Graphics current vs final

:shock:

That looks really good!!!

Compared to PA, is this a polycount issue or something else?
Sorry, I'm not really engine tech savvy.

This looks good? It looks absolutely and 100% industrial strength ugly.

It looks like a planet made out of playdoo.

Besides having a horrible colour palette (brown, we need moar brown) the hills don't look like hills and more like something made out of mud.

Using heigthmaps for the terrain imo always ends up looking bad. The current planets in PA at this early stage look much much better even now.


I guess what you're liking here is the "varied" terrain, ie. less flat space as the planets in PA have now. But that's a design decision and you'll be easily able to make bumpy terrain like in this picture. Just with the difference that it can look good.

on a pure graphics tech level the alpha beats Spore by far, it is just that PA is still aesthetically incomplete (its called alpha for a reason), which means the game does not look like it is intended in the end yet (duh). Spore looks relatively good because it looks coherent, to the design by Maxis. I have confidence PA will achieve that as well.

My guess is you could in the end create a very similarly looking planet in PA, but way better when it is done, if you would pick a very small planet. But without the clouds maybe

Exactly. No comparison even in its current state. There will most likely be a lot of texturing, lighting and post processing improvements. Have patience people.

As for the clouds... I would rather see the time spent in more important areas.

Don't worry, clouds aren't on the agenda. Why would we spend time on something that doesn't change gameplay? Purely aesthetic stuff isn't going to get much love until the game part is done.

I have to second the 'that looks like a ball of playdough' opinion.

I think PA planetary detail has spoiled me forever now.

Obviously clouds are a nice aesthetic touch for when gameplay is good. The one detail that I like about the Spore planet is that the atmosphere seems to be much higher than in PA.