About half of the visual information taken in while flying around in Star Citizen is with your eyes and the other half is done via radar, scanning targets, or sending out a pulse or “ping” to find areas of interest. While those functions are certainly operational in the game currently, there’s definitely room for improvement, which is being outlined in this week’s Inside Star Citizen video.
In terms of radar, there’s plans to have each ship effectively transmit a bubble of influence, meaning smaller ships can hide within a fleet of larger ones and not be immediately visible on radar until someone flies close enough. This also works for the game’s gas clouds as well, obfuscating radar signatures when flying through clouds. In-development scanning improvements will yield more granular details about objects or ships that are scrutinized such as cargo contents, whether someone on board is wanted, and other such details. Finally, pinging will soon allow players to see the rough size and direction of entities within a ping’s “blob,” and if the strength of a blob item’s signature is high enough, its contents can be scanned.
The latter half of the video features another sprint report that provides updates on rooms, emergency drop-off areas, and props for hospital locations; takes another look at gas clouds that cover the jump point between Stanton and Pyro; previews final lighting for ship-to-station docking areas coming in the next 3.13 patch; shares some new refinery NPC outfits and player combat armor; and provides another look at Orison’s habitation platform.
