Test Server Feedback

Good. I'm glad we could come to an agreement!


The problem with the current implementation of PBR is that it only looks good when light's reflecting off shiny or gloss surfaces. When anything else is involved - matte shaders are a particular pain in the neck - it just looks drab and flat. Almost all the standard-issue Caldari ships have this problem, as do a lot of Minmatar vessels. The green areas of Gallente ships also suffer from being drab and visually unappealing - at the very least, the vibrancy of Gallente green needs to be rejiggered so the ships retain their pre-PBR visual appeal.

The issue is that PBR actually does exactly what it says on the tin - it's Physically Based Rendering and the problem is that it does accurately reflect how these ships would look under realistic lighting. The problem is that the current ships (apart from the possible exception of the new Blackbird and Incursus models) weren't designed with PBR in mind - they were designed with the universal "vague shine" that marked EVE's V3 graphics pre-PBR. PBR hasn't changed the way the ships are coloured - it's accurately simulating the way light would reflect off those surfaces. It isn't that PBR has made the ships look boring, it's that the ships were technically always boring but the less advanced lighting model we used to use covered it up by inaccurately representing what the ships look like. To solve the problem we're experiencing, CCP don't need to fix PBR - they need to reskin the ships and redo the shaders.

The problem is that CCP has already decided it's going to release PBR in its current state on December 9th, and like certain other terrible decisions, unless there's an utterly massive backlash against them, CCP won't budge. I absolutely agree that CCP needs to rethink PBR but unless you can produce a seriously compelling and very large group of people saying "don't release PBR in this state," CCP is going to release PBR in this state. This is part of a much, much larger problem with CCP consistently and intentionally disregarding the advice of their testers.

Well, you see, the high-res textures are just a bigger version of my gripe about the goggles. This is a feature that CCP quite transparently has developed because they've shown it to us on multiple occasions - pretty much everything they show you at fanfest is on an EVE client running the high-res textures, and everything you see in the Jessica engine (which they use to make the cinematic trailers) is done using the high-res textures.

The high-res textures absolutely exist, and they are absolutely not being released by CCP despite the fact that there's increasing demand for them.

Yes, but how many expansions do we have to "tough it out" before PBR rendering becomes epic?

I checked Abaddon earlier today, it looks much better than before now that its hull got a better looking structure. There is a much better feel for the volume of the ship, it certainly feels "more 3D" compared to the earlier flatter looks.
Yet still, the base texture will probably need a very thorough rework at some point, because it looks very low rez and full of artifacts if you just zoom a bit into the ship.

Here is a view where it is looking much improved:
http://abload.de/img/2014.12.04.17.09.141azux.png
http://abload.de/img/2014.12.04.17.09.068al06.png

Here also in space, much better surface structure than before:
http://abload.de/img/2014.12.04.17.04.26inlu5.png

And here what is becoming more obvious when you start zooming in:
http://abload.de/img/2014.12.04.17.05.45z9lhf.png
http://abload.de/img/2014.12.04.17.05.3552zlv.png
This is visible not only at full zoom.

Another small detail that irks me a little bit about the Abaddon is that the rows of lights on both sides of the ship towards its end are basically swallowed by the reflections of gold plating around them. Feels like an unnecessary loss of another detail.

Looking at other ships i suspect that many of them would look somewhat messy if they featured a bright hull like the Amarr battleship line.

On the other hand, the segmented gold plating on the top of the Apocalypse is pretty boss now, gold and shiny with the new rendering, much better than on TQ imo.

Welcome to my world since early 2011, buddy. CCP outright deleted a post of mine pointing out that they don't listen to their testers and giving examples of how this behaviour has come back to bite them in the ass.

My thought is that PBR as a system looks great.

The problem is it hasn't been properly taken advantage of yet. The ships that look drab aren't that way because of PBR specifically, it's because the ships themselves could use some work. it's these textures that need to be worked on rather than the system itself.

What he said.

Fair enough.

I don't know where hi-res textures fit in to that, though. The detail level is at least workable at present; it's the combinations of color and shininess in general, and adding more pixel won't fix that, so the high resolution textures CCP has in house would probably need to be dumped anyways.

I do, definitely want to see higher resolution textures and even possibly higher poly models, but that's tangential to the issue here. I would also add that while CCP really should hurry up ad add these to the game, it should probably be optional since delivering that high level of graphical content could be detrimental to certain people (low bandwidth, data caps, etc.), so new textures at the current detail level are needed as well.

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I would fully support delaying this feature till the textures can be worked out.
That is, after all, the point of the 6 week release cycle.

On a side note, I again urge CCP to put new features up for feedback earlier in the QA process. As much as I like the shorter lead times on new content, I am getting tired of CCP waiting till the last minute to make sure it's actually ready to ship. I would very much like to start seeing threads on changes coming in the release AFTER the next one (ie. 6-8 weeks n advance), rather than just have them start going up 2-3 weeks before release. like it is now.

With the current setup, there's a lot more shadowing and diffuse lighting so the standard low-res textures are more subtle. With PBR, everything is brighter and sharper - so the differences are now more glaring.


Yes, I'll grant you that the Amarr and Gallente ships look better. Minmatar and Caldari ships are somewhat worse for the wear, but Angels, Sansha and Serpentis ships have been absolutely massacred. SoE and Mordus Legion come off neutral (with some loss of detail), and Blood Raiders and Guristas are muted/flat.

Theres a dev response regarding PBR on my thread here https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=386971