Funky Huge Cave

[marmarmar34]

Absolutely massive cavern opening that I found while translocator hopping

[WiseLifelessCorpse]

That looks like a like boss fight arena

That is a huge find wink wink

[Forceous]

How is that even possible lol

[Maelstrom]

Those very circular geometric shapes are very suspicious.  This looks VERY artificial.  Note a switch to creative back to survival just before the screenshot?   I call foul and believe that this is the result from using world edit.

[ifoz]

3 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

I call foul and believe that this is the result from using world edit.

I've seen this kind of thing before in survival, though none quite as big as this.
Still, some absolutely massive near-perfect half-sphere shaped chambers near the mantle.
My friends who play Vintage and I call them 'fried egg caves', since they look a bit like an egg yolk when all lit up. 

[CastIronFabric]

2 hours ago, ifoz said:

I've seen this kind of thing before in survival, though none quite as big as this.
Still, some absolutely massive near-perfect half-sphere shaped chambers near the mantle.
My friends who play Vintage and I call them 'fried egg caves', since they look a bit like an egg yolk when all lit up. 

so I do not call foul on the OP. I think it was just a world generation bug.

I do however call foul on your claim. It would have to be fairly common place for your story

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Those very circular geometric shapes are very suspicious.  This looks VERY artificial.  Note a switch to creative back to survival just before the screenshot?   I call foul and believe that this is the result from using world edit.

Switching to creative may have just been to place the torches. Would be really annoying to light that up otherwise.

I'm not sure, but as far as I can tell based on skimming over the cave generation code, it could generate naturally, because:

• caves are generated in a recursive function, one segment one after another,
• the width of each next segment is determined by the previous segment,
• size changes are applied purely based on chance, and it's theoretically possible for several of them to stack over a couple subsequent segments,
• large caverns are generated by multiplying the previous segment's sizes by a large number,
• the algorithm does some things to roughly keeps cave sizes in check, but there doesn't seem to be a hard limit (unless it's asymptotic).

So it seems to me possible that the cave size was increased very quickly over a couple segments, leading to this monstrosity.

As for it looking artificial, I'd argue that applies to almost all caves in VS. The caves are generated just by carving ellipsoids (stretched spheres) in rock. While they do get deformed somewhat with random noise, it's ultimately just ellipsoids. Some deformation is also visible in the screenshots, which, when using something like World Edit, would have to be added in separately from simply carving a ball.

There's also basalt with a bunch of pretty believable stones and even flint on the floor as well as speleothems, which would have to be added in as well. If it's artificial, then there was some pretty good effort to keep it really quite in line with the actual cave generation.

 

1 hour ago, CastIronFabric said:

I do however call foul on your claim. It would have to be fairly common place for your story

They are really not that uncommon. I mean, you might have to be pretty lucky to find an actual near-perfect half-sphere, but roughly a blob with a flat basalt bottom can appear anytime a cave generates near Y = 12.

Edited Wednesday at 04:31 PM by MKMoose

[ifoz]

7 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

I do however call foul on your claim. It would have to be fairly common place for your story

I have no idea why I'd want to make up my claim, really.
I've flown around in creative noclip a lot testing worldgen, especially back in 1.20.
These big spherical caves aren't all that common, but they happen often enough for me to find them in noclip mode.


This is a screenshot from 2024, you can tell because the NPCs in the hotbar aren't wearing clothing, which is a bug that's now been patched.

Edited Wednesday at 10:43 PM by ifoz

[marmarmar34]

11 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Those very circular geometric shapes are very suspicious.  This looks VERY artificial.  Note a switch to creative back to survival just before the screenshot?   I call foul and believe that this is the result from using world edit.

It was either go into creative to place torches or download a mod that enables fullbright. I chose the former. Believe what you will.

When I saw this the first time, I thought the chunk in front of me bugged out. It was just a pitch black void with monster moans coming out of it.

[Maelstrom]

After I posted I thought that the switch to creative was to place torches in those high to reach places.  That formation is incredibly geometric that it seems artificial.   

Good find!