For the past week we’ve been working on a new system to handle our open world streaming. We found our previous implementation of world composition wasn’t entirely flawless and some users would occasionally face hitches when crossing into new areas. With this update we have made this hitch free, so you can enjoy completely seamless loading. There is also a vastly increased render distance using improved LOD terrain to make the world better suited for the vehicles we are actively developing.
The other significant change is repackaging of environment textures with the intention of providing more normal map detail, plus considerably reducing file size (the game is around 2 GB smaller installation size now). As part of quality improvements, all homes have had their available materials for customization adjusted, with previous not-so-good materials removed, and a bunch of new ones added. Most of the Shack house type materials have a grunge-layer added to better fit with the environment, plus we've improved the quality of shadows.
Additional changes in this update include much better LOD meshes for distant landscape, plus various fixes to foliage around Metarahi. We’ve also considerably increased the rendering distance of trees, so you will see them on distant islands. There are also some areas that have been tweaked slightly, like the caves on Naupata that have received better track and minecart models, plus the dock areas receiving various additional decor clutter.
Patch Notes:
Environment
- Added foliage to several landscape tiles where there wasn’t previously.
- Added new minecart and track models to Naupata caves.
- Added various tweaks to foliage draw distances.
- Added reworked texture packing for various normals to reduce artifacts.
- Added horse recall point near Matarangi (at base of hill, near bridge).
- Added improved landscape lods.
- Added landscape and environment texture file size reduction through revised packing (makes build size around 2GB less).
- Added increased range of Metairangi Cinema.
- Added additional props to Naupata docks.
- Added improved shadows to all homes.
- Fixed foliage placement on Metarahi, Kiokio and Naupata.
- Fixed terrain painting on Metarahi, Kiokio and Naupata.
- Fixed collisions of some objects on Metarahi.
- Fixed rock placement on Naupata and Metarahi.
General
- Added reworked selection of home wood materials for customization. This may break some previous customization saves (but will be fine when you make a new selection for the wood), as we have revised the selection.
- Added new Parquet flooring types of Bamboo, Makore and Walnut.
- Added corrections to house coloration defaults.
- Added reordering of spawn list slightly.
- Fixed an issue with horse rider mounting.
- Fixed an issue with options combo boxes for scalability not immediately updating.
- Fixed various issues with home materials.
- Fixed missing photos on Hawaiian house.
- Fixed an issue with area volumes on Naupata.
- Fixed various issues relating to server commands.