So, in the top 20 issues, tiling planetary features (which really hurts exploring) has this comment:
"Tiling Planetary Features: Changing the way planets are generated signifies a huge undertaking, so we're still investigating this."
Unfortunately, since Sagittarius Eye magazine is on hiatus for the time being, my Editorial for this month will never see the light of day (if you didn't know, I'm one of the Chief Editors of the aforementioned publication, and for the last year or so have been writing the Editorial at the start of the podcast/magazine). I think the Editorial I wrote for the August edition is still very relevant, so I'm going to post it here. It's a plea to Frontier. In the magazine, we would have written it "in universe" (which with this subject matter is a challenge, we tend to use "Pilots' Federation" when we are talking about FDEV) - I've changed it to be "out of universe" so as to be a more understandable forum post, but other than that, it's what would have appeared in SAGI this month. I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears:
---
Once again, this esteemed publication finds itself making an appeal to Frontier. The Odyssey era has certainly brought controversy, one of which is the eventual loss of access to the planets that allow hooning; more of this in our article about the subject.
There is optimism, at least in the mind of this writer. A recent set of updates has brought fixes and improvements with some of the issues that have been raised by commanders over the last couple of months, and Odyssey era ships are in a much better place than they were back in early June. Frontier Developments has also acknowledged the situation with repeating planetary features, revealing that these issues are in the top five most important reported to them by commanders. While they don’t directly address activities such as hooning, they have stated that they are currently actively working on one of the issues (hoonable landscapes) and are actively investigating another that’s very important to the exploration community (repeating terrain patterns).
The latter they have revealed to be “a very significant technical challenge”, and at the time of writing, they did not have a workable solution. At Sagittarius Eye, we can only implore Frontier Developments to grasp this challenge and not give up because it is difficult. Already, Distant Worlds 3 has been postponed indefinitely primarily due to this issue, and it would be a great shame if the end of the Horizons era also brought to a close the era of ambitious expeditions with rosters numbering in the hundreds or thousands. To quote John F. Kennedy, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. Frontier Developments has already invoked the name of Neil Armstrong: let’s hope they also have the spirit of the NASA engineers who solved the hard problems which Kennedy alluded to, as the “Armstrong moment” simply cannot exist without all the hard engineering problems being solved.
-- Mack Winston, editor, Sagittarius Eye magazine
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I truly hope that when Sagittarius Eye magazine returns, we'll be reporting the preparation of events like Distant Worlds 3, and the genuine "Armstrong moment", when we can step out on something unique. From personal experience, having just done the Apollo 15 Expedition mostly in Odyssey, the problem for explorers isn't merely repeating patterns on a single planet, but the sense of déjà vu you get whenever you approach a new planet, and realise you've seen that vaguely Italy shaped ridge three times today already on three other planets. To be fair, Odyssey looks great when you're below 1000m altitude - but we also spend a lot of time from orbital cruise down to 1000m, and it would be a much more satisfying game experience if we didn't have that sense of déjà vu, something we didn't get while approaching a Horizons planet.
So please Frontier, choose to do this not because it's easy, but because it's hard, and will make Elite Dangerous: Odyssey stand out from the crowd. And from a commercial point of view, remember the amount of good, sustained and positive - and free! publicity that DW2 brought. A big expedition like DW3 would do it again, bringing new players, new cosmetic sales, and new enthusiasm about what should be David Braben's magnum opus.
"Tiling Planetary Features: Changing the way planets are generated signifies a huge undertaking, so we're still investigating this."
Unfortunately, since Sagittarius Eye magazine is on hiatus for the time being, my Editorial for this month will never see the light of day (if you didn't know, I'm one of the Chief Editors of the aforementioned publication, and for the last year or so have been writing the Editorial at the start of the podcast/magazine). I think the Editorial I wrote for the August edition is still very relevant, so I'm going to post it here. It's a plea to Frontier. In the magazine, we would have written it "in universe" (which with this subject matter is a challenge, we tend to use "Pilots' Federation" when we are talking about FDEV) - I've changed it to be "out of universe" so as to be a more understandable forum post, but other than that, it's what would have appeared in SAGI this month. I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears:
---
Once again, this esteemed publication finds itself making an appeal to Frontier. The Odyssey era has certainly brought controversy, one of which is the eventual loss of access to the planets that allow hooning; more of this in our article about the subject.
There is optimism, at least in the mind of this writer. A recent set of updates has brought fixes and improvements with some of the issues that have been raised by commanders over the last couple of months, and Odyssey era ships are in a much better place than they were back in early June. Frontier Developments has also acknowledged the situation with repeating planetary features, revealing that these issues are in the top five most important reported to them by commanders. While they don’t directly address activities such as hooning, they have stated that they are currently actively working on one of the issues (hoonable landscapes) and are actively investigating another that’s very important to the exploration community (repeating terrain patterns).
The latter they have revealed to be “a very significant technical challenge”, and at the time of writing, they did not have a workable solution. At Sagittarius Eye, we can only implore Frontier Developments to grasp this challenge and not give up because it is difficult. Already, Distant Worlds 3 has been postponed indefinitely primarily due to this issue, and it would be a great shame if the end of the Horizons era also brought to a close the era of ambitious expeditions with rosters numbering in the hundreds or thousands. To quote John F. Kennedy, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. Frontier Developments has already invoked the name of Neil Armstrong: let’s hope they also have the spirit of the NASA engineers who solved the hard problems which Kennedy alluded to, as the “Armstrong moment” simply cannot exist without all the hard engineering problems being solved.
-- Mack Winston, editor, Sagittarius Eye magazine
---
I truly hope that when Sagittarius Eye magazine returns, we'll be reporting the preparation of events like Distant Worlds 3, and the genuine "Armstrong moment", when we can step out on something unique. From personal experience, having just done the Apollo 15 Expedition mostly in Odyssey, the problem for explorers isn't merely repeating patterns on a single planet, but the sense of déjà vu you get whenever you approach a new planet, and realise you've seen that vaguely Italy shaped ridge three times today already on three other planets. To be fair, Odyssey looks great when you're below 1000m altitude - but we also spend a lot of time from orbital cruise down to 1000m, and it would be a much more satisfying game experience if we didn't have that sense of déjà vu, something we didn't get while approaching a Horizons planet.
So please Frontier, choose to do this not because it's easy, but because it's hard, and will make Elite Dangerous: Odyssey stand out from the crowd. And from a commercial point of view, remember the amount of good, sustained and positive - and free! publicity that DW2 brought. A big expedition like DW3 would do it again, bringing new players, new cosmetic sales, and new enthusiasm about what should be David Braben's magnum opus.
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