EVE Online - Walking in Stations @ Eurogamer

Oli Welsh gets to look at the station upgrade coming to EVE sometime in the future.

Walking in Stations will also make EVE the first game to take advantage of a new lighting technology called Enlighten from Cambridge's Geomerics. In technical terms this means real-time radiosity - the bouncing of light from surfaces to other surfaces. In practical terms, it's supposed to allow games to take advantage of the kind of dynamic mood lighting of film, and especially film noir. A Geomerics representative showed clips of Alien and Blade Runner as well as a deeply impressive tech demo. Enlighten wasn't built into the demo shown, but regardless, there were some stunningly subtle lighting and shadowing effects on display already - ambient occlusion (softer darkening of obscured areas, as opposed to hard shadows) was spectacular.

The conclusion hints that this update maybe related to the WIP World of Darkness MMO.

Walking in Stations' presentation at Fanfest was impressive - but limited and transparently far from finished. It hasn't even reached alpha testing yet, and the chances of it making the first of the next year's two expansions look pretty remote. But the project has implications beyond EVE - it's surely a technology testbed for CCP's second game, the mysterious, vampiric horror-fantasy World of Darkness. As such, it's reassuring that the developer is investing in cutting-edge technology, and developing realistic, worldly content with the same intellectual thoroughness and dedication to player freedom that it has brought to the abstract reaches of space.