Star Trek Online Talks Graphics Upgrades

When it was announced that headed to consoles later this year, it was announced that the game's graphics had been upgraded for the console release. A recent blog post explains the graphics improvements in some detail. When choosing improvements to make, the team had to ensure that each would "make the game look as good as possible in the time [they] had," but wouldn't "adversely affect the game for players with older PCs."

The blog post discusses the new lighting model that the team decided to implement. According to the post, the old lighting model "was way out of date" and only allowed the team's artists to "use a few lights in any given scene." The new system involves deferred shading, which "basically means the artists can use as many lights as they need to light their scenes." With this system in place, the team has worked on "basically re-lighting the entire game." You can see some of the results of their efforts in the original blog post.