PLEASE Remove The Speed Particles aka Space Rain aka Warp Speed Effects
The new speed particles are ruining my enjoyment of the game. I do not want to feel like I'm using some sort of warp drive when I'm only moving 50 m/s, and when turning, the entire effect turns around my ship and it just looks so horribly fake. The particles, when combined with the horrible sound mechanics (being tied to velocity rather than acceleration), remove all immersion and enjoyment from space travel. I would expect this sort of thing from some arcade-y game like No Man's Sky, not a space simulator like Space Engineers.
Please remove the space particles, the game was so much more fun before they were added. If you want to give players the feeling of using warp drives to get around, then please just give us warp drives instead of making normal space travel feel like warp drive even though it's powered by rocket engines and ion thrusters.
If you want to give players a sense or movement direction in space - then just give us pro-grade and retrograde velocity indicators like in KSP, Star Citizen, Verse Project, In The Black, etc. They would improve the player's understanding of the ship's movement and actually add to immersion, unlike the speed particles which do so at the expense of immersion.
Alternatively, you could change the speed particles into toggle-able space hologram effects, like in the demo for Capital Command. These would be far less obtrusive and wouldn't take away from immersion as they are clearly 3D HUD elements that aid understanding of the ship's movement, not some in-game tiny stars flying past you for some reason while moving through space.
Thank you for reading. I really hope you take this feedback into consideration. I absolutely love a lot of how this game is progressing, but the game's continual drift into the realm of arcade games is something that is making me very worried.
I like this feedback
Agreed. I think they look bad and are immersion breaking. Also means any cinematic shots now just look ridiculous, especially since the particle effect looks especially bad when turning. At least give us a toggle to turn them off.
Agreed. I think they look bad and are immersion breaking. Also means any cinematic shots now just look ridiculous, especially since the particle effect looks especially bad when turning. At least give us a toggle to turn them off.
Definitely needs a toggle. An indicator for direction of travel and an artificial horizon (in grav) would also be nice.
Definitely needs a toggle. An indicator for direction of travel and an artificial horizon (in grav) would also be nice.
First, on planets we already have plenty of visual references. In space, there could be a VERY minor effect when flying above ~200 m/s.
What we definitely need is a better flying HUD. Ideally, it should show your predicted trajectory, and if that path intersects with other grids or voxels, you’d see time to impact along with an audio/visual warning when it gets close. That would be both immersive and much more friendly for new players. With something like this in place, super dampeners should be gone for good too :).
About sound — it makes sense to increase noise at higher speeds in atmosphere, but NOT in space, please. Space doesn’t feel like space if you constantly hear loud travel noise at high speed. In vacuum, you should mainly hear sound when engines are firing.
And honestly, if someone needs constant sound feedback just to understand they’re moving fast in space… then the question is: is this game really for us? And why spend precious dev time on things like this in alpha?
I definitely don’t like this “speed sound” in space, and it’s also buggy. No one really asked for it. Please, just give us a better HUD instead.
First, on planets we already have plenty of visual references. In space, there could be a VERY minor effect when flying above ~200 m/s.
What we definitely need is a better flying HUD. Ideally, it should show your predicted trajectory, and if that path intersects with other grids or voxels, you’d see time to impact along with an audio/visual warning when it gets close. That would be both immersive and much more friendly for new players. With something like this in place, super dampeners should be gone for good too :).
About sound — it makes sense to increase noise at higher speeds in atmosphere, but NOT in space, please. Space doesn’t feel like space if you constantly hear loud travel noise at high speed. In vacuum, you should mainly hear sound when engines are firing.
And honestly, if someone needs constant sound feedback just to understand they’re moving fast in space… then the question is: is this game really for us? And why spend precious dev time on things like this in alpha?
I definitely don’t like this “speed sound” in space, and it’s also buggy. No one really asked for it. Please, just give us a better HUD instead.
I like the hologram idea, and agree that the particles are really distracting. my first thought was they should be far less dense if they're supposed to be particles rushing by. More of them if you're in a planetary ring where there are more particles. All should depend on the light in the area, but they should be infrequent. Best to just remove them (though a much more subdued version in the dust rings could be interesting).
There are some hologram SE1 mods that are interesting, though I usually turn off the speed lines there too.
I like the hologram idea, and agree that the particles are really distracting. my first thought was they should be far less dense if they're supposed to be particles rushing by. More of them if you're in a planetary ring where there are more particles. All should depend on the light in the area, but they should be infrequent. Best to just remove them (though a much more subdued version in the dust rings could be interesting).
There are some hologram SE1 mods that are interesting, though I usually turn off the speed lines there too.
I do not mind the speed particles but they are a bit much. And we can loose them at slow maneuvering speeds completely. The particles in SE1 were fine. It is ok when they are just barely noticable.
I do not mind the speed particles but they are a bit much. And we can loose them at slow maneuvering speeds completely. The particles in SE1 were fine. It is ok when they are just barely noticable.
Yeah, lessen the effect. A benefit is that they give an instant perception on ship movement, which is handy since we cannot feel G-load as in real life when flying.
Pro-tip: Use the standard military FPM marker for prograde/velocity indicator. Why? It has 3 wing's around a circle, one pointing up, the other two left and right. This is your Attitude Indicator, if tied to a planets Sphere of Influence or the Solar System Ecliptic ;)
Yeah, lessen the effect. A benefit is that they give an instant perception on ship movement, which is handy since we cannot feel G-load as in real life when flying.
Pro-tip: Use the standard military FPM marker for prograde/velocity indicator. Why? It has 3 wing's around a circle, one pointing up, the other two left and right. This is your Attitude Indicator, if tied to a planets Sphere of Influence or the Solar System Ecliptic ;)
I agree with Wilhelm, I don't dislike the particles, but space is quite literally defined as "sparsely packed particulates". There should be less of them, few enough that when you see one rush by you give it second thought for a brief instant.
I agree with Wilhelm, I don't dislike the particles, but space is quite literally defined as "sparsely packed particulates". There should be less of them, few enough that when you see one rush by you give it second thought for a brief instant.
It moves around the camera relative to the craft in such a weird way. If I turn off dampeners, aim one direction going about 30 MPH, and then tap W... the entire warp field effect moves in a 2D plane around the ship. It's super obvious. It would be less obvious if there were less of them.
I believe they intend this feature to replace Attitude indicators; You can watch how the particulates move to judge where you'll end up relative to another shuttle or station or asteroid. I must admit, it is an ingenious way to cheat in that information, but my personal opinion is that it is not necessary. If you must have it for new, less skillful players, fine. But it should not be so obvious that it interferes with others. And no, I can hear it already, "let us toggle it in the menu" is not the appropriate response; It should be in for everyone, or out. If it's in, it needs to be reduced. If it's out, there needs to be a way to *add* an Attitude indicator, or make one yourself.
It moves around the camera relative to the craft in such a weird way. If I turn off dampeners, aim one direction going about 30 MPH, and then tap W... the entire warp field effect moves in a 2D plane around the ship. It's super obvious. It would be less obvious if there were less of them.
I believe they intend this feature to replace Attitude indicators; You can watch how the particulates move to judge where you'll end up relative to another shuttle or station or asteroid. I must admit, it is an ingenious way to cheat in that information, but my personal opinion is that it is not necessary. If you must have it for new, less skillful players, fine. But it should not be so obvious that it interferes with others. And no, I can hear it already, "let us toggle it in the menu" is not the appropriate response; It should be in for everyone, or out. If it's in, it needs to be reduced. If it's out, there needs to be a way to *add* an Attitude indicator, or make one yourself.
sadly its currently the only way to tell in what direction we are flying
sadly its currently the only way to tell in what direction we are flying
I don't think the suggestion is to remove them entirely, they're just far too over-done. I would rather see something like the SE1 inertial display that shows the direction of movement (relative to the horizon on planet) or holographic display mods from SE1 that can include holographic speed lines indicating speed and direction...vs. particles that leave me pondering 'what the hell are these glowing particles racing by the ship?' They appear even in the dark, so what's making them glow, etc? (translation: The way they're done now looks fake and distracting). Tone it down, make them very subtle and give us more instruments on our display to give us the motion feedback.
I don't think the suggestion is to remove them entirely, they're just far too over-done. I would rather see something like the SE1 inertial display that shows the direction of movement (relative to the horizon on planet) or holographic display mods from SE1 that can include holographic speed lines indicating speed and direction...vs. particles that leave me pondering 'what the hell are these glowing particles racing by the ship?' They appear even in the dark, so what's making them glow, etc? (translation: The way they're done now looks fake and distracting). Tone it down, make them very subtle and give us more instruments on our display to give us the motion feedback.
The effect itself makes sense, but it has to be much less conspicuous.
It should start at a higher speed and be much more subtle.
The effect itself makes sense, but it has to be much less conspicuous.
It should start at a higher speed and be much more subtle.
I could argue that they really don't make sense from a space/physics perspective. (no comment whether they provide any real game benefit, which is an entirely different question :)
In reality, space is so empty that you would find only one microscopic grain of dust (of a size ~
10-40 micrometers in size, i.e. a single particle of flour) particle in every million cubic meters of space. To see enough dust for 'motion lines', which would require thousands of particles passing your ship every second, you would have to be flying through a debris field billions of times denser than an actual environment similar to Earth's orbit. At the density required to show the kinds of speed lines depicted, you’d be sandblasting the hull constantly. These dust particles also have a generally very low albedo like closer to charcoal, so they'd be only visible at specific reflective angles relative to the ship and sun/star.
Even in the planetary rings, you'd probably not get individual speed lines like that, even dense rings cut that density down to 1-3 particles per cubic meter (which is enough to show the speed lines in theory, but in reality the effect would appear differently) If heading towards the sun/star you'd experience these dust particles as a type of diffuse "glow" due to forward scattering, instead of individual streaks. This glowing haze (color of the glow based on the primary light coming from the sun) would get thicker or thinner depending on where in the rings you are. Heading other directions inside a ring system relative to the sun, you might catch occasional pinpricks of light like a microscopic flash that wouldn't actually convey a sense of motion before it winked out due to the angle between the light reflected from the sun and the ship changed enough that it was no longer reflecting enough sunlight to be visible. The number of these flashes would also depend on where you were in the ring also, dropping back to almost nothing once you leave.
I could argue that they really don't make sense from a space/physics perspective. (no comment whether they provide any real game benefit, which is an entirely different question :)
In reality, space is so empty that you would find only one microscopic grain of dust (of a size ~
10-40 micrometers in size, i.e. a single particle of flour) particle in every million cubic meters of space. To see enough dust for 'motion lines', which would require thousands of particles passing your ship every second, you would have to be flying through a debris field billions of times denser than an actual environment similar to Earth's orbit. At the density required to show the kinds of speed lines depicted, you’d be sandblasting the hull constantly. These dust particles also have a generally very low albedo like closer to charcoal, so they'd be only visible at specific reflective angles relative to the ship and sun/star.
Even in the planetary rings, you'd probably not get individual speed lines like that, even dense rings cut that density down to 1-3 particles per cubic meter (which is enough to show the speed lines in theory, but in reality the effect would appear differently) If heading towards the sun/star you'd experience these dust particles as a type of diffuse "glow" due to forward scattering, instead of individual streaks. This glowing haze (color of the glow based on the primary light coming from the sun) would get thicker or thinner depending on where in the rings you are. Heading other directions inside a ring system relative to the sun, you might catch occasional pinpricks of light like a microscopic flash that wouldn't actually convey a sense of motion before it winked out due to the angle between the light reflected from the sun and the ship changed enough that it was no longer reflecting enough sunlight to be visible. The number of these flashes would also depend on where you were in the ring also, dropping back to almost nothing once you leave.
Thank you all for taking the time to share your detailed feedback on the speed particles and associated audio/visual effects.
We are currently in the process of refining this area of the game. The concerns around immersion, visual clarity, and the overall feel of space travel have been noted, and we do have plans to make further adjustments to improve both the realism and player experience.
We are going down the road of more subtle effects, alongside exploring improved HUD-based solutions for better movement and direction feedback. Your suggestions around alternative approaches such as less intrusive visuals and clearer instrumentation are very much part of that discussion.
We appreciate the passion and thoughtfulness you've put into your comments, and we'll continue iterating on these systems with immersion and gameplay clarity in mind.
Arron
Community Manager
Thank you all for taking the time to share your detailed feedback on the speed particles and associated audio/visual effects.
We are currently in the process of refining this area of the game. The concerns around immersion, visual clarity, and the overall feel of space travel have been noted, and we do have plans to make further adjustments to improve both the realism and player experience.
We are going down the road of more subtle effects, alongside exploring improved HUD-based solutions for better movement and direction feedback. Your suggestions around alternative approaches such as less intrusive visuals and clearer instrumentation are very much part of that discussion.
We appreciate the passion and thoughtfulness you've put into your comments, and we'll continue iterating on these systems with immersion and gameplay clarity in mind.
Arron
Community Manager
Replies have been locked on this page!