Luminalia 2955 Calendar - Day 1
Daily reward:
Golem Deck the Hull and IceBreak Paints
Luminalia 2955 / Christmas events
13 Days of Luminalia Surprises:
- Starting on December 10 and ending on December 22, all citizens can open a daily Luminalia-themed surprise.
- Click here for a carefully-wrapped Luminalia gift and be sure to check back daily at 1600 UTC to see what else is in store!
Design a Card:
- We want cards upon cards upon cards that say “Luminalia is here!” Whether it’s giving gifts, feasting with friends, or stealing Gelbees from a baby, show us what the season means to you with a digital or physical entry. Details can be found on Spectrum.
Ho! Ho! Ho! Go! Go! Go!:
- Gift boxes all the way! Are you giving presents or snatching them for your own hangar this Luminalia? Either way, box off a gift-courier mission or go in search of harvestables hidden around the ‘verse. It’s a carryin’ carolin’ holiday!
New Courier Missions
- Take on new courier missions in the Stanton system that task you with collecting and delivering gifts. Perfect if you want to spread some holiday cheer while earning a little something on the side.
RSI Launcher 2.11.0 Release Notes
New features:
In this version, we are improving the messaging on mandatory system requirements to Play Star Citizen.
OS requirement: Window 10 and up
CPU requirements:
- X86 architecture
- AVX instruction feature enable
- AVX2 instruction feature enable
- FMA3 instruction feature enable
Known issues:
- Some users encounter a flickering Launcher background, which can be partially mitigated by turning off accessibility settings. Please look at this comment for a potential fix:
- The Launcher sometimes fails to create the StarCitizen/Live folders for some users, leading to Error 2000, Error 5008, or Error 5010. Try creating the folder manually and running the Launcher as an administrator.
- LCH-1030: Launcher suppresses Screen Saver
- LCH-1958: Never Ending Download loop. Please report the issue; we are encountering trouble investigating it.
- LCH-2229: We are investigating Network error 5008. Please report your issue there.
A personal and heartfelt message from Silvan himself:
*I joined CIG in 2018 to make this dream come true. I’ve poured out my heart and soul into this and I’m extremely happy and proud to see it finally in your hands.
There is nothing quite like seeing our amazing and detailed ships in VR and grasping the grandness and scale of the Star Citizen Universe in this way.
I’ve spent lots of time integrating the Theater Mode and the dynamic stereo switch (Note: The headset needs to support it!) so you can seamlessly swap between VR and desktop any time without any restrictions.
I want to see someone building a contraption where you can pull the headset from the ceiling to enter VR and take it off to switch back to desktop. Please share a video and ping me if you accomplished that!
Thanks to everyone who helped me in this journey and make this dream come true especially @jschneidercig @YogiKlatt-CIG @Gill-CIG @Sothar-CIG @Bault, as well as @CIG-SeanT for teasing it in the summer, all the QA for rigorous testing and the man himself, @croberts68 for giving us all the opportunity to become real space explorers.
This ist just the beginning and there is still lots to do. So hit me with your feedback and suggestions.
Silvan-CIG*
Star Citizen VR Support - Experimental Release (4.5 PTU)
Hi everyone,
We’re excited to introduce something a little different with Alpha 4.5: early, experimental VR support. As part of our commitment to innovation, we have always encouraged our developers to stay current and explore ideas that could open up new possibilities for Star Citizen. This VR implementation grew out of that exploration mindset, and a small group of passionate engineers took the initiative to experiment with VR on their own, and we are now ready to share the first steps of that work with you.
This is not our full VR launch. When that day arrives, we will make plenty of noise about it. What we are rolling out today is an opportunity for some early hands-on time, very much in the spirit of Open Development, so you can jump in, see how things are shaping up, and help guide what comes next.
Because this feature is highly experimental, not all gameplay or interfaces will behave as expected in VR mode. You should expect issues, missing functionality, or elements that simply do not render or interact correctly. This is normal for something at this stage, and we are looking forward to hearing your first impressions and anything that stands out to you.
There’s a lot more to do, but we’re excited to have you along for the ride.
SAID AGAIN IN BOLD: This is an EXPERIMENTAL feature.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into some further details.
Key Features
VR Anywhere, Anytime
Experience the entire Star Citizen universe in virtual reality, from the Main Menu to FPS gameplay to flying your ship and everything in between!
VR Theater Mode
Toggle between full VR and Theater Mode at any time, giving you the best of both worlds. Theater Mode projects a virtual screen in your headset with full game compatibility using the standard desktop pipeline.
Love flying in VR but prefer traditional controls for FPS? Just press a button to instantly switch between full immersion and Theater Mode, complete with head tracking support. Theater Mode mirrors your desktop resolution, so you can even play in ultra-widescreen in VR without ever removing your headset.
VR Dynamic Switch
Let the engine handle the VR switch automatically. Whenever you put on the headset VR will be enabled on its own. If you take it off you are back in desktop mode!
Note that not all headsets support this at the moment.
Getting Started
Make sure you are running the game using the Vulkan renderer first. Starting with Alpha 4.5 this should be the default, and the D3D11 renderer is not currently supported. Simply connect your VR headset and ensure your preferred OpenXR runtime is set as active. Star Citizen will automatically detect your headset and initialize the engine for it. If a headset was detected, VR options will automatically appear in Settings → Comms, FOIP, VR & Headtracking section. All you have to do is turn it on there.
When troubleshooting, if VR options do not appear, check your Game.log file and search for “OpenXR” to identify any initialization errors.
Default Keybinds
- Toggle VR on and off: “Numpad /”
- Toggle Theater Mode on and off: “LALT + Numpad 5”
- Recenter View: “Numpad 5”
All bindings can be customized under Advanced Controls/Keybinds → Comms, FOIP, VR & Headtracking.
VR specific settings
You will find a series of new settings in the options under Comms, FOIP, VR & Head Tracking. They will only show up when you have a VR headset connected:
- VR - Enabled: Enables and disables the headset (also available via keybind)
- VR - Theater Mode: Enables and disables Theater mode (also available via keybind)
- VR - Theater Mode Scale and Distance: Allows you to adjust Theater mode to your liking.
- VR - Automatic Switching: Automatically enables / disables VR based on headset detection if your headset supports it via a sensor (verified on Quest 3 - compatibility varies by headset)
- VR - Interpupillary Distance (IPD) Scale: This allows you to further scale the IPD distance that the VR headset is reporting. Effectively it means you can expand and contract the distance between your eyes.
- VR - Show Console: self explanatory
- VR - Monitor Mirror Mode: Allows you to set what your normal screen will show while you play. Useful specifically for streamers.
- VR - Actor Control Mode: Allows you to define how you want to play the game in VR during the FPS / on-foot sections using the default mouse and keyboard controls. Since we do not support normal VR locomotion yet there are two ways from you can pick:
1- Pitch-locked (default): The mouse yaw allows you to turn but aiming up and down will not move your head but just your gun pitch angle. You have to manually adjust your head to look along the aim line of your gun. This gives you a stable view (which causes less motion sickness) but a somewhat suboptimal aim experience.
2- Direct offset mode: The VR camera is directly offset from your normal game camera. Very easy to use but the camera will tilt while leaning or high pitch angles. It is faster to use in terms of normal SC gameplay but less stable and therefore more prone for motion sickness. - VR - Vehicle HUD Projection Distance: Allows you to define at what distance infinity projected vehicle HUD elements are shown (e.g. gunnery PIPs, the Advanced HUD or the aiming crosshair). By default, it is set at 100m at which parallax effects should not be visible anymore.
- VR - Visor and Lens Aspect Ratio/Distance/Height/Scale: Allows you to tweak placement of the visor and lens elements.
Additionally, we whitelisted some advanced settings which can be changed via the console. We do not recommend changing them, but you’re free to experiment with them.
- g_headtracking_hmd_actorIK_offsetPosition_applyInSeat (1 by default): This will adjust the actor rig based on the VR position offset while being seated (similar to what normal headtracking does).
- g_headtracking_hmd_actorIK_offsetRotation_applyInSeat (0 by default): This will adjust the actor rig based on rotational VR offsets while being seated. Enabling this will adjust the unified actor rig based on where you look with the headset, but it will also induce more motion sickness as the actor posture changes with it.
- g_headtracking_hmd_actorIK_offsetRotation_applyDefault (0 by default): This will adjust the actor rig based on rotational VR offsets while not being seated. Enabling this will adjust the unified actor rig based on where you look with the headset, but it will also induce more motion sickness as actor posture changes with this.
- g_headtracking_hmd_vehicleAds_allowPositionOffset (1 by default): If enabled, allows the VR offsets to be applied to the the precision targeting camera.
- g_headtracking_hmd_actor_shake_applyRotationOffset (0 by default): If enabled allows shake to happen to the VR camera. Until further testing we turned this off, but you’re free to try it out.
- r_StereoDepthComposition (0 by default): If enabled, provides OpenXR with the scene’s depth buffer. This may improve any kind of reprojection behavior. Please let me know if you see any improvements from this!
Performance Considerations
Enabling VR will impose an additional performance impact depending on your machine’s hardware capabilities. Performance may suffer without adequate VRAM or a current-generation GPU & CPU. Our recommendations:
- Enable upscaling (TSR, FSR, or DLSS) for substantial performance improvements
- Ensure your system meets or exceeds recommended VR specifications
- Monitor VRAM usage and adjust settings accordingly
Meta Quest Link Users
We recommend disabling Asynchronous Spacewarp in the Oculus Debug Tool to prevent severe reprojection artifacts when using Meta Quest Link. These artifacts become increasingly pronounced as framerate drops.
This issue may be resolved in the future once we implement the XR_FB_space_warp extension, but for now disabling ASW provides a better experience.
Current Limitations
The following features are currently disabled:
- Holographic displays like ship radars
- Visor effects (frost/rain)
- Water interaction effects
Known Issues
- Actor look offsets via VR are not visible to other players yet.
- Precision Targeting doesn’t zoom in VR yet
- In vehicle seats unlocked gimbals may not work when they are slaved to the view direction. We recommend you do not slave the - - gimbals to your view direction.
- UI elements (personal inventory, world markers, weapon customization & more) need optimization for VR
- Gravlev vehicles have an incorrect head position
You may toggle to Theater Mode for any VR-specific issues you encounter.
Bug Reporting
Please report VR issues on the Issue Council, and use the “Experimental VR” category so that we can isolate and find VR specific issues rapidly.
Before reporting VR bugs, please verify the issue is VR-specific by testing in Theater Mode or with VR disabled. This helps us isolate and address VR-specific problems more efficiently.
Looking Forward
Our immediate focus is polishing the current implementation and resolving existing issues. Once stable, we’ll explore exciting additions like:
- Motion controller support
- Full body tracking
- Face and eye tracking integration
And more!
The virtual verse awaits!
Luminalia 2955 Calendar - Day 4
Daily reward:
Spirit Deck the Hull and IceBreaker Paints
(This Topic relates to the Discord conversation here)
Is there still a point to getting bigger hauling ships?
Absolutely there is.
A Caterpillar full of Pressurized Ice(32) has the ability to make around 20% more per trip than a Starlancer Max full of bioplastic(16). This, in turn, is about 20% more than a Cutlass black full of Fresh Food(8), and so on.
No matter how efficiently you trade, there’s a cap on how much you can make trading 8s in the appropriate size ship. If you jump from 8 to 16, you will make more profit running 16s in ships appropriate to that size.
What about Multi-Crew?
We “restrict” brackets by making it more dangerous and slower to trade at a smaller bracket the bigger your ship is. Those restrictions can be mitigated by simply having a bigger crew. If you have enough people to load a Starlancer Max with bracket 2 goods efficiently, go for it! Of course, you might need to get a variety of bracket 2 goods depending on how much the location supplies. Your ship will also end up have a lot of value concentrated in one point…
There have been large exploits, why are we now getting even more ways of making more money? Isn’t the timing here a bit bad?
Yes. The exploits from the last 2 patches have been rough for the game and the economy. As a result, a full wipe is likely at some point down the line.
Let’s speak about the abundance of earnings you are getting currently. If you feel like you are gaining more aUEC than you can spend, that’s intentional. When we look to add the badly needed sinks and cost decisions later next year, those new costs will be balanced against the current aUEC earning. That said, we want feedback and analytics on those numbers as they are now, so that we can correctly implement those sinks.
For now, you might find that your aUEC earnings are much higher than your expenses necessitate, but rest assured that the values will start making sense down the line.
Message from the Economy team
Howdy, Econ team here, we wanted to go into a bit more detail regarding the reasoning for why we felt the changes we made were possible, healthy and beneficial for the game. I’ll answer some expected questions throughout. If you aren’t a fan of lots of details… Sorry.
Disclaimer: It’s a sandbox, so almost every “rule” has at least 1 exception. Our systems prefer rubber bands to hard boundaries.
Why the Refining Change for Mining?
While Starter Mining vehicles can carry 32 SCU of ore, Starter Freight Ships do NOT carry 32 SCU of cargo. We want to make it easier with a smaller freight ship to transport the refined ores, while still getting the full value of what you’ve mined.
It’s works better to have smaller volumes of refined ore for some upcoming features.
What are “Brackets”?
Brackets are back-end groupings of commodities which help us reinforce the rarity, volume and supply of resources throughout the ‘Verse. (They don’t have official names for now, so we are still calling each bracket by its crate ). If something is easy to mine in a large volume (like Copper), then locations that have or need Copper should reflect that. Since Gold is rarer and harder to find than Copper, it’s in a smaller bracket.
For now, the simplest way to differentiate brackets for traders is by the maximum crate size purchasable. To help, here’s some insight on the brackets:
Max Purchasable Crate Size | Example of a good ship to trade these | Examples of Competitive Goods | Example of Casual Goods
32/24 | Caterpillar (576 SCU) or larger | Steel, Tungsten, Pressurized Ice | Helium, Mercury, Silicon
16 | Starlancer Max (224 SCU) | Gold, Bioplastic | Scrap, Astatine
8 | Cutlass Black (46 SCU) | Dymantium, Fresh Food | Organimass, Iodine
2 | Clipper (12 SCU) | Diamond-Laminate, Partillium | AV Equipment, Slam
Keep in mind that the commodities within each bracket still have a good deal of variance in how competitive vs casual they are:
- Competitive goods have lower supply, higher demand (Pirate Bait)
- Casual goods have higher supply, lower demand
All goods can still make profits when traded.
What values will I likely see affected differently between resources in different brackets?
Brackets help represent scarcity, value, stock and more. Outside of just prices, smaller brackets will be restocked more slowly and have lower limits to their stocks. Many locations simply won’t be keeping an Olympic swimming pool worth of Atlassium, as it’s a rare material.
What do Brackets mean for Mining, Salvage, and other Resource Gathering Loops?
Honestly, this isn’t new for y’all. Miners have been using the bracket system for years, we just took a while to apply those same rules everywhere. Quantanium(2) is more rare than Taranite(8), which is rarer than Hephaestenite (16), which is rarer than Tin (32). That’s brackets.
Trading and Brackets
Let’s rip the band aid off. If you are a solo trader, it’s intended to have more challenges while trading smaller bracket goods in larger ships. Mostly, it’s just not the optimal use of your space and time.
It’s extra work (especially in dangerous areas) to move a large quantity of smaller crates into your ship, than it would be fewer larger crates. That’s not even considering that you are fighting for a much smaller stock with other traders. In short, it’s more efficient for a ship like the Starlancer Max to be loading up 16 SCU crates, than attempting to fill its grid with 8s or 2s.
Considering prices in the game are constantly dynamically changing based on demand, this makes the difference between commodities on the ends of different brackets cleaner. This means that players who know what bracket they want to focus on have more actionable information.
ENGINEERING RESOURCES
Engineering gameplay is the physical expression of the Resource Network and the management that surrounds it. As a result, there are several core resources that the crew must balance to maintain peak efficiency. These are controlled through MFDs, or through dedicated Engineering consoles on larger ships, that display more detailed information. These resources are the lifeblood of your vehicles and define performance. If any one of them is mismanaged, the impact will ripple across the ship. They are produced through systems throughout the vehicle and exist to bring the Resource Network to life in a hands on way.
Power is the most crucial resource to manage, directly affecting system performance. It is generated by the power plant and distributed through the Resource Network and fuses, allowing you to direct power to the systems that need it most.
Power is just one part of the equation. A crew must also manage several other vital resources to keep their ship operational:
- Power : The resource that keeps every system running. If you lose it, the ship goes dark, and in critical failure states the risk of explosion rises sharply.
- Coolant : The counterbalance to heavy system load, keeping temperatures under control and preventing components from overheating.
- Life Support : Maintains breathable air, temperature, and pressure so the crew can continue operating throughout the ship.
- Hydrogen Fuel : The lifeblood of the power plant, enabling power generation and forward thrust, and Power Plants will use fuel in a future patch.
- Quantum Fuel : Required for quantum travel and long distance travel planning.
Engineering Gameplay Guide
A key pillar of Star Citizen’s vehicle gameplay loop is Engineering. It turns the moment-to-moment management of ships and vehicles into a focused effort to keep them operating at peak performance. It becomes especially important on larger vehicles with interiors, where full efficiency depends on multiple crew members working together to manage all essential systems. Engineering sits at the heart of managing a ship’s systems and resources in real time, while responding to critical failures across items and components, all with the goal of keeping the vehicle alive as long as possible.
It is a constant balancing act for any crew, relying on engineers to make vital decisions that preserve the full capabilities of their ship, protect lives, and keep them operating at their best out in the ‘verse.
Below is a starter guide to the developing Engineering gameplay, covering the fundamentals and introducing the key elements you will use along the way, helping you get ready to tackle any issue that may arise while navigating. If you are looking for support as you begin your journey into Engineering, visit the Guide System to connect with an experienced player ready to help.
Note: This post was released to coincide with Alpha 4.5, and will be updated when adjustments and changes are made to Engineering Gameplay.
WHAT IS ENGINEERING GAMEPLAY?
Engineering gameplay revolves around managing resources across your ships and vehicles through the Resource Network. This system forms the foundation of Engineering, allowing every item and system within a ship to communicate and rely on one another. The Engineering loop is how that management takes place, directing the flow of resources and keeping everything running as smoothly as possible.
Engineering affects all ships and vehicles, although the experience changes depending on size and crew. On a single seat fighter, most Engineering tasks are handled directly through MFDs, with pilots relying on preset flight profiles (which are SCM and NAV). On larger multi crew ships, the loop focuses heavily on extending the ship’s lifespan, with far more systems handled through a dedicated Engineering console and active coordination with the crew.
An engineer’s job is to monitor the ship, manage power distribution and system performance, and use every available tool to keep the vehicle flying. It is all about getting the most out of the Resource Network and the ship’s systems to operate at full capability.
This work takes shape in four key areas:
- Preparation : Before departure, review your ship’s systems, extra parts, power levels, fuses, and anything else needed to stay flight ready. Always bring a Multitool with a Cambio Lite SRT attachment and a few full canisters for field repairs on components and hull.
- Management : Distribute resources throughout the ship to achieve the operational profile you need. This can be adjusted in flight or swapped using presets.
- Reaction : Address unexpected issues as they occur, including repairing, replacing, rerouting, or putting out fires with a fire extinguisher.
- Maintenance : Plan ahead for eventual failures, store critical spares, and counter long term wear (coming in a later patch), so the ship can fly for as long as possible.
