The new alpha version of Star Citizen has been released. In addition to the visually impressive city of Orison, it also contains a special technique for displaying clouds.
Cloud Imperium Games has released the new alpha version 3.14 of Star Citizen. The most important changes are presented in an extensive article, whereby the new cloud city Orison stands out in particular.
You can get a visual impression of it in the video embedded above. In keeping with the city’s surroundings, the current alpha version also brings a new technology called “Cloud Tech”, which will be further elaborated in the future
Fancy clouds probably need a lot of computing power
Cloud tech is used to render clouds in different colours and shapes in a particularly realistic way. According to a tweet by Digital Foundry employee Alexander Battaglia, this already looks impressive at the current stage, but it also puts a lot of demand on the GPU.
At the same time, this is not surprising, after all, graphic effects for the most realistic, volumetric representation of clouds are generally known to require a lot of computing power.
Just had my first go at SC 3.14 – enjoyed a gas giant sunset, met some neat people, flew through some clouds and made off like a bandit on a mercenary mission. Planetary clouds are really impressive, require incredible GPU though. pic.twitter.com/USrqNrK2AG
— Alexander Battaglia (@Dachsjaeger) August 7, 2021
As the extensive patch notes in the “New Features / Core Tech” section show, a suitable graphics option has been added for the new cloud technology in the game. In addition, more fine-grained setting options are added in other areas, such as for the tessellation of the terrain.
