In fact almost nothing in the game is seamless. Boarding ships is not seamless leaving your ship is not seamless entering buildings is not seamless traveling to a different part on the planet via a Metro system like new Atlas has is not this is not some early version of the game it is clearly designed this way.
There is a pop-up when you get to the boundary alerting you that you have hit the boundary of that area that was designed by the developers.
It is in fact a lie that you can explore the entirety of the planet seamlessly which is what they've led to us to believe. Nothing on the planet is existing until you land there that is my firm belief. Because I have landed directly next to opposite landing zones and the terrain is not nearly the same or similar
Yeah if I had to give you my honest opinion fully explorable planets is a clever lie. Technically you can land in multiple spots on the planet and technically that means the whole planet is explorable. But the whole planet doesn't exist outside of those squares.
I tried making four landing spaces directly next to each other and it didn't make the area any bigger. Each one of those areas were separate and not connected