But how does that prove the planet is rotating and it's not the sun moving around the planet? This is why I don't understand why you think it's been removed. What proof have you that it's been removed if you're using this as proof it was originally there?

The planets are all bunched up in the same place. It's a huge play area, but it's not covering an entire solar system. IE planets are never on the opposite side of the sun.

The sun itself is really just a standard video game sun that's part of the skybox. In one stream a player spent a long time trying to fly towards it but made no progress. However things started glitching out a bit, probably from floating point imprecision. That's a good sign that nothing exists farther out. So the skybox sun revolves around the whole play area giving every planet an identical 24 minute day and none of the planets move.

It proves the planet isn't spinning. Since the planet still experiences a day night transition though, it means either the planet orbits the sun every 24 minutes or the sun orbits the planet every 24 minutes.

Since all planets experience 24 minute days and all planets stay grouped up in the same area, the conclusion I came to is that the sun orbits them. This probably only happens while in the planet atmosphere. Otherwise you'd see the sun flying around like crazy while in space.

The sun being too far away to reach is actually proof that the planets are rotating. It would have to move faster than a speeding bullet to produce a day and night cycle on a planet if it was indeed the sun moving and not the planet. Here are the reasons I know they still rotate. We'll get the obious one out of the way first:

1: Sean Murray designed it that way.
2: The IGN video was released specifically to show how the rotating planets create night and day cycles
3: If it was the sun rotating around the planet it would have to move faster than a speeding bullet, as I mentioned above.
4: You posted the IGN video to prove it's been removed so I'd then assume if you saw a day and night cycle on a planet that would prove it's still there. I've sat and watched a day and night cycle on someone's stream.
5: When people finally leave the planet, moons, other planets and space stations are not where they thought they were because the planet has moved.

The planets still rotate.

1: Things change during development.

2: Yes it was, but that video clearly showed it didn't.

3: The sun is "infinitely" far away. Almost every videogame does the sun this way. It's not a problem.

4: Yes if I saw a video with the stars moving at night, that'd prove the planets spin. Honestly I'd love if you could find one since I'd much prefer functioning solar systems.

5: Sean talked about that in an interview, but has any leaked footage showed that? It seems like this changed during development.

If the planets still spin that's great, and if they still orbit that'd be even better.

1: Yes they do but the he's been talking about it right up the latest IGN first. Why drop it now?
2: Why did the video show the planets don't rotate?
3: Again, the sun would need to move at a ridiculous speed to create night and day on a planet
4: I'm not sure anyone has stood and watched the sky yet.
5: Again, what makes you think it's changed?

I don't understand why you think it's changed? It hasn't. The game is designed like that. It's all mathematics. You're making the mistake of believing the whole universe exists in the console, it doesn't, it's just a mathematical formula that evaluates how far the planet has rotated and then procedurally generates things in line with the answer. It's not difficult to do. It's just a calculation. The difficulty is expressing the result in graphical form.

At Joe

I watched that video of the time lapse but can't see any stars, I can see shooting stars, ships and firefly type bugs (could be watching on phone that makes it difficult) . And if all the day night cycles are 24 mins for every planet, that would just mean all the planets rotate at the same speed, which would be disappointing but I would wait to see if true and what the patch would do. It seems faking it would be just as much hard work to pull off.

It's just a calculation though. Nothing really exists in the virtual space, they're just the answers to those calculations in voxel form. Calculating how far the planet has turned is just as easy as calculating how far the sun has moved. And both would affect the rendering in exactly the same way. LOL

1: I don't know. Could have had two competing methods and only decided on one at the last minute when PS4 couldn't hit 60 fps? Although it's just speculation anyway. I'm just trying to analysis gameplay video instead of going off interviews.

2: The stars are only visible for a few seconds and are very minor. For most people that video was about showing the game's atmosphere.

3: No. Video games have "point source" lights and they have "directional" lights. A point source light works exactly like lights in real life and would indeed need to move at a ridiculous speed if used for the sun. However video games almost always use directional lights in such circumstances. Directional lights simulate a light infinitely far away from the player. All a game does is rotate the directional light to make it look like the sun is moving.

Again this is standard and is the method used for the sun in almost every 3D game.

4: I found a video showing the stars in the beginning, and as far as I can tell they don't move: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ELX8AEGkE

5: The game makes me think it changed. All in game signs point to the planets not spinning and probably not orbiting.

I'm well aware of how procedural generation works in general and what NMS's specific approach is. I've been using procedural generation in my PS4 game for a long time. However that has hardly anything to do with this. NMS still produces planets when you are present, and the question is if they spin while you're looking at them/on them.

Yeah there was some discussion about this way back when that video came out and a lot of people couldn't see them. Try increasing brightness or viewing at an angle.

Faking it would simplify everything. All planets would be static (a huge huge positive for game engines) and planets can be kept closer for better views. Coming up with the concept of faking it this way might take some time, but implementing it is near trivial.

They wouldn't affect rendering in the same way. In one case the stars spin and in the other the stars don't. It's a generally minor thing which is why it makes sense for HG to use it, but it sure seems to be what's happening.

I suppose it's a case of just wait and see. I just don't think Sean would mention it again in a video 3 months from release if it had been taken out.

See you in 3 days!