High Rez+Polygon Texture/Model Pack Option

[Archived Post]

I know a few games have done this in the past, I would like Cryptic to consider the request that they add the option for people whos systems can hack it to download a higher res/poly pack to make the whole game look better.

Things I notice the most that dissapoint me.

Low res blurry textures even at max quality value throughout the game.

Low poly count models for players and npc's(and some items, but thats more acceptable/tollerable to me as it sticks out less then for example leggs/bodyparts of people having flat surfaces and sharp edges/points.

Im far from alone in noticing this, everybody I have talked to notices it, I will admit, Im talking about people whos systems are all able to crank this game to max settings and run driver based enhancements on top of it without a noticeable perf hit, but thats really not uncommon or hard from what i can tell...

Sorry if this upsets anybody whos system really cant hack it, but alot of us like this game but would like it even more if it looked just that much better(in dx11 mode if it could push the hardware a bit that would be nice....with the 12.2's my 6870 gets same perf as dx9, no dropped/missing texture problems here(and i have looked) I dont even need to bother using CFX despite the fact I can....

well thanks for considering this request, And please note: it could get the game some publicity for being one of the few mmos thats got dx11 AND high rez textures/high poly models :) (if you wana use light tesselation to get the higher detail level on models that works for me, as long as u test it with both nvidia and amd hardware....:D )

[Archived Post]

Wishful, but I agree.

[Archived Post]

I Don't See why this is wishful.. .

Cryptic has the Time & the Money (by far over $5million a week)
they have plenty anough people working on Game

They could easily Provide a Set of Textures for those who use a Decent Computer

* HD Res Pack - All Textures for Rocks, Asteroids, Plants, Scenery, Shadows, toons. Ships. etc,
Be Available in 8192X8192 True HD Resolution with improved mapping.

[Archived Post]

If you find the textures in STO blurry, you better never look at swtor in game....

[Archived Post]

I'm looking forward to some nice screenshots if that is realized. But considering that my PCs cooling noise goes up to ~200% as soon as I switch from space to character view and even gets hot enough to just turn itself off if not kept dust clean from time to time I think I'll pass.

Max setting btw. & think it looks beautiful.

[Archived Post]

I'm looking forward to some nice screenshots if that is realized. But considering that my PCs cooling noise goes up to ~200% as soon as I switch from space to character view and even gets hot enough to just turn itself off if not kept dust clean from time to time I think I'll pass.

Max setting btw. & think it looks beautiful.

I got maxed graphics on... I don't get that >.> lol.

I also only got one system fan, a fan on the GPU (built on it) and a CPU factory cooling unit fan...

[Archived Post]

I Don't See why this is wishful.. .

Cryptic has the Time & the Money (by far over $5million a week)
they have plenty anough people working on Game

They could easily Provide a Set of Textures for those who use a Decent Computer

* HD Res Pack - All Textures for Rocks, Asteroids, Plants, Scenery, Shadows, toons. Ships. etc,
Be Available in 8192X8192 True HD Resolution with improved mapping.

HA! That's hilarious.

[Archived Post]

I Don't See why this is wishful.. .

Cryptic has the Time & the Money (by far over $5million a week)
they have plenty anough people working on Game

They could easily Provide a Set of Textures for those who use a Decent Computer

* HD Res Pack - All Textures for Rocks, Asteroids, Plants, Scenery, Shadows, toons. Ships. etc,
Be Available in 8192X8192 True HD Resolution with improved mapping.

I think you're thinking of SWTOR hehe ;) :P

[Archived Post]

umm yeah cryptic dose not make 5 million a week, this aint microsoft!

[Archived Post]

HA! That's hilarious.

I think he was being serious. He arrived at that crazy monetary figure in another thread. While money is being made off of the lock boxes, it is nowhere on that level every week. They have probably made in the 6 figure range, but nowhere near the 7 figure range since the launch of the lock box.

Honestly most of the textures in the game are quite good. In my opinion, the only areas they suffer are where the same small texture is stretched out over a very large area. Some of that is the nature of the MMO beast. The textures still hold up well when looked at on their own.

[Archived Post]

HA! That's hilarious.

Yeah, the revenue figure is, especially as Perfect World's total revenue is only about $1.7M a week.

The texture thing isn't THAT crazy when you consider that ID Tech5 (used for Rage) supports textures of 128000x128000 (and not just for the big environment textures, but for characters/items too :-).

STO's texture quality is of course pretty standard for an MMO, thought it has a much more sophisticated lighting model than most MMO's (despite the nice model work in SWTOR I couldn't believe how conservative their engine tech is, most underwhelming).

A problem STO has is that the environment is more realistic and not abstracted to the extent the visuals games like WoW and SWTOR are (this is also a problem for LOTRO; lower quality textures just stand out more there too, even though in reality the resolution of the textures isn't any less than in other MMO's).

As someone who has disposable income to plow into better gaming hardware (and just upgrade when I find new games come out that start taxing my system - like every time a new Elder Scrolls title gets released...), I'm personally always happier with more detail...

However STO already relies quite heavily on nice lighting effects to make the graphics stand out and friends who've played all have systems that struggle with STO already, so probably the balance is about right. The LCARS textures on the Belfast interior do stand out too much IMO though.

I think it would work if they could be dynamically filtered better even if there were the same resolution, if that's possible. i.e. if there was a better approach to stretching them (even if it made them slightly less sharp). I think a lot of the problem with them on the Belfast interior is to do with /how/ they are stretched - there is a lot of artifacting and I suspect it's noticeable because of the high contrast of the images (less of an issue with the lower contrast blue LCARS of course... 8).

[Archived Post]

that's all great, but our engine's current texture limit is 2048x2048, and those are few and far between. We don't make $5 mil a week, and we don't have the time/money/personnel to recreate every texture/model in the game.

This is a no. straight up. this won't happen. I'm sorry.

[Archived Post]

Originally Posted by Berlorian
I Don't See why this is wishful.. .

Cryptic has the Time & the Money (by far over $5million a week)
they have plenty anough people working on Game

They could easily Provide a Set of Textures for those who use a Decent Computer

* HD Res Pack - All Textures for Rocks, Asteroids, Plants, Scenery, Shadows, toons. Ships. etc,
Be Available in 8192X8192 True HD Resolution with improved mapping.


I think you're thinking of SWTOR hehe ;) :P

I don't think so, as anyone who plays SWToR can tell you, its texture maps are all lower res then SPO's (and direct from a SWToR Dev - they like it that way ;))

[Archived Post]

that's all great, but our engine's current texture limit is 2048x2048, and those are few and far between. We don't make $5 mil a week, and we don't have the time/money/personnel to recreate every texture/model in the game.

This is a no. straight up. this won't happen. I'm sorry.

good to know you at least read, sad because even without textures at least upping the poly count of char models would make the game far more attractive.

gotta ask tho, why if the engine is so limited are you even bothering with dx11?

waste of time if your not gonna take real advantage of dx11 hardware if you ask me, whats the point of pretty lighting when the game has models that remind me of games i played 5-7 years ago....

just wondering....i mean if your not worried about the quality being MEH, why bother introducing dx11...makes no sense to waste time and money developing from something it seems clear your not going to really exploit it.

[Archived Post]

DX11 brings many other benefits than just higher poly counts.

Honestly, our characters are pretty high poly in the world of MMOs. MMOs in general lag behind single player games in terms of graphics because all of it has to be sent through the tubes, and synced up between multiple (thousands) of computers. We are not immune from that. But I still think our game looks DAMN GOOD. Especially for an MMO, but even without that caveat. I think you are misjudging how our game looks.

[Archived Post]

I don't think so, as anyone who plays SWToR can tell you, its texture maps are all lower res then SPO's (and direct from a SWToR Dev - they like it that way ;))

Even better they honestly think players will believe that giving them highres textures will create lag on the servers ... At least that is what they told the players

[Archived Post]

But I still think our game looks DAMN GOOD. Especially for an MMO, but even without that caveat. I think you are misjudging how our game looks.

All my gripes about art assents in STO have either been scale or style related, never quality.
The quality has always been fantastic.
Sometimes it just feels like fantastic generic sci-fi, rather than fantastic Starfleet which is what keeps me up nights trying to figure out your .wtex files :p

[Archived Post]

DX11 brings many other benefits than just higher poly counts.

Honestly, our characters are pretty high poly in the world of MMOs. MMOs in general lag behind single player games in terms of graphics because all of it has to be sent through the tubes, and synced up between multiple (thousands) of computers. We are not immune from that. But I still think our game looks DAMN GOOD. Especially for an MMO, but even without that caveat. I think you are misjudging how our game looks.

You're not kidding. (http://s16.postimage.org/rc6i8cdo5/screenshot_2012_02_18_15_44_47.jpg)

Making a full orbit of a planet, I get to see just how much detail you guys put in to make these kinds of effects seamless -- and so realistic and beautiful we somehow take it for granted. A sunrise looks just as gorgeous in STO as it does in real life! Kudos.

[Archived Post]

DX11 brings many other benefits than just higher poly counts.

Honestly, our characters are pretty high poly in the world of MMOs. MMOs in general lag behind single player games in terms of graphics because all of it has to be sent through the tubes, and synced up between multiple (thousands) of computers. We are not immune from that. But I still think our game looks DAMN GOOD. Especially for an MMO, but even without that caveat. I think you are misjudging how our game looks.

There's just one flaw with your argument...

Yes, MMO:s generally tend to have hundreds or even thousands of players interconnected at the same time. And yes, that tends to be the general reasoning behind a quality reduction compared to single-player games.

However, both CO and STO rely heavily on "Instances", with a limitation of anywhere from 10 to 75 players per instance. 75 players, also means at most 75 computers. Your argument about syncing between thousands of computers goes out the nearest airlock, when you consider that you never have more than at most 100 computers connected at the same time, in the same instance.

Does STO look good? Yes it does, i've seen plenty of games (both MMO:s and non-MMO:s) that looked worse.

Could STO look better? Sure could. Problem is time, and manpower, and a general willingness to get things done. We've seen time and time again, and even heard first-hand remarks how things are often rushed out, because it's "Good enough". These same things that get rushed out, invariably end up bug-ridden and requires weeks, if not months of patching before they are properly fixed.

In short, a better idea is to work on things longer to make them "The best they can be." before rushing it out the door. STO has great potential, but it also has a multitude of issues that still need fixing. "Medical Generators" still not functioning properly after 2 years, being a major doozy.

In a perfect world (no pun intended), i'd love to see STO "go back to the drawing board", and have nothing but bug fixing and general polish to the game applied, over the course of 3-6 months. STO has plenty of game features already. I would rather see the existing features get a major polish and bug fixing overhaul, before introducing new feature, or raising level caps, or the likes.

[Archived Post]

The game looks fine with the exception of planet surfaces if they are green and living.

I also would like to know where actually all the money is floating into...after those massive changes Cryptic and the STO community had been exposed to we now have reached a point where this game is as profitable as it ever will be. If the team now needs to stay small, there will never be a bright future to this game. I also don`t understand why Cryptic is doing a new (minor) MMO instead giving those already finished the love they deserve.

[Archived Post]

In a perfect world (no pun intended), i'd love to see STO "go back to the drawing board", and have nothing but bug fixing and general polish to the game applied, over the course of 3-6 months. STO has plenty of game features already. I would rather see the existing features get a major polish and bug fixing overhaul, before introducing new feature, or raising level caps, or the likes.

Why go backwards and rehash old things when you can move forward and experience new things?

[Archived Post]

There's just one flaw with your argument...

Yes, MMO:s generally tend to have hundreds or even thousands of players interconnected at the same time. And yes, that tends to be the general reasoning behind a quality reduction compared to single-player games.

However, both CO and STO rely heavily on "Instances", with a limitation of anywhere from 10 to 75 players per instance. 75 players, also means at most 75 computers. Your argument about syncing between thousands of computers goes out the nearest airlock, when you consider that you never have more than at most 100 computers connected at the same time, in the same instance.

Does STO look good? Yes it does, i've seen plenty of games (both MMO:s and non-MMO:s) that looked worse.

Could STO look better? Sure could. Problem is time, and manpower, and a general willingness to get things done. We've seen time and time again, and even heard first-hand remarks how things are often rushed out, because it's "Good enough". These same things that get rushed out, invariably end up bug-ridden and requires weeks, if not months of patching before they are properly fixed.

In short, a better idea is to work on things longer to make them "The best they can be." before rushing it out the door. STO has great potential, but it also has a multitude of issues that still need fixing. "Medical Generators" still not functioning properly after 2 years, being a major doozy.

In a perfect world (no pun intended), i'd love to see STO "go back to the drawing board", and have nothing but bug fixing and general polish to the game applied, over the course of 3-6 months. STO has plenty of game features already. I would rather see the existing features get a major polish and bug fixing overhaul, before introducing new feature, or raising level caps, or the likes.

The problem is, you are in a tiny minority that feels this way. Most of the player base would revolt if we had to go another 6 months without new content. PvP people have been crying for new maps for ages. And so on.

And stop with the scare quotes around good enough. If you've ever had a paying job, you know perfectly well that nobody ever has all the time they want/need to do what they have to do. Good enough doesn't mean "we don't care." It means "we have limited resources, and this was the best that could be done given those restrictions."

[Archived Post]

The game looks fine with the exception of planet surfaces if they are green and living.

I also would like to know where actually all the money is floating into...after those massive changes Cryptic and the STO community had been exposed to we now have reached a point where this game is as profitable as it ever will be. If the team now needs to stay small, there will never be a bright future to this game. I also don`t understand why Cryptic is doing a new (minor) MMO instead giving those already finished the love they deserve.

I expect the money is going to the hiring they're trying to do, along with a large increase in infrastructure to handle F2P, etc.

And if you don't know why they would do a new MMO, then you don't know how business works at all. New product = new revenue base.

[Archived Post]

And if you don't know why they would do a new MMO, then you don't know how business works at all. New product = new ways to take peoples money .

Fixed the quote for you there.

We all know, this is exactly what will happen with "Neverwinter", if the past track record for CO and STO remain true. The game will be released **********, bug-ridden and lacking in features from "Day 1".

Even if people such as myself argue that they need to try their best to make things better, it's still upto Cryptic to actually try and improve themselves. After the events of the past year, and the sale to Perfect World being finalized, there really is no excuses anymore for not getting the games they already put out, improved upon.

Yes, I too wanna see "New stuff", but as an avid gamer and longtime MMO player, i'm not unaccustomed to long-term "droughts", if I know that the developers are also working on fixing things that already exist.

[Archived Post]

In a perfect world (no pun intended), i'd love to see STO "go back to the drawing board", and have nothing but bug fixing and general polish to the game applied, over the course of 3-6 months. STO has plenty of game features already. I would rather see the existing features get a major polish and bug fixing overhaul, before introducing new feature, or raising level caps, or the likes.

My feeling is, It would be better for them to have 2 teams, one working on some new content(even if its just small stuff like new maps for stf's and such) and get the rest of the people quashing bugs and updating the game, and yes, the games buggy.

a way to slow the need for new high level content is to slow leveling down, take the game out of super easy mode, make leveling a challenge, make it take more then 1.5 weeks of semi-casual play to get to 50....

slowing the leveling makes the content go farther/last longer, this dosnt mean adding grinding, but just making the game more challanging/harder in its current framework.

the easiest way to do this would be to alter the difficulty teirs.

add an EASY mode(current normal
normal becomes whats now "Advanced"
Advanced becomes whats now Elite, and make elite truely evil(not snk boss evil, just make the mobs more durable, in elite they already hit damn hard at times)

this would slow leveling a bit(because it should default to normal only move the slider to easy if you REALLY cant get past a mission)

note: i would take injuries off the table at "nomal" mode despite the move up in difficulty.

with the tweaks to gameplay they could buy the time needed to make the game FAR better then it is now, not just visually(but common, why are my chars bumb and leggs flat and pointy?), but also fixing some serious bugs like if you bork up some missions you cant get them to reset(have had this happen a few times had to have somebody else redo the mission as leader and let me tag along to get past the broken part)

I guarntee, it wouldnt drive alot of people away to make the episode play last longer, at least not any more then the people quitting because the games to easy....

I still dont get why they are bothering with dx11 support if they arent gonna use it to make the game look any better....if they are (As it seems) targeting the lowest common denominator, why bother with moving beyond dx9 support...hell im sure alot of the people they are targeting this game at have wally world special "gaming" computer that use intels kickass GMA.....

[Archived Post]

Fixed the quote for you there.

We all know, this is exactly what will happen with "Neverwinter", if the past track record for CO and STO remain true. The game will be released **********, bug-ridden and lacking in features from "Day 1".

Even if people such as myself argue that they need to try their best to make things better, it's still upto Cryptic to actually try and improve themselves. After the events of the past year, and the sale to Perfect World being finalized, there really is no excuses anymore for not getting the games they already put out, improved upon.

Yes, I too wanna see "New stuff", but as an avid gamer and longtime MMO player, i'm not unaccustomed to long-term "droughts", if I know that the developers are also working on fixing things that already exist.

I just don't think the majority of the playerbase agrees, but we won't solve that here.

And yes, they want to earn more money! Imagine. A business trying to earn money. It's an unexpected move, I agree.

[Archived Post]

I just don't think the majority of the playerbase agrees, but we won't solve that here.

And yes, they want to earn more money! Imagine. A business trying to earn money. It's an unexpected move, I agree.

I dont think most players of this game would mind if it took longer to level (giving them more time to fix the bugs that are making things like STF's not function at the moment, or missions that randomly break...)

I know everybody I have asked would prefer them to slow leveling a good bit and get the game bugs fixed.

in that time, they could also work on some higher poly char models(my main concern with poly count and maby stools(most stuff looks fine low poly but some stuff just looks poorly done IMHO)

less blurry textures on consoles and some walls and floors in space stations would be nice....

I was not intending to ask for every texture and model in the game to be made uber high res and poly, just would be nice if my chars bumb/leggs/arms weren't flat and pointy and if some easily noticeable textures where a bit crisper...again starting with player char and item's(imho ships look fine).

bug fixes are on the scripting side, models and textures art(doubt they have the same people doing both...)

but again, dev says it aint gonna happen no how no way, so really pointless talking about how much we would like to see even fairly minor updates to make the game look a bit better.

[Archived Post]

I play the game on low settings, so I'm fine with my own monitor looking meh. I am consistently WOWED by people who have STO screenshots taken at max quality. My computer can't handle it, but for those who's compys can, I just don't see any issues with the graphics.

[Archived Post]

I play the game on low settings, so I'm fine with my own monitor looking meh. I am consistently WOWED by people who have STO screenshots taken at max quality. My computer can't handle it, but for those who's compys can, I just don't see any issues with the graphics.

gotta thank you got this post, alot of people with low end systems want to keep things status quoe(why games like Ulitma Online still look so retro and dated...)

if you ever decide to/can afford to upgrade and want advice, hop on ashentech(my forums) we will happily help you spec up something that gives good/great band for the buck....recently helped a buddy upgrade for under 300bucks so hes able to play anything he throws at his system, before upgrade he couldnt have played sto a minimum settings, maby kalonline...but that would have been pushing it :P

[Archived Post]

If you find the textures in STO blurry, you better never look at swtor in game....

Hmm not mine, mine are good in both games, I do wish STO had some High Rez stuff, the space stuff would be great with High Rez graphics.

[Archived Post]

Hmm not mine, mine are good in both games, I do wish STO had some High Rez stuff, the space stuff would be great with High Rez graphics.

imagine if they imported some of the images from Hubble or the like for backgrounds on new STF maps......but I doubt that will happen....very little profit to effort ratio....

they would make more by doing another annoying box event....*looks at inv and sees another 30 boxes to discard*

[Archived Post]

My main issue with the player models is( and i think i linked images of it) how legs/bumbs/breasts all look pointy....I hate to tell you this but most F2P mmos have better player models.....some even have far more detailed char animations.

examples from some korean mmo's would be things like how a chars butt moves when it runs, or how breasts move from walking and even breathing, hell even WoW has better char models and its far from a top notch choice in the art and realistic gfx dept.

higher poly/quality player models will not change how much data has to be sent over "the tubes" outside downloading the patch.

let me be clear again, I had no intention of asking for Super HD res textures for any part of the game, I was mostly interested in things like better textures and models for player chars and some for places like space dock, where I would think you would have higher res versions of these assets already and just compress/downsample them for the live game(this is how most game developers I have worked with do things)

I will re-link the images as they are still in my dropbox
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22439362/StarTrekOnline/Pointy%20Bumb_legg.png

note the sharp flat angles and points, WoW dosnt have these, nore do most of the better f2p korean grinders, some of them even have amazingly detailed models that move much more like real people do both male and female.

DX11 brings many other benefits than just higher poly counts.

Honestly, our characters are pretty high poly in the world of MMOs.

really http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22439362/StarTrekOnline/Pointy%20Bumb_legg.png want me to load up wow, or some other f2p mmo's and get you some screen shots of their character models?

MMOs in general lag behind single player games in terms of graphics because all of it has to be sent through the tubes, and synced up between multiple (thousands) of computers.

model and texture detail/quality have nothing to do with syncing actions between systems "over the tubes" as you put it, this can be seen many ways but one easy way to see it for free is to try games like ********* where there are clients that are almost stunning in their retro look/feel and other clients that almost look modern.

or ultima online where you can run a free 3d client over the original client 2d client
http://iris2.de/index.php/Main_Page

look at the orignal game from here
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html

the iris2 client runs on top of the 2d game, has zero effect on other players or server syncing, the same would be true for a native update to player models and select textures, the only added traffic would be for initial download and updates(optional being the key word for this kinda pack)


We are not immune from that. But I still think our game looks DAMN GOOD. Especially for an MMO, but even without that caveat. I think you are misjudging how our game looks.

I have played quite litterally hundreds of f2p and p2p mmo's, many have much better player models then sto, some old easy examples would be
Linage II
Requiem
...
better if i link some videos
some videos/images I found to show what i mean(not the best, because in most cases they didnt have details maxed out)

http://youtu.be/tZ3zqiheOpA

http://youtu.be/SHPme0F-IHY

http://youtu.be/KLoBXRPR3MA this ones very good,

http://youtu.be/GAFlaJrTUy4

http://youtu.be/b_07aodr9SE pretty good, perportions are wrong on body parts...but that would be the fault of the guy creating the char, like guys who make chars in sto with huge knockers and bumbs :P

gotta head home from office now, will try and post more links from there.

[Archived Post]

DX11's tessellation isn't supposed to require a lot of work and file size increases to get better complexity, right?

EVE/Nvidia Fanfest 2012 tessellation demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXYeNiXHWmc

Personally, I'd like to see more detail and more accurate detail for characters, especially faces. For instance, eyebrows look pasted on, at least for men. There is dark shading in the eyebrow area and dark beard stubble that makes for unrealistic blonde and red-haired characters. I'd like to see a smoother skin type for men, too. The current ones are too wrinkly. The hip and buttock size shouldn't be linked together, too. There should be separate sliders for both.

[Archived Post]

Ideally, no. In an ideal world, everyone has made all of their assets perfectly, with well done normal maps, etc.

The realities of production mean that people often cut corners where they can. This means that many of the normal maps that exist in our game were derived directly from the diffuse map. It's not perfect, but will often work well enough to allow that artist to focus on other more important elements. Those imperfections, when amplified by automated tessellation become glaringly obvious.

We did a number of tests with NVidia a while ago, testing out both well made normal maps, and poorly made normal maps that are unfortunately rather omnipresent, and even the "good" normal maps, often required a fair amount of tweaking to get the tessellation to look right.

The bottom line, is that while tessellation sounds cool, and CAN be cool, when done right, it really requires all of a game's assets to be built with it in mind. Our game was developed before tessellation was really a thing. And it doesn't really work to try and slather it on top of everything that already exists now.

As for your character comments, I don't think tessellation, or even DX11 will solve any of that. Things like stubble, and eyebrows are in the texture/material at a base level, not artifacts caused by the rendering engine.

[Archived Post]

Thanks for the info. :)

[Archived Post]

I have only been in game a month or so and if I appear to be talking out of my proverbial I quite possibly am.

From the perspective of a new player though I thought my observations might be useful. First off I love the game. I am not a big gamer but dabble now and then. I love the concept and for the most part I am happy enough with how Cryptic implement it. I liked it enough to go gold in the first week and have spent a decent chunk on the CP store.

The visuals are important to me. A big part of pulling me in and getting me immersed are how things look. For the most part in STO they do and look wonderful. When I hit VA I could not decide what to get to celebrate ...the Cat Carrier (which looks stunning) or the Oddy. In the end I got the Oddy bundle because that bridge is simply stunning. It really is a thing of beauty.

Still there are things that really do slap you about the head and scream blue murder every time I look at them.

That sofa in the ready room. I can understand the scaling issues to an extent, camera angles and such mean that a normal scale asset in there would look oddly small .....but that thing is so huge that if I were to throw it out of the window (I wish) the thing would be colonised. The worst of it are the very obvious seams on it. It looks bad whichever way you look at it. (pun intended). Bad UV or bad bake .....either way it looks terrible.

Now that might seem petty (and probably is) and I know it is hardly essential to gameplay. However that asset is in every Fed ship, whatever bridge you buy or whichever upgrade you purchase the ready room (in my experience thus far) is always the same.

Compare it with the quality of other less visible and equally non essential assets dotted about I just don't understand how that was ever allowed to get past QA.

I am not going to sit here and list every pixel I don't appreciate because it is entirely subjective anyway. Also I do understand the devs probably have much more to worry about than stuff like that, but it does matter. It sets the tone and it gives the impression that 'it's good enough' is the standard to aim for.

Just my thoughts.