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Speed Evolved: More FPS in New Eden

Speedy capsuleers,

The future of EVE Online is accelerating. As part of EVE Evolved, a transformation is coming to how EVE renders space, unlocking a boost in performance and taking another step toward EVE forever.

With a cutting-edge GPU-driven pipeline, New Eden’s battles, bustling trade hubs, and deep-space explorations will look and feel better than ever. By shifting more processing to your GPU, capsuleers will experience smoother gameplay, higher FPS, and a more immersive universe, all while reducing the strain on CPU-bound processes. This fundamental change offloads more rendering tasks to the GPU, allowing for more efficient batching of draw calls, reduced CPU overhead, and better parallel processing of graphical elements. The result? A game that runs faster, feels more responsive, and can handle larger-scale engagements with greater stability.

Testing so far has shown an average FPS gain of 25-50%! Whether you’re navigating through Jita’s busiest trade lanes, engaged in high-speed skirmishes, or commanding massive fleets, performance gains will be felt across the board. This means less stutter, fewer slowdowns in large battles, and a visually richer experience with reduced strain on your CPU.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
These improvements are tailored for DirectX 12 and macOS users, setting the stage for even more advancements in the future. But before this evolution fully takes flight, we need your help in putting it to the test!

[h2]Join the Mass Test on Singularity[/h2]
From 17:00-19:00 UTC on 28 February, capsuleers are called upon to log into the Singularity test server to put the new rendering system through the motions. The more pilots in space, the better we can refine and optimize this leap forward. More information on the test is available here.

After the initial test, the server will remain open for extended testing until 3 March, allowing further data collection and refinements. As a thank-you for your service, Large Skill Injectors will be available on Singularity, so there will be plenty of fun to be had during the testing window and opportunities to try something new. The new system will be released on Tranquility on 18 March.

Indulge your need for speed and stress test the new rendering system. See you on Singularity!

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EVE Fanfest 2025 Tickets are Already Sold Out


Today, CCP Games made the surprising announcement that EVE Fanfest 2025 has already sold out after tickets hit the market three months ago.





Despite tickets only becoming available starting November 2024, CCP Games has made the startling announcement today that tickets for EVE Fanfest 2025, scheduled to take place in May 2025 at the Harpa conference hall in Reykjavik, Iceland, have officially sold out. The official announcement comes from the CCP Games X (formerly Twitter) account, and it can be seen below.






EVE Fanfest 2025 is sold out in record time! Thank you for continuing to make Fanfest history #tweetfleet 💙

https://t.co/WOKBC2YrMd pic.twitter.com/kK2A1UIzD5

— CCP Games (@CCPGames) February 26, 2025




CCP Games’ official announcement reads, “The passion and dedication of the EVE community continue to shape New Eden, and this milestone is yet another testament to its strength. The 17th edition of Fanfest promises an unforgettable celebration of... Read more



Paint Your Ship Red & Make it Faster?

Capsuleers,

It’s time to continue the conversation around Quasar, the underlying ecosystem for modern development in EVE Online. Since its introduction at Fanfest 2022, it has become the foundation for several major advancements, including:
  • https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/sovereignty-updates-transition-and-upgrades
  • https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/8500/view/4221643401455949514
  • https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/8500/view/4174351800579482458

This journey, a part of EVE Evolved, has touched on set theory, graph theory, and, uh… color theory. Today, however, the focus is on the technology powering capsuleer-created ship SKINs, because it is much more than just a fancy editor and shader wizardry! In fact, it is a key part of unlocking future capabilities for server performance. Brace yourself, though, as a few technical crash courses will be needed to appreciate the ins and outs of what the team has been up to.

[h2]Netcode and Tick Rate[/h2]
One of the most common challenges in multiplayer games is its network architecture, colloquially referred to as “netcode”. Whether striving to ensure a consistent experience for all players or to prevent cheating, the way information is transmitted to game clients plays a crucial role in the overall performance and enjoyment. A key factor here is tick rate - the frequency at which the game server updates and sends information to connected clients.

Different game engines approach this in different ways. Unreal Engine, for example, emphasizes relevancy filtering, sending only the most important updates to each client, while Source Engine focuses on input prediction, reducing the number of corrections needed to maintain smooth gameplay.

Regardless of approach, tick rate remains a fundamental factor in network performance. Most games operate between 20Hz and 120Hz, depending on the number of players online, meaning that updates are sent between 20 and 120 times per second per client. For instance, at 60Hz, the server must process and send updates every 16.6 milliseconds to ensure that 60 updates can happen within one second, and leave room for other players to receive the same information in the same time frame. Assuming a magical latency-free internet connection bringing clients the game state directly on connect (let’s just pretend that exists), a 60Hz server would process game state updates like this:

[h2]Two ticks of a 60hz Server[/h2]

Input prediction and movement interpolation can create the illusion of near real-time interaction, even without a magical zero-latency internet. But as tick rates drop, delays become more noticeable. Which sounds bad, right? So why would you ever want a lower tick rate?

Well, EVE Online has been around since the days of 56k modems. To keep bandwidth requirements low enough for massive space battles, the server tick rate was set to one second.

More specifically, the tick rate of the physics simulation is 1hz which dramatically reduces the need to send updates to the desktop clients.

Other interactions with elements that don’t affect physics are processed as quickly as the Python hamsters will go. This means that if an input is sent right before a tick, it feels highly responsive. If sent right after, it can feel like it takes a second or even more to see an effect (when factoring in real-world latency – GG, Australia). Technically, therefore, you could get into a good vibe with the server by pressing a key exactly once per second, but of course, for mental wellbeing, it can be very important to click “Jump” thirty times per second.

Looking holistically at Tranquility on average over the past year, it’s clear that the number of operations per second is proportional to the number of active capsuleers in the cluster. On average, each session processes around 0.7 operations per second, demonstrating how efficient EVE Online is at transmitting only the data that is necessary.

The numbers fluctuate, of course, and these are all averages. When fleet fights hit processing limits, Time Dilation (TiDi) kicks in. If you’re curious about the nuts and bolts of that, you can look at the archive on TiDi to learn more.

[h2]So Where do SKINs Come In?[/h2]
Almost all cosmetic mechanisms in EVE Online are sent via simulation frames, EVE’s version of a tick. Before SKINR, ship SKIN changes were delivered with the next simulation frame that was sent to all relevant clients. In other words, SKIN updates could only happen once per second. Even without any rate limits on the UI or network requests, no matter how fast you would change SKINs, no one would be able to see more than one update per second, because that’s the limit on simulation frame transmission.

There’s also another issue: fanout. (Last crash course, promise.)

When you change your ship’s SKIN, the update needs to be sent to multiple recipients – what is referred to as “fanout”. But which ones need to receive the information? What happens if you are near a hundred other ships? What does “near” actually mean, and who are the other hundred?

Simulation frames handle both problems by only processing updates for ships within the same bubble (colloquially grid - not to be confused with warp disruption bubbles). This approach comes at a cost, though, as more data per simulation frame means more serialization and fanout for the server simulating that solar system. Previously, Quasar only tracked which solar system a ship was in, but for SKINR to function in real time, it had to track ship movement between bubbles as well.

This was no small feat. It required deep changes to EVE Online’s core simulation engine to allow Quasar to access its state in a way that hadn’t been done before. The result was shocking! A whopping 27x increase in processed data compared to the simple transitions between solar systems.

Here’s a comparison of events per second between solar system travel and bubble travel – keep in mind that warping traverses multiple bubbles, not just “A to B”.

And that’s just internal traffic, before even considering the fanout problem!

[h2]Solving the Fanout Challenge[/h2]
Now, let’s go back to the “one ship changes its SKIN near 100 other ships” scenario. With Quasar tracking all ships across all bubbles, it now understands what “near” means and which clients need to receive updates. Instead of waiting for the next simulation frame, Quasar immediately dispatches SKIN changes to everyone in a given bubble.

This is made possible by messaging from the mighty NATS, which efficiently handles the roughly 10,000 messages being sent out to EVE clients every second. Services like the ones that handle cosmetic state can now serialize and send a single SKIN update, which is then fanned out to all nearby ships, rather than being delayed by the 1Hz simulation tick.

This is demonstrated in this quick clip from a SKINR playtest:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The question becomes: Why is it important that Quasar can track ship locations and send out cosmetic updates independently? Because this technique allows EVE Online to offload a purely cosmetic function from the main simulation engine.

Furthermore, it has broader implications when considering all the other cosmetic effects that need to be serialized and fanned out to clients. Once the conversation moves beyond cosmetics, the natural question becomes: what else could be unloaded to Quasar?

[h2]Pushing the Limits[/h2]
To put the system to the test, part of the SKINR mass test involved removing the UI limiter on SKIN switching to see what would happen. The result? A rather interesting visible effect:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The fun part was when the real stress test began, with 500 players simultaneously spamming SKIN changes in the same bubble on a potato test server. This resulted in the system hitting a peak of about 45,000 messages per second!

A big thank you goes out to everyone who participates in these kinds of mass tests. It might not always be obvious just how valuable your contribution is, but this clearly illustrates the impact your participation has.

Going back to the chaotic example above, what exactly did it accomplish?

Looking at the statistics from earlier, Tranquility typically handles roughly 30,000 messages per second across the entire server, giving it a nice average of about one operation per second, or 1Hz. In contrast, the SKINR test reached 45,000 messages per second with just 500 players, meaning Quasar was effectively delivering updates at 90Hz in that scenario.

If Quasar can provide 90Hz traffic for 500 players on a small-scale test server running just three nodes, what could it do if scaled up to the full power of 230 Tranquility nodes with 30,000 active players?

What happens if simulation frames themselves follow the same paradigm?

What happens if simulation frames no longer have to wait a full second to be sent?

What implications does this have for Time Dilation? Does the meta shift when battles are fought real time at scale?

If the fidelity of the network can be increased 90-fold, what new experiences can the designers bring to the pilots of New Eden?

These are the questions that will shape the evolution of EVE Online, and some may be answered on CCP TV at 15:00 on 20 February, so make sure you tune in.

o7

https://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/EVE_Online/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1872800/EVE_Vanguard/

Drifter Crisis: The Story So Far

[h2]Battle-ready capsuleers,[/h2]

The Drifters have struck and New Eden has answered. From highsec to lowsec, fleets have formed, ships have fallen, and puzzling information is coming to light. The latest intel has been gathered, and it paints a picture of war.



Amid the chaos, the Arataka Research Consortium and other dedicated groups have uncovered fragments of a mystery lurking out there, leading to rumors and theories, all of which remain unconfirmed at this time.

[h2]You Are Ready for the Fight[/h2]

The Drifters are not an untouchable force. They fall to disciplined fleets, coordinated fire, and capsuleers who dare stand their ground. This is not a battle for the elite, but a war for all of New Eden, with skirmishes taking place in lowsec and even highsec. A well-piloted Tech I cruiser, a few allies at your side, and the will to fight will go a long way toward turning the tide. There is plenty of time left to join the fight, and reap great ISK rewards for your valor. In addition, capsuleers have reported spotting Drifter officers in some of these sites, so there may be even greater glory and riches to be had.



If you’re looking for advice on getting started in the war against the Drifters, these community resources are a great place to start:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A particularly resilient group of capsuleers recently became the first to bring down a Vigilant Dreamer structure in a Crisis Resolution site, despite overwhelming adversity. These pilots have been awarded a medal for their achievement. Read more about that here. A special thank you to capsuleer Walter Islands for capturing the image at the head of this article, marking the occasion.



Using telemetry gathered during the Vigilant Dreamer’s destruction in Tash-Murkon, the Society of Conscious Thought has been able to synthesize new upgrades for Crisis response fleets. Targeting computer modifications and improved hyperspace tracking methodologies will ensure Vigilant Dreamers remain available for assault as long as they are in a system.

The storm is brewing. The fight is now. Victory is yours for the taking.

It’s All About Spaceships

Capsuleers,

EVE Online uniquely allows players to explore the vastness of space, engage in a complex and ever-evolving community, and carve out a place in a living universe. At the heart of that experience is your ship – your identity in New Eden.

As part of EVE Evolved, changes have been made recently to elevate ships beyond other items in the inventory, overhauling how they are presented and interacted with. These updates are not just visual improvements - they enhance usability, refine how ships are represented in the game, and lay the groundwork for further improvements.

[h2]Cards Against Monotony[/h2]
The first baby step toward improving ship interaction and giving your vessels the spotlight they deserve was the introduction of ship cards in the hangar. This goal is to bring more information to the forefront, making it easier to see ship types at a glance, and providing quick access to traits and fitting details for owned ships.

While developing ship cards, it became clear that there is a lack of a central authority for ship groups and classifications which presented development challenges. Improvements are needed to streamline ship categorization, but as this is a large undertaking, it was not addressed in this update. However, refining these systems in the future will be highly beneficial.

While not a particularly complex feature, ship cards add a great deal of clarity and usability to ship interactions. Further enhancements to hangar interaction are planned, as many areas of inventory management still have room for improvement.

[h2]The Ship Info Overhaul[/h2]
The Ship Info window was a much bigger project and greater challenge. Unlike ship cards, which introduced a new way to display ships, this was about rebuilding one of the most used windows in the game – one of the cornerstones of EVE Online!

The most important priority was preserving functionality while ensuring any changes elevated the experience. The approach taken was to frame the new Ship Info window as though it were a manufacturer’s technical brochure, reinforcing the concept that each ship is a real, physical object within the EVE Universe.

A game in continuous development for over 20 years inevitably accumulates technical debt, and the Ship Info window was no exception. Originally implemented early in EVE Online’s development, it had never seen a dedicated overhaul. As new features were added over time, its structure became increasingly difficult to maintain.

A major part of this update involved restructuring the various services and components that the old window relied on. The first step was extracting all necessary functionality into a base class, allowing the new window to be built upon a more stable and maintainable foundation.

One of the more unexpected challenges involved rendering the 3D scene in the background. The existing renderer is primarily designed for objects in space, so additional work was needed to integrate it smoothly into a UI environment. A solution was developed that not only worked for this window but also sets the stage for more 3D rendered UI elements in the future.

The result is a more immersive and functional Ship Info window, improving how ships are viewed in the ship tree, in hangars, and in space.

[h2]The Community Response[/h2]
A change of this scale was bound to generate strong reactions. Some were a bit more vocal than others, and some, let’s say, interesting bug reports were submitted. Despite some particularly passionate opinions being voiced, most of the feedback gathered was constructive, thoughtful, and quite valuable.

The support is greatly appreciated and was very useful in refining the final product.
The Ship Info window is only the beginning. Many ideas surfaced during development, both internally and from community feedback, for example compact mode which was added recently. Some other great ideas also surfaced but didn’t make it into the first release. These include further improvements to the 3D view, triggering warp animations, further improving the fitting panel, and more that will be explored in the future. With the new framework in place, these and further refinements will be easier to develop and roll out and might lead to more specialized UI elements as well.

[h2]The Boarding Cinematic[/h2]
Ships are the heart and soul of the EVE experience. They represent investment, progress, and identity. In a game built around acquiring and piloting different vessels, boarding a new ship should be an exciting experience, not just a menu action. The goal was to make boarding a ship for the first time feel like a milestone. It should be visceral, satisfying, and feel like an achievement.

With hundreds of ships and multiple hangar types, a universal solution was needed. The challenge was to create a system that worked across all ships without requiring individual animation work for each one.

The answer was to add anchor points to ship models, allowing the camera to follow predefined paths. Ships were grouped based on size and shape, ensuring smooth transitions while maintaining consistency.

Some ships, such as titans and other uniquely shaped vessels, required custom camera movements. For the majority, however, a system based on broad groupings worked to create a seamless and immersive experience without hand-crafting sequences for every single ship.

This feature, while not directly impacting gameplay, strengthens immersion and reinforces the connection between capsuleers and their ships. The groundwork laid here also opens the door for more dynamic cinematics in the future.

There are still multiple factors that can be added and improved, and as ever, this will continue to evolve along with EVE Online. These are strong foundations to inform future enhancements to the UI for a deeper immersion than ever before.

Fly safe.

o7

https://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/EVE_Online/

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