David Colson · Gameplay Programmer, Product Owner of the Vehicle Feature Team

It is still being worked on. That reworked shield tech is mostly to do with SDFs, the idea that previously we would have the ship encased in a mesh that someone would make, but now that is calculated automatically with this SDF. An SDF, if you haven't heard of it before, is this data structure that lets you query how far away a point is from the ship, so you can effectively work out very easily if a bullet or projectile has hit the ship. It'll result in much more reliable shield hits and stuff like that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

Of course, SDF is being used for quite a few things, not just the shields. On ISC, SDF is being used for the new reentry effects. I'm trying to think of other things SDF is being worked on right now, and I'm blanking.

David Colson · Gameplay Programmer, Product Owner of the Vehicle Feature Team

VFX is a huge one. There's so much VFX that you really want to conform to the ship, and it's time-consuming to author all these effects for every different ship, so this automates a lot of it.

John Crewe · Vehicle Director

Especially when you have to deal with animating ship parts and bits that fall off the ship, you get that. Not for free, but it's significantly easier than how the current systems work.