First sorry the update is still not out! I want to release it when I am satisfied with the result and I have a few items on my list to tackle.
To be honest I have spent a lot of the time on tracking and fixing bugs...
A few things I added where tree and monoliths though:
Trees:
They are randomized to an extent: their color of course but also their bark and leaf texture are swapped randomly. The color will sometime matches the ground color and sometime be of an complementary color. The tricky part was working on a LOD tech so they are not too resources intensive.
I would like to spend more time to also generate procedurally the trunk but this will have to wait for another update!
Monoliths and ore veins
Of course the ultimate goal for exploring planet will be to harvest resources and mine ore especially. I added ore veins with that in mind. Another feature was the monolith: most of the time these will be standard rocks but once in a while you will see more exotic shapes like pyramids, prism or else. And if you are lucky they will be made of raw ore! As they are visible from afar this will be quite convenient to mine large quantity of metal.
I leave you with a few screenshots! I am not satisfied with a 100s of little things but it is getting there!
Cheers
Francois