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ARENA COMMANDER V0.8 - THANK YOU!
JUNE 5TH 2014




Greetings Citizens,
Thank you! The Arena Commander launch has been a great success, and we are excited to see so much of the community fully embracing the nature of a pre-alpha module. The entire team has been energized by your successful combat reports, which seem to be going more smoothly than we had imagined. As you know, Arena Commander is just your first taste of what is to come with Star Citizen… now get ready to see what else we have in store!

For now, we’re extremely happy that Citizens everywhere are getting into space. To share a little data about Arena Commander’s launch:. As of 1 PM PST (about twelve hours after launch), 33,813 people have successfully played an Arena Commander match! We’ve served 820 TB of data, which means that in half a day we put out more data than we did in August, September, October and November of last year combined! And that’s all WITHOUT crashing anything!

And special thanks to the dedicated Citizens who are filing Arena Commander bug reports on the forums. Getting your real world feedback is why we thought a modular release system was a good idea… and you are proving us right! Our QA teams in Manchester and Austin are examining your reports, reproducing bugs and working on solutions for future patches! Your reports on design issues like control responsiveness are also being considered; remember that a lot of what you’re seeing today will change in the future!

Our QA team has also set up a workarounds page for common issues we’ve been able to solve without a patch. You can find it here. One big request we’ve had is for additional HOTAS layouts. Future versions of Arena Commander will feature customizable controls and multiple presets, but for now we’re making available XML files you can add to the game for additional control schemes.

• Saitek X-55 Rhino HOTAS XML
• Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS XML

Here’s how you use them:

1. Click the correct link above for your HOTAS joystick
2. Right click the page and Save As – noting where you’ve saved the file e.g. C:\Hotas
3. Now, once you’re in game, open the console with the [ ` ] key and type: pp_rebindkeys C:\Hotas\layout_hotas_x55 (or pp_rebindkeys C:\Hotas\layout_hotas_warthog)

We’re also thrilled to see the many Citizens who are sharing their Arena Commander experience via Twitch. Again,THANK YOU! You’re giving backers who haven’t had a chance to play an opportunity to see the game in action… and you’re helping show it off to the world, too! (Twitch streamers even helped us work last night’s ‘missing file’ bug that was keeping Citizens in their Hangars!) Here’s a short list of some of our favorite streams:

• Nyaandere
• Bluebird
• Cohh
• AverageAdam
• Ngotie

We know there are lots of other great Arena Commander streams; share your favorites in the comments below!

We’re in the process of putting together some ‘how to’ videos to get people flying in Arena Commander! Today we’re premiering guides that show you how to use the keyboard and mouse controls, both for flying and for fighting! You can check them out below.

And if you haven’t had a chance to look at Arena Commander’s manual, here’s a link. The manual is designed both to teach you about the game and as a call back to the days of games like Wing Commander, where players were given a cool “in-universe” booklet to further immerse them in the game world. Note that the manual is a living document, just like the game: we’ve already updated it once since launch!

On that note, we’re aware of a bug in the 300i’s cooling system that reports overheating when it shouldn’t. You canclick here to find an official response from Origin Jumpworks detailing their plans for correcting the error!

Again, thank you for making Arena Commander V0.8’s rollout a success. We know there’s a lot of work left to do… but we’re emboldened by the fact that our most dedicated backers seem to ‘get’ where we’re going with this. The best is yet to come!

— Chris Roberts

P.S. We also have a new version of the Arena Commander trailer you saw last night. There was a heated debate among the team as to which was the better version… now you can decide! It’s available below.

 

Star Citizen Patch 12.1
95.38176
JUNE 6TH 2014

• Updates
  • Increased the size of production server and deployed servers with Google Compute
  • Updated Arena Commander controls screen to include HOTAS mappings and updated other control screens to reflect current controls accurately
  • Adjusted power consumption and the speed of the laser bolt for the Klaus and Werner CF007 Bulldog

• Bugs Fixed
  • Unable to access multiplayer with an account that contains the appropriate multiplayer game mode items
  • Resolved an issue in multiplayer where the pilot enter animation would play every time you respawn
  • Resolved an issue with the Hornet’s Gatling gun which would cause it to begin taking heat damage prior to reaching a critical heat state
  • Resolved an issue with the AI firing their Gatling guns constantly until they were destroyed due to heat damage
  • Resolved an issue with pilot animations becoming offset in the 300i when viewed in 3rd person
  • Resolved an issue which caused the animations for pitching up and down in the cockpit to be reversed.
  • Resolved an issue which caused AI who were destroyed when the player blew up their engine and reactor to register as having committed suicide.
  • Resolved an issue in multiplayer that would often cause a crash of the server and clients at the end of a round
  • Corrected an issue with cooling on the 300i which could cause unintentional overheating under normal operating conditions

 

INTRODUCING THE FREELANCER FROM MISC
JUNE 6TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
The MISC Freelancer is here!

We are pleased to announce that the MISC Freelancer line of variants is available starting today! You can learn about all four Freelancers in the brochure below, which outlines exactly why you might want to add this ship to your fleet. The Freelancer is a versatile, rugged starship capable of exploration and shipping roles. Whether exploring the depths of space or shipping cargo, the owner/operator of a Freelancer is his own man (or woman.)

Visit the MISC FREELANCER page for more on key elements of this chassis by Musashi Industrial & Starflight Concern. The SHIP SPECS matrix has been updated to reflect all of the Freelancer variants properties.

And be sure to watch the finale of The Next Great Starship: we’ll be premiering the Freelancer commercial trailer, showing off the ship’s features with some very cool visuals! TNGS airs live in this space, Saturday at 3 PM PST. If you can’t catch TNGSlive, the commercial will be available in this space later tomorrow.

Three additional versions of Freelancer are being launched today:




MISC FREELANCER LINE SALE WEEK



All of the Freelancer variants are now available in the Hangar! You can’t dogfight with them yet, but you can explore them like any of Star Citizen’s other ships. The DUR and the MAX are permanent additions to the pledge store, while the MIS will be available through Monday, June 16th. The MIS package even includes a limited-edition UEE coat (for those not interested in the MIS, the coat is available as a separate item, also for this week only.) It may return for special promotions in the future.

If you already have a Freelancer as part of a game package and would like to exchange the hull to a DUR, MAX or MIS you can do so with one of the upgrade packages listed below.

Remember: we are offering these pledge ships to help fund Star Citizen’s development. All of these ships will be available for in-game credits in the final universe, and they are not required to start the game. The goal is to make additional ships available that give players a different experience rather than a particular advantage when the persistent universe launches.

As a Package:
Freelancer package

Freelancer DUR Package

Freelancer MAX Package

Freelancer MIS


As an Addon:
Freelancer Addon

Freelancer DUR Addon

Freelancer MAX Addon

Freelancer MIS Addon


As an Upgrade:
Freelancer DUR Upgrade

Freelancer MAX Upgrade

Freelancer MIS Upgrade


HANGAR PATCH

The Hangar patch is now available! Freelancer variants should appear correctly in your Hangar at this time.

PLEASE NOTE: Do not be surprised if you log on to find a Deluxe Hangar! We have temporarily upgraded all Hangars to display the two The Next Great Starship finalists. Check them out and decide which you like best; the winner will be determined via live vote during the TNGS finale tomorrow at 3 PM PST!

 

Letter from the Chairman: $45 Million
JUNE 7TH 2014






Greetings Citizens,
We’ve hit $45 million in crowd funding, so I think it’s safe to say that the Freelancer is a winner! I think the Freelancer is a great microcosm of the Star Citizen experience. Backers chose the original design during the initial campaign, they petitioned us to update the cockpit… and now here it is, beautifully finished in your Hangars with a full set of variants. This isn’t just a ship you helped pay for: it’s a ship you helped create.

At $45 million, you’ve unlocked one of our backer-selected rewards, the mysterious Hadesian artifact. We have some cool plans for exactly what this will kick off in the Persistent Universe… but you’ll have to explore that aspect of the game yourself! Here are the details:

• Hadesian Artifact – The mystery of what happened in Hades has been one of the great archaeological puzzles ever since the system was discovered in the early 26th Century. The evidence suggests that the Hadesians nearly erased their entire civilization in devastating civil war that left a planet cracked in half, but so many questions remained. Who were these Hadesians? How did the war get started? Over the centuries, even the public became enamored by the mystery of this system. This curiosity was inflamed when scientists recently discovered a lone Hadesian artifact on the black market of all places. Trinket manufacturers quickly tried to capitalize on the resurgence of interest by building exact copies of the artifact for sale to the public, even replicating the unidentified symbols along the base…

For your final ‘flare’ reward, you’ve voted for the “Engine Tuning Kit.” Here’s the newly-unlocked official description:

• Engine Tuning Kit – Wilkes & Federman MaxTune Kit has become one of the best-selling starter kits for the discerning home enthusiast. Featured in Whitley’s latest Steal of the Year issue, this kit comes with everything the fledgling engineer needs to take a deeper look into the mechanics of their engine. With a Tap Analyzer, you will be able to view your engine’s current output and energy draw numbers in an easy and comprehensible way. Use the thirty-eight piece omnitool to access your engine to start tweaking. Wilkes & Federman is not responsible for damage incurred after tuning your engine. Please consult with manufacturer’s warranty before performing work.

I hope you’re enjoying your Freelancers, and that you like today’s commercial. As you know, our initial plan was to produce brochures and commercials for the first set of pledge ships. You’ve seen the Aurora, 300i, Hornet and Freelancer now, and the Constellation and Cutlass are in production.

For the next ‘player reward’ stretch goal, I’d like to add another commercial to that lineup… and I’d like to leave the choice up to you! Please vote below to pick which of Star Citizen’s second wave of ships should be the focus of the next commercial we develop.
As always, thank you for your incredible support! Enjoy Arena Commander, and stay tuned as we perfect dogfighting and roll out even bigger parts of the Star Citizen universe.

— Chris Roberts

 

FREELANCER COMMERCIAL LIVE!
JUNE 8TH 2014



The Freelancer commercial is here! As with the Aurora, 300i and Hornet, we’ve put together a cool in-engine (and in-universe!) commercial to show you how theMISC Freelancer lineup fits into the world of Star Citizen. You can learn more about the Freelancer lineup here.

 

Four Horsemen Wins!!
JUNE 8TH 2014



The search for The Next Great Starship has ended and Four Horsemen has taken the crown. You voted and now all Citizens will have the option to travel the ‘Verse in a ship designed by Four Horsemen. Congratulations to Four Horsemen and to all the teams that competed in TNGS. We shall see you, and the Redeemer, in the ‘verse.

If you’re interested in checking out the Redeemer, log in to your Hangar this weekend: we’ve placed it on display for all backers! (Your Hangar will revert to normal on Monday.)

 

CHRIS ROBERTS' E3 DEMO
JUNE 11TH 2014



Chris Roberts stopped in to E3 today to demo Arena Commander as part of Gamespot’s coverage! You can view the whole segment here.

 

ARENA COMMANDER PATCH AVAILABLE
JUNE 12TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We have issued a patch for Arena Commander! This patch helps prepare the game for the multiplayer roll-out, adds several control-related features and fixes a number of bugs. You can find further details and a list of other known issues in the Patch Notes.

Please note one change that may be confusing: you must press tab in order to see the cursor while accessing the Arena Commander menu in the cockpit. This is a result of ongoing updates to the controller setups, and will be altered in future builds.

 

Star Citizen Patch 12.2
JUNE 12TH 2014

• PLEASE NOTE: You must now press tab to show the cursor when the Arena Commander menu is open in the cockpit.

• New Features/Fixes
  • Vanduul no longer show as committing suicide when defeating them with missiles
  • Added “Invert Flight Mouse” and “Invert Flight Controller” options to game settings screen
  • Helmet animation plays when putting on the helmet now
  • Ejection now counts towards player death
  • Added an expanded X52 mapping
  • Lighting fixes for AMD machines
  • Improved Aurora mount/dismount/idle animation
  • Increased fuel tank capacity to allow for longer afterburner use
  • Improved Thruster Animations
  • Improved Holoship destruction
  • Player is now able to access the scoreboard whilst waiting on respawn
  • Improvements on overlapping ship audio SFX
  • Fixed crashes when match round ends
  • 300i seat animations now added and improved
  • Entering 300i and Aurora with your helmet now displays the HUD on the helmet
  • Removed debug text from X55 HOTAS in key binding menu

• Known Issues

• Hangar:
  • Buggy can only move when using boost in the business hangar
  • Audio missing from legacy Aurora control panels when sit/standing in pilot seat
  • CF-117 Badger repeater geometry becomes offset when fired from firing range
  • Red replace me ball shown beneath DFM Trainer Hornet
  • Texture z-fighting appearing in DFM Trainer Aurora cockpit
  • Third person camera view can roll using Q and E

• Vanduul swarm
  • Aurora boost level decreases when not using boost
  • Boost level not shown while flying 300i

• Multiplayer
  • Aurora boost level only shown as decreasing after first death
  • Other ships can appear to rotate when they actually are not
  • Scoreboard info not shown if round ends while outside of ship

 

Arena Commander Multiplayer Roll-Out Begins!
JUNE 12TH 2014




Greetings Citizens,
If you’re a very early backer, check your e-mail! The first invitations to Arena Commander’s multiplayer have gone out. QA invited the first 250 backers to start playing today. These backers were selected by the team because of their especially valuable bug reporting skills during the Hangar module release.

The team decided that reports were looking good and that we should begin the general rollout. Only a small number of Citizens have been sent invites at this point, but we hope to increase that dramatically in the near future. From this point forward, invites will be based on Citizen number in the aims of giving the earliest access to the backers who have supported us the longest.

 

WIP: RETALIATOR
JUNE 13TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,

As promised in yesterday’s Letter from the Chairman, here are newly generated images of the Retaliator bomber! The Retaliator is being developed by the team at Foundry 42 in the UK… and everything you see here is entirely in-engine! The images include process notes from the art team explaining how they reached the ship’s current state. Enjoy!

 

BROADCAST SCHEDULE UPDATE
JUNE 16TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’re updating our video broadcast schedule!

Starting this week, the community show, Around the Verse, will air Thursdays at 9 AM PST. This will give the video team time to edit both Around the Verse and 10 for the Chairman while still being able to premiere Around the Verse at a time it can be viewed by audiences in Europe!

In the future, Inside CIG packages will appear on Fridays at 3 PM. Inside CIG segments won’t run every week, but will be put together whenever we have an interesting development process to share!

Schedule

• Mondays (3 PM PST) – 10 for the Chairman
• Thursdays (9 AM PST) – Around the Verse
• Fridays (3 PM PST) – Inside CIG (when available)

 

FROM THE CHAIRMAN: FLIGHT MODEL AND INPUT CONTROLS
JUNE 17TH 2014

Greetings Citizens,


It’s really great to see so many of you taking to space to try out the first taste of what space combat will be in Star Citizen. I, like the rest of the team have been avidly watching the Twitch streams of backers playing and reading the forums for your feedback. Two of the hot topics of debate have been the Flight Model and the advantage or disadvantage of various input devices. So I thought I would take a moment of your time to share some insight on the two topics.

Flight Model

Most space games (including my past ones) greatly simplify the simulation, usually as an atmospheric flight model without gravity and air resistance – ships have predefined pitch, roll and yaw rates, linear acceleration (that is applied to a simplified point mass) and a capped top speed. When you want to turn, the joystick or mouse input is mapped directly to the specified turn rate irrelevant of the ship’s moment of inertia. Damage is usually handled as a multiplier on the turn rates and linear acceleration.

Star Citizen doesn’t do that. We model what would be needed on an actual spaceship, including correct application of thrust at the places where the thrusters are attached to the hull of the ship – in our model moment of inertia, mass changes and counter thrust are VERY necessary. Star Citizen’s physical simulation of spaceflight is based on what would actually happen in space.

There were a couple of reasons why we went this direction –

1. Because we were planning on modeling and simulating spaceships with a fidelity that hadn’t been seen before I felt we needed a simulation that would let the player have different flight behavior if a thruster is damaged, a wing is blown off or a pilot overloads his ship with weapons and ammunition? I wanted a system that could feel distinct for a huge variety of ships, with wildly different sizes and roles because in Star Citizen you can go from a single seater ship 15 meters in length to a huge capital ship over 1km in size crewed by many players. I wanted these ships to come with their own identity and feel much like similar sized cars, even if equivalent in mass can feel radically different. I wanted ships to have their own personality – not just a slower of faster version of the base ship.

2. The second is that Star Citizen will have a significant amount of player vs. player combat. I don’t know how many people played Wing Commander Armada (the first Wing Commander game to feature multiplayer) but it wasn’t that much fun in battle mode (the head to head mode). When you design a single player game you can deliberately dumb down the AI to allow the player to get on the tail and shoot down multiple enemies, which gives the player a sense of achievement. There’s nothing more fun than single handily clearing a wave of 10 enemy Kilrathi fighters. But let’s be honest, in single player games the ability for the player to gun down waves of enemies has less to do with the skill of the player because the player is usually overpowered in respect to the base enemies he will fight. You can’t do this in player vs player, and it’s likely that multiple players will have the same ship. Without a sophisticated simulation and flight model, with lots of options for a pilot to fluidly try different tactics to get the upper hand the battles can end up as a frustrating stalemate when both pilots have the same ship as no one can get on the other’s tail because you don’t have the same forces that affect air combat (namely gravity and air resistance) to bleed energy from the maneuvers.
These reasons are why we went out of our way to fully simulate the physics that would involve controlling and moving a ship in space with no short cuts.​

In the very same way we also simulate the ship systems. Every function is tied to individual items that are “plugged” into the ship – the weapons, the thrusters, power plant, heat sinks, radar, fuel tank, batteries, targeting system, CPU, HUD and even the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) are all items that tie into various “pipes” that connect the systems – there’s a pipe for power, heat, fuel and CPU cycles. The targeting computer needs power from the Power Plant and CPU cycles from the Ship’s Computer, positional information from the Radar to resolve targets. If there aren’t enough CPU cycles to go around the targets will resolve slower, not enough power and the targeting computer may stop functioning all together. If you don’t draw off enough heat from the weapons, they may overheat, malfunction or even become damaged. If one of your wings gets blown off with its attached heat sinks, you better scale back your heat output.

By fully simulating both the systems and physics of powered spaceflight we allow for a huge amount of emergent behavior and variety in the final game. Ship load out becomes very important not just for functionality but also for actual flight and responsiveness. Just like in real military aviation design, you could decide to have redundant systems for better battle survivability or you could maximize your hitting power at the expense of maneuverability.

Sounds pretty cool right? So why all the fuss?

Proper space flight simulation is inherently different than an atmospheric flight model. In space there is no aerodynamic force (lift or drag) and so both angular and linear inertia becomes much more important. Unless you apply a counter force to arrest the angular or linear momentum of an object in space it will continue unaltered. When a player pulls back on the stick the thrusters apply thrust to create rotation, which accelerates the ship’s angular velocity. When you let the stick return to zero or move it the other way, the IFCS now has to apply counter thrust to first retrograde the current angular velocity and then move you towards the new desired angular velocity. Unless the ship has hugely overpowered thrusters, this will not happen instantly. As the IFCS isn’t clairvoyant and doesn’t know when you wish to change angular velocity it can’t anticipate your actions, so unless the pilot himself eases into his desired orientation, it’s likely he will overshoot it. Think of it as stopping in a car; you normally have a good feel for your stopping distance and so when approaching a stop sign you start to slow down. You don’t expect to go from 50 mph to zero instantly. This behavior is quite different from an airplane which uses control surfaces that alter the airflow over the wings/tail to maneuver. In this case the angular velocity change is normally directly proportional to the rudder/flaps position.

This means that to a certain extent you need to anticipate where you want to be and ease into that position. If you’re used to an atmospheric model when first flying in a model where momentum is much more important it is pretty easy to overshoot your desired heading. Then as the counter thrust isn’t instant you can overcorrect the other way. This is why the ship can feel “twitchy” when trying to line up a target.

As this is different than what people are used to, a portion of our community clearly feels the current flight model is “wrong.”

But if you think about what we are doing, we actually allow for a LOT more variation and nuance in flight and combat than a simplified Wing Commander/X-Wing style flight model. Like learning to drive a car really well…it requires some learning. You have to anticipate where you want to be and plan for it.

Does this mean I think the system is perfect?

No!

This is one of the big reasons we wanted to get it into all of your hands. It’s been great seeing people play the game and provide their feedback. It’s been really great to see quite a few people who first hated the flight model, come around to seeing its potential after some other members of the community have shared their insights. This doesn’t mean everyone is sold but it’s always heartening to see people being open to new possibilities.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m satisfied with where we are. My goal is to have all the nuance that I describe above for the players that want to go deep but also make it accessible in the way Wing Commander was for someone new to the game (and genre).

The key thing to remember is that the Intelligent Flight Control System is just the interface between the physical simulation of the ship’s movement via its thrusters and the force they exert. It’s not the model. I see a lot of posts talking about the desire for “Newtonian” mode. The physics simulation is already a full Newtonian rigid body simulation. For what we are trying to achieve there will always need to be a fly by wire interface between the players input and the actual physics as no human can simultaneously direct eight thrusters simultaneously, specifying their thrust and attitude to achieve desired movement. Within the confines of physical reality the IFCS can do pretty much anything we want. The key is determining what we want the player’s input to map to.

The first pass of various modes – basic IFCS, De-Coupled, G-Safe and Comstab are all different modes that we felt would be useful at various times. It doesn’t mean it is the end of the modes, or how they are implemented is the only way they will be. A lot of people have been asking for “true” 6DOF available all the time – basically having strafe available during normal IFCS flight mode and to make strafe additive to the ship’s velocity in decoupled mode. These are all things that we will experiment with, along with quite a few other options e.g., an additional G-Safe mode that is turn limited rather than speed limited and we’re also going to be playing with thruster power as currently the maneuvering thrusters are about a half to a third of the power of the main engines which is fairly overpowered Just be warned the weaker the maneuvering thrusters the more the ship will “slide” at speed before vectoring to the desired direction.

To give you even more insight into how the IFCS works, John Pritchett, the engineer who wrote the current implementation of the IFCS has written an in-depth piece that goes into the detail of how the system works. I hope you will all appreciate the level of detail we are aiming for in Star Citizen. Don’t forget there is so much more to the game than just Arena Commander – and even in Arena Commander there is so much that cannot be appreciated yet as we are blocked by a work in progress HUD and lack of items to equip your ship with – both of which will open up new possibilities and tactics.

Control Devices
There has been a lot of debate about mouse control vs. joystick control and the worry from some portion of the community that the mouse scheme makes the game too “arcadey” and HOTAS users feeling that their control mechanism of choice has not been supported properly.

Firstly let me state the goal for Star Citizen will be controller agnostic. No one control mechanism should have an advantage over the others. Personally I am a joystick pilot (either through HOTAS or Gamepad) as opposed to a mouse pilot. I just feel like I have more precise flight control with a joystick. In our various studios there is a huge variety of controller use – some prefer mouse, some joystick, some HOTAS and some gamepad. This is the best guarantee that any one control mode will not dominate.

Having said this we recognize that the control input schemes need work in flexibility/customization to achieve this goal.

One of our top priorities for Arena Commander is to allow users to customize their key bindings form inside the game. We are actively working on this and hope to deliver something next month.

We also will be working on the various HOTAS profiles, as well as fine tuning the control filtering for joysticks to hopefully allow for crisper maneuvering during smaller movements of the stick. There are also some additional head look modes that haven’t been implemented yet that will allow a joystick player to take advantage of the gimbaled weapons the way the mouse player can. And of course if you feel the mouse, with its greater precision allows for better aiming you could always fly the ship with a joystick and look with a mouse!

Yaw vs Roll
There has also been some discussion around the fact that yawing does not impact your pilot in terms of negative G effects (i.e. the black and red out of the vertical G forces). There are a few things to consider here. First, pure yawing turns, without any bank, are certainly possible in space, but that isn’t the optimal way to turn. You can generate more thrust by combining your side and lower thrusters than you can with just your side thrusters. IFCS automatically banks a ship to optimize its turning thrust, and this is where vertical G forces come into play (note this is different from atmospheric flight where banking is necessary for turn stability). Second, the amount of bank in any yawing turn will depend on the amount of side thrust that your ship can provide, which means the amount of vertical G forces in a yawing turn will vary based on the situation. Third, black/redout and loss of consciousness are consequences of vertical g-force exposure only, where blood is being either drained from or forced into the pilot’s head. Properly constrained pilots can withstand very high levels of horizontal G forces without any significant loss of cognitive ability.

For horizontal g-forces, the limiting factor is structural. Unfortunately, that limitation has not yet been implemented in our model. Once it is, there will be consequences for extreme unbanked turns. Instead of blacking out, you might rip off a thruster or a wing from the sheer magnitude of the horizontal Gs. And if enabled, G-safe mode will guarantee the structural integrity of your ship by limiting the amount of thrust in any maneuver.

Turreting
A portion of the community has expressed concern about the ability for players to “turret” by going into decoupled mode and spin around to fire at their target, feeling this removes the skill level of dogfighting. I know people think this but I can assure you that in our internal multiplayer tests pretty no one exclusively decouples and “turrets” as they would get destroyed very quickly. The key to surviving a dogfight is about being constantly on the move and not being predicable with your movements – sitting still or moving in a constant vector (which is what happens when you decouple) will get you killed. Decoupled mode is best used by going into briefly for a quick orientation change then dropping back into coupled mode. As we tweak the power of the maneuvering thrusters to make the main engine more significant going into decoupled mode, making a quick orientation change and going back into normal flight will be a great way to maximize your available thrust for a quick vector change. I know that some people think that being able to change your orientation much quicker than you can in an atmospheric flight sim makes the game easy but this is a space combat simulation NOT an atmospheric flight simulation and the ability to decouple your orientation from your velocity vector is absolutely something that would be used – and don’t forget a huge amount of the community demanded to be able to do the maneuvers you loved from Battle Star Galactica!

Gimbaled Weapons vs Fixed
In Arena Commander V1.0 (and Star Citizen as a whole) there will be both fixed weapons and gimbaled/turreted weapons. The fixed weapons will have a slow auto convergence of perhaps -/+ five degrees to allow them to focus at a point that is user definable (defaults to half maximum range) or will adjust to the distance of the current target. We didn’t have time to finish this feature so for v0.8 we just made all fixed weapons gimbaled in order to not give the Hornet a huge advantage over the Aurora and 300i. This is not the long term plan.

Fixed weapons will have a lead indicator (just like in a real combat aircraft). We are also considering altering how the gimbaled guns look reticle operates. Right now you just have to place it over your target and the targeting computer gimbals the guns to achieve that firing solution, when the dotted lines collapse inside the reticle it means that all guns have achieved the solution. We are thinking about making it so you have to place the look reticle over the lead indicator in order to achieve the firing solution.

This will allow a pilot who is not using the full power of his gimbaled guns (it’s not always easy to aim and fly into two different directions or if you’re in a combined look and fly mode like the “Freelancer” mouse mode) to fly in a more optimal manner for leading the target (you want to heading at where the target is heading not where it is now)

As for people thinking that gimbaled weapons spoil the “skill” in the game, gimbaled / turreted weapons are a mainstay of current military equipment and will likely be even more so in the future. That doesn’t mean a hit is automatic. The weapon still has to come to bear on the target and you have to be pointing your ship’s nose in such a way as the firing solution can be met. And that’s assuming the target doesn’t start changing course or speed erratically!

— Chris Roberts

 

INTELLIGENT FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM OVERVIEW





In Star Citizen, IFCS is a flight control system that is designed to assist the pilot in operating a spacecraft. It translates a pilots control inputs into thruster operations to accomplish a designated command, even under a sub-optimal or failing propulsion system. It is an adaptive system that uses a combination of sensors and feedback control to drive the error between the goal state and the actual spacecraft state to zero. It is fault tolerant, in that it can adaptively utilize any combination of thrusters and its backup Control Moment Gyro to compensate for the failure or loss of one or more thrusters and keep the craft stabilized and, if possible, under pilot control. Even with a single thruster remaining, a pilot can, with some difficulty, actively control his or her spacecraft.

IFCS Subsystems
IFCS is comprised of many subsystems that work together to provide a pilot with spacecraft stability and control. These include:

Propulsion and Attitude Control (PAC) – PAC includes, typically, the full set of thrusters, which provide both translational and rotational action, and a backup Control Moment Gyro (CMG) unit which provides supplemental attitude control. It also includes the circuitry and control software that drive these units.

Primary Control System (PCS) – The PCS provides an interface between the pilot and IFCS. It translates a pilot’s commands into control actions that are applied to a virtual control frame which represents the ideal goal action of the pilot. The virtual control frame consists of a goal velocity along any combination of axes, goal rotation rates about any combination of axes, as well as a reference attitude. This virtual frame represents the ideal state of the craft under perfect control, and all pilot input is applied relative to this virtual frame, thereby limiting the effect of external error on pilot control.

Reaction Control System (RCS) – The physical state of the PCS virtual frame is controlled by the predicted thruster and CMG output in response to pilot control. Under ideal conditions, the PCS frame attitude will be perfectly synchronized with the actual attitude of the spacecraft. However, factors such as sub-optimal thruster response or failure, external forces such as weapons fire, missile explosions, etc., can cause the real attitude of the craft to deviate from the virtual attitude. When this happens, it is the job of the Reaction Control System to drive the error between the two attitudes to zero. It attempts to do so using both thrusters and the Control Moment Gyros. If it fails to synchronize the attitude of the real and virtual frames within a reasonable time, it may reset the virtual frame attitude to that of the real spacecraft in order to avoid pilot disorientation.

Anti-gravity System (AGS) – The AGS detects and compensates for gravity, and, in general, any other continuous external force, allowing the spacecraft to maintain its position relative to the field’s source.

Turn Control System (TCS) – TCS assists the pilot in achieving stable turns. At high speed, a spacecraft’s thrusters may not provide enough force to hold a stable turn, causing the ship to slide, often resulting in a collision. A pilot will normally decrease his or her speed when turning, but TCS can manage the throttle for you by automatically setting the forward velocity to match the desired turn rate given the level of turning thrust currently available. The system takes into account the optimal banking thrust in calculating the sustainable turning velocity.

G-force Control Mode (GCM) – GCM is a safety mode that attempts to limit a pilot’s exposure to potentially dangerous levels of g-force. The primary danger for a fully constrained pilot is prolonged exposure to vertical g-forces which can cause blackout, greyout, redout, disorientation, loss of consciousness, and, if not corrected, even death. Horizontal g-forces of an extreme nature are also avoided, as they can cause both physical harm to a pilot and structural damage to the spacecraft.
​

In addition to these standard subsystems, other functionality may be implemented for more advanced systems.

IFCS Operation

IFCS takes as input a pilot’s commands, which may include a variety of operations, but are ultimately translated into 3 degrees of translation and 3 degrees of rotation. Additionally, other pilot inputs may be used as parameters in various phases of the IFCScontrol system.

Once the input values are modified by IFCS modes such as Turn Control and G-force Control, speed limits are imposed, etc., the modified inputs are passed into the Primary Control System, which includes both a linear and angular velocity PID controller. These control functions calculate the optimal force and torque which, if applied at the ship’s center of mass, will provide the motion requested by the pilot.

Simultaneously, attitude readings are passed into the Reaction Control System where a positional PID controller is used to drive the ship’s real attitude toward a goal reference attitude provided by the PCS. The control function outputs a torque that will optimally decrease the attitude error over the next time step.

Finally, a reading of persistent force fields, typically gravity, is passed into the Anti-gravity System which calculates the necessary counter-force.

Once the desired forces and torques have been calculated, propulsion resources are allocated to them in order from highest to lowest priority. AGS force is allocated first, as failure to generate sufficient counter-propulsion could be catastrophic. Next, RCS torque is allocated, drawn from primary propulsion first, then falling back on CMG torque if insufficient propulsion is available. Next, PCS rotation control is allocated, again drawing upon primary propulsion first, CMG torque next. And finally, at the lowest priority, translational control is allocated.

After a short time, once the propulsion system has acted on the IFCS commands, sensors read the ship’s actual state, which may vary from the expected state because of propulsion malfunctions, uncompensated external forces, etc., then feeds the results back in to the IFCScontrol loop and the process repeats.

Velocity and Attitude Control

Because IFCS cannot rely on the propulsion system to deliver the requested control, it uses a PID feedback controller to minimize the error between the desired state and the measured state. Such controllers are used by the Primary Control System to calculate the optimal force and torque to carry out the pilot’s control commands, as well as the Reaction Control System to maintain attitude stability.

PID controllers can be tuned to provide a range of response characteristics. Using velocity control as an example, an overdamped controller will accelerate quickly toward the reference velocity, overshoot, then oscillate as it settles into the final velocity. An underdamped controller will accelerate more slowly, settling into the reference velocity without any overshoot. A critically damped controller will accelerate at the optimal rate to settle in minimum time without any overshoot. The Primary Control System controllers that provide linear and angular velocity control are dynamically tuned. Based on pilot input magnitude, they can range from a subtle to aggressive acceleration response. In addition, individual pilots may prefer a more or less stiff acceleration response.

The actual response time of IFCS controllers is dependent not only on the tuning parameters, but also on the response time of its propulsion system components.


Propulsion System
Thrusters
The primary component of propulsion on most ships will be the thruster. The Star Citizen flight model provides a 100% accurate thruster model that takes into account the location of each thruster relative to the ship’s true center of mass, and the maximum thrust capacity and response time of each thruster. Under ideal conditions, the thrusters will generally be balanced about the ship’s intended center of mass. This allows the ship optimal thruster control. In this sample image, the top rear thrusters are balanced about the center of mass and will generate a zero sum torque about the z axis.

After suffering damage, the center of mass may shift, destabilizing the thruster system. In the following image, the thrusters are no longer balanced about the center of mass. When firing the thrusters, the ship is subjected to non-zero torque, resulting in an unintended yaw. IFCSwill attempt to compensate for this torque error by using other thruster pairs to generate counter torque, and if unable to do so, will attempt to limit the error by decreasing the amount of thrust generated by the thrusters.

Damage and other conditions can also change the available thrust capacity, response time and even accuracy of each thruster, or a thruster may become completely non-functional or be lost altogether. Any of these changes will have an effect on the thruster balance and therefore how the ship behaves under pilot control.


Control Moment Gyro
Each ship has a small amount of backup torque available to it even if every thruster has been lost. This torque is provided by a set of internal Control Moment Gyros. As long as the CMGs are functional, the pilot will always have minimal torque available on each axis of rotation. This torque is sufficient to stabilize the ship’s attitude, and can be used to slowly spin up or down under direct pilot control.

Final Notes
This document is not an in-fiction description of the Star Citizen IFCS, it is an accurate description of the true flight control model implemented for the game. This level of realism was necessary in order to deliver a flight control system that could be fully integrated with and influenced by the environment, damage states, changing mass distribution, power allocation, thruster placement, etc. IFCS is an emergent system, and therefore may be imperfect at times. But this mimics reality.

And finally, great effort has been made to limit spacecraft control to only the command pathways provided by IFCS. No player, AI or even IFCS itself will ever modify the position, velocity, rotation or rotational velocity of a ship directly, with the exception of initialization and network correction. This guarantees that all spacecraft control is consistent and the game will never have an unfair advantage over a player.

I look forward to your feedback as we work to refine and polish this system. After all, this is only the beginning. We’re just getting started!

John Pritchett
Physics Programmer at CIG

 

you just made my head hurt

 

ARENA COMMANDER PATCH 12.3
JUNE 17TH 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve released a new patch for Arena Commander! Today’s patch fixes a number of bugs discovered by QA and Star Citizen’s backers and also further prepares for the full multiplayer rollout. The first 20,000 accounts have been given access, and more will follow soon! You can find the full report in the Patch Notes.


PATCH 12.3 NOTES

New Features/Fixes

• Arena Commander
  • Arena commander menu now accessible through options menu
  • Proper score awarded when an enemy is destroyed in Vanduul Swarm
  • All ballistic weapons now use ammo boxes
  • Frozen effect no longer appears for everyone after ejecting
  • Command pp_rebindKeys layout_joystick_spacesim now properly works
  • HOTAS X55 Joystick is diplayed under controller options menu
  • Run no longer toggled off when user interacts with something
  • Cockpit and ship should now despawn after ejecting
  • All ship controls now have smoother animations
  • X-box right joystick can now be inverted
  • Countermeasures should now be more effective
  • Hornet chaingun audio should no longer cut out
  • No longer stuck unable to respawn if chat open while killed
  • Spawn warping audio no longer heard by everyone in the match
  • Broadsword when equipped now has ammo and properly overheats
  • Ship debris can no longer pass through cockpit
  • Improvments to zero-g movement
  • Various performance improvements
  • Various server and client crash fixes
  • Switched spawn points so that players respawn next to their own bases inCTC
  • Match end after reaching over 100 points.
  • Helmet Animations
  • Various matchmaking tweaks (public matches were requesting private ones)
  • Reduced texture sizes on the 300i
  • Implement new win mechanic into Team Deathmatch. Fixed up next kill wins mode, audio and HUD alerts.
  • Item Balancing
  • Shield energy reallocation does not lose energy but realloc existing energy
  • Loading screen remains on screen after the level has loaded
  • Pausing the game as DFM loads from hangar sticks on a black screen
  • Added directional indication for shield impacts not in view (similar to an older verison of the shield) for gameplay feedback.
  • ReExported LandingGear_deploy animation
  • Player is able to enter ship while he is also able to ‘press X to respawn’. Ship now correctly rez’s out when landed after ejection.
  • Improved lighting but for real this time
  • If a Vanduul becomes sufficiently damaged they disappear from the map and their name in-game becomes “undefined”. Need to be destroyed to progress. Added missing return to fix.
  • Allow custom user CFGs to be specified in cmd line.
  • When one player ejects from their ship, the frozen visor FX may appear on all player’s screens.
  • After destroying another player their body will float in space in a t-pose.
  • MP Fix – Player is now hidden following a vehicle destruction death as in SP.

• Hangar
  • Buggy can now drive properly in the Business Hangar
  • Turrets no longer mountable on missile racks hardpoints
  • Third person camera no longer rotates using Q and E
  • Replace me ball no longer present under Hornet Trainer
  • Improvements to Trainer Hornet rear landing gear geometry
  • No longer able to place 325a engine on other ships
  • Hornet Ghost engine no longer able to be equipped on other ships
  • Resolved issue of no ammo when chaingun removed and added back to ship
  • Fix for third person camera rotating when pressing Q or E when not in zero-g
  • Created basic mapping for Logitech G940. Fixed up a number of asserts it caused in the Joystick device handler.
  • The Logitech G940 completely changes if you install the correct drivers. Updated the mappings to work with those drivers rather than the default windows ones.
  • AC menu can be navigated using a gamepad

Known Issues:

• HUD target indicator arrows can be missing
• Graphical issues can occur while using SLI/Crossfire
• It can be possible to sometimes load into a black screen when choosing an Arena Commander match
• Hornet gatling guns take heat damage when not being fired
• Hornet gatling gun ammo temporarily shown as missile racks in the Holo-Table

 

XI'AN SCOUT AVAILABLE!
JUNE 20TH 2014






Greetings Citizens,
We are excited to announce that the first concept model of the Xi’An Khartu-al scout is now available !

As part of the development process, our artists first create a ‘concept model’ to show how a ship will work before beginning work on the finished game-ready mesh. That’s what you’re seeing today: the concept model for the scout that lets us see how its unusual thruster configurations, cockpit, landing gear and more will function!

Here’s the original description of the Scout from the Stretch Goal that added it. The goal is to build alien ships that fly totally differently than those you already know; something that Star Citizen’s robust physics simulation allows us to do!

The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military. Contrary to Human ship design, the Khartu doesn’t have a traditional main thruster, instead featuring an array of maneuvering thrusters on articulated rigs. This design allows for incredible agility, making them the bane of UEEpilots, who bestowed the nickname ‘Quark’ because when all of the thrusters are firing, the ship looks like a spark flying through space. The Xi’an Aopoa corporation also manufactures an export model, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament.
We’ve also found some rough footage from a UEE reconnaissance drone, available below; this is a pre-viz of how the Khartu should function in-game!

Xi’An Scout concept sale
Want your own scout? The Aopoa Corporation has made another allotment available for the export market! They’re not ready for the Hangar or Arena Commander yet, but we’re adding them to the pledge store for this week (through Friday, June 27.) Get yours now and you can be the first to fly when it’s ready!


Xi’An Scout The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military.


Load Holo-Viewer



HOLOGRAPHIC WEB VIEWER



The web team at Turbulent is working to build an all-new Star Citizen pledge store complete with interactive ship models… and we’re demoing a prototype of this holographic viewer for you with this announcement! This prototype is loaded up with the actual concept model of the Xi’An Karthu Scout.

Tech

The viewer is using WebGL to display the ship meshes in your browser. This technology allows us to use the GPU to display a high number of polygons on screen and also provides us with a rendering pipeline to create view options and effects with the shader API. The viewer at the moment is powered by the outstanding open source three.js library, we thank them for providing such convenience!

Star Citizen ship meshes are very large and thus required some work to get them loaded in the browser in an acceptable time frame. Most graphics card can render very high poly counts even in the browser and so transferring the model data from the web servers to your browser becomes the bottleneck. We start from a 3DS / CryEngine output of the model in pieces (which can weight over 100 megs and up!) and construct and a highly optimized and compressed binary triangle stream using the OpenCTM format. For example, the full-resolution Hornet weights about 85 megabytes in OBJ format and compresses down to 1.5 megs with this method. We can then easily unwrap and load in GL buffers without too much additional processing on the browser side. Using this method, in our test lab, we were able to load and render a 6 million polygon ship! (I will let you guess which one) Obviously, we still plan on using LOD versions for the higher end ships in order to support a broader range of hardware profiles.

As WebGL sees more adoption and support, we think harnessing it’s power to bring some of the game elements on the web though utility viewers and browsers is a great way to enhance the immersion in the game universe.

Controls

• Orbit Cam: Click and drag around the viewer with your mouse to view the model in all angles.
• Orbit Cam: Right click to pan.
• Mouse wheel to zoom in and out
• Use the buttons at the bottom to jump to preset locations around the ship or activate view options.
• Free Cam: Use your keyboard keys (WASD, QE) in conjunction with mouse drag to move the camera anywhere on the ship.

Keep in mind this is a prototype of the viewer. It has been mostly developed using Google Chrome and so should be best viewed with that browser (though it should work properly on Firefox as well, fingers crossed). As the team iterates on it many more features will be added like additional view modes, ship components and compatibility , loadout options. The goal is to bring every ship and variants available in that viewer for you to browse!

 

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN: $47 MILLION
JUNE 23RD 2014



Greetings Citizens,
We’ve hit $47 million in funding! I’m betting that means there will be more than a few Xi’An scout ships flying around in the Star Citizen universe. The Xi’An ship is one of the ones I’m most excited about, because it’s really going to show off the depth of Star Citizen’s physics engine: with its unique thruster configuration, it will use the already-developed engine to fly very differently!


Initial concept art

The Xi’An scout is a good example of how much goes into Star Citizen’s ship development process. As you may remember, we offered the scout earlier in the campaign without showing a picture. That’s because I decided the concept art we had didn’t represent the ship I wanted for this role. You can see that original art here; it’s a cool design, but didn’t get across the unique thruster system that makes the scout so special.


Final concept design

We went back to the drawing board… and eventually got to the concept model you saw on Friday! Going forward, we plan to share all the WIP concept models in this same fashion once I believe they’re on the right track. In the case of the new scout, I’m very impressed with the work the team has done… and I can’t wait to have it flying in Arena Commander!

Moving past the scout, the $47 million stretch goal that you earned today is the last of the player-voted reward items, the Engine Tuning Kit. Here are the details:

• Engine Tuning Kit – Wilkes & Federman MaxTune Kit has become one of the best-selling starter kits for the discerning home enthusiast. Featured in Whitley’s latest Steal of the Year issue, this kit comes with everything the fledgling engineer needs to take a deeper look into the mechanics of their engine. With a Tap Analyzer, you will be able to view your engine’s current output and energy draw numbers in an easy and comprehensible way. Use the thirty-eight piece omnitool to access your engine to start tweaking. Wilkes & Federman is not responsible for damage incurred after tuning your engine. Please consult with manufacturer’s warranty before performing work.

Speaking of stretch goals, last time around we put their future up to a vote. 54% of Citizens voted that we should continue to offer goals, and we’re going to honor that choice. As I said last time, every dollar supports Star Citizen’s persistent universe… but I’m not comfortable promising additional features with each million unless they’re truly additive. When we have a new idea that really impacts the final game and needs the funding then we’ll offer it here… but you can expect a number of player rewards and new ways of highlighting Arena Commander as immediate goals!

But with the $49 million goal, we’re going to give you something that didn’t quite win the poll the last time around: the “space plant”! It’s actually a Xi’An tree, so it’s very appropriate for today’s post. Here are the details:

• Xi’An Space Plant – Similar to a bonsai tree, the Centennial Bloom is a very famous Xi’An plant indigenous to Eealus III that blossoms for one night every one hundred years. They sell the plants in sealed terrariums to traders. Ever since their introduction to the UEE, Humanity has been fascinated by these beautiful plants and the wait for them to bloom.

As always, thank you for your incredible support. We’re working hard to make Star Citizen a truly special game… but you have already made it an incredibly special community.

— Chris Roberts