Almost all particle effects in the game have been revised to make them bigger and prettier. Most noticeable additions are explosion, flame and smoke effects that also make it very clear when a ship or module gets disabled. The number of spawned particles can be adjusted from the settings screen at any time so you can control the performance impact.

Gameplay video with the new effects

The game has had GPU accelerated particle systems (which can handle a lot of debris and effect particles) since before the first release but the effects have been pretty subtle. While the subtle effects were more realistic, bigger effects can greatly add to the visual appeal of the game, especially on video where details are lost in compression and scaling.

Changelog

• New flame and smoke effect when an active (not armor or hull) module gets disabled.
• Redesigned explosion effect when a propellant tank module gets destroyed.
• New explosion effect when a core module gets disabled.
• New Explosion effect for impact explosive missiles.
• Smaller tweaks to all other particle effects as well.
• Updated particle effect textures and infra to allow different sprite sizes. The sprites are now defined in a separate file.
• Added separate spawn rate multipliers for effect and debris particles to the settings screen.
• Various improvements to particle emitter code to make flame and smoke effects look better when attached to accelerating and rotating objects.
• Increased visual size of projectiles when not zoomed in very close.
• Increased visual size of missiles in "icons overlay" shown when zoomed far out.