Which game would you rather play? The top picture, the middle picture, or the bottom picture? I spend a lot of time on the ground. Most of my time in game in fact and after hundreds of hours running around ghost hollow, running around all the old (far, far better) and the new (far worse) jumptown locations, and running to most of the bunkers on most of the planets one thing above all else strikes me: This is the ugliest "pretty" game I've ever played. Star citizen can be Quite pretty. I've spent a fair amount of time on Microtech's mountains watching the sun rise and set. I also find the ice moons particularly pretty when illuminated. However, for all those photogenic moments Star Citizen seems hellbent on making the player visual experience as bad as it possibly can. Let's start with lighting: This game can be well lit, and I consider the middle image above a prime example of how it could look if done well. But we all know SC is rarely this good looking. Try to QT from Microtech to Crusader and you spend 10 minutes staring directly at a star, washing out half the HUD. On the flip side, visit any area at night and it's too dark to fly and too dark to fight, the fact that it took years for the devs to finally give most of the ships actually useful lights is an indictment: There is no legitimate reason it should be this hard to see. Moving on we have atmospheric effects. A massive storm blowing in as in my top image is cool. Once. Precipitation on the windscreen as you descend from orbit to the surface is cool. Once. Every-time after that first golden moment the effect sours and actively detracts from the game. Star Citizen employs a dizzying array of shit with the sole purpose of blinding the player: Snow, Sleet, Ice, Fog, Sand, Smog, Smoke, Dust, Clouds, everything that is Orison, and I'm sure more on the way. Why are all the bunkers filled with this persistent haze? Why are all the planets and moons wracked with constant storms multiple times per day? Unlike all the bugs, which should in theory go away one day and all the unfinished features we're actively watching mature, the game's environment is getting more and more hostile to the very act of playing. What's more, a good half of these effects are a farce. I'm supposed to believe that the Empire has FTL drives but they've forgotten how to keep rain and ice off their windshields (wipers? bleed air? de-icers?) I'm supposed to believe that sunglasses were lost to the vanduul? This game places so much emphasis on immersion. I'm an aerospace engineer, The too bright cockpits, too dim (and often blurry) HUDs, lights placed too close to the cockpit as if purpose built to blind the player if there is any kind of particle in the air. All of those pull me right out and remind me that these ships aren't real and weren't designed by real engineers solving real problems. They were designed by artists trying to sell jpgs. Some suggestions that would greatly Improve the player experience: -Fix your lighting. Quite simple either give the player real ways of mitigating adverse effects (dim/glare reducing helmets, more powerful lights) or make your darks less dark and your brights less bright. -Weather should be far more rare, at least at ground level. I spent about 4 hours at the new microtech JT today and I spent a fair bit of time at the yela location. A solid half or more of every hour is blanketed by white-out snow storms. This might be immersive in the short term, but long term it's a massive "no fun zone" that kills any game play -Weather should be predictable or the player should be able to see it coming. Standing on a mountain and watching the wall of sand that is an incoming sand storm sweep towards you would be awe-inspiring much as it is in real life, and it would allow players on the ground to plan and play around that. Attackers could time their pushes with the lowered viability, and defenders of a location would be able to adjust for scouting or deploy countermeasures the devs will hopefully add such as snipers equiped with thermals or dedicated scouting assets. -Weather and light conditions should be noted in bounty missions, as should atmo vs space. Many games that feature adverse weather tell the player "hey, this mission takes place during a snow storm, or at night." and that is often factored into the level design and difficulty. -Clutter in general should be reduced. To be frank, there's a lot of crap on microtech. The trees are nice from the air, but the recent addition of 2-3x more of them on the ground really kills gameplay. both the Hurston and Microtech JT sites have so many trees that it's impossible to land even modest amounts of small fighters and trying to use vehicles or have a good FPS fight in these areas is a joke. The new settlements suffer similarly, picking players and NPCs out from the clutter is a chore, and the shear amount of stuff destroys the frame rate. Anyway, that's my two cents. You've made a pretty game CIG, Why do you work so hard to hide it from us all?