Since I haven’t seen anyone post this, I thought I’d share the new Star Engine demo video from Cloud Imperium Games.
I booted it up yesterday. Flew around at 10 FPS and gawked at some pretty locations. Bought armor and weapons for my allotted alpha money and crashed.
Booted it back up today, all gone. FPS was better. Took an elevator and got stuck in an ether-world. Respawned. Had to wait 10 real-time minutes for my ship to be “delivered” to the station it should’ve already been at. Flew to a lagrange point just to see the volumetric gas clouds. Couldn’t find any stations. RTB, quit, uninstalled.
I’m going to be brutally honest; if they do not start designing their ship cockpits with at least input from a real pilot then I’m gonna start being upset about it. You can’t see anything! Huge canopies in fighter cockpits, can’t see shid. I would accept this if they had implemented synthetic vision so you could just x-ray through the ship hull, but you can’t, and I’ve never heard them talk about it so I assume it’s not on the table. A lot of the ship HUDs are also dense with useless information, blocking more of my view.
Waiting 10 whole minutes to get your ship back is the devs not respecting the player’s time.
I know why they do it though, they want people to buy more ships so that they have one ready while the original is in a cool down period. This is also a similar tactic used by shitty mobile phone games.
Disagree. The intention is for SC to be a space sim sandbox, so I’m surprised they’re only making you wait 10m.
When you take your car into the shop and have to wait a few hours for it to be repaired, you don’t think “the solution they want me to go with is to buy a second car for this moment”, right? But that’s the argument you’re making here. If this is the lens you see all games through, then it’s impossible for anyone to make a game that’s just literally normal life.
Conversely, I could argue that mobile games are built around instant dopamine rushes. Any 10m wait is explicitly accompanied with an option to pay the wait away immediately. Afaik, that’s not an option here, if you’re a new player, you have to wait that 10m no matter what. Correct me if I’m wrong. But that’s not a very good job at capitalizing on the wait time.
What value do timegates add to video games? How does the user experience improve or degrade if the wait is, say five minutes? One minute? None? Is the point of the simulation to wait for everything? What’s the difference between acceleration humans can’t survive and wait times? What’s the line we can’t cross to suspend disbelief?
I personally think it’s all made up so making me twiddle my thumbs for 10m is fucking stupid. If I wanted a waiting simulator I’d play “kickstarting Star Citizen” or a less punishing game like Desert Bus.
In spite of your short attention span, these are good questions. The point of a proper simulation isn’t to be fun, and game that wants to be fun is usually not a perfect simulation. A game that wants to be a fun simulation has to find the middle ground. I’ve heard it referred to as “the good suck”: It sucks to have to wait for something in a game to happen, but it contributes to a larger, sometimes desired feeling of immersion. But yeah, there’s always a line where the suck outweighs the fun.
In the case of SC, if the game literally makes you sit and do nothing for 10m, that’s one thing. But my guess is it doesn’t. My guess is you can do other things in the meantime. So it’s basically like any game: you can’t just do anything you want at any time, otherwise it’s not a game, it’s a skinner box.
In the case of SC, if the game literally makes you sit and do nothing for 10m, that’s one thing. But my guess is it doesn’t. My guess is you can do other things in the meantime
What do you mean by ‘guess’? Have you not played it?
Nope, have you?
Yes, actually. Do you read what you’re replying to?
Actually just have a good day, I hope you find what you seek in life.
Well, it’s not like that’s exactly an outlandishly improbable guess though?
What value do timegates add to video games?
Well, if taming dinos in ARK was instantaneous, it would massively change the game, and turn it into nothing but a constant stream of t-rex (or other large predator monster) battles. Those 1-hour countdowns are a time-gate for balance.
If reloading in CS:GO was instantaneous, there would be no tactical decision around when you do it, or danger presented by it happening at an inopportune time. Those 3-second reloads are a time-gate for balance.
There are tons of time-gated mechanics across all sorts of games. You just don’t like this one.
How does the user experience improve or degrade if the wait is [less]?
Well, it means that other players may have to contend with them too-quickly returning to a fight as though nothing happened, which would be pretty crappy if you just got finished killing them. It would mean that if you fly across the solar system in a ship with a very fast Quantum Drive, you could potentially just summon your large, slow ship at your destination, effectively obviating the difference in travel time.
What’s the difference between acceleration humans can’t survive and wait times? What’s the line we can’t cross to suspend disbelief?
It’s not about realism, it’s about game balance. Your ships are something you need to take care of. Dying is and will have major consequences (loss of items, for instance). Do you think that Eve’s manufacturing timers are about realism, or that they are disrespectful to the players? Should a tiny shuttle take the same amount of time to build as a Titan (the largest ship class in the game)?
It’s game balance.
It gives combat stakes.
TTK is obviously substantially longer than an FPS, so instead of the 15 seconds you need for an objective mode there, you need something more substantial for battles to fundamentally work.
Time is the one thing we all suffer through equally.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a whale gamer with 100 ships or a normal person with 1 or 2.
Those 10 minutes pass the same for us all. And it’s that consequence upon death that gives real weight, meaning and purpose to your choices.
It’s what’s meant to keep you from going, “hurr durr guns go brrrr” and shooting everyone you see on sight like a neanderthal.
The only thing I don’t agree with is the current durations given the state of the game.
Often your ship explodes through no fault of your own. They should incrementally increase wait times as the game stabilizes more on my opinion.
But in a game where death is not permanent like real life time is one of the few things that weighs on us all the same.
And yes, ofc owning more ships b/c you’re wealthier than other players does give you an advantage over other players, doesn’t invalidate my point.
If anything that’s making it more realistic, and some day 200 years from now when they implement “Death of a Spaceman” there will be harsher penalties to death that you can’t whale your way out of, forcing you to prize your life and take action accordingly.
It’s not meant to appeal to everyone. Nothing is meant to appeal to everyone.
If you don’t like it, that’s fine, don’t play, no one is forcing you.
If you disagree with the game mechanics, that’s fine, don’t play. No one is forcing you.
If the devs need to do x, y, and z to appease you as an individual or you’re going to quit, that’s fine, don’t play. No one is forcing you.
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Like it or not it does have an effect, which is to raise the stakes. If everything is instant gratification there are less lows, but also less highs. You may prefer games that are less punishing, and that’s fine, most people do. It does have an impact on the experience that creates value for people who like a more punishing experience, though. It doesn’t create that value in the moment you’re waiting, it creates it when you’re debating whether a risk is worth it somewhere else in the game. If there was no punishment for a mistake, there’s no reason to debate the risks, and that removes the high of taking a risk and having it pay off.
The intention is for SC to be a space sim sandbox,
But it’s not, it’s a tech demo where your ship blows up on the pad for no reason
This isn’t a good argument, though. You replied to somebody stating the intention with a description of a game that’s in alpha.
Generally, they want everybody to have a good time, but that’s not realistic right now. Star Citizen isn’t being marketed as a fully functional game is being marketed as an alpha where people can see features that are being worked on.
Getting mad about one thing working as intended because something else isn’t right now just sounds like your expectations aren’t aligned with reality.
“But that’s the argument you’re making here”
That is clearly NOT the argument they are making lol, stop making up stuff! The argument is it’s a game. It’s written there…
The only time you have to wait for the ship is if it’s destroyed or lost. If you fly it to the station or landing zone and stow it, the delivery is immediate.
And you can buy and rent ships in-game, using in-game money. This is about preventing you from instantly jumping back in the same ship repeatedly which could have huge implications for PvP, for instance.
The point still stands though. Arbitrary time restrictions like this make it more difficult to enjoy the game because you don’t get to fly the cool spaceships anymore, now you’re stuck on land or in a station somewhere until the timer expires.
Or, you know, you could
a) do stuff there since the landing locations are not just empty waiting rooms,
b) use another ship that you bought (in-game),
c) use another ship that you rent (in-game), or
d) fly/ get a ride with someone else.
Exactly. One could spend at least 10 mins just getting provisions like food liquids and gear by walking/running across the station and trams. Plenty to do with how spaced out (no pun intended) the facilities are. Maybe they should put ship insurance kiosks near the apts so that by the time you get to the space port you’d have to wait a minimum amount of time.
They really just haven’t implemented the insurance kiosks yet. I do think they should take a lesson from real life and let those claims happen remotely.
I’m happy that the Citizen Con update included S42 being feature complete. I hope they will start moving some resources back to SC with that.
What people often forget is that SC has been a minor focus for a couple of years while they finish up Squadron.
They do mention exactly this. Once S42 drops we will start to see a flood of quality of life improvements in SC. This is one of the reasons my main fighter is the Aegis Gladius.
Yeah there is plenty more to come they just need to finish up S42 and get that on a slow burn to deal with the inevitable bugs, and reallocate resources to the verse.
Been out of the game for about a year now and a lot has changed and it seems like there are nearing completion on some of the major framework. I think with the reallocation and framework mostly complete we’ll finally get some real content.
Eventually.
O7
Those are excellent points if the game wasn’t a broken mess where your ship will blow up on the pad for no reason. It’s a tech demo, they even say as much, so I don’t understand why you have to insist that it’s a real game that people totally play for realsies. There are like 14 people who play the current iteration seriously, everyone else are just trying to keep up to date on the status of SC.
I would be a much bigger fan of SC if I didn’t have to grind for days to experience half of what this tech demo wants to demo me. Are we alpha testers or are we suckers? Also the game ate my money, anyway.
The time restriction will make sense when there is a game to play, not while it’s a tech demo.
There are like 14 people who play the current iteration seriously, everyone else are just trying to keep up to date on the status of SC.
At this point you are just talking out your bum. If you actually had any clue about SC, you’d know DAU numbers, and you’d never have made such a dumb claim.
And no, CIG does not call it a tech demo, they call it an alpha, the 2 of which are not remotely similar.
I’d like to meet those 50000 average daily players, because they sure aren’t on any of the server I play on.
I’m glad you’re having fun. This is not a reasonable response to criticism of your favorite space toy simulator. I have invested money into this, too. I also want it to thrive. I hope you have a lovely day.
I can count the number of times I’ve been put into an empty server on one hand. The game has a pretty dedicated playerbase.
That said, I completely agree with the notion that time restrictions don’t really make sense right now. The game is far too buggy in it’s current state to really make the insurance claim times make sense and the developers seem a little out of touch on that. They have actually tried to increase the wait time several times to massive outcry from the community. I really think they would be better served cutting the grind down a little bit while they iron out the game.
I can’t discount that the state of my network is somehow responsible for putting me in near-empty servers (it’s complicated), but your second paragraph is exactly spot on.
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Real pilots rely more on the instruments than the window
“A lot of the ship hud is dense with useless information.”
Yeah but they have a useful instrument panel. The panels in SC are not particularly useful except for combat. There’s 3 separate graphs that display your power usage in the Cutlass, not counting the HUD.
I’m not trying to be snarky, but landing in hangars or on pads in SC requires third person mode. You have no tools to check your clearance except experience. I have no issue landing F-35s in VTOL VR without autopilot assistance, or flying IFR/VFR in MSFS, but in SC I feel like I’m piloting a brick through a tank-commanders vision slits. Even dedicated fighters place the pilot so low in the cockpit that the entire bottom half of the screen is just interior and MFDs. Real fighter pilots can look down at a decent angle, because visual is essential in dogfighting which is the only kind of fighting this game has.
Ok, I know we love to shit on that “game”, but that video in and of itself left me speechless.
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It’s objectively a good target for ridicule that the game has raised enough money to make the next Grand Theft Auto off of a strange and exploitative business model, been in development for over a decade, and still has no release date. At the same time, there’s more game in that public alpha than a handful of fully released products, so calling it a scam never made sense.
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It is not normal, under any circumstances, to take 10+ years to make a game. The rest of the industry is encroaching on it, and it’s ridiculous there too. Right now we’re looking at a AAA industry that’s taking about 5-6 years to make a game, and everyone knows that has to come back down somehow; the ones that go longer than that are Prey (2006), Duke Nukem Forever, Beyond Good & Evil 2, etc. Not a great track record.
the business model was no more “exploitative” than something like Apex or PubG that make literal billions yearly off cosmetics
Those are bad too. In different and sometimes arguably worse ways. But at least you get the product at the point of sale and not an IOU. That, of course, makes Star Citizen an easy target once again.
People have their ego wrapped up in the criticisms about the game, they don’t like the idea that they got duped into hating on something by people who profited off their rage. People need to stop trying to save face; they were wrong about Star Citizen and SQ42.
I saw a trailer for this game with Gary Oldman in it 8 years ago. 8 years. They cast a lot of fan favorite actors that were already, let’s say, of an advanced age, and I’m betting one of them dies by the time Squadron 42 comes out. I’m looking forward to playing Squadron 42, but if it takes you 8 years from the time you had something to show for your work for that single player mode to come out (which can and should be smaller in scope than an MMO and have none of the CI/CD restrictions that a live service game has), then you can bet your ass there’s something to criticize there. At the very least, project management. And it’s totally fair to criticize someone for choosing to make the wrong game (overscoped) when your massive AAA company doesn’t exist yet and scaling up to meet that need apparently takes over a decade.
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I get that Star Citizen is extremely up your alley, but there’s a lot of colorful language in your post about how much of an advancement this is or how it’s doing so much more than some other game (pretty difficult to make apples to apples comparisons about number of features in a cowboy game), and let me just summarize that as being very subjective. What we can actually play and get hands on is a game that, after all this time, has some rough technical performance and plenty of bugs, paid in exchange for features that offer only diminishing returns as you expand the circle of the game’s audience out further from the people looking for the strictest simulation. Starfield couldn’t get 60 FPS on console, even skipping 80% of the minutiae that SC is targeting, and Red Dead Redemption II also took flak and criticism for how the game felt to play for prioritizing a lot of simulation-y things as well. Those games aren’t immune to criticism either, and they were able to come from teams who had successfully built acclaimed games in the past, iterating on them.
Also, that “8 years” is in all likelihood including several years of greyboxing, engine work that’s reusable for future projects, and other pre-production work with a skeleton crew, while most of the studio was at work on GTAV and its own secondary MMO alongside the single player. Cyberpunk 2077 was announced back in 2012 with a CG trailer, but I distinctly remember a Giant Bomb interview with a CDPR designer in ~2014 ahead of the Witcher 3’s launch. Of course most of CDPR wasn’t working on Cyberpunk yet. Jeff Gerstmann asked what Cyberpunk was looking like at that time, and the CDPR rep just responded that it was a stack of design documents a foot high off the desk.
If people are aware they are getting an IOU, that’s not exploitive.
It is. For all the reasons that everyone says not to pre-order video games, pre-ordering a ship that you don’t even know when you’ll really be able to use it is exploitative, and it’s priced to cash in on whales. At least it’s not a blind box preying on gambling impulses, but I still find it to be gross.
The very least you can do is stop gaslighting. Every step of the way people have been stepping back their criticism, they’ll say this features not coming and then it does and they drop it off their list, they say it’s a scam and now it’s suddenly “Well of course it’s was never a scam, no one would actually think that.”
Don’t attribute to me what others have said. Plenty of other people have called this a scam, but right at the top, I said that never made sense to me. Maybe a few weeks ago, I said something right here on the fediverse that someone interpreted to be too positive about Star Citizen, and the next response was to ask me how much I paid into the game. Those people probably haven’t changed their minds. I am not them. I think for myself. That is not me gaslighting you. It’s me having a different opinion than someone else you spoke to.
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I don’t think it’s about loving to shit on something, you can only get burned so often with overhyped games, i rather have the game speak for itself when it’s released.
I am in shock at the number of people upvoting positive comments about this scam project. Until they refund all the people they defrauded to get the project off the ground, they will continue to be dragged down by their own fucking karma.
Suckers want to spend money on it now, knowing everything we know now? That’s on you. But plenty of us didn’t know we were being conned at the time.
Spending more than a basic access package is absolute stupidity and those that do it and regret it have no one to blame but themselves. I spent $45 dollars and play the exact same game and can buy most of those expensive ships with in game money after a few days of playing.
I have had hundreds of hours of great times in Star Citizen. Your anecdotal experience and very emotional hatred for this project because of your own bad financial choices doesn’t make my good experience, the most common experience, untrue. The massive, growing number of active users trumps your loud minoroty’s passionate hatered. Hatered 100% based on hot, salty tears because you wasted your own money on pretend spaceships like a spoiled child, not based on an objective look at things. You were 100% informed about the realities of this project, you just ignored it. I know this because I’ve been following it too and didn’t spend buckets of money on a videogame that isn’t even done yet. Because that would be really irresponsible of me.
This game keeps making money and keeps adding more users. This is because it is fun to play for more people than not. Otherwise they would be failing after this many years. Grow up, get a life, focus on games you like, ignore the ones you don’t like a healthy adult. Don’t spend money on speculative projects if you don’t want the project to change, caveats have been everywhere saying as much since day one. The only person that lied to you was you.
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Not enjoying the game is a fair criticism. It is slow paced and there is no pvp off switch, only things you can do to minimize risk by learning best practices. It’s not for everyone. It’s going for a sci-fi second life vibe, it’s not very gamey. I don’t think everyone expects that. And the prototype criminality system is rather useless right now, you’re right, so you get griefers and undeserved fines here and there. I can still have a lot of fun despite these things, but I can totally see it being not worth everyone’s time, especially for the lesser flushed out jobs. I have had my share of bug induced rage quits.
But yeah, they are making a huge game in good faith, any claim of it being a scam is childish. Any claim that it’s not fun is a valid opinion if they’ve actually tried it.
They know whale hunting is paying for the game, without them it’d be a tiny, indy, space game we’d have all forgotten about by now like they thought they’d make back in the original in Kickstarter. Some people have better stuff than me because they earned it, some just bought it, but it’s more RPG than competitive shooter and the in-game progression is fair so far so it hasn’t been world breaking yet, plus it ads a lot of diversity and multicrew options right out the gates. So it’s not great, but it’s less shady than premium currencies, battle passes, or loot boxes to me.
@Stillhart @SeaOfTranquility even if it comes out its gonna be pay to win garbage. They sold goddamned star destroyers for thousands of dollars, you think those won’t have an advantage?
I can’t believe there’s people who still defend the amount of time and money that’s gone into this. It boggles the mind.
I will never let myself live down the stupidity and shame of falling for their bullshit not once, but twice. I’m ~$150 poorer thanks to my impressionable college-brain thinking their “complete in a few years” line back in 2014 was even remotely possible.
Well, think of it so that you spent $150 on a class on media literacy and a crash course on the dangers of unethical business practices.
That’s a constructive way to look at it
It’s sort of how I try to view my past fuckups: I can’t change the past by feeling like an idiot for making some mistake, but I can try to learn to not make the same mistakes again (and instead make new and exciting mistakes) and learn to “forgive myself” in a sense.
Fuckups are inevitable parts of life, and beating myself up over mistakes won’t stop me from making new ones. I do need to learn from them when I make them, so I might as well do it in a way that’s less unpleasant and doesn’t require carrying around an ever-growing pile of memories labeled “I’m an idiot for doing […]”
Before Star Citizen got announced, I tried to get up a project that would’ve been better, bigger, and far more revolutionary… only I didn’t lie about it, so funding fell on blank stares at best, and a bunch of insults at worst.
Congrats, you voted with your wallet to get conned, so you got what you voted for. Same with No Man’s Sky.
The average citizen has no vision or perception of the costs involved, so you either con people, or nothing gets done.
Are you a well-known developer though? One of the reasons why Starfield attracted so much attention was the name Chris Roberts attached to it. As flawed as his legacy is, he’s a household name in the industry. Are you? What was your project about? How big was your team?
Precisely, you just described what’s needed to pull a con. My project was just an engine capable of running a real-scale galaxy with consistent time travel, we had no great concept artists capable of churning out eye candy marketing material. Should have made it a solo project about digging mines, or something.
I prefer that they are spending the money one actually developing advanced/new engine technologies than just releasing a half baked cames and a huge profit.
They got loads more money than they expected and increased the scope to match.
(I agree on the pricy ships though)
Even if they went bust and the game failed, I would be happy if other big studios got the engine.
Oh, so they’re like, actually making something with all that money, huh. Wow
Always have been, that’s why calling it a scam has always been ridiculous. You can think about the feasibility of the project and quality of their decisions what you want, but they were always very honest and transparent about the work they are doing and the huge goal they are chasing.
We’ve been trying to tell y’all this for years, we just want you to have fun and not listen to horrendous “journalists” that smear Star Citizen for clicks. But you don’t create multiple offices across the world with over 1000 full time employees and dozens of third party contractors if you’re trying to scam your fans. You also can’t create a AAA studio from the ground up in just a few years. This studio started with 8 people in a basement and it grew slowly, because you have to. Only so many people are looking for work at a time and only so many of them are hirable. It took them 10 years just to have as many devs as other AAA studios, but they knew they had the budget to go AAA from early on. So for a long time there weren’t enough people to deliver a game of this scope in a reasonable time. They knew it, we knew it, it was part of the plan. They were hiring like mad across the world for years and years because the payoff in the end will be a well supported AAA game like no other. Now that they are chugging along at full speed, people are starting to see what the rest of us have been trying to show you. Yes, Chris Roberts wants to be a billionaire CEO. But he also wants to build a rad game in good faith and has the money to do so.
So yeah, it’s taken a while and will be a while still, but it’s a genuinely fun game to play, even now. If it goes belly up tomorrow I’ve already got my money’s worth of enjoyment out of it. Every quarter, new massive updates drop. Once Squadron 42 is launched and running smoothly I think it will change a lot of hearts and minds. Just play SC during a free fly week. It’s janky as early access games always are, but genuinely a fun time.
You should all be angry at the shitty hit pieces that deprived you guys of quality online scifi shenanigans by lying to you about this game and remember gaming news isn’t always good journalism, sometimes reputable sites will post tabloid garbage because there are no rules, only shareholders and click quotas.
A AAA game company needs to release a AAA game to be one, so while they may be poised to be one in the future, they haven’t reached that label yet.
I suppose, if you want to argue symantics. Their intention is to build a AAA game is my meaning.
You’re right, but I think its important to recognize that important distinction, otherwise some, such as myself in the past, have been lead to believe that they had previously released a successful game
Star Citizen 4.0 ?! Can we have Star Citizen 1.0 first maybe?
It’s alpha 4.0
They’re currently on 3.21
I think my point still holds. :D
I mean, no? Version numbers don’t dictate the release readiness of something.
You want them to just call what they have now 1.0, before they implement the Alpha 4.0 features shown there? Because that’s the gist of what you said.
Conventional version numbering (afaik) lead up to 1.0 as the release candidate.
Most often in gaming, yeah, but there are no rules. PURE CHAOS, BABY!!!
Usually yes if you use only numbers, but when you use alpha/beta/release cycles etc, it’s not that uncommon to have them start from 1.0 as well.
As an example, the fifth phase of minecraft dev started with “Minecraft Alpha v1.0.0” and once it got to v1.2.6, the next was “Minecraft Beta v1.0.0”. The proper Minecraft 1.0 came after Beta 1.8.1.
That was a standard that existed because of older, ‘linear’ SDLCs. It stopped being the case when Agile development took over. When you’re using Waterfall, and all your milestones are planned out before a single line of code is written, you can do that.
Modern software development doesn’t work like that, and it’s silly to use nth-degree nested decimals (0.1.0, 0.1.1.2) when you can just use 1.1, 2.13, etc, and call something RC1.0 and 1.0 on release without bothering with internal version numbers or project codenames (or just keep the working version numbers anyways).
@SeaOfTranquility star citizen is a scam
The moon landing was fake!
@Cagi you could have built a real rocket with the money they spent
Revenue is not the same as money spent. They have raked in enough money to build to build a rocket, so have many games. That’s a good thing. All you are doing is calling them successful.
I like the person casually walking into the fire at 19:05. I also noticed reflections in the water near the edges of the screen don’t show properly, most noticeably at the end of the video.
Amazing tech demo, but I wonder if they’re focusing on the right things. Physics-based nosebleeds are cool, but not as noticeable as getting reflections right.
I also noticed reflections in the water near the edges of the screen don’t show properly,
It’s called screen-space reflections: Things that aren’t on screen don’t reflect because, well, they’re not rendered. The alternative is either not having reflections, having the “screen” not be a rectangle but the inside of a sphere, or, and that’s even more expensive, raytracing.
It’s a bog-standard technique and generally people don’t notice, which is why it’s good enough. Remember the rule #1 of gamedev: Even if not in doubt, fake it. It’s all smoke and mirrors and you want it like that because the alternative is 1fps.
You can also do overscan, but that’s costly since you’re rendering a bigger picture (I am not a rendering engineer but have experience with offline rendering)
Well yes I was answering under the assumption of “eradicate 100% of artefacts”, and as long as you don’t render all the perspectives there’s always going to be some angle somewhere that you’re missing.
Practically everything in rendering is a terrible hack (including common raytracers as they’re not spectral) but realism is overrated, anyway.
