We’ve released a new video showing a sneak peak of the solar system we’re building for the Infinity: Battlescape Kickstarter. You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k&feature=c4-overview&list=UUNEHBrhTUN4P_ZxIy29DNQw
Flavien is also working on a follow up blog to talk some more about what he’s been working on lately!
Thank you, modeling must take some time for you it a planet.
By cons I regret that the video can not be in full HD (1080p).
I hope your strech goals will be ambitios, because people will be throwing their money at you 
Actually, modelling a single planet takes a matter of seconds as it’s all done automatically (procedurally). Creating the algorithm that makes planets and tweaking it to make them seem realistic (more or less) has, of course, taken years - but once it’s in place there’s very little difference between making one planet and a thousand.
Oh and if someone could invent a way to convert physical currency to a digital transaction whenever it strikes a monitor that’d be great. I’d like to actually throw some money at my screen right now and have it end up in inovae’s pockets.
Its like looking at a partly finished painting, you can tell there are some major pieces missing but can already tell the finished product will be a masterpiece.
Is it just me, or is it just that when you go t really close to the ground, I couldn’t tell if what I was looking at was the size of my foot or Mt. Everest?
Great video though! Can’t wait to see more!
What a fascinating world. While it does look believable, I could help but wonder what kind of geological processes can create such a landscape. An ancient heavy bombardment? Long times under a shallow sea?
I could on most parts, but sometimes not. I think the voronoi tessellation needs either narrower ramping or less depth (Depending on what it’s used for).
Great to see the progress that’s been made!
Fantastic! Really has a beautiful sense of awe surrounding it, this game will be a masterpiece. Ground breaking!
Looks awesome… I agree with shadowalker though that the scale was hard to determine, should be fine once you can see your spaceship in comparison though… or if you have Rift support
Really cool indeed. I also couldn’t tell the scale a few times, but its amazing how much the textures have improved. I guess seeing a ship in third person when you get close to the ground would help, as would trees and bushes, or 3d grass(even if simple ones, though I digrass…ahem, digress).
Any chance of getting a direct download? The compression on youtube didn’t help.
And I couldn’t help but notice that there were no asteroid belts. Is Flavien still tweaking them or are they broken and won’t be added in time? I also couldn’t see any stars, so I hope they will be back in time too.
edit: The blogpost is up.
@AngryMarine We’re still working on re-integrating planetary rings and stars. They should be back soon. At the moment we aren’t planning on releasing a direct download but maybe once I finish polishing up the rest of the website I could possibly throw it up there.
This is a problem I’ve had ever since I first saw a video of Infinity back in 2006. I don’t think it’s a problem that applies just to this game. I also had the same problem in EVE Online, because you can’t judge distances between ships, you can’t even judge the distance between the camera and your own ship so it’s hard to get a sense of scale.
It might be something to do with the distance between the camera and the ground. There is probably some kind of complex lighting required or something to give a real sense of scale, but I also think that if Battlescape and the full game support Oculus Rift, that might be another good way to get a sense of how big everything really is.
Well, yes, 3d would help, but the thing that would help the most is vegetation. And when it comes to ships, there are tricks like having windows that are the same size on each ship(thought thats hard considering the size of some ships), or other details like hatches and stairs.
That video has no vegetation, and since the resulting mountains/features look a bit alien, its hard to find something on earth to compare those things to.
In fact, a simple elevation instrument to show you how high you are would help wonders.
There’s no saying that vegetation would be recognisable. An alien tree may be tiny compared to Earth trees, so what looks like a mountain covered in them may only be a little hill.
You can have the same problem in real life as well. Go to a desert or some place that is entirely covered in snow but without trees and you will have the same problem judging distance. Vegetation does help quite a bit but the biggest way to get a sense of the scale is for us to restrict the speed of the camera to walking speed ;).
Oh yeah that’s make a lot of sense. I never thought about movement speed.
True, but the moment you approach one of those alien trees and compare it to your ship(of known size) that problem would be gone.
It looked beautiful. But if I may give a few points for improvement the ridge lines on some of those mountain ranges seems way too sharp and clean and something felt off about the clusters of small rock areas.