Worse graphics content - planets surfaces
No idea, personally I blame console port but truly no one knows what happened or if/when it will be fixed. As a explorer I`m starting to loose my patience with gfx the downgrade 
I would like to ask, why is the surface of planets worse then in 2016?! It looked amazing in 2016.
In these days, every planet has almost same color, worse surface. Where is the reason to make visuals worse?!
http://jardabar.net/tmp/Elite2016vs2017_001.jpg
Shadows make an immense difference in how a surface looks. Your first pic has long shadows, the sun is low on the horizon, your second pic has no shadows, the sun is overhead, this will basically wash out most textures;
For instance;
Sun low;
same planet, sun overhead;
If you want to do comparison pics please try and take them under the same conditions, it's very helpful.
It's called beigification. It came with the release of 2.2. There is an whole big thread for that topic: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...e-have-a-ETA-on-the-cure-for-the-beige-plague
I would like to ask, why is the surface of planets worse then in 2016?! It looked amazing in 2016.
In these days, every planet has almost same color, worse surface. Where is the reason to make visuals worse?!
http://jardabar.net/tmp/Elite2016vs2017_001.jpg
I hear ya, to me the staion look so out of place new not weathered or covered in dust as they should be, I have often said this about stations and wreck sites on planets they just look like they have been plonked on the surface, I think at least a change of colour to them would help or some blending options, dont think its hard.
I would like to ask, why is the surface of planets worse then in 2016?! It looked amazing in 2016.
In these days, every planet has almost same color, worse surface. Where is the reason to make visuals worse?!
http://jardabar.net/tmp/Elite2016vs2017_001.jpg
Some of it is lighting. The shots have very different lighting so they will look different. Also some of geometry was reduced, as they used geometry to create texture. Now we have texture painted on with less geometry. This was for performacnce reasons. I would have over 200fps in space and go below 60 on a planets with the old way. Now for me it is above 60fps on a planet. Much better.
Sometime the new way looks better when you are up close to the surface, but looks slightly worse when you are further away.
Max Factor is right, but I would prefer better visual than more fps.
Depends what GPU you have. Mine is pretty good, an AMD Fury, but others where lucky to get 10-15 fps on the lowest settings. Something needed to be done, and they did in what was probably the best way possible. The textures are still much better close up though. Also having those spare FPS gives them the chance to put more stuff on the planets like the barnacle forest. And if your PC can handle that okay, it will be a good indication for if your PC can handle planets with other stuff on them.
The graphics truly became sort of childish. There was better. The good that they has removed this intense coloration of the space. So now space looks not bad.
Me too feel changes for environment. The graphics looks unnatural, immature. This toy-like stations, planets like balls on playground...
Me too feel changes for environment. The graphics looks unnatural, immature. This toy-like stations, planets like balls on playground...