I have spent 20 in-game hours over the last week scouring a planet looking for Osseus Spiralis. This was due mainly to a lack of understanding in regards to what I was supposed to be looking for; the oft mentioned but never explained "Rocky Areas".
My intent here is to spell out what to look for, so everyone can make good use of their game time instead of wandering around in frustration.
The first thing of note for budding exobiologists that I found frequent misinformation about:
This is not a heatmap!
The DSS map is a binary representation of areas where you can (shaded) and cannot (unshaded) find the selected type of life form. The colour variation in the shaded area indicate the topography of the surface. Think of it's function as telling you where not to land, rather than exactly where to look. "Exactly where to look" comes next…
Rocky Areas as a term could mean just anywhere, especially on a Rocky planet, right? Nope.
They are definable terrain features that can be found in craters and on plains, and can be defined by their outline in night vision mode:
The area spotted/shaded by the night vision are what you're after. Cruise around a plain, moving from patch to patch, and you'll shortly find an Osseus if they exist on the planet. To give you an idea of how well this works: Of the 20 hours I spent looking for Osseus, I found my three specimens in the last 20 minutes. After learning what a Rocky Area was.
Lastly, know what you're looking for and what it looks like. The following link contains information regarding what specific kinds of life can be found under which conditions:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nV_UD_0kIxkWAHhAqvf62ILHpbYzdZpJ53CqPHn3qlA/edit?usp=sharing
Compare the conditions of your current planet to the listed specimens, then hit up the codex in-game for what it looks like.
I'm not gonna lie, I spent a lot of the past 20 hours mad at Frontier for not respecting my time. Once I knew what to look for that feeling dulled considerably, but it didn't disappear. I don't expect handholding or quest markers, but vagueries like "Rocky Areas" for explicitly definable game features do not make for an engaging experience. They make for wasted time.
If this info helps one person to not feel as dumb as I do right now, it will have been worth it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. 😛
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