Extremely bothersome visual glitch with ocean horizons

[ninienielniels]

Hi there,

I'd like to point out a (quite intrusive) visual glitch that was first introduced with the release of Beyond. It is a glitch where, when looking over bodies of water that stretch far enough to see no land in the distance, the underwater terrain becomes visible at the horizon, resulting in a weird, bumpy-looking "water horizon". From what I can tell, it affects the game on every gaming platform.

Now, I may also have figured out what causes this weirdness: before Beyond, the white atmosphere line that is visible around planets when seen from space would become invisible upon entering a planet's atmosphere. Now, ever since Beyond, something is going wrong here; said white atmosphere line is not being hidden anymore and it clips through the water at the horizon, causing the strange and bumpy looking horizon that we have been observing ever since Beyond.
(It is not a Vulkan-related glitch as the Vulkan experimental builds did not suffer from this glitch)

The following is an older YouTube video showing Vulkan Experimental build gameplay, you can see said white horizon line and the moment where it becomes hidden during entry into the atmosphere, showing that the glitch did not occur in pre-beyond Vulkan builds: (at 7:28 in the video)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x_m964e_xqU&t=446s

Screenshots of the glitch:

https://i.imgur.com/Qb52wtq.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ZxcmqDW.png
http://imgur.com/a/Ksjzq5F

Please, don't keep ignoring this visual glitch! I realize that gameplay bugs are being prioritised, but for a game that has beautiful visuals as its main feat, this glitch really is a major eyesore that plagues every planet that has water.

[ninienielniels]

Pre-Beyond gameplay video showing properly smooth ocean horizon, before the glitch was introduced:

https://youtu.be/NEwhRiXWM2g

See how beautiful NMS oceans used to look?

[Lurk]

I'm with you on this.
EXTREMELY bothersome indeed.
Can't believe it's been going ignored/unnoticed for so long. As I said, I stopped playing the game for this bug alone.
As far as an immersion breaker it goes on pair with planet atmosphere showing through asteroids, for which I had already stopped playing until it was finally fixed, which took them almost a year.
And now this graphical disgrace with water.

[ninienielniels]

Another immersion breaking visual glitch is planet rings clipping through the sky when you're on a planet (making it look as if the ring is *inside* the atmosphere) but I find that more tolerable than this water horizon thing, that just looks horrible and downright broken. I've reported it on their zendesk form many times, posted about it on their subreddit (and it was a 'top' post for a while), posted about it on HG Twitter page and now I'm repeatedly sending them DM's about it on their new Instagram account. Eventually they'll have to notice it, right?!

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by ninienielniels:

Another immersion breaking visual glitch is planet rings clipping through the sky when you're on a planet (making it look as if the ring is *inside* the atmosphere) but I find that more tolerable than this water horizon thing, that just looks horrible and downright broken. I've reported it on their zendesk form many times, posted about it on their subreddit (and it was a 'top' post for a while), posted about it on HG Twitter page and now I'm repeatedly sending them DM's about it on their new Instagram account. Eventually they'll have to notice it, right?!

They already noticed, but spamming isn't going to get it fixed any faster. 99% of people won't do something faster just because someone else keeps bringing it up.

[Lurk]

Originally posted by Orion:

They already noticed, but spamming isn't going to get it fixed any faster. 99% of people won't do something faster just because someone else keeps bringing it up.

true, but such noticeable graphic issues in a game all about landing on planets should be absolute priority for them to fix. this has been around for over six months iirc.

oh, and I agree with ninienielniels regarding the planetary rings.
they look screwed up but somewhat more tolerable than this horrendous non-existent water horizon bug.
can't believe water appearance took such a steep way down.
it looked so pretty when the game first came out.
sad memories : (

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Lurk:

Originally posted by Orion:

They already noticed, but spamming isn't going to get it fixed any faster. 99% of people won't do something faster just because someone else keeps bringing it up.

true, but such noticeable graphic issues in a game all about landing on planets should be absolute priority for them to fix. this has been around for over six months iirc.

oh, and I agree with ninienielniels regarding the planetary rings.
they look screwed up but somewhat more tolerable than this horrendous non-existent water horizon bug.
can't believe water appearance took such a steep way down.
it looked so pretty when the game first came out.
sad memories : (

The bugs they fix are much more important than this. Stuff that actually prevents people from playing the game.

[ninienielniels]

While it's true that there are more critical bugs on their bucket list (because surely, adding all that extra fluff and toys to the game brings along heaps of new bugs), considering what's causing this graphical glitch to happen, and it being new since Beyond, the fix for it would likely be quick and easy. It's very likely a glitch caused by an accidental, unintended change in a single line of code, which they've been unaware of and now perhaps they're puzzled about why the water is looking like this.
At least, after 8 months, someone at HG could have taken a couple minutes to really look into this eyesore of a visual anomaly and revert it. It really does stick out like a sore thumb whenever you look at an ocean in NMS. If they can release multiple major updates since Beyond, to add more toys and fluff to the game, I don't understand why they couldn't have taken a moment to fix this horrendous bug.

[Lurk]

Originally posted by ninienielniels:

...I don't understand why they couldn't have taken a moment to fix this horrendous bug.

neither do I.

[Lailantie]

This bug is the reason why I've never built a base on a small island in the deep ocean. I just can't tolerate to see this bumpy horizon line. I also posted about it a while ago, but there wasn't much resonance of others. It's one of the things that bother me most about this game.

[Lurk]

good to hear I'm not alone. I have almost 500 hours in the game and I stopped playing ever since I started the mission to build the underwater vehicle. couldn't stand being around water for how bad it looks, with the screwed up water planet horizon being the icing on the cake. I'll eventually get back to playing when and if it'll ever be fixed.

[ninienielniels]

Originally posted by Lailantie:

This bug is the reason why I've never built a base on a small island in the deep ocean. I just can't tolerate to see this bumpy horizon line. I also posted about it a while ago, but there wasn't much resonance of others. It's one of the things that bother me most about this game.

Same here, I avoid ocean views like the plague ever since the horizon became messed up like this.

[Lurk]

Wondering whether this has been magically fixed with the Origins update. I'm away from my pc and won't be able to check for a few days.

[ninienielniels]

I haven't checked yet, I'm waiting a day or two until after the first couple of patches. But the update notes don't say anything about water, so I won't get my hopes up for a fix.

[Lurk]

Yeah, didn't see anything mentioned in the notes. Kinda sad, I'm still one of the three players convinced that this is a major visual bug.

[ninienielniels]

Have you tried it? If not, I'll update here as soon as I've tried the new update.