UPDATE : LOADING PROBLEM HAS BEEN FIXED

When loading the game you can experience a freeze. The is not crashing just loading a big amount of textures that are used as monitor animations. It was created to reduce the CPU usage. Right now i am working on a visual loading system that will show you the loading progress. So don't panic when you hit 100% loaded and you wait some time till the game start.

Fixes :
- Fix the grass rendering in the rover mode and storm the ares, Now shouldn't be rendered white or missing

Changes:
- Rover now uses a rigid body as a simulation instead of raytracing. This will help detects the environment better.
- All prerendered textures for BOINC, antenna animations, etc. are implemented in the game. With this technique the CPU usage will be decreased, especially using the BOINC. The only downfall will be the increased loading time before starting a new game ( as some of you have already found ).

Fix:

• When using the VHS, the game starts filling the log file with thousands of unnecessary logs.
  
• Vegetation scale in distance

Optimizations:
In the old version the monitor antennas, planets when you detect signals and other animated monitor images were rendered in realtime as textures increasing the CPU usage. I have started to prerender some of the animations as separate textures, removing the camera rendering. The downside of this is a little more Ram usage and loading time, but this will decrease the CPU usage. In the next few weeks expect updates that will replace the old system.

Thanks to D00mD0g for recording some real signals that are added to the game. Here is the tech he used :

• Telescope Added to the game
  
• VHS - you can now watch movies from your local hard drive - IMPORTANT only .mp4 and .avi files can be played
  
• Some new secrets :)

• If you click on the laptop and then quickly get out of the chair the laptop screen still opens.
  During the bug above if you click on the terminal and then exit out it won't return you to the main laptop screen (where you can select from scanner, database .etc) and instead closes you out of the laptop entirely. At this point the mouse cursor is still visible and you won't be able to interact with anything.
  
• Some lights doesn't show on snow.
  
• When solar panels are clean from snow and start cleaning again the snow layer resets.
  
• When using the laptop if you click on the rover, then on logout and then go to the scanner without first closing the laptop does the FPS noticeably decrease while inside the scanner.
  
• Rover doesn't stop when there is a wall in front of it.
  
• Rover Camera doesn't render snow, sun and weather effects
  
• While Antennas are moving and you start auto calibration, the antennas continue to rotate.

• Added option for TAA
  
• Added option for SMAA
  
• Buttons for purchase an Upgrade or Install a Module are moved in the lower right corner of the screen. Reason is to prevent it from cropping.
  
• Upgrades and Modules can be scrolled in case of wider screens. Same with the modules
  
• Transition from legacy to Post Processing v2
  
• Terrain Improvements

Signals:

• More signals suggested from the community
  
• More event signals
  
• One event that can be activated using the rover

Curiosity Rover:

• A new UI in the laptop where you can control the rover
  
• The rover is programmable, you can choose between forward, backward, left, right, analyze.
  
• Commands can be stacked so you can execute up to 20 commands
  
• Analyzing the ground can give you science data, like chemical elements that can be converted to resources as credits, electronics, transmitters, etc.
  
• Rover detects radiation and temperature, higher radiation means there is something hidden somewhere. Closer you are higher radiation.

Radio:

• UI changes
  
• You now can remove or add a radio from the game.
  
• Generated JSON file in the save folder will stay, so you can do it from there too.

Fixes:

• Shadow artifacts through transparent objects
  
• Observatory shader too dark when lights off
  
• Alpha channel rendered before the fog causing graphical black spots at distance.

Changes:

• Sun shafts are now connected with the fog
  
• Fog and Sun Shaft resolution is connected to volumetric effects. In 1.7.1 the fog resolution was around Medium, so High and Ultra can cause you a FPS drop

IMPORTANT
- With the changes of the volumetric effects you may have a fps drop. The main reason is that in the last update the fog resolution was lower than this one. In graphics -> volumetric effects lower it to medium and you will get the same quality as before with better fps.
- If you have a high CPU usage you can lock you FPS in graphic option to 30 or 60 fps. This will reduce the calculation per second and will reduce your CPU usage. High end CPUs shouldn't have any problems.