Strook, I did not claim that "this is already seamless planetary flight", nor did I claim there were any atmospheric effects, or whatever. Please read what is said before you go getting all
, ok?
The degree of detail on some planets and moons is at least suggestive of mountains and hills. Here is a pic from orbital height of the Earth's Moon..
..and here is from a fairy close distance of under 40 km..
Note that is certainly looks a bit like hills, probably about as much as it would from that height. Also note in the orbital pic, no indication of atmosphere, which is to be expected, since the moon doesn't have any. But a pic from fairly close in to Earth (as compared to the usual docking distance)..
...and we do see some indication of atmosphere.
What I was saying was that if a flat object we can refer to as a "starport" or something was attached on or very near the planet surface, and it had dockable regions, that it would be possible to land there and it might function like the stations or whatever we currently end up at when docking at the planet do now. My thought is that this would be possible quicker and could achieve some of the functions and feel of being able to land and take off from the surface of at least some planets. A large "spaceship landing area" like that might have some terrain details near the edges and buildings and such features. Since landings and take-offs would be made in these small (compared to the size of a planet) areas where detail could be higher, it could look and feel maybe at least reasonable.
I at no point said that all this exists in the game at present. But maybe the ability to fly very low, coupled with some sort of a dockable landing port such as already exists on some stations, might be used to put together planetary landings and take-offs and etc with objects the game already has.