Space Scenes Really Need "space Dust"

[BrazilianJoe]

Space dust is a completely fictional and non-existent in real space.

 

You have this wave going around the ships when the camera is bahind them, but once the camera moves away we lose the frame of reference to evaluate speed. 

 

Pastrs of the ship animations don't seem to convey the sense of speed they should. 

 

I think that adding a bit of space dust could help making these scenes more exciting, with a better sense of ship speed and vector.

 

 

 

[BrazilianJoe]

I fired my email too quickly. let me elaborate:

 

Many space games have this little thingie called 'space dust'. It is little speckles hanging in space which move contrary to the ship or camera  movement. 

 

They serve the purpose of giving the spectator/player a frame of reference for the brain to assess the ship's speed. 

 

THe current loading cutscenes with the Liset are nice. Beautifully rendered and animated. 

 

The wavy thing in front of the ship is nice, but is only visible when the camera is behind the ship. 

 

Once the camera starts free roaming and the ships get zipping around, it becomes harder for the brain to get what is happening, until they get really close to another object e.g. the grineer galleon. But until they get there, the ships did some pirouettes in the sky and the camera wobbles everywhere, the eye can't get what is going on because the background is just too far away to be comparable to the ships. 

 

So, I think that the fix would be to have some space dust, so that the eye can differentiate between camera movement and ship movement, and have a better sense of speed.

 

The thruster trail is beautiful, but very homogeneous. perhaps having subtle color waves propagating along the trail could work as static markers along the ship's path, for the brain to also gauge the ship's speed. 

Edited July 21, 2014 by BrazilianJoe

[BrazilianJoe]

Now that Archwing is around the corner, I feel it's the right time to cast Shadows Of The Dead on this thread. 

 

DE, you should have a proper space dust implementation now for Archwing, add it to the Liset cutscenes too.