Star Citizen Devs Talk Atmospheric Flight and More…

So Star Citizen’s release date of 2016 is getting to be a shorter and shorter window as every day ticks by, but in the meantime we can bring you this video from the official Star Citizen YouTube Channel detailing some of the physics of the game – specifically the ins and outs of atmospheric flight. The video below starts at 2m 59s, feel free to watch through to the end, there’s a bit of niff-naff, but there is quite a lot of detailed information that helps open the game up even more to us.

If you can look past the faux-news studio style video, there is a great bit of gen on this game that is well worth looking through. Basically the cliff-notes from the video regarding atmosphere is that if your starship appears more aerodynamic, then it actually will be more aerodynamic within planetary atmospheres. It will be easier to manoeuvre, drag will have less of an effect and it fly more like a plane. Whereas starships that are not particularly aerodynamic will and I quote “fly more like a bus”.

But that’s not only it, the way the ships will fly will be calculated dynamically, so depending on the atmosphere, depending on your speed, and depending on the shape – including if you’ve lost a part of your ship or depending surface areas of the ship – will depend on the way in which your ship will fly in atmospheric conditions.

The devs have also been working extensively on the motion capture side of the game, but the “life animations”, such as being in a bar, sitting down and – wait for it – leaning against a wall. My writing style might be condescending, however it could potentially be that if they are working on the little back-ground after thought animations like leaning against a wall that Star Citizen maybe closer than we think…

Another awesome part of this video is showing in detail some concept art and information on the ship – The Reliant. This is truly a multinational effort with work taking place in Austin, TX as well as in the UK. The type of ship the Reliant is, is similar to a scout ship which is “multi-state” and “transforming” with multiple flight modes which alters the way that the ship performs and works from an engineering perspective. The take off and changing mode section of the video from 11m 56s is seriously impressive and shows the difference in speeds and way in which it will perform.

The detail that is going into this game however is absolutely stunning, it would appear that from a physics point of view this game is absolutely on point, with seemingly no detail being too small to look through and spend a good amount of time on. It would appear that they are approaching this game from a “marginal gains” point-of-view. What I mean by that is that it looks as though instead of working on something to improve the quality of the game by 10%, they might be working on multiple, minor aspects of the game almost hundreds or thousands it would appear, that are quick fixes, that would each improve the quality of the game by a tiny portion, a fraction of a percentage – but by doing so the game looks to be polished, smooth and incredibly beautiful.

What do you make of how Star Citizen is shaping up? Whatever your opinion, let us know in the comments below or in the RGM Forums.