Inside Star Citizen: Life Among the Clouds | Spring 2021

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:01

   [Music] i felt goosebumps so i know i don't know i i hope you feel the passion not just from from the other team but from everyone that poured a lot of work into this i hope music gives justice to the thousands of men hours that were put in this place it's just so much better than we ever hoped it would be when we started working on crusader half a year ago

2. 00:00:51

   very very different than what you'd see you know there's huge vistas to look at these beautiful sunsets to look at but also almost too perfect a world i guess the biggest reaction that we're trying to create is this insane sense of scale and we really want to capture that sense of of origin just sprawling out into the distance i've seen our backers get excited about all kinds of tiny little details that you'd think that doesn't really matter but the first time i saw it for myself it was beautiful i'll be honest it'll only get better from here the things that give an environment character

3. 00:01:38

   beyond just the architecture and the shape of it is things that are super important like the the dressing the props that are placed around the foliage a lot of it is about adding that human element in because if you have no dressing you've just got architecture it feels very sterile and doesn't feel very real so one way we um we try to add that character into a location is through what we call our graphics standards which includes fonts and iconography and just style of lines and things and those can be different between whole landing zones but they could also be different within landing zones depending on it it might be more industrial looking it might be more habitation or looking and or medical for example

4. 00:02:27

   there's different ways you can do that one thing that we talked about was tourism is a big part of your industry you want to paint the pretty picture you want to have the postcard shot you consume through your your eyes as you see what people are dressed like what are the you know what are the vendors wearing what are they selling what are they talking you know the people that come up to you what's the average person look like that tells so much about an area in this case we kind of focused in on sort of this uh 1950s americana like the white picket fence the perfect family unit you know the norman rockwell sort of painting like what is that sci-fi version of that even the guys wearing suits it's like that traditional well-dressed businessman of that era and that kind of was our jumping off point it's got a much different feel than a lot of the zones because of that

5. 00:03:19

   performance is one of the biggest challenges especially for lighting for lighting we wanted to achieve a nice contrast between you know kind of a friendly welcoming mood for the commercial and tourism areas and then at the same time not an unwelcoming mood but more of a functional kind of high-tech workspace for the other industrial platforms and then at the same time we also want to add further contrast so that at daytime it's very clean it's very bright and then at night time you get a little bit more varied color palette and because we want to have all of this light at night time we have to take into account the level of detail that we expect while also leaving enough room in the lighting budget for all of these lights like

6. 00:04:08

   one platform further away from you two platforms three andy and even further than that so lighting is a big challenge particularly one of my personal favorite bits with the butterflies and the fireflies that come out at night in the the garden they are absolutely stunning it's one of those things you don't necessarily notice the little details consciously but it just breathes so much life into an otherwise empty space in the case of the the platform thrusters you've got to communicate why this platform is floating you've got this massive platform it's going to have some way of staying in the air so the idea is that these thrusters are there to keep this platform in in situ otherwise you're just going to fall out the sky and fall into the gas giant

7. 00:04:54

   so first for us being a bit technically challenging but i think it's going to be worth it it's the initial goal and reference point for generating clouds like realistic looking clouds that are convincing for the player like for everybody obviously there's always going to be earth but art direction wanted something less earth-like and a bit more alien if you will and that was one of the bigger challenges i definitely know there's some visual artifacts that you can see sometimes in high contrast areas or in the distance and stuff but i know that if it's not fixed by 314 carson and the team will definitely be able to work on those and improve those in in the future i think it's great that the cloud tech

8. 00:05:42

   is going out as it is because it does look amazing everything that's gonna have clouds will use this technology just from what this there already it's so promising that we have no doubt it's gonna be amazing once it's fully realized and deployed in the whole universe [Applause] for the planet we wanted to feel the more grandeur element of crusader is a fantastic planet i think the music is the first thing that makes you understand the culture and

9. 00:06:29

   the tone of the place the guidance i got from darren when you land is that you wanted to feel as if you were looking at an eternal sunset or something like that i mean kind of feel like a makes you go into the most human part of you and for the industrial part we wanted to to make sure we felt the grandeur of the industrious mind of engineers that worked there and construct all the beautiful ships that we have in star citizen i certainly really way much more deeper than usual uh even more deeper i mean i try to go deeper and deeper in everything i do so hope you guys enjoy it

10. 00:07:20

    our next landing zone horizon and the gas giant crusader that sits beneath it represent the next major milestone for our planet tech content environment engine graphics vfx teams and more and like each planet and moon before it will continue to iterate and improve as subsequent technologies come online and further development progresses and while it's a it's a major component of the upcoming alpha 314 there's more where that came from now before we let you go for the quarter let's take a moment to recap everything coming our way in the patch report as we just saw the fabled orizon city amongst the clouds and dream of star citizens everywhere makes its long-awaited debut riding high on the gas giant crusader in alpha 314. now like microtech

11. 00:08:10

    and loreville before it it will continue to expand in subsequent patches with the addition of hospitals the crusader showroom whale watching tours and more additionally this first version of crusader boasts another new feature for alpha 314 our initial implementation of planetary volumetric clouds which builds off previous work from our stellar gas clouds and begins the process of expanding that tech across the entire surface of a planet or moon now while still in active development and not yet final the work continues beyond alpha 314 with sdf occlusion to help alleviate graphical artifacting the addition of local vfx work and a refinement to overall process

12. 00:08:57

    that will improve an already amazing quality seen here in subsequent patches on the gameplay front there are several advancements to ship and vehicle operation coming in alpha 314 that aim to further improve the combat and flight experience including power management v2 formerly referred to here as capacitors designed to rebalance all the connected systems that make ships go from thrusters to weapons to shields adding another layer of critical decision making to combat is just one more way to put the successful outcome of any battle more squarely in players hands there's also missile operator mode and the rework to missile guidance and control which not only brings about a new way to interact with and control the variety of

13. 00:09:44

    munitions available on ships and vehicles but improves the way they handle themselves in the verse by bringing the same intelligent flight control system pilots use for spacecraft to their missiles and torpedoes this has the effect of improving both performance and tracking ability while providing skilled pilots a way to use their talents in avoiding death and destruction a revitalization of the way radar scanning and ping work throughout the star citizen universe is another essential addition to the upcoming alpha 314 with detailed and consistent means of discovery distraction and potentially destruction now this new unified system with its upcoming fps counterpart will form the foundation of a new and improved level of investigation cat and mouse chase and more for the

14. 00:10:33

    future while changing the way players interact with content already in the game today and of course all of these new systems are displayed better than ever before with the new canvas slice hud a tech made possible by our continuing development of building blocks that aims to provide an improved layout that maximizes screen real estate while providing more opportunities for increased information and the groundwork for allowing manufacturer-specific visual designs like the aegis one we've seen before and the drake version currently being developed now but when you're flying through the verse there's been a ship waiting patiently for its time to shine that last variant of our original five pledge ships finally makes its debut in the the constellation taurus now it may not

15. 00:11:23

    look like much kid but it's got it where it counts and that's the cargo hold just be careful where you take it because alpha 314 also brings with it the danger the conflict and the opportunities inherent in two dynamic events scheduled to occur during the next quarter first the return of the newly improved and remastered xeno threat that will bring all players across all servers to bear in battling the tormented invaders from the pyro system as well as the smaller more local threat of the nine tails in a new pvp-focused event that will occur several times in different locations throughout the stanton system of course if you get caught up where you shouldn't be there's also the new surrender system that will allow criminals who can't get away

16. 00:12:10

    to be arrested without losing either their life or their ship if you're into that kind of thing so what did we learn this week well we learned that with horizon and crusader we truly do belong amongst the clouds that the volumetric cloudtech itself might not be exactly where we want it to be just yet but like with all things in star citizen it'll continue to be iterated on and improved in subsequent releases and boy howdy can that pedro make a piece of music geez now we're going to take our regularly scheduled quarterly break here but our other broadcast will continue on fridays and for all the latest information about the continuing progress of alpha 314 including when you can jump in and help test things in the ptu

17. 00:12:58

    all that stuff will be available on the robertsspaceindustries.com website for inside star citizen i'm jared huckaby we'll see you all in about a month