Star Trek Online shines more light on graphical changes

If any game doesn’t need to offer players actual technical information about graphical upgrades, it’s Star Trek Online. The developers could just say that the polarities were swapped on the inverse rendering scatter projectors and fans would accept that as perfectly valid. However, the developers have offered us a rather detailed look at how the game’s lighting system is getting an upgrade to make everything in the game look more naturally lit.

While the differences to shading alone made a big difference in outdoor areas and in space, the lighting system ran into more issues with interior spaces, dealing with things like the lights cast by computer monitors and the like. Fixing the lighting system thus required re-coding a variety of different pieces of the game to look more organic and realistic. Since the game’s construction is modular, though, the results could easily be spread throughout the game with only a few changes. Check out the full development diary to get an in-depth look at how just a little more light makes everything better.