Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

The Stargate Warp Tunnel - An Invaluable Tool

I didn't much like the warp effect when I first experienced it. Well, I enjoyed it the first few times, then it quickly became annoying. Mainly the camera move just before the warp effect.

I didn't see any point in complaining about it, though. It wasn't like CCP were going to remove it, or add an optional checkbox for it in the settings window. The camera move is necessary, otherwise the warp looks a bit silly and off-kilter. I figured I'd just get used to it eventually.

Now I love it. Though not for aesthetic reasons. It's actually sort of ugly. Voyage Into Your Sphincter. Journey Up Your Intestine. Both are unpublished Jules Verne novels. Or whatever butt-end joke you want to come up with for the tunnel effect.

Why do I love the new effect, then? For two reasons. Both are technical. Both mostly apply to nullsec. And both mostly apply to high time dilation situations.

The first is the camera effect. Under high TiDi, it can take a bit of time before the system responds to the jump request. The moment that camera starts swinging around, I know that my jump command has been received by the server. Now you might point out that I can still rely on the jump flash, that moment when your ship disappears from the screen. The problem there is if my camera is zoomed out and there are a hundred other ships on the gate. It's then difficult to pick out the jump flash for your ship from among all the other ship flashes. The camera move, though, is a guaranteed acknowledgement that the server is processing your jump command. I have had the jump command fail at times, and not seeing that camera move has me resending the command.

The second reason is likely unintentional by CCP. And it's something I hope they don't spend any time trying to fix. If you're running some wickedly high-end gaming rig, maybe you don't even notice it, but I do, and probably a lot of other people do as well. When travelling through the tunnel, just before you hit the destination system, the new grid starts loading, and as that is happening the tunnel animation begins to spurt and sputter. I could not live without that spurt and sputter. I like to know right when I'm landing on the new grid. This is especially useful during high TiDi, when you can be staring at that tunnel animation for one, two, up to five minutes. The spurt and sputter breaks you from the reverie the tunnel has put you in, and you immediately start preparing for what you may have to do when you land. That spurt and sputter has become a necessary visual cue during my time in the Fountain War. Don't be trying to fix that shit, CCP.

I don't really know what all the bitching is about, anyhow. The tunnel effect, even if a tad ugly, is a helluva lot better than looking at a black screen, with no indication at all that anything is happening or about to happen.
Source: The Stargate Warp Tunnel - An Invaluable Tool