There is a pyramid on the Mun!

[SyberSmoke]

I'm not sure they are errors. They all have much less detail than surrounding terrain, it almost looks like they're put there intentionally. And many other poles are perfectly flat (at least Kerbin, Minmus, Dres, and Ike).

Lets see if I can explain. It does not look like ALL of the planets terrain is procedural, the terrain of all the planets conforms over a series of games in a broader sense. This means that some one created the terrain, at least the broad strokes (mountains, valleys, hills...etc.) while the smaller bumps and close in irregularities are added by the engine.

This means that the terrain has a height map some where that it takes the general map cords from. I have made these and usually they are a gray scale image, but they can also be color coded, or just text files you paint into existence with an editor. The problem is that the image is a natural square. And squares do not work well when wrapped around a sphere.

So in the process of making a complex terrain on a square, you generate artifacts...little holes, typically in the poles, where the map just does not make any sense. This can be mitigated by having your poles flat and at the default height...so the error does not manifest. But if you make a varied terrain that is higher or lower then default, you tend to get spires or divots. This is simply because that vertex of the mesh remains at default height while the vertices around it get height map data.

It is a common error with spheres...you can get around it by having multiple terrain maps. Layering them together like paper machete on a basketball. But this can cause other issues if they are not blended properly. So in the end, we get odd little WTF's because of the nature of computers. Pixles are square...images are square...and we do what we can to wrap those squares around things that are not.

Edited November 11, 2013 by SyberSmoke

[Kasuha]

It is a common error with spheres...you can get around it by having multiple terrain maps. Layering them together like paper machete on a basketball. But this can cause other issues if they are not blended properly. So in the end, we get odd little WTF's because of the nature of computers. Pixles are square...images are square...and we do what we can to wrap those squares around things that are not.

According to what HarvesteR presented on the

(around 32:00), KSP uses a cube mapped on a sphere. And as I wrote before, not all planets are crazy around poles.

[Savage117]

So if these Pyramids were built by aliens what would they be called? Muntians? Dunians? Mo Ho's?

Seriously though, I always liked these kind of easter eggs, not something that was placed there deliberately by a dev, but just a glitch, its even better when devs leave them in the finished game later. For veteran players to go "Oh, I remember that glitch :)" and new players to go "WTF!!??". Wish it wasn’t so easy to find though, since its obviously going to be at the poles, it would be kinda cool if they're location was more random.