Yeah technically, this looks super impressive! Thanks for this Alex. I also admire the ambition of the project, that said they have a lot of resources and are taking a lot of time, so hopefully things pull together. the level of detail and scale is top tier. The lighting in general is also good, although some of it looks off to me. I think next gen we will get games with better fidelity, animation, proximate geometry, etc. But this thing isn't likely to be beaten on scale.
They will be improving technology and fidelity in the future, so it a moving target ;p
Some examples from top of my head:
- just recently they finished working on new hair tech and whole production pipeline for it
- they are doing an R&D on photogrammetry tech for planetary assets
- they are working on better bright light representation and curve, so snowy planets or very bright conditions are better represented
- they finished or are finishing (do not remember ;p) new material system
- they are working on full Global Illumination tech, because current one is single bounce and only works from the sun (this one could be on hold currently)
- they just released new screenspace based global illumination tech for flashlights, something inline with what TLOU was doing
- they are completely reworking shadowing system to better handle long distance and large objects, as well microscale objects
- they are working on new full on volumetric fog system for ground terrain
- they will be working (i do not know the progress on this one) on weather and clouds effects for planets
- they are working on pull/push mechanics in zero-G and improvements to movement animation on stairs
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The tech looks impressive -- but will it still be impressive when the game actually releases? By the time they ship a completed product we will be possibly years into next-generation, and all this advanced tech will pretty much be the standard.
I dont think they will. Of course some of the tech SC is using or developed will be developed/used in other engines, the prime example is double precision cords system, which already is being used in some games like new Flight Sim for example, but not all of them or not to degree that is being used in SC.
Alex only talked about tech in the game in high level manner, but pretty much every tech he covered is required for game to even work or was part of multi years research. Companies cannot just start now and come up with fully working solutions next year or two years from now for many stuff that CIG did, it takes time, very smart people and a lot of trial and error.
Unified 1st and 3rd person animation system for example was being worked on for years. Many engineering core in CIG's Frankfurt office is core team from Crytek and they said that they were working on unified 1st/3rd person animation since Crysis 2.
It actually has 3 hard components that they had to R&D, one is of course how to create animations that look good and work in both modes, second how to apply inverse kinematics feedback animations and not completely block players viewpoint and still be realistic and 3rd that was the most hard for them, how to make a eye stabilization tech to work with all of those animations and inverse kinematic animation and still feel like player have full fluid control over a character and camera doesnt bounce with every move. The third one they said they resolved with few lines of code in the end, but it tooks years to do it.
Another thing regarding this game is how complex it is in comparison to others. The main thing is that is multiplayer, this alone make everything harder, another its a space sim of very high fidelity of systems and that means simulation and synchronization in multiplayer of one ship can be more expensive than dozen of players, they had to rework a lot of systems how they synchronize data, how they calculate physics and systems (in complex batch modes) and send it to server (in special optimized formats), how to synchronize with other players and when cut of this synchronization etc.
Next the scale, they have cities or point of interested with dozens of thousands of simulated entities spread over whole solar system, they had to create a tech that support such large amount of objects on server side (millions literally), system to synchronize those items, system to make them persistent, so you can grab item, move 10 millions km away to some moon and drop it on the ground and fly away and then other players can pick it up with the same properties.
And so on, and so on. I could literally talk for hours about their tech and what limitations they encountered, how they overcame it and how many times they iterated on them, because they explained it all in hundreds of hours of content they provide to community in videos, streams or blog posts.
I mean if you are interested to learn, i recommend watching below presentation about animation and head rig scaling for accessories. Its probably the best tech presentation i've ever watched.
Especially first 30 minutes, so Ivo Herzog's presentation, you'll get an idea with how hard engineering problems they deal with daily :)
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PS. That being said i would love for Star Citizen engine to be shared with other companies or even being the part of Lumberyard release in future, so more devs could use its technology :)
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