Star Citizen Tests the Boundaries of Modern Technology

What is Star Citizen?

Star Citizen is, to quote the creator, a “massively multiplayer space simulator.” It’s a mouthful, but highly accurate. Most games have a plot, but Alex Battaglia was a bit vague on the overall mission of the game. Being a simulator instead of an RPG, Star Citizen has a very open-world with undisclosed, but seemingly infinite, freedom. The defining characteristic of this space epic is its revolutionary technical standard.

A Technological Prodigy

Star Citizen is, beyond any shred of doubt, the most ambitious and advanced game to date. The game runs at such a high capacity that it is beyond the processing power of modern game consoles. Your Playstation or Xbox seems primitive compared to the sheer minimum PC requirements. Whether tech-savvy or not, you essentially require a computer that can outperform NASA. I’m serious.

For example, one of the game’s features has FTL travel where the player is hopping across star systems. The player sees the typical sci-fi blurring of hyperspace, but the same is true for others. The player is literally moving so fast, that they appear to vanish to other players. This isn’t a loading screen, but the player actually at such an extreme speed that it can hardly fit into a single frame.

Star Citizen’s Remarkable Details

I’m going to go on more about the incredible attention to detail because the technology is Star Citizen’s main selling point. The player sees their character using complex animations for most actions while only basic ones are seen by the outside world. Say, for example, that the player aims. Others will actually see the player hunch over and look into the scope of their gun with the player being at exact eye-level. Whatever recoil the player experiences, others see them shake and react in the same way. If those animations aren’t enough, the character’s mouth will move in real-time and lip-sync perfectly to whatever the player says if using a mic for chat.

Expected Release?

There’s not a concrete date available for the official release. However, the game is in an advanced Alpha stage and mostly playable. There are a few hiccups remaining in regard to minor bugs and server accommodations. In a game of such high quality, the errors are hardly noticeable. Given that the game has been in development for seven years, the final product will be an incredible, never-before-seen, technological marvel that will be an industry leader for years to come. To see more details, or view these features for yourself, visit Alex’s YouTube video here.