Before 3.5, we last saw ArcCorp at CitizenCon 2017, and the view from orbit has changed quite a bit since then. Why did that happen?
TL;DRThe current orbital view is built from the actual procedural planet and shows Area18 properly, whereas the 2017 view was a swapped-in texture modelled on Coruscant that only worked on the demo path.
Well, the view from orbit that you see now is actually the proper view of the planet. In the 2017 version, we didn't have a way of distilling that down. So we had a texture, admittedly a cool texture, that was swapped out when you got to a certain level. But right now, if you actually do the fly down, the transitions are much better, and you can actually see Area18 properly from space. And even that level of stuff is some of what we're talking about improving going forward with the ArcCorp stuff. But what you have now is you can go everywhere, and there's nothing brushed over or faked. In the '17 demo, we did a lot of stuff, but there was definitely, if you went off the track of the demo, it wouldn't look as nice. And that aerial shot looking down was a texture with a nice illum thing on it, versus what we have now, which is actually made up of the different procedural areas. Plus you can see Area18 and stuff like that. So the new way is a more accurate way than we had in '17. And okay, it doesn't work as well in the individual screenshot, because everyone loves Coruscant, which is what we modeled that texture after, but Area18 isn't set up like Coruscant. It hasn't got these concentric circles or anything like that.