EVE Online News

Perceptive Capsuleers,

The Clear Vision update to EVE Online is now live, featuring big graphical improvements to a number of key elements across New Eden! These changes are part of the ongoing mission to continue pushing the boundaries of immersion and the stunning visuals of EVE.

[h2]Jita IV Station - The Next Phase[/h2]

Eagle-eyed Capsuleers may have noticed gradual changes, improvements and additions to the main Jita IV station over the last few months as work began on its major redesign, celebrating the largest trade hub in New Eden. The Clear Vision update brings further steps in the redesign of nearby structures, with the completion of the Jita IV Communication/Science station and significant progress on the Mining Center.

So, next time you travel to Jita in order to carry out your trading activities, be sure to check out the continuing improvements!

[h2]Jump Tunnel Animation[/h2]

Note: The new jump animation has been temporarily reverted. We will do more work on the feature to address concerns about the jump cloak timer starting before the animation has completed.

A further visual improvement that comes as part of the Clear Vision update is a new graphical effect for travel between certain types of location in New Eden. This new animation for jump tunnels applies to K-Space jumps through stargates, Abyssal Deadspace jumps, Cyno jumps, and Black Ops Cyno jumps.

It is worth noting that you will now see your ship moving through these tunnels, with an extremely smooth camera entry mechanic. The color of the tunnels will also vary depending on the security and type of destination.



[h2]Contrast Adaptive Sharpening[/h2]

In addition, the Clear Vision update also introduces further visual enhancements to EVE Online with Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) from AMD, a process that considers the contrast of the pixels during the sharpening process. CAS will accurately sharpen visuals all across New Eden, including areas that have large contrast differences where normal sharpeners often struggle, bringing even further clarity and immersion to moon surfaces, ship hulls and more. Furthermore, CAS will be platform agnostic.

This feature will only be enabled when the ‘Post Processing’ setting within EVE is set to ‘High’ for the moment, but this will have almost zero impact on performance. You can check out the full details of this feature in the CAS dev blog [link to dev blog].

There will also be details coming up very soon about an exciting EVE Online screenshot competition with awesome prizes including AMD hardware, PLEX and EVE merchandise, so keep an eye on all EVE social and news channels for that info!

These visual improvements continue to push the boundaries of how computer games can look, and represent investment in the future of the EVE in order to set it up for a thriving third decade!

Stellar Capsuleers,

Voting is now open for the 15th Council of Stellar Management (CSM15), so exercise your democratic right and cast your vote for the candidates you feel best represent your interests in New Eden! Make sure to check out the details on all of the candidates and cast your vote before 12:00 UTC on 8 June.

To celebrate the voting period, alongside voting for your chosen candidates in CSM15, you can also claim free gifts as part of the Rewards of Democracy daily login event running from 1 June to 8 June! Rewards include Skill Points, Boosters, Needlejack Filaments, and CSM-themed special edition shuttles.

Both Alpha and Omega Clone State Capsuleers can claim free gifts daily, with Omegas getting bigger and better rewards as well as being able to claim the Alpha rewards, too!

For those unfamiliar with how the voting works, please take a look at this video created for one of the previous elections.

Dear Capsuleers,

From undocking in Jita to getting in your first Titan, beauty is found in all areas of New Eden. Today, you will be introduced to one of the new features coming in the upcoming Clear vision update: Contrast Adaptive Sharpening.

The process of image sharpening is important in most visual media. Film directors, photographers and game texture artists will use it daily to get the desired result. Using it correctly takes patience, practice, and skill, but the result can be a vastly improved image when used appropriately. When used incorrectly, over-sharpening an image will make the result look unnatural or introduce artifacts.

The main reason this happens is due to the way sharpening generally works; it adds contrast between pixels, which means it becomes particularly noticeable around edges. Quite simply, as one pixel gets brighter, the other gets darker.

The image on the left below is a normal, unedited screenshot from the existing renderer within EVE Online. On the right is the same image, adjusted by using the default ‘Sharpen’ filter twice within Adobe Photoshop, to illustrate the type of issue that can occur when sharpening is applied incorrectly. There is artifacting at the edge of the planet, the gradient has lost its smoothness and the surface of the planet is starting to look too pixelated.



While it is clear from these images that sharpening can hurt image quality if not done correctly on a 2D image, in a 3D rendered environment where the camera and ships regularly move, it looks even worse. As EVE has a significant number of areas that also have large contrast differences, such as planet surfaces, ships against space, hangars, stargates, and even weapons fire, it’s been a challenge to find a solution that fully satisfied. This means that sometimes objects look slightly blurred, out of focus, or the image looks soft.

This problem is not unique to EVE, and many other games encounter similar issues. AMD noticed this and provided a free-to-use, open-source, high-quality sharpening shader called "Contrast Adaptive Sharpening" as part of their GPUOpen FidelityFX toolkit. It is graphics card agnostic, so you will see a benefit no matter what GPU you have.

As the name suggests, Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) considers the contrast of the pixels during the sharpening process. Edges and gradients no longer suffer from the same artifact problems shown above, but it still allows for areas that have large contrast differences to be sharpened accurately.

A great example of this is moon surfaces. They have craters, surface rings, mountain ranges, and flat areas that have large contrast differences by design. CAS really shines in this situation, where it successfully allows for the subtle details created by the artists to become clearer in the final render, even with the existing post-processes turned on.



It looks equally as good on ships, where CAS brings out the subtle details of the hulls. You can see this particularly well on the Orca and Naga where paneling and decals are used:





The performance cost of this enhancement is negligible relative to pre-existing post-processing. However, it has been decided that this feature will only be enabled when the ‘Post Processing’ setting within EVE is set to ‘High’ for the moment.

Work is continuing on the DirectX 12 client which will open up even more avenues to explore in the future.

Fly safe!

Opportunistic Capsuleers,

There is currently a limited time 10% discount on PLEX purchases of 500 PLEX and higher! You'll need to act fast, though, as the offer is only available until 11:00 UTC on 2 June.

Remember, you can trade your PLEX for in-game ISK to spend on ships and skills, or spend your PLEX at EVE Online's New Eden Store on Omega Clone State time to unlock access to all of EVE's ships and skills, as well as double training speed. Your PLEX can also buy you Skill Extractors, HyperCores, stunning ship SKINs, character apparel and more at the New Eden Store!



The HyperNet Relay fee reduction is also now live! The fee has temporarily been reduced from 5% to 0%, but only until 11:00 UTC on 4 June! It’ll be cheaper to put your items up for sale on the HyperNet Relay during this time, so don’t miss the opportunity to save some ISK.

Are you a Triglavian hunter or defender? Show your allegiance with the brand new Eden's Hunters and Kybernaut Clade SKINs for selected ships, available now in EVE Online's New Eden Store!

As Chapter 3 of the Triglavian Invasion is now underway, you can get either SKIN for the Nestor, Vindicator, Kikimora, Drekavac, Leshak, Guardian, Basilisk, Bifrost and Noctis.

For those eager to support and promote the efforts of Capsuleers hunting Triglavian structures and vessels, the unique Eden's Hunters SKIN is perfect for anyone aggressively taking the fight to the enemy.

Radical Capsuleers who find something attractive, even uplifting in Zorya Triglav's message of "proving and joining the flow" can display their allegiance with the Kybernaut Clade SKIN, its name a reference to the Triglavian term for Capsuleers.

Declare your support for the invaders, or for the Empires as they fight for New Eden!