Newcomer / Intro What kinds of planets are generally landable?

King Drax I

K
I'm currently having great fun doing planetary surface work with the Scarab.

I have noticed that most of the landable planets I have seen are metal worlds, and high-metal-content, also some rocky worlds.

But it doesn't appear to be the case that e can land on ice worlds or - especially - Earh-like worlds.

Is that generally the case, is it always the case, or could it possibly be (I hope this is the answer) that my dataset is simply not big enough to be able to make that assertion with any veracity?

In other words, are there ice worlds and Earth-like planets 'out there' that are landable?

Thanks!
 

Codger

Codger
What aRJay said - we can only land on bodies that have no atmosphere. So no Earthlikes, not yet anyway.

But there are lots of icy worlds, and some have lovely landscapes, along with all the rocky and high-metal, metal-rich type worlds. There are also rocky-ice planets, and occasionally one will be landable.

https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Planets
 
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Mo Ronik

Mo Ronik
What color of ring appears around a planet that is landable when you approach it? Is it the blue ring or yellow ring?
 

BinakAlgo

BinakAlgo
Atmosphere landing is expected for the next "season" or DLC product. Probably they will start with "dead" worlds with thin atmospheres of neon, ammonia and such. They also want to do dommed cities, procedurally generated cities, flora, fauna, etc. It's going to be a challenge.

The other expected expansion is the so-called "space legs" that will let us walk around our ships and stations and probably worlds too.

But we'll have to be VERY patient.
 

Tyres O'Flaherty

Tyres O'Flaherty
BinakAlgo said:
Atmosphere landing is expected for the next "season" or DLC product. Probably they will start with "dead" worlds with thin atmospheres of neon, ammonia and such. They also want to do dommed cities, procedurally generated cities, flora, fauna, etc. It's going to be a challenge.

The other expected expansion is the so-called "space legs" that will let us walk around our ships and stations and probably worlds too.

But we'll have to be VERY patient.
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All sounds fantastic.

I'm saving for that RTX2080ti SLI rig now. Perhaps it'll all be beautifully ray-traced for us as well.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Tyres O'Flaherty said:
Are ammonia worlds landable?
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Para Handy said:
No - they have an Ammonia atmosphere.
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Actually, that's not true. They have an ammonia hydrosphere - oceans, lakes and rivers of liquid ammonia. The atmospheric composition is considered completely separate. Most ammonia worlds have no reported ammonia in the atmosphere (just like most WWs and ELWs have no reported water in the atmosphere)

Further, it is entirely possible in ED (and in contravention of the laws of physics) to have Water Worlds and Ammonia Worlds with no atmosphere. I believe they are even separate entries in the Codex. Here's a ringed airless ammonia world (image by roboteconomist posted in this thread:
cclo8ms.jpg

...and here's an airless water world, from Cmdr Bolamshea's thread:
attachment.php

But, even though these worlds are rated "no atmosphere", you still can't land on them. ED haven't yet figured out what to do with our ships when we try to "land" on an ocean (Do we float? Sink? Blow up?), so these physics-defying planets are also off-limits. I believe there may also be some airless lava worlds we also can't land on, for the same reason.

The only other non-landable airless worlds are the permit locked ones, of which there are only three (Triton (in Sol), Lave 2 and Diso 5c), and Earth's moon, which is apparently awaiting ED finding a way to conflate ED's surface rendering model with the real-universe map of the Moon.
 

King Drax I

K
So, what actually happens if we do try to land on an unlandable planet? I know the FSD drops out as you get close, and so it would take ages to get there, but what if you are willing to point the nose at the planet and just sit and watch until the distance winds down to contact?
 

Zoltah-Talion

Zoltah-Talion
King Drax I said:
So, what actually happens if we do try to land on an unlandable planet? I know the FSD drops out as you get close, and so it would take ages to get there, but what if you are willing to point the nose at the planet and just sit and watch until the distance winds down to contact?
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You blow up! (Unfortunately.) lol
 

avow555

avow555
It's been a long wait but more landable planets need to be introduced this year.

Long, slow development of this title really do it no favours.
 

Skizomeuh

Skizomeuh
My guess too, as new shaders and features that came with 3.3 (lighting model, volumetric fog, color grading, Lagrange clouds...) and those which didn't but are coming (ice and overall planet improvements) are hinting quite seriously at atmospheric-but-lifeless planets.
 

Conde

Conde
King Drax I said:
So, what actually happens if we do try to land on an unlandable planet? I know the FSD drops out as you get close, and so it would take ages to get there, but what if you are willing to point the nose at the planet and just sit and watch until the distance winds down to contact?
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A couple of years ago I tried to go "Home" and land in my future back garden (perhaps one day but no promises, no guarantees!). The lowest altitude I could get was around 7 km as you can see. However if it was an image of the real thing the actual altitude must be a lot greater.

I haven't tried it recently but at that time the ship just met an invisible "force field" and would go no further. Interesting to note in the 34th century how much the sea level has risen, major areas of land seem to be under water. Whether this was deliberate on the part of FD or just graphical coincidence I'll leave you to conclude....

 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
Zoltah-Talion said:
You blow up! (Unfortunately.) lol
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Presumably, one of the requirements for landing on a planet with an atmosphere is that you have to remove the default "planetary landing suite" all our (Horizons) ships currently have, and install an "atmospheric landing suite" - heatshields and so forth. Trying to land on an atmospheric planet without it will presumably result in destruction.

So having our ships blow up now if we try to land on an atmospheric planet is perfectly reasonable. For the currently-prohibited airless WW, AW etc I mentioned in my previous post, perhaps not so reasonable.

They can't simply flick a switch and make these worlds landable - if it were that easy, it probably would have been done a long time ago. The issue is, these non-landable worlds use a completely different set of algorithms to render their appearance in-game - and it's a "quick and dirty" algorithm that simply doesn't scale to the extent that a landable planet would need; which is why sitting adjacent to a landable planet uses much more processing power than sitting the same distance form a non-landable. "Landing" on these planets now, we would see nothing but a monochrome featureless plain with no texture or surface details. So, to land on an AW or WW, the need to "start from scratch" and create a believalbly realistic planet that renders well and reproducibly, whether you're 10000 km away or sitting on its surface.

The non-landable planet model is also unrealistically static. Specifically, clouds never move. Visit Earth, and observe the hurricanes over Greece and San Fransisco. Those hurricanes are always there, no matter when you visit - because the rendering of the Earth includes the "cloud layer", which is effectively fixed to the surface. Every other ELW is the same, it's just harder to tell because we don't know what those planets are "supposed to look like". Likewise, gas giant storms never move and rotate.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Conde said:
...The lowest altitude I could get was around 7 km as you can see. However if it was an image of the real thing the actual altitude must be a lot greater...
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That's not "7km". That's "7.02 Mm", or 7000 km. And that distance is measured from the planet's core, so subtract 6378 km to get your actual altitude from the surface (about 642 km).

Conde said:
...Interesting to note in the 34th century how much the sea level has risen, major areas of land seem to be under water. Whether this was deliberate on the part of FD or just graphical coincidence I'll leave you to conclude....
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It's not a political statement, but rather, a result of the rather simplistic modelling of "sea levels" on ELW planets, which includes Earth. The base map of Earth in ED is reasonably accurate in terms of altitude, but the Oceans, seas and lakes on the surface are all placed at the same level - sea level. So, all the above-sea-level bodies of water (like the North American Great Lakes, and Lake Victoria in Africa) have vanished, while below-sea-level areas of land (like the Netherlands, the Danakil Depression in East Africa, much of Florida, the Dead Sea/Jordan Valley in the Middle East and the Norfolk Fens in England) have been drowned.

A more realistic hydrology, with proper lakes, rivers etc is just one more feature FD will need to address before going live with landable ELWs.
 

BinakAlgo

BinakAlgo
Sapyx said:
Presumably, one of the requirements for landing on a planet with an atmosphere is that you have to remove the default "planetary landing suite" all our (Horizons) ships currently have, and install an "atmospheric landing suite" - heatshields and so forth. Trying to land on an atmospheric planet without it will presumably result in destruction.

So having our ships blow up now if we try to land on an atmospheric planet is perfectly reasonable. For the currently-prohibited airless WW, AW etc I mentioned in my previous post, perhaps not so reasonable.

They can't simply flick a switch and make these worlds landable - if it were that easy, it probably would have been done a long time ago. The issue is, these non-landable worlds use a completely different set of algorithms to render their appearance in-game - and it's a "quick and dirty" algorithm that simply doesn't scale to the extent that a landable planet would need; which is why sitting adjacent to a landable planet uses much more processing power than sitting the same distance form a non-landable. "Landing" on these planets now, we would see nothing but a monochrome featureless plain with no texture or surface details. So, to land on an AW or WW, the need to "start from scratch" and create a believalbly realistic planet that renders well and reproducibly, whether you're 10000 km away or sitting on its surface.

The non-landable planet model is also unrealistically static. Specifically, clouds never move. Visit Earth, and observe the hurricanes over Greece and San Fransisco. Those hurricanes are always there, no matter when you visit - because the rendering of the Earth includes the "cloud layer", which is effectively fixed to the surface. Every other ELW is the same, it's just harder to tell because we don't know what those planets are "supposed to look like". Likewise, gas giant storms never move and rotate.
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Sapyx said:
That's not "7km". That's "7.02 Mm", or 7000 km. And that distance is measured from the planet's core, so subtract 6378 km to get your actual altitude from the surface (about 642 km).



It's not a political statement, but rather, a result of the rather simplistic modelling of "sea levels" on ELW planets, which includes Earth. The base map of Earth in ED is reasonably accurate in terms of altitude, but the Oceans, seas and lakes on the surface are all placed at the same level - sea level. So, all the above-sea-level bodies of water (like the North American Great Lakes, and Lake Victoria in Africa) have vanished, while below-sea-level areas of land (like the Netherlands, the Danakil Depression in East Africa, much of Florida, the Dead Sea/Jordan Valley in the Middle East and the Norfolk Fens in England) have been drowned.

A more realistic hydrology, with proper lakes, rivers etc is just one more feature FD will need to address before going live with landable ELWs.
Click to expand...

When you describe that way, I've the feeling that it would take years to get it done right. Just too many details, variables, effects, flows, textures, mechanics... sounds like a never-ending work. It even makes me thing that the whole "We could keep developing this game for 10 years" will fall short on time.
 
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