Want to see the difference between a trailer planet and the in-game version?

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I wouldn't know the difference - in general people are way too focussed on gfx. Almost anally. In contrast my eye got somehow stuck on this one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/nnddpw

And after that there was another quite neat buggycrobatics clip.

 

[CMDR Yates]

I think a not insignificant part of the "underwhelmingness" of both landscapes and skies stems from how Odyssey handles exposure.

Here's an ice planet I happened to have nearby just now:

Looks kinda cool, but the image seems a little flat and dull looking. It's even worse with the helmet on.

Here's the histogram:

That's a pretty low-contrast, somewhat underexposed image. The absolute top highlights are only about 80% of the way to the top of the image.

If I'd taken this as a photo, I'd probably boost the levels to something like this. Using up more of the range.

Which looks like this:

Which gives us more icy-looking ice, more shadow detail, and a more airy-looking sky. On Earth, at least, this would usually be close to how the eye sees it, as the eye adapts automatically to light levels within reason.

Arguably, FDev are trying to give the impression of dark, distant, dimly-lit planets (and ice planets do tend to be further from the star). This planet is only about as far as Earth is from Sol, but the parent star is a dimmer M-type. However, in real life, your eyes adapt to dimmer conditions to balance out the difference, and the darker look doesn't make it look alien so much as underexposed.

I'd suggest boosting exposure on planets for all but the furthest bodies (1000s of LS out, or orbiting a brown dwarf, etc.) as one way to boost the look of them.

 

[danteuk]

The simple problem is the planets are subject to RNG - as well as all the data from the stellar forge.
When the marketing videos and screenshots where done it was on their internal builds - because the planet regeneration hadn't been done yet on the live version of the galaxy.
The unfortunate truth is planet tech was not finished when the marketing stuff was done.

The fact that the planet in the original marketing looks so different from the ingame version today is no surprise at all - and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that's been paying attention to the posts and live streams from FDev where they have gone into detail on the new planet tech. There is RNG involved and things have changed since the marketing.

FDev's mistake was including the planet and location text in the picture - they must have known that come go live date people would fly there and check - and given the RNG and changes to the tech the changes of that planet looking the same where next to zero.

There ARE some good looking planets out there and there are a lot of boring dull planets too. This seems reasonable to me.

There ARE some issues with the tech, planets where their hand crafted 'shapes' are obviously being used too much too close together forming areas that look ridiculous. They need to be fixed.
The variety of geological formations needs to be increase, there are too many dull flat planets, too few mountains, canyons are incredibly rare. Caves where mentioned but so far appear to be missing. The lovely ice textures we saw previewed a few years ago - then forgotten about.
The top-right pic was actually a prototype texture/shader affect they showed as a video. The rest are just artistic mock ups that there were aiming for ( and missed ).

 

[Arthur Spooner]

Procedural generation is not RNG.

 

[dannysquid]

The problem is the Planet tech doesn't seem to always work properly. Planets that SHOULD be gorgeous end up being rounded bland balls of putty, but sometime you'll fly in and it actually LOADS PROPERLY.

There's a clear and obvious issue with the LOD transitions, to the point that it doesn't transition at all and leaves the terrain at a medium LOD even when you're right on the ground. That isn't people just "deliberately finding ugly planets to whine about." It's about the engine not loading in details properly resulting in things looking awful.

Yes, I'd say the major issue is LOD transitions, which are generally struggling to keep up (with the landscape undulating around the player as they move around).

And it's less of a performance issue, but I think the actual boundaries between areas (whether it's mountains and desert or rocky bit and slightly less rocky bit) have no graduations -- it's either on or off -- so when you've got poor LOD stuff you get quite ugly stuff happening. I'd say either blurring the masks or having a proper alpha channel would help so a texture can be 50% one material and 50% another -- this would be wrong and incorrect but it might look nicer than what they have.

 

[tomimt]

Another issue I've noticed is, that the rocks, boulders and whatnot the planet tech is using to populate the grounds, are not always rendered right. I've come across several invisible rocks, which cast a shadow but aren't rendered. You can even run against them with the SRV.

 

[Tormentor89]

As i was saying all along, there is a deliberate campaign here, steam and reddit, to sabotage Odyssey.
They started with Review bombing, and now continue with their campaign in order to misslead people in to posting negative reviews.

 

[Vandal71]

I wouldn't know the difference - in general people are way too focussed on gfx. Almost anally. In contrast my eye got somehow stuck on this one.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/nnddpw

And after that there was another quite neat buggycrobatics clip.

Yeah we're focused on graphics. You know why? Because our rendering performance has been cut in half from Horizons and all the fanboys are justifying it with "Well the GRAPHICS have been upgraded, of course performance will be worse." Video game developer simps are why devs think they can output broken products and think "it's fine."

If you play in VR, well, I don't ever see that as viable in Odyssey. They would have to pull off an optimization miracle.

 

[roryclague]

The human tendency to form teams and to react to unwelcome views that challenge biases that are shaped by our choice of teams as if it were a direct, personal threat of bodily harm is a sight to behold. Multiple things can be simultaneously true. For example, Odyssey’s planet tech is more powerful and flexible, going forward, for the game than Horizons planet tech. It is capable of delivering beautiful planets. It is also true that its implementation in the release build is producing results that are, on average, inferior to the results it produced under a different set of tunable parameters in the pre alpha marketing materials and even in the alpha, graphically speaking. The new parameters were untested prior to release and that has caused a lot of the drama we are now seeing, due to problems arising from efforts to balance gameplay, performance, and the average quality of how planets look. Unintended issues have arisen. Finally, it is also true that Frontier are working on these problems and will, with time, solve most of them to a degree that is satisfactory to most people. The game is not doomed, but large parts of it are not working as intended. Not many studios have created galaxies with trillions of plausible looking planets that you can explore on foot, in a moon buggy, or from a space ship. Getting it as good as possible will require lots of effort, and lots of critical feedback, but also lots of support and patience.

 

[Ydiss]

The terrain and sky in your screenshots look better than Horizons but still look like a downgrade from what was shown in the Odyssey dev diary and other hype.

Yet I've seen sights that blow the trailer away.

I don't think it's possible for every planet to objectively look better than those pre alpha shots.

 

[jackoisinthehouse]

The current planets are not bad at all, could be just a bit more eye candy? Yes, hope FD will improve them sooner or later, but now priority is bugs and showstoppers.

 

[Erei]

As i was saying all along, there is a deliberate campaign here, steam and reddit, to sabotage Odyssey.
They started with Review bombing, and now continue with their campaign in order to misslead people in to posting negative reviews.

First they came for the Steam reviews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Steam user.
Then they came for the Reddit, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Reddit poster.
Then they came for the forums, and I did not speak out—because I was not a forum poster.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to defend Lord Braben.

Last words of an ED defenders against the Star Citizen horde, circa 2022.

400 billion star systems in the galaxy, you Mensa brainiacs go to one planet and make up your minds.

Try going to another planet, genius.

400 billion star systems in the galaxy, you Mensa brainiacs focus on a few of them to make up your minds.

Try going to others planets, genius.

 

[Decandently]

Here is my Odyssey experience with planet tech:

 

[MacIntoc]

The human tendency to form teams and to react to unwelcome views that challenge biases that are shaped by our choice of teams as if it were a direct, personal threat of bodily harm is a sight to behold. Multiple things can be simultaneously true. For example, Odyssey’s planet tech is more powerful and flexible, going forward, for the game than Horizons planet tech. It is capable of delivering beautiful planets. It is also true that its implementation in the release build is producing results that are, on average, inferior to the results it produced under a different set of tunable parameters in the pre alpha marketing materials and even in the alpha, graphically speaking. The new parameters were untested prior to release and that has caused a lot of the drama we are now seeing, due to problems arising from efforts to balance gameplay, performance, and the average quality of how planets look. Unintended issues have arisen. Finally, it is also true that Frontier are working on these problems and will, with time, solve most of them to a degree that is satisfactory to most people. The game is not doomed, but large parts of it are not working as intended. Not many studios have created galaxies with trillions of plausible looking planets that you can explore on foot, in a moon buggy, or from a space ship. Getting it as good as possible will require lots of effort, and lots of critical feedback, but also lots of support and patience.

That's pretty much what everybody say. The main difference is that for some it's acceptable to pay $40 for an unfinished and unmastered product but with good potential and as long as it works acceptably for them and for others the release shouldn't be a beta that's closer to a technical demo than a game, especially when the extra gameplay is supposed to keep you entertained for at least 2 years.

I think a not insignificant part of the "underwhelmingness" of both landscapes and skies stems from how Odyssey handles exposure.

Here's an ice planet I happened to have nearby just now:

View attachment 234477

Looks kinda cool, but the image seems a little flat and dull looking. It's even worse with the helmet on.

Here's the histogram:
View attachment 234480
That's a pretty low-contrast, somewhat underexposed image. The absolute top highlights are only about 80% of the way to the top of the image.

If I'd taken this as a photo, I'd probably boost the levels to something like this. Using up more of the range.

View attachment 234483

Which looks like this:

View attachment 234485

Which gives us more icy-looking ice, more shadow detail, and a more airy-looking sky. On Earth, at least, this would usually be close to how the eye sees it, as the eye adapts automatically to light levels within reason.

Arguably, FDev are trying to give the impression of dark, distant, dimly-lit planets (and ice planets do tend to be further from the star). This planet is only about as far as Earth is from Sol, but the parent star is a dimmer M-type. However, in real life, your eyes adapt to dimmer conditions to balance out the difference, and the darker look doesn't make it look alien so much as underexposed.

I'd suggest boosting exposure on planets for all but the furthest bodies (1000s of LS out, or orbiting a brown dwarf, etc.) as one way to boost the look of them.

Your exemple expose pretty well all of the main differences between actual game and pre-alpha :
1°)Contraste
2°)Colors
3°)Ambiant light
4°)Atmosphere (the sky seem "detached" from the surface but maybe it's also related to 2 and 3)
5°)Mountain are nothing in common with thoses we can see in pre-alpha (and no, it's not RNG related)

Caves where mentioned but so far appear to be missing.

No, they explicitely said that cave andt cliff are not handled by the current version of planet tech. But I would be very happy if you could prove me wrong.

 

[Exeider]

As i was saying all along, there is a deliberate campaign here, steam and reddit, to sabotage Odyssey.
They started with Review bombing, and now continue with their campaign in order to misslead people in to posting negative reviews.

Oh do not even start with that bilge. Fdev screwed up plain and simple, they rushed an expansion to meet a date on a calendar because that's when their Fiscal year ends. Their blatant and disastrous mismanagement combined with the lockdowns because of Covid, brought this upon their own heads. the very people you accuse of "waging a campaign" are the same people who told them to delay in the first place because we saw how unfinished Odyssey was and realized it needed more time in the oven and even the clear red flag issues that were so bad they actually decided they needed to split the player base, so there are two versions of the game means they knew damn well what was about to happen and they did it anyway. There is no "campaign" here, just calling Fdev on their own foul ups, except this time it looks like it actually and finally bit them in the a** and deservedly so.

They have blown all the faith, goodwill and charity of this community. It's now "put-up-or-shut-up" time. The sad thing is they wouldnt be in this position if they simply managed themselves better. No one is criticizing the actual developers, they had no control, this was solely a decision and fault of management, which has been a problem for years, for YEARS!!!