The models looked like toys. Not anymore. The causes were almost entirely in the materials and lighting, not the shapes:
- Desaturated. Bright orange and loud blue were the real toy signal. The hull is now gray with a color tint — only what actually glows stays saturated.
- Nothing repeats identically. Instead of a grid of identical plates, the texture splits its surfaces up at random, each plate a bit different in brightness, with rows of rivets and hatches.
- Grime. Grain, streaking, chipped warning paint. Without it, every surface looks like it just came out of the mold.
- Glowing things actually glow. Window bands and energy ridges are no longer shaded. A neon band that dims just because it faces away from the light is paint, not light.
- Specular highlights, rim light and contact shadows. A tight highlight separates metal from matte plastic, a rim light draws the silhouette, and shading in the seams is baked in at build time — it costs nothing at runtime.
- Small details. The ring and frame now carry little greebles. The oldest trick for technical models: it makes the scale readable and gives light edges to break on.
The old guideline of 400 triangles was a guess, and wrong. Measured for real, 3200 triangles cost the browser 0.33 ms per frame — two percent. Being stingy hurt the look: a ring made of 16 segments shows its corners. The trading post and the Gate are now 1800 and 1536 triangles and have round silhouettes.
Fixed: a ring had its plate pattern stretched into streaks, because a ring’s UV mapping runs once around its whole circumference. Rings now use a field with cross-running bands that survives the stretching unharmed.