Another set of scenes from the same planet. I like to take the screenshots as they come and go, not altering via photomode. Makes stunning scenes rarer but also much more rewarding and astonishing!
Not oh so spectacular but beautiful sunrise at a mountain range, viewed from a marker site:
To reach the mountain at the back, I needed to cross this giant gorge (with gorgeous lightning by the evening scenery) :
On top of that particular mountain, I was rewarded by some further stunning looks downhill:
Further downhill, I came across a monolith (although actively searching for them via scanner, I stumbled that one randomly) that was embedded within the mountain range up high:
Took me some other hours of travelling, marking sites, looting crates, selling stuff and upgrading my inventory, until I encountered what you could describe a dead sea with steep cliffs and an ambient that makes you think there once was a great sea there:
The glowy thing in the background to the right of the first image was something I initially couldn’t make out. First I thought it was some kind of visual artifact.
Yet I drove that way until nightfall (toward a ruin marker 5 hours away), suddenly seeing no more sky, only pitch black darkness. I drove for what seemed to be several minutes of very steep terrain, until I found myself on top of a mountain which is so high up that it almost touched the clouds of the sky themselves.
When arriving on top of that mountain at midnight, I eagerly awaited the sun. I sat for several minutes there, just waiting for the sun to rise (which I normally don’t do).
But the waiting was so damn worth it:
The mountain almost touched the clouds:
Even though there was no hot storm (for once), you could barely see the silhouette of the surrounding mountain ranges.
It was absolutely stunning. I never encountered such a huge, big mountain with such an amazing view.
Now think of this:
When I first set foot on that planet (extremely harzadous, hot with storms during day, freezing in the night), I immediately thought of setting up my base somewhere else, somewhere nicer.
The irony here is that I was guided through the story to that single planet in its solar system.
I would have never imagined ever seeing such amazing things on this planet. It seemed so dull, so empty at first.
And now, just imagine what amazing landscapes you might have missed on those planets you decided not to stay for they seemed too bland, too generic or too boring.
I think this game teaches a huge lesson in living. What seems so insignificant can have such a huge impact on your journey. Those discoveries you made, the experiences and emotions you had, they guided you on your way to where you are now. In hindsight, are any of these “bad” things that happened to you things you regret?
If those “bad” things didn’t happen the way they did, you wouldn’t be what and who you are now. Of course, this applies to “good” things as well. But we shouldn’t judge whether things are good or bad - they simply are what they are. They make us to what we are. And what we will become.
The paragraph(s) above were meant both as an reply to your post, but also as a reminder of how similar (in size and amount) this game is to our universe. We will never be able to see and experience everything we want to see and live. But what we see and what we live we should cherish, for there is significance in insignificance everywhere to be found.
Which is also why I love SpaceEngine so much - since its planets may be empty, their procedurally generated landscapes and celestial features can be incredible sights.
And still I hope for massive improvements in procedural generation NEXT, which are going to make planetary exploration even more rewarding (if you have the patience for it, that is).
… I think this might have been much more text than I initially wanted to write. Sorry for that huge off-topic banter, it was just something I wanted to point out. 