Test Server Feedback

Hi,

Our graphics team is busy re-publishing all ships to use PBR (physically based rendering). In the current build many are already done - but many are still missing (for example all Minmatar) and others will need tweaking.

Do not send any bug reports yet about missing ships and other related issues (like wrong colors). Feel free to share your first impressions in this thread, but the graphics team is NOT looking for feedback yet (but I can understand if you are being excited about the new looks - our internal QA chat was very busy yesterday while we explored some of the new looks). They will post their own thread as soon as they are ready. I will close this thread then.

Known issues:
* Minmatar ships and a few other ships are missing
* Icons in the ISIS are missing

poor caldari .. just as they are getting nice looking models .. you do this too them

Changes are interesting, but I'm not sure yet if its overdone or not. The amount of reflection makes most of the ships look like they're made out of aluminum, like a freshly waxed new car. Not sure if spaceships that constantly take blows in the megaton range should be made out of aluminum.

The Mach.. has turned into a Minni ship..

Everything looks like HDR on steroids.

first of all I want to say "Hell, It's about time"
I am glad that CCP not far behind the quality of the whole gaming industry (and often even ahead)

some minor problems with old model textures - but I think this will be fixed in future

and of course new ships design must be not only with right scale
but now also with right material types in mind (because in PBR its matter)
I also noticed that some of the newer ships have already been made with PBR in mind

Unfortunately I did not catch the time to try it myself on SiSi - and have little question
-- Physically Based Shading required scattered (blurred) version of reflection for "Rough" materials
(because now reflections is really important part of whole visual with PBR)
so how EVE handles it - with math in shader or just by set of low resolution blurred cubemap textures?
(how strongly felt the difference between rough and smooth materials ?)

PS. it will be awesome visual boost when CCP artists get used to PBS\PBR and also fix old textures
(and roughness masks - if used "roughness" workflow)
i hope with time players(people) will understand that with PBR any object of EVE World may look
like this image - or this video - or this image - or this image
(first time "metal" will feel like a real metal) - and this is only the beginning

Argh too late. Noticed I can't see any Minmatar hulls, cried a little and wrote a bug report. :(

But I really like what I've seen so far. :)

The new blackbird.. SEXY!!

Gallente T2 in general looks odd now, way too shiny especially when the other races are now more matte than ever. Makes the ships look less realistic and more like toys. Duvolle colors in general just seem weird. They were some of my favorite looking ships before the patch (especially Astarte) but now they look like a shiny mess. Roden is similarly too shiny (just look at oneiros or lachesis). CreoDron is better; perhaps still a bit too shiny for my tastes but I still like the look of ships like the Sin. The Amastratis and Ultramarine miasmos look kind of weird, but they're not seen often so it doesn't bother me nearly as much.

T1 is better, still some overly shiny bits (Moros) but overall much better. Very happy with Navy, Serpentis, as well as the various corp skins. Love the deeper yellow on the Inner Zone ships and the blue on standard Quafe. One oddity I noticed is that the Erebus is nearly completely silver now which doesnt fit with the rest of Gallente T1 as much as it used to.

Other than that though the new shaders look really good. Particular favorites of mine are T1 Amarr, Amarr Navy, Nugueohevi, Caldari Navy, and Kador.

Reposting what I posted here not realising there was already discussion in this forum:

Hello friends,

In CCP Seagull's dev blog on Rhea she mentioned the new 'Physically Based Rendering' that CCP will be introducing in the next release. I suggest you look at that section in the dev blog before continuing: https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/coming-to-eve-online-in-the-rhea-release-on-december-9th/

Like most people when I saw in the GIF in the blog of the Apocalypse and Oracle I was very impressed but I've just spent a few hours on Sisi looking at the new appearance of the ships and I'm a bit concerned.

It seems to me that PBR works fantastically for some ships but not so well for others. Most Amarr ships look amazing with this new technique but Gallente ships look much too glossy and Caldari ships seems a bit to "flat" and either cartoon-ey or pastel-ey. Here are some screenshots that I've stolen from Reddit which show some of the new hulls. From these you can already see what I'm getting at but the issue is even more pronounced when in-game. I'd encourage people to hop on Sisi and see what I mean by that. Check out the Gallente Duvolle ships in particular (Taranis, Arazu, Astarte) for overly glossy and virtually any Caldari ship hull for really flat, dry looks.

I guess my feedback on PBR for the ships coming in Rhea is that while the Amarr ships generally look great, others are a step backward from where they are now. Ideally all the ships would look better but from what I've seen after examining about 40 different ships currently on Sisi it'll be a scenario with some winners but a lot of losers from the PBR effort.

CCP: please revisit the Gallente and Caldari ships. Make the former less shiny and the latter more "vibrant".

I can't remark on Minmatar ships since as of the time of this post there are no Minnie ships showing at all on Sisi.

My impressions:
- Most of ships looks just awesome. Especially Amarr ans Caldari ships. I disagree that caldari looks "plastic", just matte. It makes them more consistent, you know.
- Impel has texture bug on t2 thrusters.
- Ishukone color scheme looks worse than not PBR version. I suppose it needs complete rethink. (And make Raptor Ishukone ship!)
- KK scheme just awesome. But Nighthawk looks too rusty. All another Drake variants too.
- Duvolle Labs scheme is too shiny. Needs fix.
- Big problems with color of "interior lights" on most amarr and some other ships (mostly green on amarrs).
- I hope turrets and launchers will use PBR as soon as possible too.
- I completely love new Federation Navy look.
- Sarum scheme will looks better with little more shiny golden plates. Make them as shiny as t1 one.
- Not sure if all Ok with sansha ships (lack of "green oil"), but I like new look.