Weird. Hope it's true. Ridley said years back that he wished he could use real-life locations for an alien world:
'Studio landscape is bloody difficult. You're constantly staring at plaster rocks and saying, "Christ, this doesn't look right." I would have preferred to do some of it on location and then do a studio link. In fact, I 'd been looking at some spots for another picture that would have been beautiful for Alien, particularly in Turkey where there are these pyramid-like dwellings – huge mountainous structures which cover hundreds of square miles. Absolutely extraordinary. But it was a practical budget decision not to go away on location, and so we just did what we could in the studio.'
Ridley Scott, Cinefex, 1979.