I'd like to point some big interesting facts about the potential of this game regarding exploration, because I think it's very important and in the future could change everything. The scale of this game is not huge, is beyond huge after I was reading people experimenting and exploring, just made me realize how crazy could be the enhancement of it with new content by the developers and also by tons of mods (those games from Bethesda has one of the biggest community in this regard)... so, I think the best way to describe those parts is to divide them in two: one related to the planetary aspect, and the other one to the space exploration.
1.) Before reading about all those landing experiments, I was thinking that you can go to a planet (just like in Mass Effect) and land on some spot where those markers are procedurally generated and you can explore some points of interest with some limits and that's it. Turns out, if you disable your HUD (via console command) and you'll put the landing spot just to the next pixel where you've landed, you can certainly go there and see new procedurally generated points of interest and you can explore that entire tile on foot until its limits. Then, you can land on the next pixel, and the next, and that could take years to explore an entire planet

. So technically, you can land on whatever spot you want and explore those new generated points of interest, then you can explore another 1000 planets on those solar systems, so that could take literally your lifetime. Imagine if Bethesda will think next to add hundreds of more points of interest that could procedurally generate on planets, quests or activities... Also can't wait to see how crazy will be the modding content created by that passionate community...
2.) When you are on your ship in space without using those fast travel options, you can literally navigate and fly manually from one planet to another through entire solar systems, but that will take real hours, months, years, depending on the distance. I know that almost nobody wants to do that, but it's crazy that the distance there is really palpable. Also, those calculations of planets are done right and the planetary alignment in our solar system is done correctly including movement, solar day/night cycle (in other systems I guess nobody on Earth knows for now). I like the fact that in space there is movement and interactions: stations, pirates, planetary ships (where players could have some real action), but taking in count the scale of this space I think Bethesda could enhance it way, way more (and can't wait to see that...). I'd also like to see if they could do a dynamic transition when you fly from a planet to space or when you land on a planet, so the player could immerse himself more by those transitions doing the manual piloting. In other hand, if the exploration is divided in tiles I don't think that will be possible to explore the planet by flying close to the ground, but I'll be happy if they'll create some manual landing transitions instead of cutscenes...
I'm so invested in this game right now !!! I'm lucky to be on some working vacation so, (besides kitchen and bathroom

) I'm enjoying all day long Starfield
