EVE Online News

Welcome back pilots to the Community Beat!

Can you believe this is already the 25th issue of the Community Beat?! Fifty weeks ago we started on a journey to help introduce players to the myriad of EVE’s community resources, in-game events, out-of-game gatherings, developer chats – anything and everything!

Let’s get to it!

[h2]If You Build It…[/h2]



We’ve featured YouCaldarian before, but he’s at it again making amazing – and incredibly detailed - ship models. Check out his latest Tengu, complete with the Exoplanets Hunter SKIN. We’re not quite sure how YouCaldairan managed to level Caldari Starship Engineering to VI – but we love the results!

[h2]Alliance Tournament Getting Closer![/h2]



New Eden’s premier competitive PvP tournament: The Alliance Tournament, is just around the corner. This week CCP Zelus and CCP Convict took to CCPTV for the live seeding of the Tournament bracket. Each year a different groups sponsors the Alliance Tournament, and this year the Minmatar Republic have taken that mantle.

For teams that didn’t bid directly into the competition, the Minmatar have setup a very unique play-in tournament called the Trials Tournament. Teams are broken down into different groups, representing each of the seven Tribes, and the winners of each group stage proceed to the main Tournament in November. Second place teams from each Tribe go into a redemption pool for one final shot at glory.

Mark your calendars because the action kicks off next weekend, October 1st & 2nd!

[h2]Strategic Looks[/h2]

The Loki, Proteus, Tengu and Legion belong to a special class of ships called Strategic Cruisers. Unlike most ships, these ships change their bonuses based on which Subsystem is equipped. Different Subsystems also change the ships appearance. If you come across one of these ships in space and you need to decide whether to run or fight, it’s incredibly helpful to know what you’re up against. Thankfully for us, Mazzic Karde put together a Visual Strategic Cruiser Identification Guide!



For those wanting to go even more advanced, he’s got a follow-up guide for identifying turrets and launchers. Commit these to memory and you can know exactly the type of ship you’re up against – potentially before the fight even starts. Use your superior EVE knowledge to eek out a victory, or perform a dashing escape.

[h2]Burnin’ for you![/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

While working for mission agents, occasionally pilots will run across “Burner Missions” - incredibly high-value missions with no penalty for declining. , occasionally pilots will run across “Burner Missions” - incredibly high-value missions with no penalty for declining. Players familiar with these sites often run missions exclusively for these, while others choose to skip them entirely. If you fall into that latter category, Erstschlag has made a compelling case as to why you should overheat out of your comfort zone and tackle these head on!

[h2]In Space Nobody Can Hear You…Add[/h2]

There’s so much great content this week! As we learned in the Uprising Announcement, updates to Factional Warfare are coming in November. While not exclusively PvP oriented, there is quite a lot of PvP content for all levels of play. Many pilots have said it’s a great way to dip your toes into PvP, and we tend to agree.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Some of the most rewarding fights come down to perfect execution, and in the above video capsuleer Hookk perfectly diagrams a well-crafted engagement. From the killmail alone the fight would seem completely mundane, but these inside looks show just how much EVE knowledge & understanding your fleets capabilities can do. He also includes some fleet lexicon, so in your first fleet you can sound like a seasoned vet!



That’s it for this week, space friends! Head on over to the EVE Online Forums to let us know what you thought of the Beat this week, or if there’s anything you’re interested in hearing about moving forward.

Greetings Capsuleers,

On Tuesday 27th September at 17:00 UTC we will be conducting a Mass Test on the Singularity server to test several technical improvements aimed at improving your audio and visual experience, while drastically improving performance:

• EVE now fully supports variable refresh rates, which allows the use of Freesync and G-sync. If you have a system, it will be automatically used and ensure a smooth visual experience.
• Sound prioritization has undergone several improvements since the last mass test. Audio in EVE now sounds much clearer and will use drastically less CPU, resulting in more immersive and clearer sound experience, especially during heavy scenes.
• There has been major refactoring in how we handle controllers for ships, which improves performance. This is most noticeable when many ships are rendered at the same time, like in fleet fights. The memory usage of the client is also significantly improved in these cases. We’ve also improved how long it takes for the client to load and unload ships, which gives a smoother gameplay experience.

You can read more about these improvements in our latest EVE Evolved Devblog

During the test, we will be examining performance in the following situations:

• Docking, undocking, warping, and jumping of fleets
• Shooting an Upwell Structure
• A Fleet fight at a gate

How to connect to Singularity for this test:

• Change the server from Tranquility to Singularity in the bottom right corner of the launcher and log in as normal.
• More detailed instructions on connecting to Singularity are available here

Please refer to this forum post for more information on the testing procedure.

When logged in on Singularity use the command /moveme in any chat window and select the system FD-MLJ from the pop up to be relocated to the testing system.

Your attendance would be most welcome! All participants will receive be rewarded with two million skill points on Singularity.

Tenacious Capsuleers,

As EVE edges ever closer to the Uprising expansion’s full release, various teams around CCP are working on continual investment into the underlying tech of New Eden. This commitment, known as EVE Evolved, ensures that EVE Online remains at the forefront of visual and sensory fidelity for now and into the future.

Furthering that story, another EVE Evolved release is now available on the Singularity test server. This time, there is a focus on audio and tech improvements, alongside even more upgrades to Photon UI.

[h2]Hearing is Believing[/h2]

The headline feature in this EVE Evolved release are the improvements to sound prioritization on grid in EVE, marking the beginning of several coming audio updates. This means that sounds happening closer to you will be given priority over distant sounds.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This sound priority system will improve your gameplay twofold. For one, you can expect a more immersive, convincing soundscape as the thud of weapon fire pounds your enemies’ hull (or perhaps even your own!). This system will also serve to reduce CPU usage by about 75% during busy scenes, such as large battles, helping improve your overall performance during fights. That means it's time to turn the sound on, turn the volume up, and enjoy battles that are more immersive and dramatic, without sacrificing performance.

Bass-Blasting Capsuleers,

We are excited to announce that the audio feature originally demoed at Fanfest is being released in October and is already available for testing on Singularity! Sound prioritization, previously known as "audio culling”, drastically reduces CPU usage from the audio system during large fights. Not only does sound prioritization save on the CPU, but it also significantly improves the overall sound experience of EVE Online by intelligently choosing the most important sounds to play, along with limiting the overall number of sounds allowed to be played at once. That means more nuance, clarity, and realism across New Eden’s soundscape.

We know that a common fleet doctrine suggests that players disable audio when going into a large fleet fight. We can speculate that this has always been both because of how much CPU audio takes in large fights, as well as the cacophony of sounds that can be produced in such situations. Tackling those problems was exactly what motivated the creation of the sound prioritization feature, with a view to letting pilots turn their sound on and experience more immersive combat with a rich, dynamic audio backdrop that brings the battle to life. But before we dive into sound prioritization itself, let’s explore the challenge of those previous limitations.

[h2]EVE: The Demanding Boss[/h2]

Have you ever had a boss that overloads you with so many tasks that you are constantly scrambling to keep up?

This is exactly what the relationship between EVE and its audio engine has always been like; EVE filling the role of demanding boss and its audio engine the devoted (if overwhelmed) employee. Let's see what a "dialogue" between EVE and its third-party audio engine, called Wwise, would look like:



The audio engine, while highly capable, can't keep up with EVE's tremendous demands, so it starts using 100% of its allotted CPU. The following video is what a scenario like this can sound like along with the audio engine's CPU usage:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Now, let's look at how sound prioritization moves the EVE client from being a demanding boss to a supportive and fair boss instead.

[h2]EVE: The Good Guy Boss[/h2]

To be a supportive and fair boss, the EVE client needs to consider what is important when it comes to audio, and to make reasonable requests of Wwise, giving it some breathing room to render the sounds. Let's take another look at the "dialogue" between EVE and Wwise except this time let's play out what it would look like if EVE were the kind of boss we all deserve:



The results of being a less demanding, more focused boss to the sound system can be heard immediately:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Simply removing sounds indiscriminately is easy. However, this would give a less nuanced audio experience, so it is not the route we are taking. We want to deliver the best audio experience; not just throw as many sounds at you as possible. As part of this work, we had to consider carefully what sounds are considered 'important', which is a big question!

[h2]How Sounds are Prioritized[/h2]

The sound prioritization system keeps track of all origin points from which sounds emit. The term used for this is "audio emitter". Based on how important an audio emitter is, it will either be kept alive and exposed to the audio engine, or it will be put to sleep and kept hidden from the audio engine entirely.

The most important factor when prioritizing audio emitters is how far away it is from the player's camera. The emitters that are closest to the camera are considered more important. In fact, the prototype shown at Fanfest [LINK] was using only distance as its prioritization criteria. However, when applying only distance-based prioritization to anything outside of battles, it was killing off important environmental sounds. After Fanfest, the following additional factors were added for the sound prioritization to consider whether an emitter:

• has ever been used to play a sound.
• is actively playing a sound.
• has sound in range of the listener.
• is visible to the camera.
• is playing a sound marked as "vital" by a sound designer.
• is playing a 2D sound – A 2D sound is one that has no position in 3D space and is purely in stereo. Usually, if a 2D sound is playing in EVE then the sound designers meant for it to be an added atmospheric layer.
• has a "one shot" queued to be played - A "one shot" is just a sound that has a clear 'start' and 'end', which is not designed to loop. A typical example of this is the sound of an explosion or the impact of a rocket.

All the above factors are considered to decide the "weight" of an audio emitter. With this value, we can decide how important a sound is in each scene.

[h2]Let's Talk Performance[/h2]

As was shown in a previous video, sound prioritization cuts the CPU usage of EVE's audio engine in heavy scenes by about 75%. In a scene of around 2000 ships, previously the CPU used by the audio thread could easily reach its defined limit, in turn limiting the clarity and finesse of the soundscape.

Glance at the CPU usage comparison image below, and it's clear to see that the audio thread is regularly hitting 100% utilization when sound prioritization is disabled. When that happens, and the sound becomes cluttered or impacts performance, players understandably start to disable audio in busy scenes. Look to the right-hand side of the image, where sound prioritization is turned on, and the reduced demand on CPU is striking.



Because sound prioritization has a hard limit on how many audio emitters will be used, the cost of the audio thread on the CPU will stay between 20% to 30%. This stands true no matter how many ships are on screen at the same time. This may increase slightly if we add more complexity to sounds in the future, but this system allows us to have very tight control over how much CPU we use.

[h2]Let's Talk About the Soundscape[/h2]

Sound prioritization doesn't just improve your game performance by freeing up system resources, it also improves the overall soundscape of EVE tremendously, and in almost every situation. You will notice a crisper sound experience, where it will be possible to hear the details of objects you are focused on while still getting the environmental cues necessary for gameplay. Where the soundscape could have felt overwhelming previously, you will now be able to enjoy the amazing sounds created by our talented sound designers.

It is much easier to hear the difference rather than write about it! Here is a clip from the last mass test that shows the differences between having sound prioritization on and off:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]

We've already had one mass test and made changes based on player feedback. Another mass test is scheduled for the 27th of September, and we would love to see you there! While this feature is now available on Singularity for testing, it will be available to all players as part of the EVE Evolved update on October 11th. We are very excited to bring this improved audio experience to you and look forward to your feedback.

Fly safe, turn your sound on, and turn up your volume!

Display your allegiance to the throne as the Amarr Empire enters its seventh year under the divine rule of Empress Catiz I, with select Crown and Sword & Imperial Jubilee SKINs returning to the in-game NES at 20% off and a special Imperial Jubilee Pack on sale on the EVE Store during this year’s Coronation Day celebrations!

The Crown and Sword SKIN series symbolizes the Pax e Kilizhi Do (or “Peace of Two Swords”), an ancient doctrine that serves as the foundation upon which Empress Catiz’s vision for future of Amarr has been continually built since her coronation in YC118, while the Imperial Jubilee series ornately evokes the celebratory spirit that rings across every Amarr world each year.

Crown and Sword SKINs for the Imperial Navy Slicer, Devoter, Malediction, Purifier, Anathema, Confessor, Zealot, Curse, Prophecy, Ark, Apostle, and Revelation, and Imperial Jubilee SKINs for the Dragoon, Harbinger, Guardian, Damnation, Redeemer, and Paladin are on sale in the NES at 20% off.

The Imperial Jubilee pack available in the EVE Store includes 30 days of Omega, 100 PLEX, and Imperial Jubilee SKINs for the Vengeance, Coercer, Sacrilege, Oracle, Armageddon, and Abaddon.

These offers are available only during Coronation Day celebrations from 20 September to 2 October – so adorn your indomitable starships in the colors of holy Amarr while you can!