Planetary Landing
Planetary Landings is the act of landing on a planet with a ship. It was added with the Elite Dangerous: Horizons expansion on December 15, 2015.
Players are able to land on four types of airless planets - rocky, metal, ice and rocky/metal - which make up 61% of the planet types in Elite Dangerous' Milky Way. These planets vary in size and composition, therefore having different gravity forces affecting the flight and landing dynamics.
The landings are graphically seamless with a small pause for instance loading, and the planets can be explored in low-level flight or by using a Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle.[1] Once on the surface, players can discover constructed, as well as natural, points of interest, which can be military bases, research establishments, hideouts, starports, mining complexes, crashed ships and debris to investigate. The nature of the encounter varies depending on where the player is: the planet type and composition, and the local topography affected by geology.[2]
Landing on atmospheric planets with cities and lifeforms will be added with future updates. Check the Atmospheric Landings page for more information.
Landing
There aren't any transitions between supercruise and planetary orbit. When you go into orbit there's an altitude meter and G meter. When you drop out of supercruise over the surface of a planet, the game does peer-to-peer (P2P) matchmaking and instance creation. So dropping out of supercruise can cause a slowdown. The slowdown or load time was reduced after some updates.