Star Citizen FPS mode detailed at PAX Australia 2014

PAX AU 2014 - Last night, Roberts Space Industries took the stage of the Forum Theatre in Melbourne to show off the FPS mode of Star Citizen. We found out that developer Illfonic has been tirelessly working on the first-person module of the game for quite a while now. We were at the event itself, watching the entire thing in awe. Check out the footage below.

What the video doesn't show you, is the little details that RSI and Illfonic have put into the game. Because you're in space, and on various spaceships, in the game you're wearing a suit. When you breathe, your breathe is hitting the visor and creating a fog. As you run, you will breathe faster, and more often, which results in the visor getting foggier and foggier - immersing you into the world of Star Citizen. From there, Chris Roberts explained that they've created "correctly simulated eyes, head & body", which allows a much more realistic portrayal of the game world to be achieved.

From there, it allows the first- and third-person animations to be unified. The team explained this by showing off switching between first- and third-person modes, which was seamless, as the eyes were being rendered in the same place. So instead of the eyes being a camera or window into the game world, and then the third-person view being a wider, but more far away look into the world, it's completely unified. It provides a much more realistic sense of being there, as your eyes and where they're fixated, becoming your focal point.

Roberts went even deeper, explaining that the gun you're holding will shoot in the direction the barrel is pointed. So if you're walking around and the gun is positioned toward the ground and you all of the sudden shoot your gun, the bullets will fly off to the side until you look down the sights - exactly how it would happen in the real-world. RSI explained this as they have "no old school floating guns" which feels very, very realistic when shown off, let alone being played with.

Star Citizen isn't a generic shooter like Call of Duty, as RSI explained that the game is "high stakes" with "real consequences". RSI explained that the "gameplay is dangerous and intense", "death without respawn is a constant looming threat" and that gamers have the ability to "drag wounded players to safety and stabilize them". It sounds like a massive mash up of ARMA 3, DayZ, Battlefield 4 and various other games, all while being its own title.

If you didn't think it could get better, RSI teased Zero G fighting where "gravity can be controlled to sway the outcome of battle". On top of that, we can expet "jetpacks and gravity boots" with a "push/pull system for moving along surfaces" in the near future. Roberts explained it would be like the movie Gravity, where you'll be able to pull yourself along on the sides of ships and various objects, pulling and pushing yourself through the Zero G environment.

RSI is promising the FPS module for Star Citizen sometime in early 2015, which will be followed (but not in order) by Planetside/Social Module launch, Arena Commander 2.0, Squadron 42 Chapter One, and then the Planetside expands into the persistant universe alpha. It was only a little over 24 hours ago now that Chris Roberts himself talked to us, saying that he "doesn't care about consoles", and now we know why - the PC is the ultimate gaming platform, the only one capable of playing out what he has created with Star Citizen.