A look at EVE Online's new planet art
Filed under: At a glance, Video, EVE Online, Expansions, News items
With the upcoming Dominion expansion, EVE's planets are receiving some much needed graphical love. While they don't look bad, they just don't look like the rest of the graphically updated universe anymore. But, CCP has seen the problem, and will be updating all of their planets to bring an artistic focus back on them -- especially as they will be the settings of DUST 514's battles.
As the Dominion expansion has hit the test server, one of the testers made a video showcasing some of the artistic upgrades. CCP certainly has made some beautiful worlds and awesome atmospheric effects, and you can catch it all in Flamewave357's YouTube video. Click continue reading to check out the video after the jump!
[Via MMORPG.com]
As the Dominion expansion has hit the test server, one of the testers made a video showcasing some of the artistic upgrades. CCP certainly has made some beautiful worlds and awesome atmospheric effects, and you can catch it all in Flamewave357's YouTube video. Click continue reading to check out the video after the jump!
[Via MMORPG.com]




















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
aurickle said on 9:40AM 9-18-2009
Yeah, it looks like a big improvements. But how many different views of the same planet did he have to show? At least, I hope that was all the same planet...
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Myria said on 10:32AM 9-18-2009
Given how many times one sees the same exact nebula no matter where you go, I wouldn't bet on that not being a dozen "different" planets.
Graphics aside, and honestly none of that looked particularly impressive, are they going to deal with the scale issue? Planets in Eve have been way smaller then they should be, as many objects (asteroids, for instance) are. The planet looked at least possibly closer to scale here, but honestly the way the video is handled it's pretty hard to tell for sure.
Chris said on 11:51AM 9-18-2009
god im so tired of responding to this same non-sense question, theirs no SCALE issue! It's a distance issue, the eve ships dont go into orbit around the planets or moons, they stay very far away, warp to zero in fact takes you to a very high orbit not low orbit, hence your very far from the planet and the size still appears small...
asteroids on the other hand are normally 5-10km away and look pretty large,
wow did no one take an art class and get explained depth or perspective anymore?
Brendan Drain said on 1:10PM 9-18-2009
I've heard the planet surfaces are actually procedurally generated based on a stored random seed, so each planet will have a unique look. And they're going to move the warp-in points and stations closer to the planet surfaces as currently they're so far away that the planets look very small.
Chris said on 1:21PM 9-18-2009
hey where'd you see that? As i'd love to put a "DEAR GOD PLEASE SAY THIS IS TRUE" below it, as the moving stations and warp2zero closer, and the procedural would soooooo make things awesome...
Oh and as a nite theirs atleast 2 planets in the video, theirs a earth like one and a ice one thats basically all white almost with hills
Brendan Drain said on 1:44PM 9-18-2009
In the 2008 fanfest, the chief technology officer Halldor Fannar gave a talk on visual computing at CCP Games. He and a guy from Nvidia discussed the plans for updating the game's visual effects and then planets. The visual effects are done and they're working on the planets now. In the talk, they discussed the possibility of using a fractal based approach to procedurally generate the planetary details.
That would let them add more detail dynamically depending on zoom level, so that people could get much closer to planets than before without resolution problems. That's something you can't realy do with just plain textured spheres, even with high definition textures. And then CCP Chronitis just posted on the forums that they are indeed moving warp-in points and stations closer to the planets ( http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1181371&page=1#10 ).
I seriously hope they stuck with the procedural generation idea and certainly the terrain they have on those planets looks like it was generated with 1/f fractal noise. So it's looking promising.
Mookow said on 10:34AM 9-18-2009
Yeah, but when you warp to a waypoint do can you still warp through planets? That never seemed terribly accurate. Granted it's sci-fi and just a game, but if you're going to go to the trouble of improving so many aspects of the game, you'd think the warping through solid masses would get some attention too.
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Chris said on 1:23PM 9-18-2009
i wish it was fixed as well, but to do it would require something like a multiple warp path finding, to warp to the left/right of the planet and then set the final path would really slow down travel... but ya i agree it breaks the immersion, but its ignorable.
Aetrix said on 2:10PM 9-18-2009
Who says you need to warp in a straight line? It would look cool as hell banking and zooming around the side of a moon or planet as you decelerate approaching a station. Since they're moving everything closer to the moons and planets, i'd say solving the straight-line warp issue is almost a necessity.
James said on 10:00PM 9-18-2009
Yeah, they should work out a better bezier warping curve, for instance, the warp takes you through an object, just make the top speed not quite warp, but accellerating around an object, and when you're clear of the obstacle, blast off into space. They're doing alot more complicated physics in other areas of the game, it seems to me.
Mewmew said on 3:28PM 9-20-2009
Warp drive allowing you to go through planets is on purpose, and explained in the Eve lore within the pages on the Eve website...
Venekor said on 10:52AM 9-18-2009
Now they just need to update them horrible dated backgrounds.
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Rambie said on 12:26PM 9-18-2009
The background nebulae still look good there just isn't that many of them. Each region, or constellation, should have a unique nebula. Yes, that'd mean groups of systems close together would share a background nebula, but that's realistic.
Some systems the nebula would be a small ribbon and others systems closer in would have it fill the screen.
spamero said on 3:31PM 9-18-2009
I second that.. that nebula is nice but seriously.. it's all the same but with different colors... they should have a procedural generated backgrounds as well... that would be cool
Psychotic Storm said on 1:57PM 9-18-2009
I still didn't see any light? what planets are not habituated? or they have a really strict lights out?
Joke aside they really must give at least some planets evidence of people living on them.
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Brendan Drain said on 2:27PM 9-18-2009
Apparently they're still working on that to add more life to certain planets. It'd be epic to see structures and cities on the surface
Dirame said on 7:24PM 9-18-2009
I've seen several planets that look like it has technology and life in the current version of tranquility but they are all the same coat of paint in every region I've seen them.
Venekor said on 3:30PM 9-18-2009
Yeh see I even have a problem with every system having a nebula and yet theres stars still in them.......... How about mixing things up instead of the same boring types over and over again. Theres many more stars in the sky than EVE has aswel it just doesn't feel like you're in space like that you see in pictures and frigging it feels 2D and not 3D.
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Lateris said on 7:34PM 9-18-2009
What ever happened to Eve Atmospheric Flight?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pg1dzAvL2M
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Flamewave said on 8:49PM 9-18-2009
Oh hey, my video got posted here. Thanks!
Just to give a little insight, the current warp-in points on planets are usually several hundred thousand kilometers away from the planet's surface. CCP has stated that they want to move warp-in points as well as stations closer to the planets so that fights can be dominated by a beautiful planetary backdrop.
For reference, I was roughly 270-300km away from the planet's surface in the video, which is about as close as you can get before things get wonky. As for signs of life and such, CCP has stated they're still working on the shaders for the planets so we'll just have to wait and see.
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