you'll drop out of SC near the planet. You'll fly down to the planet under your own control. People have already done it, it's just not very interesting.
https://youtu.be/_URBqfP73ms
https://youtu.be/_URBqfP73ms
No Man's Sky seems to do it. You can fake a lot of things with LOS and other magicks.
What about 400.000.000.000.000 different solar systems?
You mean where every orange/blue/white/red star looks like every other orange/blue/white/red star, every waterworld looks like every other waterworld, every desert planet looks like every other desert planet. The desert planets that have the same 'hurricane' cloud formations that every waterworld has. is that the variety you are hinting at?
To be fair, December is a long way away, and the visuals might not be polished enough to show off yet.Of 1:06 video there's only 0:28 of either debug and/or non-game footage.
I would think if seamless landings were possible, it would be part of the video.
hopefully they tweak the lighting further. I mean in FE2 you had the same models everywhere but a red star would make a space station look totally different to one in a yellow star system... and in some where you had a red and a yellow it'd look different again - but the same model. I reckon the lighting cues are too subtle in the current builds - give those stars some balls yo
I would have thought that you'd supercruise to a exit point which then loads in the instance and then fly down to the planet from there.
Quite high up you start the normal space descent I don't know.
Again we actually know all of those "IFs" are coming, but probably not in one single update, it would be impossible to do everything in one single step.
Although the things you have posted could possibly be in the first/second planetary update, you can see things like these in procedural generation engines like that one called "Space Engine", it's most likely the way FDev will implement planetary surfaces
About the missions, it's confirmed that they'll talk tomorrow (not sure if tomorrow) about the missions updates that are coming with 1.4 (it says in the Lave Radio thread)
It would be enough for me, but not everybody. Probably not even the majority. I'm something of a PG nerd, and I've said almost from day one that being able to just land my ship on the edge of an alien lake, or a forest plateau, or a mountain, would be enough for me. Sitting there, be it it for 30 seconds or two hours, knowing that I'm looking at a unique view that can never be exactly repeated (even by me, let alone anyone else). And that I can experience an effectively infinite number of such views by moving my ship to the next escarpment, or the next valley, or the next continent, or the next planet, or any planet within a 70,000 light year radius... you could take away most of the rest of the game and that would still be enough for me.
But like I said, I'm a PG and visuals junkie and am well aware that I don't speak for everyone. For most normal gamers, some sort of content is going to be required. PG wildlife and settlements? A long-term prospect at best, I fear. Waiting for someone to deliver fuel or other resources? A fun diversion for both parties if you're 150ly from the edge of colonised space, but a bit of a drag if you're half way to Sagittarius A.
So what about something on a smaller scale?
The Traveller RPG had something called wilderness refuelling IIRC, where spacecraft with suitable displacement and buoyancy could land on bodies of liquid water and float like ships, pumping water through catalytic splitters to obtain hydrogen fuel. Since the Elite universe also uses hydrogen fuel, maybe this is something that could be looked into. Of course ED also has the more convenient stellar fuel scooping which IIRC Traveller did not, but it only takes a little imagination to posit a scenario whereby a fuel scoop becomes damaged and unable to scoop from stars or gas giants, but whose converters can still process water or any other liquid with a hydrogen component. It would make a trip back to human space a little more interesting if instead of scoopable stars, commanders had to look for landable planets with water or hydrocarbon oceans.
You could extend this further by having advanced auto-repair modules that could be replenished by locating the right sort of mineral deposits from which on-board nanotech could manufacture replacement parts. It's perhaps a bit too "find leaf A and flower B to make potion C" but (for explorers at least) it would give a reason other than wanderlust to land on alien worlds. Dare I say it's even tangentially related to the "crafting" mechanics so many MMO fans seem to want, albeit limited to self-preservation rather than profit or expansion.
Of course with the benefit of hindsight all of this speculation feels like the heyday of the DDF: lots of what-ifs? with very little chance of any of it coming to fruition in the short or medium term. I'm under no illusions that if the Gamescom announcement has anything to do with planetary landing it will be anything more than the "airless moons" David Braben has already mentioned. Still, parking my ship on the edge of a grey canyon might be fun for a while. And good practice for if and when those mountains become accessible...
Ive been off and not "in the loop" lately so this news caught my attention today.
We will be able to land on planets, atmospherless "rocks" to begin with, drive around with the scarab and do lots of stuff around there.
And this does sound like a great addition to the game, im surprisingly finding myself very interested.
But will we be able to FLY around as well? Can I take my ship and zoom by my scarabing friends close to the surface?
These worlds are gigantic, and - like the open galaxy - you'll be able to go anywhere. You'll be able to fly over the surface in low orbit and choose your spot to land, you'll be able to venture out in your Surface Recon Vehicle and hurtle across the surface at high speed. You'll be able to sneak around or go in all guns blazing. The nimble SRV is tiny compared to your ship, and is virtually invisible on a long range scanner – ship-based weapons will find it very hard to hold a lock on them, but airborne and ground-based players can explore the same worlds together, so watch the skies!