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Thread: Developers Blog

  1. Registered TeamPlayer
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    #301

    Re: Developers Blog

    Quote Originally Posted by CivilWars View Post
    I am a few days from an Ity 5, then BC 4/5.
    Sweet - those will come in handy.

  2. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
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    #302

    Community Communication Liaisons - The return of the volunteer moderator program

    Last week we mentioned in this blog that CCP is in the process of bringing back the volunteer moderator program and I wanted to give you a progress update. The Community team is now accepting applications from prospective candidates who would be interested in becoming part of ISD (Interstellar Services Division) to join forces with us to keep the forums a lively and informative resource for the EVE community.
    While the timing may seem a bit off considering the recent restructuring of CCP, particularly the Community team, these plans have been in motion for several months. A number of factors, including the launch of the new forums and ironing out the finer points of how the CCL program will work, prevented us from being able to introduce it sooner.
    What is the role of the Community Communication Liaisons?
    Those who have been a part of the EVE player community for a while may remember that we had volunteer moderators in the past. In fact, I used to be one. Growing concerns about information those volunteers had access to (such as the names of other players’ alts) and their ability to issue forum bans to other players led to the decision to shut the program down in 2007. We believe that these revised plans will ensure that players feel comfortable with the CCL and will be able to collaborate with them andthe Community team to enhance communication on important issues.
    The revised role of the Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs) will be a two-pronged approach of helping to maintain the forums as a healthy venue for discussion and enhancing communication between CCP and players. Volunteers will be granted roles which allow them to:
    • Edit threads and posts – Volunteers can remove offensive, trolling, flame and spam content in threads and posts. These edits will be monitored by the Community team daily.
    • Move threads – If a thread is created in the incorrect forum subsection then volunteers can move it to the correct area.
    • Moderate thread titles – If a thread has been created with a misleading or incorrect title then a volunteer can change it to something more appropriate.
    • Delete posts – Posts which contain keyloggers, pornography or inappropriate links can be deleted. These deletions will be monitored by the Community Team
    In addition, the volunteers can point out threads to the Community team who can then bring them to the attention of the relevant developers and teams. The volunteers will become a conduit of important issues and ideas being brought up on behalf of the player base. This does not in any way negate what the CSM do as an elected body. Simply put, volunteers can quickly bring issues to our attention so we can get answers to the players as quickly as possible.
    But, wait, there’s more!
    In the next few weeks we will be introducing localized forums for our German and Russian players. We appreciate that not everyone speaks English or understands it very well so we want to start off by supporting our localized clients with new areas on the main EVE forums. Initially these forums will contain a maximum of three or four subsections focusing on help for new players, general discussion and main information portal threads. With CCP Spitfire, our Russian Community Coordinator, and CCP Phantom, our German Community Coordinator, we believe that the new sections will be in great hands.
    Ok, I am sold. How do I apply?
    Applications for the Community Communication Liaisons can be sent to ccl@isd.eveonline.com. We are looking for people who meet the following criteria:
    • Are able to commit to six hours per week as a volunteer
    • Have excellent communication in English, German or Russian. If you are bilingual, even better.
    • Have good knowledge of EVE and a finger on the pulse about issues which are of concern to the general EVE player base
    • Able to use IRC and/or Skype for communication with other ISD departments and the EVE Community team
    • Are 18 years of age or older and hold an active EVE Online subscription in good standing. A good EVE forum posting history is also important.
    • All further information on the ISD Volunteer program can be found here.
    Your initial application should include the following information:
    1. Please provide us with a character name on your account. What is your primary language?
    2. Are you fluent in a second language?
    3. Are you currently involved with another game or game company as a volunteer, contractor or as an employee?
    4. Rate and describe your Eve knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being a new player and 10 being very experienced.) Are you an active member of the Official Eve Online Forums?
    5. Have you ever been banned from an online game? If so, what happened?
    6. What qualities do you possess that you feel would make you an excellent choice as an Eve volunteer? Please include real world experience as well.
    7. Explain why you want to participate in the Eve volunteer program.
    8. What obligations (such as school, work or military) would prevent you from participating as an Eve volunteer from time to time?
    9. What do you feel the primary responsibilities of an Eve volunteer should be?
    That is all for now. We will be monitoring this thread and will be happy to answer any of your queries.

    The EVE Community team


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  3. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
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    #303

    Community Communication Liaisons - The return of the volunteer moderator program

    Last week we mentioned in this blog that CCP is in the process of bringing back the volunteer moderator program and I wanted to give you a progress update. The Community team is now accepting applications from prospective candidates who would be interested in becoming part of ISD (Interstellar Services Division) to join forces with us to keep the forums a lively and informative resource for the EVE community.
    While the timing may seem a bit off considering the recent restructuring of CCP, particularly the Community team, these plans have been in motion for several months. A number of factors, including the launch of the new forums and ironing out the finer points of how the CCL program will work, prevented us from being able to introduce it sooner.
    What is the role of the Community Communication Liaisons?
    Those who have been a part of the EVE player community for a while may remember that we had volunteer moderators in the past. In fact, I used to be one. Growing concerns about information those volunteers had access to (such as the names of other players’ alts) and their ability to issue forum bans to other players led to the decision to shut the program down in 2007. We believe that these revised plans will ensure that players feel comfortable with the CCL and will be able to collaborate with them andthe Community team to enhance communication on important issues.
    The revised role of the Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs) will be a two-pronged approach of helping to maintain the forums as a healthy venue for discussion and enhancing communication between CCP and players. Volunteers will be granted roles which allow them to:

    • Edit threads and posts – Volunteers can remove offensive, trolling, flame and spam content in threads and posts. These edits will be monitored by the Community team daily.
    • Move threads – If a thread is created in the incorrect forum subsection then volunteers can move it to the correct area.
    • Moderate thread titles – If a thread has been created with a misleading or incorrect title then a volunteer can change it to something more appropriate.
    • Delete posts – Posts which contain keyloggers, pornography or inappropriate links can be deleted. These deletions will be monitored by the Community Team

    In addition, the volunteers can point out threads to the Community team who can then bring them to the attention of the relevant developers and teams. The volunteers will become a conduit of important issues and ideas being brought up on behalf of the player base. This does not in any way negate what the CSM do as an elected body. Simply put, volunteers can quickly bring issues to our attention so we can get answers to the players as quickly as possible.
    But, wait, there’s more!
    In the next few weeks we will be introducing localized forums for our German and Russian players. We appreciate that not everyone speaks English or understands it very well so we want to start off by supporting our localized clients with new areas on the main EVE forums. Initially these forums will contain a maximum of three or four subsections focusing on help for new players, general discussion and main information portal threads. With CCP Spitfire, our Russian Community Coordinator, and CCP Phantom, our German Community Coordinator, we believe that the new sections will be in great hands.
    Ok, I am sold. How do I apply?
    Applications for the Community Communication Liaisons can be sent to ccl@eve-isd.net
    Are able to commit to six hours per week as a volunteer. We are looking for people who meet the following criteria:

    • Have excellent communication in English, German or Russian. If you are bilingual, even better.
    • Have good knowledge of EVE and a finger on the pulse about issues which are of concern to the general EVE player base
    • Able to use IRC and/or Skype for communication with other ISD departments and the EVE Community team
    • Are 18 years of age or older and hold an active EVE Online subscription in good standing. A good EVE forum posting history is also important.
    • All further information on the ISD Volunteer program can be found here.

    Your initial application should include the following information:

    1. Please provide us with a character name on your account. What is your primary language?
    2. Are you fluent in a second language?
    3. Are you currently involved with another game or game company as a volunteer, contractor or as an employee?
    4. Rate and describe your Eve knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being a new player and 10 being very experienced.) Are you an active member of the Official Eve Online Forums?
    5. Have you ever been banned from an online game? If so, what happened?
    6. What qualities do you possess that you feel would make you an excellent choice as an Eve volunteer? Please include real world experience as well.
    7. Explain why you want to participate in the Eve volunteer program.
    8. What obligations (such as school, work or military) would prevent you from participating as an Eve volunteer from time to time?
    9. What do you feel the primary responsibilities of an Eve volunteer should be?

    That is all for now. We will be monitoring this thread and will be happy to answer any of your queries.

    The EVE Community team


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  4. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
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    #304

    Hybrid weapon and Tech II ammo balancing

    Hybrid turrets have fallen out of grace. Maybe they weren't that amazing to begin with, but things have gotten somewhat worse in recent years. The speed change made it more difficult for blaster ships to get in close. The webifier change meant that blaster tracking suddenly wasn't good enough. The projectile boost made hybrids worse by comparison. Whatever it was that broke the camel's back, this is where we are now; Hybrid turrets do not compare favorably to the other turret systems.

    How we go about fixing this is the big question. Not everyone agrees on the direction we should take. Some feel that the ships themselves are at fault. Others point out the inherent incompatibility of armor tanking and close range combat.

    I agree that those issues need to be taken into account, but I don't think they are the best place to start when we rebalance hybrid turrets. Before we start looking at armor tanking issues or individual ships, Hybrid weapons as a whole need to be boosted up to a level where using them becomes desirable. The goal is to make them better at what they already do, not to change their roles. Blasters should do high damage at short range. Railguns should do average damage at long range. Now let's dive right into the details.

    Hybrid Turrets

    Reduce CPU usage:

    • XL Turrets: -5 CPU
    • L Turrets: -3 CPU
    • M Turrets: -2 CPU
    • S Turrets: -1 CPU

    ** Exception: 75mm Railguns (they already have very low CPU requirements.)

    Reduce Powergrid usage:

    • All hybrid turrets: -12% Powergrid usage. Rounded to nearest whole number.

    ** Exceptions: Light Electron Blasters, Light Ion Blasters, 125mm Railguns, 75mm Railguns (they already have very low Powergrid requirements.)

    Blasters

    Tracking Speed Increase:

    • All blaster turrets: +20% to Tracking speed

    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good tracking when compared to other XL turrets)

    Railguns

    Damage Increase:

    • All railgun turrets: +10% to Damage modifier

    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good damage when compared to other XL turrets)

    Hybrid turret ships

    While I am hesitant to boost individual ships right now, I do think that a small speed boost to hybrid turret ships in general is needed. You will notice that a few hybrid turret ships are not mentioned here. The ones that are not listed are either fast enough already or they have range bonuses to hybrid turrets, which means that they are meant for longer range combat and as such should not need a velocity boost as much as other hybrid turret ships.
    Max Velocity +10 on the following ships:
    Arazu, Astarte, Brutix, Catalyst, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Enyo, Eos, Falcon, Guardian-Vexor, Helios, Incursus, Ishtar, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant

    Max Velocity +5 on the following ships:
    Cormorant, Federation Navy Comet, Hyperion, Kronos, Sin, Vindicator

    Inertia Modifier -5% on the following ships:
    Adrestia, Arazu, Ares, Astarte, Atron, Brutix, Catalyst, Celestis, Cormorant, Daredevil, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Eagle, Enyo, Eos, Eris, Exequror Navy Issue, Falcon, Federation Navy Comet, Ferox, Guardian-Vexor, Harpy, Helios, Hyperion, Incursus, Ishkur, Ishtar, Kronos, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Merlin, Moa, Phobos, Raptor, Rokh, Sin, Taranis, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant, Vindicator, Vulture

    Tech II Ammo

    I did some comparison between the tech II ammo types and found that one hybrid ammo type did indeed need some work. I also found that the other turret types had some very underwhelming ammo. Rather than limit myself to only boosting the hybrid ammo, I will also be making some changes to other tech II ammo types. Javelin is quite obviously underpowered. The correlating laser and projectile ammo, Gleam and Quake, are equally underwhelming and they all need some change. Additionally, Hail sticks out as terribly underpowered.

    • Javelin (all sizes): Removed cap penalty
    • Javelin, Gleam and Quake (all sizes): Removed tracking speed penalty, added 25% tracking speed bonus
    • Hail (all sizes): Removed falloff penalty

    Feedback

    If you have issues with this balancing plan, please post your feedback in the comment thread. We are listening.


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  5. Registered TeamPlayer CivilWars's Avatar
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    Steam ID: CivilWars CivilWars's Originid: CivilWars
    #305
    Aww hell yeah!!!


    Sent from my UrMoms using Tapatalk


  6. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
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    #306

    Hybrid weapon and Tech II ammo balancing

    Hybrid turrets have fallen out of grace. Maybe they weren't that amazing to begin with, but things have gotten somewhat worse in recent years. The speed change made it more difficult for blaster ships to get in close. The webifier change meant that blaster tracking suddenly wasn't good enough. The projectile boost made hybrids worse by comparison. Whatever it was that broke the camel's back, this is where we are now; Hybrid turrets do not compare favorably to the other turret systems.

    How we go about fixing this is the big question. Not everyone agrees on the direction we should take. Some feel that the ships themselves are at fault. Others point out the inherent incompatibility of armor tanking and close range combat.

    I agree that those issues need to be taken into account, but I don't think they are the best place to start when we rebalance hybrid turrets. Before we start looking at armor tanking issues or individual ships, Hybrid weapons as a whole need to be boosted up to a level where using them becomes desirable. The goal is to make them better at what they already do, not to change their roles. Blasters should do high damage at short range. Railguns should do average damage at long range. Now let's dive right into the details.

    Hybrid Turrets

    Reduce CPU usage:
    • XL Turrets: -5 CPU
    • L Turrets: -3 CPU
    • M Turrets: -2 CPU
    • S Turrets: -1 CPU
    ** Exception: 75mm Railguns (they already have very low CPU requirements.)

    Reduce Powergrid usage:
    • All hybrid turrets: -12% Powergrid usage. Rounded to nearest whole number.
    ** Exceptions: Light Electron Blasters, Light Ion Blasters, 125mm Railguns, 75mm Railguns (they already have very low Powergrid requirements.)
    Reduced Capacitor usage:
    • All hybrid turrets: -30% capacitor use
    Tracking Speed Increase:
    • All blaster turrets: +20% to Tracking speed
    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good tracking when compared to other XL turrets)

    Railguns

    Damage Increase:
    • All railgun turrets: +10% to Damage modifier
    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good damage when compared to other XL turrets)

    Hybrid turret ships

    While I am hesitant to boost individual ships right now, I do think that a small speed boost to hybrid turret ships in general is needed. You will notice that a few hybrid turret ships are not mentioned here. The ones that are not listed are either fast enough already or they have range bonuses to hybrid turrets, which means that they are meant for longer range combat and as such should not need a velocity boost as much as other hybrid turret ships.
    Max Velocity +10 on the following ships:
    Arazu, Astarte, Brutix, Catalyst, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Enyo, Eos, Falcon, Guardian-Vexor, Helios, Incursus, Ishtar, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant

    Max Velocity +5 on the following ships:
    Cormorant, Federation Navy Comet, Hyperion, Kronos, Sin, Vindicator

    Inertia Modifier -5% on the following ships:
    Adrestia, Arazu, Ares, Astarte, Atron, Brutix, Catalyst, Celestis, Cormorant, Daredevil, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Eagle, Enyo, Eos, Eris, Exequror Navy Issue, Falcon, Federation Navy Comet, Ferox, Guardian-Vexor, Harpy, Helios, Hyperion, Incursus, Ishkur, Ishtar, Kronos, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Merlin, Moa, Phobos, Raptor, Rokh, Sin, Taranis, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant, Vindicator, Vulture

    Tech II Ammo

    I did some comparison between the tech II ammo types and found that one hybrid ammo type did indeed need some work. I also found that the other turret types had some very underwhelming ammo. Rather than limit myself to only boosting the hybrid ammo, I will also be making some changes to other tech II ammo types. Javelin is quite obviously underpowered. The correlating laser and projectile ammo, Gleam and Quake, are equally underwhelming and they all need some change. Additionally, Hail sticks out as terribly underpowered.
    • Javelin (all sizes): Removed cap penalty
    • Javelin, Gleam and Quake (all sizes): Removed tracking speed penalty, added 25% tracking speed bonus
    • Hail (all sizes): Removed falloff penalty
    Feedback

    If you have issues with this balancing plan, please post your feedback in the comment thread. We are listening.


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    Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.



    More...

  7. Registered TeamPlayer
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    #307

    Re: Developers Blog

    Quote Originally Posted by CivilWars View Post
    Aww hell yeah!!!


    Sent from my UrMoms using Tapatalk

    x 1000

  8. Registered TeamPlayer chray00's Avatar
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    Steam ID: chray00 chray00's Originid: Chray00
    #308

    Re: Hybrid weapon and Tech II ammo balancing

    Quote Originally Posted by FEED View Post
    Hybrid turrets have fallen out of grace. Maybe they weren't that amazing to begin with, but things have gotten somewhat worse in recent years. The speed change made it more difficult for blaster ships to get in close. The webifier change meant that blaster tracking suddenly wasn't good enough. The projectile boost made hybrids worse by comparison. Whatever it was that broke the camel's back, this is where we are now; Hybrid turrets do not compare favorably to the other turret systems.

    How we go about fixing this is the big question. Not everyone agrees on the direction we should take. Some feel that the ships themselves are at fault. Others point out the inherent incompatibility of armor tanking and close range combat.

    I agree that those issues need to be taken into account, but I don't think they are the best place to start when we rebalance hybrid turrets. Before we start looking at armor tanking issues or individual ships, Hybrid weapons as a whole need to be boosted up to a level where using them becomes desirable. The goal is to make them better at what they already do, not to change their roles. Blasters should do high damage at short range. Railguns should do average damage at long range. Now let's dive right into the details.

    Hybrid Turrets

    Reduce CPU usage:
    • XL Turrets: -5 CPU
    • L Turrets: -3 CPU
    • M Turrets: -2 CPU
    • S Turrets: -1 CPU
    ** Exception: 75mm Railguns (they already have very low CPU requirements.)

    Reduce Powergrid usage:
    • All hybrid turrets: -12% Powergrid usage. Rounded to nearest whole number.
    ** Exceptions: Light Electron Blasters, Light Ion Blasters, 125mm Railguns, 75mm Railguns (they already have very low Powergrid requirements.)
    Reduced Capacitor usage:
    • All hybrid turrets: -30% capacitor use
    Tracking Speed Increase:
    • All blaster turrets: +20% to Tracking speed
    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good tracking when compared to other XL turrets)

    Railguns

    Damage Increase:
    • All railgun turrets: +10% to Damage modifier
    ** Exception: XL turrets (they already have good damage when compared to other XL turrets)

    Hybrid turret ships

    While I am hesitant to boost individual ships right now, I do think that a small speed boost to hybrid turret ships in general is needed. You will notice that a few hybrid turret ships are not mentioned here. The ones that are not listed are either fast enough already or they have range bonuses to hybrid turrets, which means that they are meant for longer range combat and as such should not need a velocity boost as much as other hybrid turret ships.
    Max Velocity +10 on the following ships:
    Arazu, Astarte, Brutix, Catalyst, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Enyo, Eos, Falcon, Guardian-Vexor, Helios, Incursus, Ishtar, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant

    Max Velocity +5 on the following ships:
    Cormorant, Federation Navy Comet, Hyperion, Kronos, Sin, Vindicator

    Inertia Modifier -5% on the following ships:
    Adrestia, Arazu, Ares, Astarte, Atron, Brutix, Catalyst, Celestis, Cormorant, Daredevil, Deimos, Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Eagle, Enyo, Eos, Eris, Exequror Navy Issue, Falcon, Federation Navy Comet, Ferox, Guardian-Vexor, Harpy, Helios, Hyperion, Incursus, Ishkur, Ishtar, Kronos, Lachesis, Maulus, Megathron, Megathron Federate Issue, Megathron Navy Issue, Merlin, Moa, Phobos, Raptor, Rokh, Sin, Taranis, Thorax, Tristan, Utu, Vexor, Vexor Navy Issue, Vigilant, Vindicator, Vulture

    Tech II Ammo

    I did some comparison between the tech II ammo types and found that one hybrid ammo type did indeed need some work. I also found that the other turret types had some very underwhelming ammo. Rather than limit myself to only boosting the hybrid ammo, I will also be making some changes to other tech II ammo types. Javelin is quite obviously underpowered. The correlating laser and projectile ammo, Gleam and Quake, are equally underwhelming and they all need some change. Additionally, Hail sticks out as terribly underpowered.
    • Javelin (all sizes): Removed cap penalty
    • Javelin, Gleam and Quake (all sizes): Removed tracking speed penalty, added 25% tracking speed bonus
    • Hail (all sizes): Removed falloff penalty
    Feedback

    If you have issues with this balancing plan, please post your feedback in the comment thread. We are listening.


    New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
    Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.



    More...
    For some reasons I do feel like playing EVE right now... strange...

  9. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
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    #309

    Beauty hides in the shadows

    In the upcoming winter expansion we’ll be upgrading the shadows in EVE. They will look a whole lot better, despite a barely measurable increase in GPU memory and workload. The upgrade should get rid of the nasty “jaggies” and blockiness while conserving the hard shadows that a dark and dangerous sci-fi game needs.
    So what did we do?
    Better resolution
    The first improvement makes better use of the available shadow map resolution. To render the shadow map we need to set up a viewpoint for the light source that encompasses the entire shadow receiver. Previously this was done in a correct, but not terribly precise way; we’d take the bounding sphere of the ship, build an axis aligned bounding box (AABB) out of it, and project this onto the light source’s view. For any ship that’s not very sphere-like, which is most of them (insert caldari jokes), that added a big margin with empty space for most viewpoints. So, we now take the AABB of the ship itself, and directly position the box in space, then project it onto the light. The result is that the lights have a much tighter idea of where to focus.
    Here’s a comparison showing the improvement in perceived shadow resolution, despite keeping the actual texture dimensions the same.

    Click to enlarge

    Better filtering
    Better resolution means the jaggies and distortions are a lot smaller – but they’re still there. We are already using Variance Shadow Mapping, but the poor resolution, some inaccuracies, bugs, and less than optimal choice of magic numbers didn’t do it full justice. We also weren’t filtering our shadow maps, perhaps because the combination of all these factors meant that a decent filter wasn’t making much difference anyway.
    However, all of that has now been fixed and the result is that most jaggies get smoothed out without losing all of the fine details or making the shadows (too) soft.
    Here’s a comparison with the old solution at the top, and the new filtering at the bottom. The left column uses 1024^2 shadow maps, the right 512^2.

    Click to enlarge
    Is this now perfect? Unfortunately not; every shadowing solution has its own set of trade-offs, and so does VSM. The new technique has its quirks, but we hope that these changes will look fantastic in 90% of the cases, and a little funky only in the remaining 10%; this should be a step up from the old shadows, which looked a little dubious 100% of the time.
    Enjoy!


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  10. RSS Bot FEED's Avatar
    Join Date
    09-07-07
    Posts
    34,809
    Post Thanks / Like
    #310

    Beauty hides in the shadows

    In the upcoming winter expansion we’ll be upgrading the shadows in EVE. They will look a whole lot better, despite a barely measurable increase in GPU memory and workload. The upgrade should get rid of the nasty “jaggies” and blockiness while conserving the hard shadows that a dark and dangerous sci-fi game needs.
    So what did we do?
    Better resolution
    The first improvement makes better use of the available shadow map resolution. To render the shadow map we need to set up a viewpoint for the light source that encompasses the entire shadow receiver. Previously this was done in a correct, but not terribly precise way; we’d take the bounding sphere of the ship, build an axis aligned bounding box (AABB) out of it, and project this onto the light source’s view. For any ship that’s not very sphere-like, which is most of them (insert caldari jokes), that added a big margin with empty space for most viewpoints. So, we now take the AABB of the ship itself, and directly position the box in space, then project it onto the light. The result is that the lights have a much tighter idea of where to focus.
    Here’s a comparison showing the improvement in perceived shadow resolution, despite keeping the actual texture dimensions the same.

    Click to enlarge

    Better filtering
    Better resolution means the jaggies and distortions are a lot smaller – but they’re still there. We are already using Variance Shadow Mapping, but the poor resolution, some inaccuracies, bugs, and less than optimal choice of magic numbers didn’t do it full justice. We also weren’t filtering our shadow maps, perhaps because the combination of all these factors meant that a decent filter wasn’t making much difference anyway.
    However, all of that has now been fixed and the result is that most jaggies get smoothed out without losing all of the fine details or making the shadows (too) soft.
    Here’s a comparison with the old solution at the top, and the new filtering at the bottom. The left column uses 1024^2 shadow maps, the right 512^2.

    Click to enlarge
    Is this now perfect? Unfortunately not; every shadowing solution has its own set of trade-offs, and so does VSM. The new technique has its quirks, but we hope that these changes will look fantastic in 90% of the cases, and a little funky only in the remaining 10%; this should be a step up from the old shadows, which looked a little dubious 100% of the time.
    Enjoy!



    New to EVE? Start your 14-day free trial today.
    Returning pilot? Visit Account Management for the latest offers and promotions.



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