De ‘Seamless Landing’-modus voor Starfield biedt een naadloze ingang in de ruimte

When you land on a planet in Starfield, you still have to select a landing spot, then watch a loading screen and animation. This is one of the details that helps make the ship feel more like a home where you can teleport around more easily. According to a report on pc-gamer-news, planets in space are basically just textures that you can fly over; this was revealed by players as they explored the limits of RPG while experimenting. This gap, which seems like something modders will never be able to fill, is notable because Frederik Wessberg has filled it. In a video he shared from his work-in-progress mod, the ship’s approach to the planet, with its heating effects as it enters the atmosphere, is shown, followed by a momentary whiteout as it enters the cloud layer and then a direct landing. While the clouds are thought to be masking a loading screen, Wessberg notes that “they don’t actually hide the loading screen; they help minimize the stitching at the point where we’re doing the cell transition in terms of lighting and color grading. For atmosphere-free satellites and planets, I’m doing the transition without any curtains, because the lighting and color grading won’t change much between two cells. The loading mechanism underneath is running entirely in the background, making the game interactive as it waits for assets to load, then performs the modification.”

To make this system work, the floating documents in the air had to be replaced with real models of planets and satellites. “I had to completely re-implement the rendering of planets in space in 3D,” says Wessberg, “and I did it with a method that had to look detailed and sharp at every altitude.” Wessberg then talks about the game’s physical accuracy: “Starfield is incredibly physically accurate, in many ways a true space simulation; it just doesn’t show it to the player, but I was able to take advantage of that in my design. Starfield is based on biome data and full surface maps, including data on planet rendering, climate data, and atmospheric composition, as well as factors such as orbital phase, distance from the sun, and contributions to the shadow cast by the planet (satellites). Our philosophy is that the truth of Starfield is, but we model it with real physics.” The final version of the mod, which will be available for free on Nexus Mods, will allow players to fly manually in low orbit, or to turn on an automatic pilot and circle the ship while landing from orbit, and to land anywhere they want, even in water. Here are the details about the mod.