Star Citizen ’s latest Around The Verse episode just dropped, and this week’s installment is all about engine trails. Find out how new tools have led to great performance gains heading into 3.0.
The team at Cloud Imperium Games’ Austin office devoted lots of discussion to the central mission giver named Eckhart. The mission system has been improved to highlight his missions, and his usables are now functioning properly. That means players can interact with various pieces of his environment like bar stools, glasses and more. Eckhart can interact with those objects, too.
With regard to ships, the main subjects include a detail pass on the Cutlass Black, as well as the Xi’an Nox bike that was first revealed last week . You can catch a glimpse of the former by checking out the image below.
The headline subject, however, was engine trail VFX, and Visual Effects Director Mike Snowden was on hand to totally geek out about those. The video below features a pretty technical explanation of how trails will follow your favorite ships, but we’ll boil it down to the most basic information.
In simplest terms, the VFX team has found a way to dramatically increase the number of particle effects on screen by taking a serious load off CPU coding. As Snowden describes, there are two kinds of particles: deterministic and non-deterministic. Most particles fall into the latter category, and that means they can be fully uploaded into the game in a single pass. The team now has the tools to separate both tiers of effects, so it’s much faster to compute.
In addition, the latest VFX tools now offer GPU usage. That means far less strain on the user’s PC and much better performance overall. It’s clear in the video clip that there’s little to no lag as ships traverse open space. That’s a major improvement over what backers have seen in previous alphas. While the look of these trails remains fairly basic, it’s a major improvement over older builds. With these new systems in place, Snowden estimates it could be possible to have hundreds of simultaneous particle effects running with few dropped frames.
These finer details may not offer much in terms of gameplay, but they'll be a major part of the experience as Star Citizen inches closer to final release. The trails ships leave as they move are an essential way to follow friends and foes while navigating solar systems. Lining up shots or tracking means keeping a close eye on engine trails and other particle effects as they emerge. They also add a great deal of sci-fi detail too. The feature itself may not seem as meaty as the multiplayer-focused ATV from a few weeks ago , but every small asset can potentially have a huge impact on such a massive game.
Star Citizen is currently in alpha for Kickstarter backers on PC.
What are your thoughts on these engine trails? Are you happy with the latest LOD pass on the Cutlass? Tell us in the comments section!
