Important Update 1.186 - Major Overhaul of Visuals, Audio and Wheels

Summary

Hello, Engineers! With today’s major update, 1.186.0, we are releasing a massive overhaul of visuals, audio and wheels, together with a huge number of additional improvements to the core of Space Engineers.
For more info go to Marek's blog post describing all the changes in detail along with visual examples: https://blog.marekrosa.org/2018/02/overhaul-visuals-audio-wheels.html

Visual

• Added high dynamic range rendering
• Added eye adaptation
• Added new post-processing effects
• Added support for NVIDIA Ansel technology
• Added depth-buffer clipping avoidance (when you get close to an obstacle, your tool or weapon won’t be clipping through it)
• Added debris to explosions
• Added block explosions
• Added camera shake effects
• Added extreme quality for voxels and models (not intended for real-time gameplay)
• Reworked all particle effects from scratch
• Improved tone mapping and bloom
• Improved global illumination
• Improved glass appearance(window blocks, cockpits)
• Improved point and spot light attenuation
• Improved and polished character animations, stabilized holding and using tools, movement cool down animation
• Improved GPU particle system
• Changed armor edges visual (small and large)
• Added new Skybox (you can find the old skybox here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1286315367
• Changed suit headlight glare, dust cone, light settings
• Fixed blocks coloring to work the same as in original Space Engineers
• Fixed bullet hit decals/bullet holes
• Fixed 3D Models: cockpit chairs, “under construction” blocks, driller head metal material, astronaut boots with proper stripe for magnetic effect and many more

Wheels

• New wheel static friction simulation (wheels will maintain expected path in turns, no more sideways sliding)
• Changes in Terminal Screen (removed number of unused/obsolete wheel/suspension settings - the game takes care of the details, tuned the default settings)
• Modified contact point response for wheels (no more wild voxel bounce-off and sliding)
• Adaptive steering (steering angle and speed are automatically adjusted based on car speed at the moment)
• Dynamic center of mass for vehicles (virtual center of mass for Wheel-Suspension interaction is adjusted to further improve car behavior)
• Air shock suspensions (jumping vehicles will extend and strengthen suspension in mid air to better absorb the shock impact upon landing and prevent damage of the chassis)
• Added suspension jumping feature (when your off-road adventure gets you into rough terrain and your car can’t get out of it (wheels are spinning, the car sits on its belly) - press X and the car will make a small or large jump. Wheels need to be in contact with ground. The car is using the suspension springs to quickly push itself up.)
• Tweaked acceleration/deceleration/stopping/braking
• Mass of a vehicle influences its inertia - e.g. heavier vehicles continue moving forward with more energy than lighter ones when left unattended with no braking force applied to them
• Physics surface materials (voxel materials now have real physical properties like friction and restitution based on surface type)
• Fixed multiplayer support for wheels
• Increased robustness and endurance of wheel and suspension blocks - so they don’t break after jumps

Gameplay

• Faster walk/run/sprint for astronaut
• Faster jetpack acceleration and deceleration
• Rifle is more precise now
• Changed gravity behavior for the character
• Doors open/close faster
• New conveyor system overload state - when your grid is in power overload, you will see new yellow color on conveyor tubes

Audio

• Small and large ship sounds - emphasizing feel of accelerating by adding additional sounds
• HUD voices re-enabled (e.g. “low energy” warning)
• Footsteps tweaked for new speed of character movement. It also supports different ground materials (ice, rocks, metal, glass). Now you should hear and feel when you are running.
• Footsteps sound also start sooner
• Character landing/fall sounds are now more prominent, you should really feel it, this is very important for immersion and different surface materials
• Polished where the sound listener object resides - before it was sometimes in the camera and sometimes in the center of a ship. Now it's always in the camera and the only exception is when you are piloting a large ship from the cockpit - listener is in camera, but you will also hear sound of the ship.
• New sound when your character dies - very subtle, but giving you important feedback
• Magnetic boots, on/off sound, different materials, you should really feel how they stick you to the surface
• Character jumping sound - emphasizing the rubbing of textile, making the jumping more satisfying
• Ships colliding and crashing (and sliding and scratching)
• Small ship cockpit - enter/leave sound - now has heavier sound, feels rewarding. You just want to keep entering a leaving the ship.
• Bullet impact on rocks has the standard wild west "pew" sound as it had in all our games. Must “hear” feature!
• Max sound instances - The game is prioritizing sounds by distance and slowly turn off less relevant sounds. It is difficult to notice, but it helps with realism.
• Distance to sound source - this is an older feature but it’s so awesome that I must mention it: when the distance between sound and listener increases over a certain threshold, you will hear it a bit muffled and with “long distance effect” applied on it. Awesome for gunshots, explosions, etc.
• Jetpack sound tweaked
• Tool sounds tweaked, better timing
• Decreased default music volume to 50%, so you can hear the sound effects better - but you can also raise it back to 100% if you want
• New sounds for doors
• New destruction sounds for some blocks
• New sound for brakes (key P)
• New sound for antenna (key O)
• Doppler effect changes - you can turn off doppler effect in options, Sound Block is ignoring doppler effect and overall it was toned down
• New Sensor sound

Performance

• New Voxel generation engine (faster loading times - about 60% faster, instant changes/damage to voxels - more than 400% faster)
• Turrets performance changed and tweaked
• Loading priority for textures and models
• Ore detector performance changes with better multithreading
• Added Sync Distance to Dedicated Server settings
• Optimized simulation speed after splitting a grid
• Optimized simulation speed with multiple missiles and Gatling gun turrets being used
• Optimized updating of Upgrade Module

UI

• Official Russian translation
• Horizontal scrollbar for multiline text area
• Changes to color palette UI (real HSV values, new design, help)
• Time of the day slider in Admin tools (works in multiplayer too)
• Auto focus for search input field in control panel
• LCD highlight changes
• New search box in load screen
• Added alignment feature to LCD
• Changes and fixes for the terminal UI

Modding/Scripting API Breaking Changes

• IMyGasTank.FilledRatio was changed to double type
• Terminal properties and actions for IMyMotorSuspension.Damping, SteerSpeed, SteerReturnSpeed, SuspensionTravel were removed (Corresponding C# interface properties were marked as obsolete and will be removed later)
• Changes in particles for weapons and tools
• Changes in glass shader can break some mods using transparent materials

Fixes

• Fixed crash of DS when setting same block twice in block limits
• Fixed a crash when joining a multiplayer game through Steam UI
• Fixed a crash when joining a multiplayer game through Friends invite
• Fixed an issue where newly created grids are sent to all players on server regardless their distance to the grid
• Fixed Heavy Armor's durability during collisions
• Fixed conveyor system updating
• Fixed conveyor system becoming nonfunctional when joining a dedicated server
• Fixed "T" key (automatic block rotation) state of persistence
• Fixed changes done by Voxel hand propagating to newly added asteroids on DS
• Reduced chance of drilled boulders rotating in gravity on DS
• Fixed an issue where big grids pasted as subparts appeared out of position while pasting it
• Fixed pasting of blueprints while moving
• Fixed a possibility to build diagonally connected grids by copy/paste in high velocity
• Fixed placement offset on moving grids causing overlapping of blocks
• Fixed inability to weld projected blueprints at short distances
• Fixed parts of blocks sometimes being visually present after their destruction
• Fixed ships accidentally becoming stations by merging to and unmerging from stations
• Fixed hand drill animation for secondary drilling mode (Right Mouse Button)
• Fixed inconsistent behavior when joining a faction from inside and outside of a cockpit
• Fixed assembler pulling more components than necessary
• Fixed engineer floating above the seat inside the fighter cockpit
• Fixed gameplay timer issue, timer is more precise now
• Fixed forced first person view while drilling
• Fixed misaligned third person view when moving on high velocity grids
• Fixed missing windows when forced to first person view in cockpits
• Fixed not zooming out when being forced out of ironsights by sprinting
• Fixed camera clipping through the player character in tight spaces
• Fixed clipping through planet voxel for player and grid
• Fixed blinking grass
• Fixed smoke clouds changing color
• Fixed thruster effects persisting in the world after switching thrusters off
• Fixed particles behaving erratically in high gravity
• Fixed cone of light disappearing when source of light is out of view
• Fixed an issue with space dust being rendered to close to the camera
• Fixed muzzle flash of gatling turret disappearing at certain angles
• Fixed centering of text on LCDs in campaign
• Improved text wrapping at block’s detailed info
• Fixed in-game screenshots to display all GUI elements properly
• Fixed position of loading screen wheel
• Fixed overflowing text in control panel
• Fixed multiple textboxes not being able to be scrolled to right and added scroll-bar
• Adjusted GUI formatting
• Fixed border in server description text field
• Fixed Curved Conveyor Tube LOD
• Fixed Sensor LODs
• Fixed Remote control visual for distant LOD
• Fixed cracking sound when exiting game to main menu
• Fixed an issue where some sounds were missing after reload
• Fixed sounds of jumping and falling not being played every time
• Fixed Jump Drive sound synchronization
• Fixed lift made from piston, no more jumping on platform

Fixes (Player Reports)

• Fixed applying moddable content file attribute to VoxelMapStorageDefinition
• Fixed expanding pool for AddTriangleBillboard method
• Fixed gamelogic updates on Programmable Block
• Fixed turrets shooting already dead targets
• Fixed updating of kinematic RB position for space ball causing unexpected behavior of space ball in some cases
• Fixed O2/H2 Generators not pulling ice through conveyor system
• Fixed wheels properties not being properly replicated for copy/pasted vehicles
• Fixed resetting of friction when copying grid with suspension
• Fixed an issue where wheel suspensions could caused grids to spin
• Highly reduced unexpected forces affecting wheeled vehicles
• Fixed placement boundaries when placing blocks above the voxel
• Fixed inverted controls for vehicles where cockpit is positioned lower than suspensions
• Fixed various text fields where text could overflow visual boundaries
• Fixed resetting of UI volume after exiting a game to main menu
• Fixed Timer Block LOD
• Fixed doors leaving a gap when closed while opening
• Fixed glass not being enlightened by artificial lights
• Fixed UI sounds being set at maximum after reload of the game
• Fixed issue with a sound of hangar doors being cut off if the block is turned off while playing it
• Fixed bullet hitting sound of trees
• Fixed soundblock keeps silent when reaching its range

Hotfixes 1.186.031

• fixed crash after starting a game

Hotfixes 1.186.033

• fixed crash with Merge Blocks
• fixed crash at drilling voxel which disappears
• fixed graphic settings not being remembered after switching version
  Quality Preset is now set to Medium by default
• fixed some of the mined boulders being too small

Important

• When loading older saves the first loading time will be slower. After the save of that world it will go back to normal
• If you are experiencing some crashes, please, verify your files on Steam and delete the ShaderCache2 directory

In case of any issues, please leave a report and your log in our Bug Forum section - it really helps hotfix everything for your quicker. Thanks a lot for your help!

Keen Software House team