With rivers and underwater content coming, what is the high-level plan for underwater particle effects? Will we see haze, refractions, suspended dirt particles, mud clouds, or suspended striations?

Obviously, rivers are very exciting for the backers and for the people at CIG. There's loads of potential once we get them propagating across all these locations. When we get to do the effects side of it, because obviously, as you know, the first iteration doesn't have effects in it, we're probably going to want all of that, aren't we? Basically, my stance whenever people ask me about these kinds of things, what will you be trying to do, it's always: well, we'll try and make it as realistic as we can, we'll try and make it as dynamic as we can. That's the expectation from Chris at the top. So we'll need to deal with that when we get it scheduled in. I think fogging underwater would probably be more on the graphics side of things, or the programmers working on rivers and water bodies in general. But then we're probably going to have to look at surface types for the soil, that layer at the bottom of the rivers, and you're probably going to want that to displace when the player displaces the surface. And maybe that needs to lead to a more misty look to it. Maybe we need to use space loop particles. We'd probably approach it in a similar way that we do with gas cloud interiors. We might have template effects depending on the type of water. There's going to be more swampy water potentially. Again, I'm just thinking future iterations, by the way. I'm not committing to immediate things here. But I guess all of that: players interacting with all the small little bits of particulate matter. We can do all that with our screen space collision, so why would we not?

I think this is a good opportunity to just talk about greater Star Citizen philosophy here for a bit. Our goal is always, and we've said this a lot, take it to the point of realism, bring it back to the point of fun. But there's also another underlying consideration: there are games that specialize in one particular aspect. People were bringing up Hardspace: Shipbreaker, a game whose sole focus is salvage, or a game like Subnautica whose sole focus is underwater. We are a sandbox game, so our focus is a bit broader than that. So we always want to take these things as far as we can. That will always be our intention. That will always be our desire. The question is only ever how far is that, before it begins to affect other aspects of our sandbox that are just as important, either in time and resources in the physical world, or resources in the virtual world. It's always just a question of how it fits in with everything else. That will always determine how far we take a thing. Our desire will always be to the absolute end. And I think we've proven, over what is now our 10th year here, that we will always push things as far as we think they can go, and continue to push, continue to refine, continue to develop. So it's a harder question to answer than it seems. We're going to do everything that we can within the sandbox universe that we are creating. It's just always important to remember, when managing your expectations, that there are dedicated games for that kind of stuff. We are not that. We are the sandbox. We are dedicated to a life in the persistent universe. So all those considerations have to be taken equally.

Fire's a good example of that, Jared, because we've already been clear that the first iteration of that is interiors, specifically vehicle interiors. If we just tried to do full-on fire propagation for Star Citizen, you're looking at burning forests.

If our game was "burn the universe", then obviously at some point you would expect everything in the universe to be able to catch fire. But because it is one aspect of our entire sandbox, it will be limited. But it will be limited after we push it as far as we can.