The opening presentation of CitizenCon has recently wrapped up, offering up a wide assortment of tech-focused updates and at least one gameplay feature that are headed to Star Citizen at some time in the future.
The majority of the presentations on offer were almost exclusively focused on the game’s StarEngine, which incidentally was a point to showcase a variety of new visual effects such as light rays, new fog and cloud effects, updated water that reacts to stimuli, and updated physics for cloth and hair.
CIG also confirmed that various visual upscaling features like DLSS2 is on the way, further talked up Vulkan rendering, and shared a long segment about global illumination updates. Lastly, the devs showed off new destructible features that will make ships blowing apart more realistic and introduce the ability for structures to be whittled down or destroyed.
One portion of the opening presentation that drew forth a lot of cheering from the crowd was a segment about persistent entity streaming updates, which offered up a live demonstration of how the tech has moved forward in terms of making persistence stable while trying to keep things lightweight. The demonstration mostly focused on a large series of rooms, however, and didn’t offer any presentation at any sort of MMO scale.
Finally of note, there was a segment that highlighted engineering gameplay features that were in the works, with a look at the engineering UI, a discussion of functions such as handling gravity or tracking doors, and confirmation of on-ship misfiring hazards that can cause a ship to catch fire.
Speaking of fire, other demonstrations included a full demonstration of a character being trapped in a burning interior, more promises of making planets come together faster, a new “realistic mode” audio option that will better replicate the soundless (ie muffled) experience of space, sweaty and crying characters, and a sizzle reel that featured space whales. Reddit has pulled together a running thread of updates, while the full VOD so far awaits below.
Star Citizen’s second day of CitizenCon shows updates to character creation, FPS gameplay, flight, and frontier locations
CIG says Squadron 42 is ‘feature complete’ and entering polish phase in new gameplay trailer
Star Citizen shows off new ships and offers vague details of ship release timing
Star Citizen demonstrates new visual effects, destructible items, server updates, and engineering gameplay
Star Citizen’s new test server will open Pyro to goodies pack owners and ‘active testers’ on October 31
