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New dev blog: Introducing New Nebulae into EVE

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Author
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Dr Djago
EnTech Technology
#221 - 2011-11-04 15:08:45 UTC
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!
Cerulean Ice
Royal Amarr Reclamation
#222 - 2011-11-04 15:18:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Cerulean Ice
Tairon Usaro wrote:
yet another x GB Patch...

Your concern was answered back on page 9.
CCP t0rfifrans wrote:
Camios wrote:
...By the way, how heavy are the new backgrounds in MBs?...

The total size for 67 cubemaps is 201 megabytes...

So you will be downloading 201 megs, which are then compressed...

Cerulean Ice, Professor, E-UNI
Vegare
Bitslix
Lolsec Fockel
#223 - 2011-11-04 15:24:58 UTC
Just checked out those nebulea on Sisi.Cool

Very nice looking! Thumbs up. Great graphics.


However, you asked for feedback, so here is what came to my mind:

- All Stars seem to be infront of the nebulae. This becomes apparent at parts of a nebula where a shadow is cast onto it by itself, or where the dust is very thick. The light of stars behind those nebulae should not cut through those parts, exactly like it works with the dark side of planets. (bug?)

- When zooming into a phenomenon the resolution quickly becomes too low. (Lots of people will want to zoom into them) However, you already mentioned a high resolution pack.

- The main issue: Jumps between regions often seem uncoherent regarding the real distances (those indicated by the star map) compared to the change of position in space according to the nebulea.

For example: If your traveling through Devoid direction Domain you can see the brown dust cloud (which is basically sourrounding Domain) looming infront of you for like 10 jumps and lots of lightyears of travel. The jump into Domain is just a very short one, however now you're all of a sudden right inside the cloud.
So you get a feeling of movement and travel because the "landscape" changes now and then, but there is no way to orientate yourself or achieve a reasonable feeling of location and distance. This is a pitty because it renders the whole "landscape idea" relatively mood and degrades the new nebulea to just a new pretty background.

--> One cube map per region is not enough. However, I do see that it won't be possible to create individual cube maps for each constellation by hand in a reasonable amount of time :(

Anyways, great work!

o/
vegare
Lolmer
Merciless Reckoning
#224 - 2011-11-04 16:08:10 UTC
CCP Vertex wrote:
Just a reminder to everyone, we are watching this thread for feedback on the Nebulae once they are on the test server.

Let us know if you have any issues and please file a bug report here: https://bugs.eveonline.com/login.asp


As this wasn't clear to me as he said "once" instead of "now that"... ;): new nebulae are now live on singularity
Denidil
Cascades Mountain Operatives
#225 - 2011-11-04 16:16:28 UTC
this thread is evidence that some people will whine about anything. hey whiners: GROW UP


(i'm speaking to the people complaining about download size, how CCP is spendings it's assets, etc. legit discussion about region vs constellation vs system level accuracy are not whines)

Tedium and difficulty are not the same thing, if you don't realize this then STFU about game design.
Bratwurst0r
DARK ORCHESTRA
#226 - 2011-11-04 16:25:59 UTC
Nice work on SISI, but my point stands, region granularity is too rough. But i like that in outer regions there is way more dark space now.

BTW, in some regions the boundaries of the cube are visible as linies that intersect the nebulaes.
Selar Nox
#227 - 2011-11-04 18:04:25 UTC
Right back from enjoying the scenery on SiSi.
Looks really gorgeous and gives a way better feeling of being in space. I like it :)
Now I would even more like to have a higher granularity.

I also registered a better warp effect. Or is this just a side effect of the more (as in quantity) and darker black used for the new "backgrounds"?
CCP t0rfifrans
C C P
C C P Alliance
#228 - 2011-11-04 18:06:20 UTC
Selar Nox wrote:
Right back from enjoying the scenery on SiSi.
Looks really gorgeous and gives a way better feeling of being in space. I like it :)
Now I would even more like to have a higher granularity.

I also registered a better warp effect. Or is this just a side effect of the more (as in quantity) and darker black used for the new "backgrounds"?

You are correct, the warp effect is being worked on as well.
CCP t0rfifrans
C C P
C C P Alliance
#229 - 2011-11-04 18:11:14 UTC
John McCreedy wrote:
John McCreedy wrote:
This may have been mentioned but especially from a nullsec dwellers perspective, will this cause more lag in larger engagements and can it be turned off/down in the graphics settings if your PC struggles with it?


t0ri, I appreciate you're trying to look through a lot of replies but part of what caused all the drama over Incarna was CCP's mismanagement of expectations prior to launch (i.e. us thinking we where getting something more than a single CQ). Unless you want to repeat the same mistakes again, we need an answer on this question otherwise the first fleet battle involving almost 1000 pilots that crashes the node is going to result in some serious unholy rage Shocked


Like stated somewhere above, the textures are the same size in megabytes as existing textures, around 3mb. We may add 1 mb to them for extra visual quality, making them a total of 4 mb. For comparison, the Raven model occupies just under 3mb of texture memory. So the nebulas occupy a little more texture memory than one battleship.

That said, they are at double resolution ( 1024x1024x6 ) than the existing nebulas ( 512x512x6 ). However, due to them being DXT1 compressed rather than uncompressed RGB 888, they are the same file size. So we are not expecting any performance hit, but that's what Singularity testing is for, to find if that is true.

And no, we won't provide an off switch for them, given their relatively low VRAM and performance footprint.
Grukni
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#230 - 2011-11-04 18:36:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Grukni
I'm comming back from playing around with the SiSi build, and I can only say AWESOME JOB, CCP!
Oberine Noriepa
#231 - 2011-11-04 18:53:17 UTC
So, earlier in this thread there was some mention of a possible high resolution pack for the nebulae as an optional patch. How likely is it that we'll see something like that? I would definitely download and use it if it became available!

I really love what you guys have done. Beautiful stuff! Big smile

∃
Imigo Montoya
BreadFleet
Triglavian Outlaws and Sobornost Troika
#232 - 2011-11-04 19:16:50 UTC
Hiram Alexander wrote:
I'm not trolling, but... to my mind, it makes perfect sense in a 'lore' respect... While I can concur that having more 'beautiful' or at least 'less scary' looking regions out there would encourage people to go exploring -- that in itself, in my mind, is the very reason why hisec looks so 'nice'... Those were the areas that the initial explorers from the EVE gate were attracted to and settled in.

The harsh 'scary' places were left til later... ;)


I'm sure that Los Angeles and New York had fantastic wild vistas before people settled there and turned the area into urban sprawl. Blink

What makes the "harsh scary" places harsh and scary is the level of law and order there, not the natural surroundings.
Adan Natrier
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#233 - 2011-11-04 19:25:17 UTC
no flaming here, looks amazing. this definitely must come right after 'a readable font' on the list of forthcoming cosmetic changes I wish were already on TQ. This is what atmospheric means, in the context of a spaceship game - to be actually flying through the world map.

I'm not above asking for more free cake however; those moons are awfully grey..
Obsidian Hawk
RONA Midgard Academy
#234 - 2011-11-04 19:33:37 UTC
Still the key question, before you nuke the old backgrounds, can you post them on the main website as downloadable wallpapers?

Preserve our history of eve! preserve the old nebulae, also i have a rotating wallpaper on my lappy, it would be nice to see a new nebulae every 5 mins with eve music in the bg.

Why Can't I have a picture signature.

Also please support graphical immersion, bring back the art that brought people to EvE online originaly.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#235 - 2011-11-04 19:57:40 UTC
Oberine Noriepa wrote:
So, earlier in this thread there was some mention of a possible high resolution pack for the nebulae as an optional patch. How likely is it that we'll see something like that? I would definitely download and use it if it became available!

I really love what you guys have done. Beautiful stuff! Big smile


I would prefer to see both a hi-res version as well as a lower-detail version for those of us running machines with slightly older video cards. And that goes for pretty much everything. I love the new eye candy for my main machine, but it doesn't run so well on my 4 year old laptop (Quadro NVS 140M 512MB).
Thebriwan
LUX Uls Xystus
#236 - 2011-11-04 19:58:29 UTC
I am looking right now at the new space. And of course the nebula look fantastic.

But it is very much darker now.

I am in The Citadel and sometimes it's so dark that I don't see my ship properly - I have to move the camera about, so that I can get light from the sun. - There should be floodlights on the camera drones!

I don't know how much darker it is in 0.0 but i am frightened Bear
Hrug
Lutinari Syndicate
#237 - 2011-11-04 20:00:17 UTC
Some screenshots after flying through space on SiSi for an hour or so: http://imgur.com/a/Oez1X
accl
The Unclaimed
Unclaimable
#238 - 2011-11-04 20:02:46 UTC  |  Edited by: accl
First time posting. Perfect example of a normal highsec missioner and I need to point out the fact that 90% of the eyecandy in eve are the nebulas (you can't effectively mission zoomed in to your ship). Nebulas are where the immersion of space and the vastness of it come from. The current backgrounds only break immersion when you notice the color range fades in smooth areas (almost like 16bit windows color range).
I checked out the new nebulas on sisi anticipating an increase in quality and a remedy to the current situation.
Have to say that the picture I saw left me a bit (understatement) worried. A pilot doesn't even need to focus to have the distortions pop out of the background and break immersion. I don't think it's only on my pc (i7 & 560ti), noticed it on some of the screenshots here also. The square edges reminded me of minecraft graphics. Hard to describe. I'll put a link here with 8mb screenshot - should be clear to anyone watching in 1080p no zoom. You've done a fantastic job creating these new backdrops and hearing that the rendering was 2gb makes me feel like its all wasted because as you said the real ingame assets are a tiny 200mb. I dislike the font too - feels like the middle ages, like a medival font - not eve at all (and it's too big, the ui resize 90% does not work too, makes it too small). Will be sad to see the current font gone. Feel bad to post such a negative comment, but I hope you guys see my side of this - we all want the game to be immersive and futuristic.
[url]http://www.upload.ee/files/1786563/2011.11.04.18.30.22.bmp.html[/url]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/J6z16.jpg[/IMG] - this is too heavily compressed, almost pointless
Andreus Ixiris
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#239 - 2011-11-04 20:31:12 UTC
OK, I'm testing out the new Nebulae on SiSi here's the thing:

1. Changing backdrops by region is not granular enough. Seriously, it doesn't give any impression of travel across the vast reaches of space that regions are supposed to be.

2. I still can't see Ginnungagap from Korama. If you claim that it's easily visible from Korama, the least you could do would be to actually make the damn thing visible from Korama.

They're pretty but we need a bigger sense of motion between systems.

Andreus Ixiris > A Civire without a chin is barely a Civire at all.

Pieter Tuulinen > He'd be Civirely disadvantaged, Andreus.

Andreus Ixiris > ...

Andreus Ixiris > This is why we're at war.
Airu Naari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#240 - 2011-11-04 20:37:40 UTC
This looks just a m a z i n g! I am so happy you guys are extremely talented at CCP and are making this game even more awesome. And can't wait for it to hit live server!