra rendering needed but you still get the effect I'm looking for.