Hoverbikes & Female Characters

Welcome to some more Star Citizen, with some more information on GravLev in the New Flight Model and Female Characters both planning to come with Alpha 3.5.
This is a Summary of Around The Verse – Hovers are for Lovers.

A little teasers to start – with Wala & Lyria the 2 Moons of ArcCorp.
Lots of Crystals and ice & shiney gem looking terrain, very rough at the moment but I like the juxtaposed colors.

The New Grav Lev makes use of the New Flight Model
The new system has had some of it’s fundamentals changed. DColson answered some questions after the AtV as well which I have included when talking here.

The Previous model was too disconnected from the surface of the the terrain, they want you the vehicle to hug the terrain and obstacles closer and for there to be a sense of risk and power to bikes using it. Rougher terrain may be a bit more dangerous as you won’t just fly over every obstacle.

As you hover the suspension will inform the grav lev plates how much thrust they need to keep it off the ground.

You’ll be able to use space to get some height over rocks and obstacles, the higher you go the less “grip” you have though, so you’d feel floatier.

The Model acts like a jet ski, where it’s almost like it’s being simulated in water, friction is modeled on the sides of the bike, this informs the thrusters of how much thrust they need to be providing.

The Thrusters work in conjunction with the Grav-Lev to drive a bike.

You should feel the bike is connected to the ground a lot more and they will feel less floaty than before. Expect some cool race tracks for this in the future.

It won’t be possible to fly in Atmosphere with a Bike ONLY hover on the ground. You will be able to fly with them in space though.

Female Characters
They are currently retargeting all of the male Animations to females so that there is a 1 to 1 parity of available animations between them however some of these animations will be different in the fact the female ones will be feminised where possible, this is obviously to match the unique female skeleton and body shape.

They have 2 ways that they re-target animations, Automated takes the 1000s of animations and intelligently corrects them for the female character. This can lead to some animations being a bit overly masculine BUT in most cases you’ll never notice.

The Manual is reserved for high fidelity and more important animations, these are typically animations that interact with something like a space ship or lifting a box.

They compare the male and female animation and tweak it if necessary then bake it when appropriate. They have entirely replaced some animation like the walking animations for females though with full appropriate motion capture.