Yeah, I think it's the size of the sphere specifically. Is there any way you can fake the approach? Perhaps an atmosphere of clouds and the planet itself disappears and you replace the planet with a ground before the ship lands?
Here's a quick example of using a large plain instead of a sphere for the initial approach. Steer with mouse. Up arrow/down arrow for movement:
set display mode 800,600,32
sync on
sync rate 60
autocam off
rem make a sphere image
cinc#=255/127.0
for r=0 to 127
c=255-r*cinc#
ink rgb(c,c,0),0
circle 128,128,r
circle 128,127,r
next r
get image 1,0,0,256,256
sync
rem make a big planet
make object plain 1,20000,20000
set object 1,1,0,0
texture object 1,1
rem position camera far away
position camera 0,0,-12000
set camera range 1,20000
do
gosub _move_camera
set object to camera orientation 1
sync
loop
`----------------------------------------------------------------
_move_camera:
move camera (upkey()-downkey())*5
yang#=wrapvalue(camera angle y()+mousemovex())
xang#=wrapvalue(camera angle x()+mousemovey())
yrotate camera yang#
xrotate camera xang#
return
`----------Enjoy your day.
