Another new Around The Verse video was released for Star Citizen’s, covering the game’s development, the new physical ownership system, and more of the milestone advancements leading up to the release of alpha 3.0.

The half hour video covers a number of different aspects of updates in the game, including dynamic shopping and players being able to purchase and sell items. This is featured as part of the physical ownership system, where players who have attached their claim or ID to a property, will be able to keep track of it, spawn it into an instance as necessary, or buy and sell items attached to their property, such as cargo in the back of a ship, or another vehicle stored in the cargo bay of a larger craft. You can see brief snippets of it in action with the Around The Verse video below featured on the Star Citizen YouTube channel.

One of the really cool new features that have been added is the new springy landing gear, which dynamically reflexes and reacts to the surface of a planet’s terrain. This causes ships to land a bit more realistically, even when landing on uneven surfaces.

The purpose of this design was to remove the more stiff looking landing animations from the landing gear making contact with the ground. The more organic feel helps with the overall theme of Star Citizen’s cinematic appeal.

For Squadron 42, med station officers have been finished and are moving into the final version of the game, along with a number of other meshes and actors who are going through the high-poly finalization phase for Squadron 42, including officers, bandits and other pilots.

The procedural derelict missions were also highlighted in the latest episode of Around The Verse, including how the team didn’t just design various broken parts of the different ships to use as “derelict” sets, they also had to design procedural shaders for the derelicts in order to create different looks for the derelict sites so that they match the biome. So some derelicts will be floating around in space that have recently been destroyed. Other derelicts have become homes for bandits or raiders; some derelicts have crashed and are burning, giving gamers a very different set of derelict mission opportunities for players.

One of the interesting things they bring up about the derelict ships is that the process of designing the procedural algorithm for a derelict site is similar to a location scout for a movie. They have to find a good location on a planet, scan how the lighting works during both day and night segments, how the ship lights up in the dark, as well as whether or not they’re inhabited.

Each of the derelicts based on the different ships are designed so that they can adapt to the different types of terrain on various planets or moon surfaces, so no two derelict sites will really be alike.

It’s also mentioned that there are special derelicts in the game as well. One in particular is based on one of the larger ships and they setup a unique encounter for it on the planet; it’s the only derelict of its kind in the game at the moment and will supposedly be available when alpha 3.0 launches for Star Citizen.

Additionally, it’s mentioned that every single ship in the game will have a derelict phase. So after concept, after design, after white box testing, after gray box testing, after production, and after the damage models are complete, the ship then receives its derelict. This pipeline is designed and put into place for every single ship in the game, so no matter how big or how small, each one will have a derelict mission for you to discover and explore.

It sounds like alpha 3.0 is getting awfully close to release, and I imagine many fans and backers likely can’t wait to play-test it and see how it runs in real-time.