While Star Citizen certainly loves its spaceships, there are a number of land-based vehicles that deserve love too, and that’s just what the latest Inside Star Citizen video provides as it outlines changes to vehicle physics that are in the works that are intended to be more sim-focused instead of arcadey. Players can soon expect tires to operate more realistically, a better camera view, UI improvements, and of course new vehicles like the Tumbril Nova tank and the Cyclone-MT anti-aircraft buggy.
In the second half of the video, we get another sprint report that outlines tweaks to certain refinery decks to make them more utilitarian like the removal of plants, benches, and advertisements; selectable lighting options in habs; further whitebox previews of hospitals and planetary outposts; and some lighting and effects work to improve lightning visuals.
In other Star Citizen news, there’s a piece on Kotaku regarding CIG’s Austin office, with six sources claiming the company mistreated them during the Texas snowstorm. Claims include office managers instructing employees to work through the storm or to use up paid time off to fill gaps they can’t report in to work; an overall lack of communication; a refusal to temporarily shut the studio down even as other larger companies shut down their operations in Texas; and a claim that upper executives were unaware of how dire the situation in Texas was, along with other CIG offices generally being unaware or otherwise dismissive of the situation.
“Head leadership for the company never appeared to acknowledge that we even faced a natural disaster and seemed to completely neglect to communicate our situation to other studios,” one source claimed. “This lack of awareness was evidenced when some of us were discussing the aftermath of the storm, and coworkers from another studio location asked if we had been dealing with tornadoes.” Another source said that comments from other CIG offices stated that employees in Austin “just wanted a snow day.”
The claims made by these sources were rebutted by a number of CIG devs, who were claiming that their experience with leadership was completely different, that the situation was regularly discussed in meetings, and that managers even reached out with offers of aid. “I have been with Cloud Imperium Games for 6 years now, and this company has been nothing but supportive and understanding. They have helped me through some tough times in ways no other company has,” claims one of CIG’s QA testers. “I had our studio manager even personally reach out to me to check up on me to see if everything was okay. I had my direct managers offering anything I needed and never had to use PTO for the storm. All for clicks though, I am sure.”
