SotW - Screenshot of the Week

[theeclownbroze]

X Rebirth Boxart is up on amazon for anyone interested.

Now that's interesting...those ships sure look Paranid to me!

Iam pretty sure that paranids are not in X Rebirth.
Also borons are dead.

There are argons, xenons, pirates, teladi and split for sure.

how do you know borons are dead???

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

1. Boron ship design does not fit in X Rebirth
2. Neither do Boron bodies fit in X Rebirth "station walking"
3. Neither do their voices.

And as last, I haven´t seen or heard anything that has something to do with borons. Not stations, not ships, not dialogues, not forum searching, nothing.

And it´s too close to release, Egosoft has no time to add another race.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Hmm, so they're still sticking planets unrealistically close to one another just to be 'pretty'. I really wish they wouldn't do that. Planets would tear each other apart due to gravitational interactions long before they got that close.

I wish they'd at least try to make it more believable.

That is making assumptions about size, scale, and distances. The gas giant may be further away than it appears.

[Tommety]

Hmm, so they're still sticking planets unrealistically close to one another just to be 'pretty'. I really wish they wouldn't do that. Planets would tear each other apart due to gravitational interactions long before they got that close.

I wish they'd at least try to make it more believable.

Could also be a small nearby lunar-sized satelite orbiting a Jupiter sized planet?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

1. Boron ship design does not fit in X Rebirth
2. Neither do Boron bodies fit in X Rebirth "station walking"
3. Neither do their voices.

And as last, I haven´t seen or heard anything that has something to do with borons. Not stations, not ships, not dialogues, not forum searching, nothing.

And it´s too close to release, Egosoft has no time to add another race.

I would lay bets there are at least some things in the release that Egosoft have not told us about in order to not spoil some of the surprises perhaps.

I could understand the Borons perhaps not being in the game, but they could be in the game via some form of encounter suit... otherwise how did they manage to get on board Split/Argon/Paranid/Teladi stations in X2/X3?

[GebürtigerTerraner]

1. Boron ship design does not fit in X Rebirth
2. Neither do Boron bodies fit in X Rebirth "station walking"
3. Neither do their voices.

And as last, I haven´t seen or heard anything that has something to do with borons. Not stations, not ships, not dialogues, not forum searching, nothing.

And it´s too close to release, Egosoft has no time to add another race.

I would lay bets there are at least some things in the release that Egosoft have not told us about in order to not spoil some of the surprises perhaps.

I could understand the Borons perhaps not being in the game, but they could be in the game via some form of encounter suit... otherwise how did they manage to get on board Split/Argon/Paranid/Teladi stations in X2/X3?

They wear special suits or have special zones that are flooded.Well at least it is written in the books so i guess it is canon.

[Nanook]

Hmm, so they're still sticking planets unrealistically close to one another just to be 'pretty'. I really wish they wouldn't do that. Planets would tear each other apart due to gravitational interactions long before they got that close.

I wish they'd at least try to make it more believable.

That is making assumptions about size, scale, and distances. The gas giant may be further away than it appears.

It's not that far away, unless that 'planet' in the foreground is a tiny moon. Which I highly doubt. If you can see two planets in the same field of view at that size, they're way too close for reality. As I said, tidal forces would tear them apart before they got anywhere near that close. I'll bet that if you could fly between them, you'd see that they're only a couple of diameters apart, if that much. This was my major beef with the backgrounds and planets in the previous games. And it seems that once again, they're going for pretty over believable.

[stilgarpl]

1. Boron ship design does not fit in X Rebirth
2. Neither do Boron bodies fit in X Rebirth "station walking"
3. Neither do their voices.

And as last, I haven´t seen or heard anything that has something to do with borons. Not stations, not ships, not dialogues, not forum searching, nothing.

And it´s too close to release, Egosoft has no time to add another race.

Egosoft has released few pictures of Boron, mostly concept arts, so I'd say they are in Rebirth.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

It's not that far away, unless that 'planet' in the foreground is a tiny moon. Which I highly doubt. If you can see two planets in the same field of view at that size, they're way too close for reality.

Europa and Jupiter??? As someone mentioned earlier?

Put a 2km size object at 2km and a 4km size object at 4km and they may look the same size, but without depth of field indications you possibly would not know which is which. A prime example of this visual phenomenon is a total solar eclipse on Earth. I am not saying this is the case in this instance, but without further information we can not rule out the possibility.

[jasonbarron]

Looks like Jupiter/Europa, so that would be Sol in the background going all supery nova...if that is the case, my plans to have my body stored in a cryogenic tube to one day be thawed out for the purposes of repopulating the Earth are totally #@!&ed.

[stilgarpl]

Looks like Jupiter/Europa, so that would be Sol in the background going all supery nova...if that is the case, my plans to have my body stored in a cryogenic tube to one day be thawed out for the purposes of repopulating the Earth are totally #@!&ed.

What? So the Sol is The Supernova that changed everything? But... but...

[Aken_Bosch]

That planet in the foreground may looks like a lot of things, but not like Europa for sure...unless you mean a scarred icy planet transformed in a rocky and cloudy one by centuries of terraforming

As for the "irrealistic distances" argument, there were many similar examples also in previous games, they had to trade some realism for some eye candy and I believe it worked quite well, but obviously that's not everyone's cup of tea

[jasonbarron]

@Aken_Bosch--Well, it is hundreds of years in the future, so anything is possible...

Incidentally, I counted three more spherical shapes in the screen that look to be moons.

[Niemmy]

Maybe the planet is getting ready to explode! That could make a less boring screenshot of the week.

[kosh03055]

It looks like Jupiter/Europa. Looking in toward the center of the solar system. The rocks you see are whats left of the planets Earth and Mars. Clouds are cause by the heat/radiation of the super nova melting and evaporating some of the ice cover of Europa. Jupiter is more than a thousand time bigger then Europa so if you were in orbit around Europa, I would guess that Jupiter would look that big even though its far away.

I guess I should sell my summer home on Mars while I can still get good money for it. Damn, I was hoping to get one more season out of it.

[Santi]

Well...looks like there is plenty of space to explore, I am starting to feel intimidated by the size of the zones.

[Wraith_Magus]

I just want to know if that red glowy stuff is on all the asteroids permanently? (Or was it just blown apart by laser or something?)

I don't particularly want to see everything glow just because it can.

For all the talk about "immersion", the incredible amounts of artistic license being taken with physics really takes me out of anything close to feeling this stuff is real. (Why can't we ever have a space game that DOESN'T have artificial gravity in it?)

[ICO_hr]

For all the talk about "immersion", the incredible amounts of artistic license being taken with physics really takes me out of anything close to feeling this stuff is real. (Why can't we ever have a space game that DOESN'T have artificial gravity in it?)

If you want everything around you in-game to be calculated per frame accurately because of the physics + everything else, just go and buy personal servers for everyone that will play that game because you will need something from the future to run it.Or go to NASA and steal something from them, i'm gonnna be fine with that i guess. lol

[Santi]

Everybody wants something different from Rebirth, it is the Crux of the sandbox games, when there is so much choice, that you think the way you play the game is, how everybody plays the game.

Personally, apart from the beauty of the screenshot I wonder two things, can I squeeze between those two planets with my ship? And is that a frog or a beetle outline in that asteroid? I do wonder what Egosoft is trying to tell us here.

[ThommoHawk]

I say that those asteroids with the red luminous markings on them represent some sort of space habitat / camouflaged pirate bases / or some sort of powered mobile asteroids. Just a hunch. The little beads of orange lights look a bit like windows ....

On the topic of X universe asteroids in general; they are the most unrealistic but essential bits in the game... (at least up to now). Most of the asteroids are so close to planets that it would be totally unviable for any planet in the real universe to maintain life because of continual ELI collisions with those VERY large, VERY close, VERY unstable objects.

They are accepted as normal in game because without them it would be very difficult to get a sense of motion as the player ship moves around.... real asteroid belts occupy their own discreet orbital region around a sun, and are so far away from other planets that the nearest one would appear like a little star in the sky.

Example; Just think of the Earth sector in AP - with no asteroids (or space stations) you have no real sense of movement as you fly around there ... ironically this is more realistic but not very interesting as gameplay.
Aldring also has this to some extent but with stations and asteroids you do eventually notice your progress...