Please consider fixing the planet height maps

Michael shared this feedback 11 months ago
Under Consideration

As you know the planets consist of 6 height map tiles. For most planets these tiles have an incorrect edge alignment which causes glitches in the terrain that are visible across the whole edge.

I found out that adjacent edge pixels of two tiles must have the same value as if the tiles must overlap by one pixel to get seamless planets. Otherwise you get sudden jumps in the terrain. With that in mind I wrote a simple code that reconstructs the edge points of the tiles so they align up properly. My algorithm could be improved but fixes over 99% of the visible alignment issues.

I uploaded the fixed files as a mod on Steam. It also contains a fix for the misaligned lakes on EarthLike/Alien which I kindly ask you to also reconsider (https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/26835-misaligned-lakes-on-earthlike-and-alien).

The mod already gained over 2400 subscribers and the feedback is very positive. However due to the way the game loads the planet data files my mod cannot be mixed with mods that change the material map files. If those mods are loaded, my modified height map files won't load.

Please consider to fixing the planet data files officially so that my mod is not necessary anymore.

Here is a link to my mod that contains a more detailed description, comparison screenshots and two videos that showcase the issue. It also links to the code I wrote to fix the planet files.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2961563719

When I reported the lake misalignment issue the argument for not fixing it was that the change might affect existing player constructions. I don't really see this as an issue. The number of affected people will probably be very low to zero and it's nothing that couldn't be fixed with a quick copy/paste. I would say the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Replies (2)

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The ticket reached the required 50 votes within 3 months. I hope you will change the status to "Under Consideration" as stated in the feedback submission guide.

Meanwhile the mod got 6250 subs and a 5 star rating on Steam.

It would be really nice if you fixed the height maps and maybe the lakes. The way the game loads the pngs makes it impossible to mix height map mods with material map mods since all those files are always loaded from the same directory. At least that's what I could infer from the Sandbox.Engine.Voxels.Planet.MyPlanetTextureMapProvider class. It would be awesome if that interface would be more flexible and allowed taking files from different mod folders and maybe even allowed a mod to provide the data for a single material map channel like ore instead of requiring all 3 color channels.


I plan to visit the 10th anniversary event in Prague. Might see you there.

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Michael,

Thank you for fixing the planets. I sincerely hope Keen takes your suggestion.

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