From Entropia Universe home page, Developers blog section:

Graphics Engine Updates
Version Update 9.0 will see the next step in the ongoing process to make the Entropia Universe the best looking virtual experience around. A process that has taken almost a year to prepare will now take a giant next step forward. Avatars, as well as their worn equipment and clothes will be upgraded. This major upgrade will include brand new techniques, models, textures, and more. It will also allow all existing avatars the chance to recreate their avatar. More info and preview screenshots will be released soon.


So, we can expect VU 9.0 to be big update. Do you believe it will 'make the EU the best looking virtual experience'. All that I expect is that players with older hardware won't be able to play EU and players with high end hardware will still be unsatisfied with the way game looks. Only good news for me is that we will have chance to recreate our avatars (I wonder what hair stylists, body and face sculptors feel about that. I presume they are a bit angry )

I hope one of the options is leave it alone.

I hope that we get a nice bonus and I hope the game comes out optimized . We want a new engine!

Mmm.

looks nice but I am affraid I have to buy a high end videocard. My old FX5700LE is for sure to weak for it and maybe we have to change to Vista because of direct x10?

Better to reduce the lag problems first, since this Eomon event its sometimes not to play.

Waldemar

The engine itself isn't bad. This graphic engine was used in many other games, for instance TES IV: Oblivion. Just look at screens here. Engine itself is quite elastic. Game could run smoothly, after using additional program - Oldblivion on PC with GF 4 MX (of course it wasn't looking as good as on the pictures but it was playable).

hottygurl Wrote:I hope that we get a nice bonus and I hope the game comes out optimized . We want a new engine!

LOL optimized. I think if MA ever optimized anything I would immediately drop dead from shock.

Sounds like NICE changes! I do wonder how much they're going to restrict us from changing our characters?!

I was going to say that it would be pretty cool if they created public 3-D models of our avatars (which would allow customization via Photoshop for example) but then tailors et. al would not be happy either Man... it's always complicated to think of changes in this game since it affects so many different aspects of the itself!

I wich there will be possible to use tatoos and jewelry. Otherwise I don't think they will ever be the "best looking", it's not just the engine that makes this, but I think they are heading in the right direction, the skys for example looks really good IMO.

Sky is quite nice though games like Crisis use different technology to present sky (Clouda are 3D not 2D) but it looks quite nice. Anyway jewellery would be nice idea, I think that atm all precious stones are useless so if craters could use those it would be great. Tattoos would be nice but if we could upload our own graphics to use as tattoos it would be even better. I doubt it will happen in VU 9.0.

Yay! I can fix my bono shades now. They are way too big and streched out for my face so i can fix that. Also i wonder what new stuff will come, wewt!

This is our last chance for big update. Due to new engine MA will be busy so we can expect only small updates and fixes until 'New Entropia' will be ready.

I did check the new graphic engine ad-movie yesterday. It did look promising, but I doubt that the existing objects in todays EU is made with such a powerfull engine in mind. So as you say, MA will be occupied for a long time to remake the game. Many of the graphical functions in the ad-movie I'm not sure that we ever will see. I'm really glad that they will kick out the GameBryo engine and replace it with this one. It looks like it will support much more graphic cards etc. But it looks very resource demanding. And I see no point in some of the effects, I don't really care if the shadow of a plant is moving or not as long the lag problem isn't fixed before. And th feature where you can harm vegetation when you fire, would the implement something like that, Calypso would soon look like the Sahara desert.

Yeah, probably not all candies will be available. I'm not sure but I think is no option for planting new trees in this engine so all woodcutters won't be happy. On the other hand this engine contains many feature we are waiting for. For example vehicles and boats. This engine should make further development of EU easier but at first MA has to move everything to this engine.

And about lag issue (from Crytek web site):

Network Client and Server System: CryENGINE™ 2 has a totally new, multi-threaded networking system which manages all connections for multiplayer mode. It features a highly reliable, low-latency, low bandwidth system based on client/server architecture using advanced range encoding based compression algorithms.

So we can expect brand new code in this part of game too. If our PCs will be strong enough game should work better.

Other useful feature is Dynamic Path Finding which will allow mobs to find they way and not get stucked. No more stucked mobs? I hope so.