The VFX team covers planned weather, rain and cloud effects, gas cloud interiors and lightning, and the new particle lighting model. They also discuss SDF-based shield and quantum travel effects, thruster VFX, the Carrack heat haze fix, the Daymar heat haze, and fire.
TL;DRThe VFX team isn't working on planetary clouds, which belong to another team (Core Tech) that has made good recent progress, and VFX will join later with misty, damp motion effects similar to gas clouds.
Just to reiterate what Jared just said, we aren't actually directly working on that. That is another team who's working on the planetary clouds themselves, like the creation and composition of the clouds. I can say that I've seen some fantastic progress recently over the last few months. I guess things have really picked up there. I know that Teo, for example, is also excited about the clouds. Looking really good. We will come into that process at a later date, so definitely VFX will play a large part of making clouds work in the game. Our role there will be very similar to what we do with the gas clouds, so all the internal effects that are in gas clouds or will be in gas clouds, that's going to be similar with planetary clouds. And gas giants and things like that. Obviously with clouds, it's a very specific type of effect. So it's just helping with the sense of motion. So it'd be very misty and damp and the wetness, I guess, of clouds. So I think that's probably where our work will kick in. I know Leo will be heavily involved in that from a code side of things.
TL;DRRain can only come after clouds are in, and it also needs a weather system using cloud density, pressure, temperature and humidity, plus wet-looking surfaces, so quite a few things remain before rain appears.
This kind of follows on from what I just said, I guess. So once we're in a position where the clouds are in and those hurdles have been overcome, then absolutely rain is going to be a consideration. Rain is going to come from clouds, so you can't do rain until you've got the clouds. Again, Leo, that's something we've chatted about recently, isn't it? Clouds that have rain, there's going to be other considerations other than just the markup of the actual cloud. But I remember you mentioning, we're going to need to understand that you're underneath the cloud for the markup for the rain, aren't you, as well?
Yeah. So for the clouds, we'll basically need to get access to the density of a cloud. From there, we'll have to write systems that are like, where are you compared to the clouds? Are you underneath clouds? Is it a rainy cloud? Not all clouds have rain. So we'll have to make a weather system as well that takes into consideration the pressure, temperature, the humidity. We have some basics already for that. But with clouds, it will get a lot more complex. And that's one of the things that we'll need for rain to appear. But another thing that we'll need is, rain isn't just raindrops falling. Everything needs to look wet as well. So our surfaces need to look wet. We do have the visor and the canopy shaders where raindrops appear on your visor. And that will help a lot with the feeling of rain. But there are still quite a few things that will need to be done before rain actually gets in.
TL;DRThey want full weather systems eventually, including things like storms and sandstorms, but this isn't a promise of specific weather such as hurricanes, and weather would need game systems beyond VFX, with groundwork like biome humidity and temperature already in place.
With CIG being CIG and with the project that we're working on, we want full weather systems eventually, don't we? We want all of that. You want to be able to see it when you're on the planet or the moon. You want to be able to see it from space as well. So obviously, we've got fantastic real world reference and footage of these phenomena. And we want to get as close to that as we can in real time. And across a server, you want to be able to have, you're up in space, you're looking at the planet down there and you can see this giant, let's just say a hurricane or a giant rain formation. You want to be able to see that from a distance, but there could be someone that's right in the middle of that, right in the thick of it, in a storm. And it's those two extremes and everything in between, as always for our game, but for the VFX in particular. So yeah, sandstorms, I've seen people asking questions about sandstorms. I feel like, yeah, just everything that you would expect from a weather system, we want to support that in the future for sure.
So obviously we are a very ambitious game and we are going to pursue pushing this tech as far as we possibly can. Mike's not saying here today there will be hurricanes in the game. He is saying that we absolutely want to pursue that and every other weather system. And the reality is that it wouldn't just be a VFX thing anyway, because the VFX team would create a thing that looks like a hurricane, but if we're talking about weather systems, then...
And we've already seen a lot of the groundwork, like Leo just said, that's there. The planet content team has gone through in all of their different planetary revisions. Now all the different biomes are set with humidity zones and temperature zones and stuff like that. So we have the foundation for something like that already in place now through the work of the planet content team. So it's definitely something we're moving towards.
So yeah, we did a quick experiment, mostly regarding my work with gas clouds, where we needed to start simulating magnetic fields to try to create a bit more organic kind of feel. Give a bit more detail and life into things. And we can actually use that tech, and did try using it, to create the details and vector fields to help move particles to try and simulate the movements with the sun. So you could get the surface movement as well as some of the corona flares coming out. It was a good initial test. It was good highlighting where we might need to improve in the future and where we could definitely add. It does have a lot of potential to just look absolutely awesome.
TL;DRSimulated magnetic fields could potentially drive an aurora effect, though particles alone can also do it, and similar tech might be needed for sun flares in Pyro, but how detailed to go depends on how close players can get.
Potentially. It does create that aurora borealis kind of... It's partly due to positive ions hitting the atmosphere, which is a magnetic field, and you get that movement because of the magnetic field. So you inherently get that movement from it. So yes, it can be used to generate the vector field required for it, but I know Mike has also done tests way back in the past to show off the whole particle system creating aurora borealis just from particles alone, so we've got many different ways to do it.
The Pyro system actually might require that sort of stuff, sun flares mostly. There was talk about it back when we did CitizenCon. So more tests probably will be made towards that.
Yeah, we've had discussions with other teams actually regarding solar flares. One question that I would straight away ask with something like that is, how close can the player actually get to that thing? Because Jake could make an absolutely phenomenally accurate looking sun-like creation with potential for really nice solar flares, but if design decided that actually you couldn't get that close because there's no tech in the game, and this is just purely speculating, by the way, but if you can't get close enough to it, then why invest all that time and resources into making it look so detailed?
TL;DRMike Snowdon says lightning in gas clouds is quite close without giving a timeframe: manually placed lightning works well, but the systemic placement driven by gas cloud data still needs to be implemented.
Well, without putting a timeframe on it, obviously, as I mentioned earlier on, I've been looking at the lightning effects options that we've got in the game. I know we've shown over the last couple of years examples of really nice looking lightning. We can do really cool stuff in our engine. What I'm doing at the moment, part of my ongoing Q1 task, is I'm looking at the tool set to see if it's user-friendly enough, to see if it can do all the things that I know we're going to need to be able to do when we have lightning in Pyro locations, like say in a gas cloud in Pyro, perhaps the art director, Ian, wants that, let's just say. I need to make sure that we're able to do that. And then the other side of it, what we can't currently do, what we haven't fully implemented yet, is the systemic placement of the lightning. So in various CitizenCons, actually thinking about it now, we've kind of shown what we want to do in the gas clouds. We can currently manually place really, really good looking lightning, but we want to, and this is where Leo again would come in and the other VFX programmers, we want to have a system where the data of the gas cloud drives those effects. So maybe design want lightning to become increasingly stronger the closer the player gets to an area that is dangerous. Or maybe it needs to just be more frequently flaring up and frequently occurring. And whichever design decision gets made there will dictate how Leo implements that lightning. So yeah, it's coming along. And I appreciate these things sometimes take longer than might be expected. But lightning is a very, very powerful thing that we've got in our game. And it's really fun to play with. It's good fun.
No, we do have a team of programmers for the VFX team as well. So we'll share the burden. But yeah, the lightning, again, it's one of those interesting projects. I think almost all the projects we do are interesting because we get to do more than just implement the lightning that you place in a location. What we want for our game, everything needs to be systemic. So the lightning needs to be dynamically spawned, let's say. And currently, we have the tech to place the lightning just in the level. But that doesn't really work at the scale that we want to develop the game. So for us, we've had a lot of discussions about this already. And it will come down to how do we drive this lightning systemically. So do you have some kind of electricity value in the gas cloud? And then different gas clouds can have different electricity values. And then if you go into the denser parts of the gas clouds, you have more lightning. And then lightning is spawned in the denser parts. And then for the programmers, it's how do we manage all those lightning things, that they are kind of like separate objects. So how do we manage them? How do we make sure that we don't spawn too many lightning objects and those kind of things? So it's quite interesting to work on these kind of projects.
If you want a visual update on how that might look, if you catch the end of the main CitizenCon 2019 presentation, when the Carrack arrives in the Pyro system, there are some of those lightning events happening in the background. That's the system that we're talking about.
TL;DRThe lightning demo used a custom build of a new, physically based particle lighting model that is looking promising and should make large dusty or cloudy effects behave consistently under different lighting.
Yeah, that's a good point. So I was testing two things at the same time then, because that was a custom build with the new particle lighting model that's underway. And again, Teo, I know you're a big fan. Caleb, our principal, has been really putting it through its paces. Simon, the lead VFX programmer, has been implementing this new lighting model. And as you say, Jared, having large scale, dusty, cloudy effects, traditionally, that's really difficult. We use textures. The bigger the thing is, the more obvious it is, because of the texture, and the less the lighting can affect smaller areas. But this lighting model is looking really promising. It's very physically based. I'm sure Simon's rolling his eyes as I just say that, but there's a much more authentic lighting set of rules that it adheres to that makes it harder for us to break, basically, which is important because with the scale and amount of effects in our game, the rules, the way that the lighting behaves has to be consistent, otherwise our effects can just break and not hold up in different lighting.
TL;DRYes, the shield rework reduces how much the impact effects obstruct the cockpit view, while still keeping the hit readable, such as the color change as the shield weakens.
A hundred percent, yes. I mean, that was very high up on the list when we did the shield rework using the SDF. Definitely, I was conscious that the current existing effects are just too intrusive on the cockpit view. So that was 100% at the top of the list for things that we need to improve. So yeah, we've done that. You're not going to get as annoyed, hopefully, by the impact effects. It's tricky because you've got to find a balance, because you still need to acknowledge that that part of the shield is getting hit. We can't just cheat and just not have anything draw, because then from a gameplay point of view, you've lost that readability. So it's just a balancing act that the artist has to strike to make sure that the effects still work from the exterior view and still adhere to all the gameplay requirements there, i.e. changing color to reflect the weakening of the shield. But yeah, it's one of my pet peeves, being honest, especially with testing all the weapon effects, as I was doing a lot last year, getting that shield just covering the screen all the time. Yeah, we're going to improve that.
TL;DRThey do plan to update quantum travel effects, which depend on gameplay hooks from the underlying system, and see no reason not to use the new shield-style distance-field tech for them.
We do. We do plan to do that, yeah. This is another example, I guess, where it's not just something that the effects team on their own would do. I hope I just don't sound like I'm repeating the same thing, but our effects are driven by other things, so there's a lot of gameplay mechanisms that trigger the actual ship going into quantum travel itself, and our effects are very much driven by that, so there's a lot of factors there, speed and the spool up and all those kind of things, lots of hooks, I use the word hooks quite a bit, from which we can spawn our effects. But yeah, because now we've got SDF shields as well, SDFs came in first with atmospheric entry and then we're using them for shields. There's no reason why we shouldn't be trying to use SDFs on other effects, and quantum travel would be a great example of that, I think.
TL;DRManeuvering thruster effects are limited by the thruster size on each ship design, but work is under way to make the effects match the physical wind volumes the thrusters generate, which should add punch near the ground.
I just want to make sure I'm not the only person talking, by the way. I've got a habit of just saying things first. I appreciate that a lot of the maneuvering thrusters have got that potential for looking a bit like a candle flame compared to the main thrusters. Sometimes it's just the scale of the actual thruster item itself. If the ship has a really small nozzle, then it's probably going to look even worse if I give it this ridiculously oversized, like five times longer than the ship, effect. You know what I mean? It's not always going to work. So we're definitely at the mercy of the ship design in that sense. But there's definitely things, I guess, relating to that. We're doing some work at the moment on thruster wind volumes, and what that is specifically is we want to make sure that the effects match the physical volume that these thrusters generate. Because I think it came in, did it come in in 3.12 when we got the thruster volumes? Teo, can you remember?
Yeah, so we just need to make sure that our effects properly match the physical force itself. So we're doing some work on that. Leo, I guess you've got some knowledge on that system, if it's worth us talking about that a bit.
I mean, yeah, I feel like there are different things that we could do. For example, add a separate strength value or have some kind of dynamic behavior based on if you're in the atmosphere. We already do something similar for shock diamonds on the main thrusters. So potentially, we could use that data we do have anyway to do something special with the smaller thrusters if necessary. The ground effects, as you mentioned, with the per-thruster wind volume stuff, I think they will help quite a bit as well to give more punch to the thrusters, especially if you're close to the ground.
Yeah, because that's the thing, it's not necessarily that we want to have a really hot, emissive, long thrust effect that you can clearly see hitting the floor. If you're sort of high up, and then there's enough force coming from a smaller thruster that it's displacing all that snow or that sand or whatever the surface is, I think that will help as well for sure. And that's definitely in the works.
TL;DRBeing downstream can complicate scheduling but isn't frustrating, as it's just the pipeline, and Leo Vansteenkiste adds that VFX sometimes drives projects itself, such as wind and atmospheric pressure, which other teams then use.
I guess it can be frustrating, but it is the way it's got to be. Audio are the most downstream, I should add, as well, because any effects that we make, then audio is going to provide the audio that matches the thing we've made. But it's just part of the process. As you say, you said downstream, and that is a phrase that everyone hears a lot in CIG. It affects the scheduling. We can't make a thruster effect until the thruster exists. So maybe from a scheduling point of view, it makes things more complicated because it's a bigger web, isn't it? There's more things that need to come into place. I don't think it's frustrating in the sense that we get frustrated with other people at all. It's just the nature of the pipeline, isn't it? It's all part of the pipeline.
That's a great point. That's a really good point. Sometimes the audio can make an effect look better. I think I might have said that in the past, but it's really true. The weapons in particular, we did a big pass on improving vehicle weapon effects throughout the latter half of last year. And without Darren, the audio director, and his team making the weapons sound better, it would have made my life more difficult. So it's a great collaboration process.
I want to add to what Mike said, but we're not always downstream either. In some cases, some projects, we're actually the driving team almost. Or we're in quite early, so that we become a driving team. For example, the weather effects or the planetary effects that we have on the planets right now, we were quite early with starting to add those things. So we were in charge of actually implementing wind. We needed the wind for our effects. And other teams have started using the same kind of wind system that we added. Because if we have it, they can use it just as well. And there are some other examples, like the fire that we're working on right now. It's, again, a system that's very VFX heavy. But it will affect quite a lot of gameplay as well. Another one is atmospheric pressure. It was something we already had. But the VFX team has implemented the support for it on planets and gas clouds, because we needed the pressure value, because it drives a lot of our effects. We just added it on planets and on gas clouds. And now a lot of gameplay systems also use that same pressure that we've been adding. So I think it's part of our company as well, because we're quite a big VFX team. I think we're in a special place where we can actually drive projects as well as be a downstream team.
TL;DRDifferent re-entry effects per atmosphere are considered feasible and worthwhile, but would need a pre-production investigation and a systemic setup that works across many planets, and none of this is committed.
I think it's a really nice idea. It's definitely something that I think would be worth looking into for the future, definitely. I think it's feasible. It's definitely feasible. And again, probably Leo will be able to talk a bit about the way that those effects are set up. Because again, it's a great example of a system that's driving the effects. So yeah, for me, it makes a lot of sense. It's entirely typical of our game, isn't it? It's a visually nice feature, but it's also going to give readability to the player from a gameplay point of view as well. So very important, visually and for gameplay too. But yeah, in terms of the setup, I suspect that that's perfectly feasible.
I don't know if you remember, when I was working on the atmospheric entry effects, I actually pitched different colors based off the... I actually wanted that to be in the first release, but it didn't really make sense because first of all, we needed a stable visual state for it, but also we didn't have that many different atmospheric compositions. So anyway, that idea was put on the side, but yeah, as Mike said, it's possible and would look cool.
Yeah, from a technical point of view, it's definitely possible. We do have all the data available on the ship to actually trigger those effects. It would be more a challenge to get a good setup that's easy to set up for artists and that's systemic again. We always need everything to be systemic. It's necessary because we want this to work on hundreds of planets, all with different atmospheres.
Maybe color, maybe size. But yeah, it's definitely possible, something like that. So for us, the first step we need is an investigation of what changes we would have based on the atmosphere. So does it affect color, does it affect size, is it a completely different effect because it's aesthetic or whatever? Those kind of things. And then artists at least will go and do pre-production. And I think Mike can tell more about it. But it's like artists will tell us what they want. And then we go and discuss options of how we can implement it.
Yeah, Leo just mentioned pre-production. That's a massive part of the VFX pipeline, and it's really just R&D. Before anyone does any effects, they have to have done a pre-production pass. For something really simple or something that we've done a lot of before, let's just say like a muzzle flash, the pre-production still exists, but it's probably a very small task, like identifying, yeah, there's an existing weapon in the game. It needs to look like this. So there you go. We've ticked that box. We know what it needs to look like. But for something exploratory, like what Leo's describing, it really is just going through a process of understanding what it could look like, what it needs to do from a gameplay point of view. Is it performant? Is it going to be just ridiculously complicated to implement? Is it going to be a year of a programmer's time, et cetera, et cetera? So yeah, lots of exploration in pre-production.
TL;DRUnique per-manufacturer shield patterns are described as feasible and discussed, but the first release has a single style and the priority is making the tech and visuals solid first.
It's entirely feasible, and it's definitely something we talked about. So I think the main thing for me is that I want to get to a point where the tech that we've got and the visuals are rock solid initially. Like this initial release, it's just the one style. It does what the designers needed it to do. It looks good. It's efficient, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, for sure. With all our VFX, we like to theme them. We like to be able to make the effects different per manufacturer. We've done that with thrusters for however many years I've been here, nearly seven. So yeah, I think it's perfectly feasible. I'm going to ask Jake a question. I'm going to put him on the spot. So 3D textures, we've talked about using 3D textures to define the shape, to give some pattern. And I guess that's the kind of thing where I might go to you and say, hey, how can we use Houdini to quickly generate some nice variety of 3D textures? Just to be clear, I'm not asking you to do that as a task. It's just a theoretical question.
TL;DRThey acknowledge that quantum entry and exit effects for other ships are wanted and would be done if the underlying system provides hooks, but an earlier attempt was deprioritized and no timing is given.
Yeah, this is a topic that crops up all the time, to be honest. It's something that design will regularly remind me needs to be a thing. And it's all about the setup again. It's to do with the hooks that we've got from the underlying system, and if it provides us with the opportunity to spawn an effect, then yeah, we'll do it. Teo, you did kind of a pitch, didn't you, for quantum travel improvements just generally, so that played a part, didn't it?
Yeah, I mean, I like things to be clear what's happening. So when ships arrive in your vicinity, it would feel, sound and look so cool if there was something really punchy there, because it's an aggressive sort of action that's happening. So I would love, yeah, I mean, for me, I love all the sci-fi tropes of ships jumping in with very large flashes. And yeah, I've tried a couple of things, and I think I had a task to actually work on it and then it disappeared because other things came into priority.
Yeah, we've moved it around, I think. But yeah, when we first did quantum travel, because it's gone through some iterations, and I mean the actual underlying setup, the tech, the system itself. So when we first did quantum travel, in some ways, it was a lot more straightforward. We just had very simple timings, like the spool up happens now, then it initiates, and then it stops, and we had all those kind of things. But we were primarily concerned with the view for the player doing the QT. But yeah, hopefully I've not rambled too much there. But yeah, we acknowledge that that's going to be a thing.
TL;DRThe team highlights unnoticed work: converting CPU particles to GPU particles for performance, a minimum-pixel-distance option keeping laser projectiles readable in combat, and physically based formulas that ease artists' ship effect setup.
I would just say that the conversion work we did from CPU particles to GPU particles, I think is something that no one really noticed and nobody really talked about, but it had an incredible impact on performance. Just the other day when I switched some of the distortion impact effects, I noticeably felt a reduction in this kind of micro lag. I don't know, it wasn't a drop in performance, but it did feel better. And yeah, that's not talked about a lot. And the entire team does a lot for that work.
That's a great shout, yeah, because even though we've had the GPU particle system for a long time, just for the sheer volume of effects in our game, there are still quite a few CPU ones that we want to eventually replace with GPU. And as Teo said, doing that actually provides, not necessarily slightly intangible, but it provides a performance boost. And actually, in our game, a really small performance boost for one scenario like that, if you think about 20 ships, however many ships, all firing that weapon, the performance gains are big. And that's a huge win for the player. I guess I've got a similar sort of thing with laser projectiles. When I say we, the VFX programmers gave me a minimum pixel distance option on the projectile shader that we use. And what that means is that I can keep that projectile, as long as it's alive and it's on screen, at a minimum amount of pixels. And even though that's a really minor thing, seemingly, in the field of battle, that was absolutely invaluable because it meant that you could still see them. It's just a readability thing. It just meant in combat, it made a difference that people probably wouldn't have really thought much of.
Yeah, so as a programmer, it's a bit different. The small gains that we do are more for the artists, I would say. I mean, we do performance improvements and those kind of things. But the small things, like making the setup easier or finding a good formula. We have the wingtip vortices on ships. It's all physically based. And as long as the planets and the gas clouds are set up with pressure and temperature and humidity, it will work with different combinations. And it means less setup for artists. So as long as they make sure the effect is set up on the ship, they don't have to tweak values of we want this here, this there. It's been a long process. I think we got some good formulas, physically-based formulas, and it's quite satisfying finding those and making the future setup for ships and anything better and easier for artists.
TL;DRGas cloud interior effects were ready but held back because the room system's pressure value wasn't ready, so they're working on restoring it, plus new collision effects with rocks and metal bits hitting ships.
Yeah, so for the initial gas cloud release that went into 3.12, we did have the effects, the interior effects, and when I say interior effects, I mean all the kind of small, high velocity, high detail noise that gives you that sense of parallax. We had all that working and it was all ready to go, but unfortunately there were just some of the hooks we were dependent on. It was the pressure value, wasn't it, of the gas cloud provided by the room system. That wasn't quite ready to ship because there were some knock-ons to the actor status, I think. So the designers had to just keep the pressure set to zero. So we are working on that at the moment, getting that back in. Everyone in this call, actually, has been working on that. I mean, Jacob, yourself, you provide the method of creating the gas cloud in the first place, don't you, for the artists? You're integral to that process. So yeah, I'm losing my thread here. But yeah, we're working on it, and it's all happening. It's all going quite well. I think Teo and Leo got together and added a really nice new feature, which is, do you want to talk about that, the collision?
Yeah, sure. It's basically inside the gas clouds. Some of them are themed differently. Some of the themes are asteroid field or mining themed, and you would expect little rocks or micro asteroids flying about. And when the ships go quite fast, you'd expect those items to interact with the ship, so the rocks would interact with the ship's hull and break apart as you fly through the gas clouds. There'll also be some metal bits in some cases, but yeah, all of those will interact with your ship and it'll feel really cool. And audio actually are hopefully going to pizzazz it up and add that extra layer. But yeah, it's coming along.
Looks really cool. I'm quite excited about it. And the cool thing from my side was that it's using existing tech from the atmospheric entry. So it's using the SDF. It's using the same kind of system for dynamically placing the emitter so that it follows the direction of the ship. And it was a relatively quick thing to add on our side that I think will give a lot of extra nice environment.
TL;DRYes, there are plans to bring the Daymar heat haze back, hooked up systemically to planetary data like temperature and possibly humidity; the effect is simple but needs reconnecting after planet tech changes.
Yes, there are. I want to make a bad joke about it being hot, not cool. But yeah, I think the actual effect itself is a fairly simple one, but I think as part of various amazing improvements to the planet tech itself, it kind of just got lost along the way, if I'm being completely honest. But yeah, the creation of the effect is dead straightforward. We just need to figure out the appropriate way to hook it back up again. And actually, it will be systemic, to use that word again, because it will be hooked up to the actual planetary data, the temperature itself, and probably the humidity, I guess, Leo. Does that play a part?
That's what I like about Leo. I ask for something and Leo goes and researches the actual real world criteria for something occurring. So then we get it all in the game.
TL;DRThe directional rain and snow effects should work with wind direction, so problems on some ships are likely UV or flat-plane edge cases, and players should report affected ships to the Issue Council.
It should. I think I'm allowed to say it should be working. The setup that we created for those directional effects was incredibly complex, actually, an intricate setup. And it is actually taking the wind strength and direction, isn't it, Leo?
Yeah. So we're using the movement direction, the wind direction, the gravity, I think, as well. It might be a bug where we're simulating the raindrops on a flat plane, and the plane then needs to be wrapped on the different faces of the canopy and the glass. So either there is something wrong with the UVs, which map the flat plane to the mesh, or it's one of the edge cases where, because it's simulated on a flat plane, we can't really get all the directions perfectly covered. And that might be an edge case. So we have to see the ship itself and see how it behaves and maybe send it to our team to fix up the UVs. It could be a few things.
Yeah. Again, I think earlier on we were talking about probably making use of signed distance fields for the eventual rework of the quantum travel effects, and this would be a great use case for it. If you think about the change we made to the atmospheric entry effects with SDFs versus the old one, just think of the same kind of thing with the quantum travel. I'm not saying visually, but with the use of the shape of the ship and the more authentic looking interaction.
So I saw this question and as I was looking at the question, I loaded up the editor and did a little bit of digging into it. It's a beautiful ship. I was a bit confused because I thought it was a bug initially. I just thought, oh, maybe it's just not working as expected. But it just looks like the settings needed a bit of tweaking. So that's something I started playing around with. I need to make sure I've got that file checked out, because I made some changes yesterday to get the heat haze back again. So yeah, that should be coming in a future patch.
TL;DRNo research into black holes has been done, comets have come up in conversation with gameplay possibilities and level design concerns, and wormhole jump gates might count as an anomaly eventually.
I mean, black holes, I'm not sure that we've done any research into that so far, but comets have come up in conversations for sure. I think when we started to show the atmospheric burn-up, Teo took a really nice video where there's a ship passing through the atmosphere, but it's right off in the distance, and it just looked like a burning up meteor. And you were probably in it, Jared, it was in one of the weekly updates. And immediately, Ian was talking about, oh, it'd be great to get loads of comets coming through. And then the designer's like, yeah, but then it's going to land somewhere. And then it could be like a new location, and there's all these gameplay opportunities.
TL;DRFire is the feature they're most excited to work on, for its gameplay opportunities and cross-department impact, and it's currently being integrated with the rest of the game, which is surfacing situations and problems to solve.
Definitely fire for me. Fire, because it's terrifying, but it's also really exciting because of, not really even to do with the visuals, but just the gameplay opportunities that it brings and the sheer game-changing nature of it and how all departments at CIG need to come together to really take advantage of it. I'm pretty sure we've shown some videos from our updates showing the potential, showing the possibilities. Leo, obviously, you and Py in particular, but the VFX programmers are just creating some amazing setups. Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah, well, of course. It's the big project I'm currently working on, so it's the same answer for me. But yeah, it's quite nice. We've shown a demo and some videos on ISC, I think. But currently we're working on getting it working with the rest of the game. So before, we had a separate kind of prototype. And now that we're implementing it and integrating it with the rest of the game, there are some nice situations that already pop up, and problems to solve.