Daniel Raymond reviews the Evocati tech preview of Planetary Tech V5’s Nyx One, highlighting its impressive terrain, solid performance, and immersive VR experience despite some limitations like the absence of wildlife and logical inconsistencies due to recent terraforming. He notes that while the tech preview is less polished than the CitizenCon sizzle reel, it largely fulfills its promise and encourages viewers to engage with his channel through giveaways and comments.
In this video, Daniel Raymond from Ray’s Guide shares his experience playing the Evocati tech preview of Planetary Tech V5, focusing on the planet Nyx One. Due to the NDA restrictions, he cannot show direct visuals from the preview but instead references the previous CitizenCon sizzle reel to compare expectations with reality. He notes that the sizzle reel was highly polished with carefully chosen camera angles, lighting, and choreography, whereas the tech preview was less dense in object placement to maintain good frame rates on typical gaming hardware.
Regarding performance, Daniel reports achieving solid frame rates—around 70 FPS at 1440p on a high-end water-cooled PC and about 30 FPS in 4K VR on the same setup. Nyx One features many large bodies of water, chains of islands, and mostly rocky or grassy terrain, with fewer beaches due to its status as a newly terraformed biosphere. The rocky ridges and landscapes closely match the dramatic visuals shown in the sizzle reel, though the tech preview lacked animal life and harvestable plants, likely due to scope limitations.
Daniel tested various ground vehicles on Nyx One, including a UTV, a Nox, and a hoverquad. He found the driving experience manageable, with the UTV bouncing but not flipping, the Nox handling well at higher altitudes, and the hoverquad being fast but sometimes hard to control. Short underwater sections were survivable, but collisions with the lake bottom at high speed were problematic. The planet also features deciduous forests and rare swamps, which looked beautiful and were especially immersive in VR due to fully 3D shaped trees and realistic layering effects.
One notable observation was the absence of floating debris in the swamp areas, which Daniel speculates may be due to multiplayer synchronization challenges. While such physics interactions work well in single-player games like Squadron 42, they are difficult to implement in the persistent multiplayer universe. Additionally, he points out a logical inconsistency where mature cypress trees appear on a planet that was only recently terraformed, requiring players to suspend disbelief to fully enjoy the setting.
In conclusion, Daniel affirms that Nyx One and the new planetary tech largely live up to the promise shown in the CitizenCon video, though the real experience is less polished and dense than the sizzle reel. He also provides updates about giveaways and events on his channel and encourages viewers to participate by subscribing and commenting with the secret word “suspend,” referencing the suspension of disbelief needed for Nyx One’s swamps. He closes with his signature sign-off, wishing viewers safe travels in the verse.