The space junk is a really important way for the player to keep track of what his trajectory is relative to a target, but I always thought the tetrahedrons were a bit much, and at high speeds, tend to take away from the feeling of speed and motion.

I think motion tracing particles would be just as useful in terms of tracking motion, but also more distinguishing, as they would be almost invisible when you're at rest, and would only become very distinguishable at higher velocities. Colony Wars for the Playstation has a good example of what I'm talking about. The tracing particles enhanced the sense of speed, and served their purpose as an indicator of your relative movement.

Here's a clip of Colony Wars (one game I think any VO fan would enjoy, simply for the similarities of gameplay)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6GRCU0y-eE8&feature=related

I don't think it would be terribly hard to implement as an option to toggle like the 3d targeting boxes. (Particles or Junk)

One problem that needs to be addressed though is whether this would have negative effects on performance.

My guess would be that this might lower the performance of the game for users.

Hmm. It would probably be pretty simple to just add some sort of trail to the existing junk, or replace them with a simple trail thing. It would have a performance impact, but depending on how it was done.. probably not much. Being a toggle-able option would mitigate that. Dunno, I'll ask Ray.

Alternatively, we could have space junk that kind of "morphs" into trails at higher speeds.

In either case, the challenge would be depicting the trails in such a way so they were helpful without being distracting. I expect we'd want them to be relatively subtle. To some extent they would occlude visibility (more than the junk). Hmmph. Well, more input and ideas are welcome.

I think thin trails wouldn't be any more distracting then space junk.

In any case current junk is ugly. very.
If it's not much trouble it really should get replaced.
That's part of the reason i turned it off, other being it makes me feel like i'm underwater not in space.
Well, i don't need it anymore to know my trajectory or anything, so personally i'll keep it off even if you change it :)

I've actually found the space junk to be distracting when looking for targets outside of my targeting range. They can actually be spotted, but space junk tends to look like distant ships if you're holding still. Static particles that only become significantly visible while you're in motion would make it easier/possible to spot a distant target visually. I think that would add a tad more dimension to the game. I'd be thrilled to see this as an option in the future.

Cool, so our visual range is farther than our sensor range.

I agree with Apex:
"...space junk tends to look like distant ships if you're holding still. Static particles that only become significantly visible while you're in motion would make it easier/possible to spot a distant target visually."

Space dust is perhaps a better name. This is usually gases and pieces of ice, like that found in comet tails.

At high speeds, distant stars won't look streaky, but perhaps jumping through a wormhole would achieve this affect. There was an earlier suggestion about improving sector jump cinematics, including having it look more real-time as a hyper jump would look, with stars streaking by.

Somehow stumbled upon this post.. I also think something different from the current space junk would bring more life to the gameplay, would love to see simple dust trails that only show when moving. What I really like about that old Colony Wars video though is the 3d type radar, makes objects much easier to place accurately and it would take away some of the flatness from the hud. Also removes the need for having two radars to look at..

*edit* Found this:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11793#141687

I know I suggested this on one of my previous threads, but how about in the future we could have sectors full of large pieces of junk? Perhaps in places where huge corporate capship battles took place, or even in sectors within the Deneb system?

Perhaps we could "mine" all that junk for technology that could be used or sold or maybe scrap metal for sale. There could be a special historical story mission for anyone who wants to take a more detailed look at the history of the big 3 nations.

Performance-wise, why not just use GL_POINTS? You'll end up with better performance and tiny little specks of space dust.

Just bumping this because it seems like it'd be easy to implement as a hidden feature to play with just to see what people think of it.

I'm imagining a super simple, 1 point/pixel particle with a tracer effect to replace the space junk. I doubt it would impact performance even on low end machines.

If they were a single pixel on display, they wouldn't even be visible unless the ship was moving.