Failed planets…

One of the things that have been beating on my head with regards to coming up with a visual style for the game is the planets themselves. The current “shelves and plateaus” vibe is kind of “done” now… and I was hoping to find something more unique. One issue we push against in VR constantly is that the amount of detail in the world has to be very measured and practical. You need to be running at an exceptionally high framerate, so you can’t just go nuts and model out insane details on the planets… yet.

One attempt I made was to try more organic looking surfaces. The individual continents are randomly scattered around the surface for variety, but it’s still not “there” yet… it lacks any style as of yet. This is one area of the game we have a LONG way to go with. I’ve been experimenting with particle systems for the planets having lots of little air “traffic” on them, representing the density of units present there… but that started really chugging the framerate down, so that’s needing some rethinking on clever ways to pull that off.

Regardless, the end goal is that we have something that invites the player to crane their head really close to the surface of the miniature planets and look around. We’ll get there!

-Lee

PlanetWork2