this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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Because the computer-generated images that symbolize said other planets are generally done with some shitty-shit stupid noise algorithm to generate the surface rather than anything decent (well, at least it's not uniform noise), whilst the ones for planet Earth just use existing map data for the Earth surface.
As it so happens I've been working on a game that has planets, so here's an example generated with better algorithms:
PS: also note that for game purposes, the athmosphere is unrealistically thick as a proportion of planetary radius, purelly because it looks better. A lot of choices in game making are mainly artistic freedom which at first people with a Science or Engineering background tend to shy away from "because it's not how things are".
I think it's also that we choose the most photogenic angle for earth, if you pick a random angle of earth it sometimes doesn't look as good.
e.g.
do you have an algorithm for picking a photogenic angle for your game?
Nah, the planets are just shown as 3D objects in the game.
The little icons as the one I linked were made by a special game mode for development which I call the PlanetPhotoStudio that just lets me manually rotate the planet 3D object and take a snapshot, since the planet surfaces are pre-generated using an external program ("Grand Designer", highly recommended) and only some results are chosen, it's fine to also make those icons during development time.
It's actually less hassle to do make a "photo studio" (especially since most of the work is also used in the main game) and do it manually for each planet like that than to try and come up with an algorithm for "how photogenic a 2D view of a planet looks".
i love the Himalaya doing a cute smile
Good luck with the game! Sounds like it'll be interesting
Thanks!
It definitelly looks nice, though the game play is IMHO what makes it fun or not.
This is a chorus I like to repeat: Entertainment doesn't need to be realistic to be fun, and I wish publishers / marketers / reviewers / players would acknowledge that more often and stop slapping the label "realistic" and the like on things that aren't.
There are sims that are grounded in careful study and attempt to model some part of reality as accurately as possible, but even they need to compromise, both to run on contemporary hardware and to balance it against playability. But they're often complex, by virtue of modeling a complex reality, and not everyone's cup of tea.
But then you have things like Assassin's Creed that regularly and heavily fudge history, not always in a bad way, but convey an impression of past societies that seems accurate, but glosses over things like the Spartan inequality and slavery or Viking brutality, painting a more "noble" and "heroic" picture than they each deserve.
Again, there's nothing wrong with making up interesting stuff, but people should be honest about it (as you are). Pointing out those artistic choices is an opportunity for learning things. Though the scale of an atmosphere is probably less significant than the scale of Viking slave trade, I still find it curious just how thin it actually is.