I like how the new aurora looks, but thatâs pretty much all I like about the new graphic updates, the old clouds (no matter how much like floating boulders they looked) were better, and the fog can break maps that you are meant to be able to see far in, the new clouds somehow look worse than 2008 Roblox clouds, and thatâs not a joke, I understand its to help performance on lower-end computers, but for the higher end, I think it should be able to be reverted optionally. like how you can turn up graphics on other settings, there can be a distance fog and 2d clouds setting, making it able to revert to the old ones, I was for the previous update for the moon, sun, and stars, but this feels a bit overboard in my opinion.
Okay, here is my opinion on that topic.
- Moon is epic, sun⌠well, it looks fine, but not so much changes are seen about it if you donât look closely.
Anyway, this is not all I want to say. I have a suggestion for it and itâs about making them smaller, like in real life. Or, as another great idea, moon/sun scale option could be added in map editor (Iâm not sure if it is possible from modding/code perspective, as I think sky canât be per-level configurated without core game adjustments). - Stars: same as first point - they looks better than they were.
- Aurora Borealis? It was changed in good sense. A little better than it was before.
- Clouds: partly I donât like it because theyâre not volumetric and have a weird-looking pattern. But I guess Itâs a subject to change,
as Nelson stated:
At least clouds became clouds, and you canât accidentaly determine them as flying boulders.
5. Fog.
Of course, SOME mapsâ locations and spots are very beautiful with it. (for example hereâs a screenshot from Arid)
But this doesnât justify the removal of fog density customisation per map. Problem with this addition is that maps that didnât use to be having fog now have it, which led many map makers into a trouble.
Same trouble they had with last update that removed asset browser from devkit.
UPD. Animaticâs comment is more accurate description of an update and I agree with him. He adressed his view at other Forum discussion.
UPD2. Fixed my statement about fog customisation removal. Thank you Nelson for correcting me.
I like it.
To clarify on this point: closer fog color and density is still customizable, but the distant objects automatically blend into the sky foggily.
i liked the changes in general. And the new 2D clouds are fine for my low-end PC. But those âbouldersâ had grace. it added a good touch to unturned. What i see that needs to be reworked are god-rays, even on ultra they seem very bad, lots of poping.
Can we get an option to enable old clouds again?, maybe nelson is searching for a new focus on art desing or idk. But i liked the old clouds too.
Iâve really enjoyed the new improvements and have definitely seen performance improvements in game thanks to them. It would be nice to allow fog to be toggleable or completely removed in editor though, as navigating and editing a map can be hard with it present.
reinstalled and opened Stasven cuz I was curious see what itâd look like with the new update
this is karma for abusing tags and layers to get around render distance, I guess
had I still been working on this project the amount of cope would be off the charts
as for feedback for Nelson, all I can really say is
it might look fine (and run really well) on default and curated maps, sure
but IMO a week on test branch wouldâve been great for feedback
I like the idea of the transition fog, and clouds. I hate the execution.
The fog is far too aggressive and in the map editor itâs impossible to get a full picture of your map while you work on it because everything is claustrophobic. There needs to be a per-player slider that allows you to change the maximum transition distance so people can set it to their own preference. I would set it to a much higher distance when working in the editor, and drop it down once I actually start playing.
The clouds look fine, outside of being a little too flat. I think just adding a second or third layer just above or below them will add a good amount of depth. The real issue is the editor slider for clouds being way less adjustable. You either get clouds, or you get slightly wider clouds. There is no way to remove them for a map anymore like with space or desert themed maps, and you cant make them any larger or abundant like you use to.
Thereâs also the bugs with reflections and other distance related things.
In general it feels like 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Some really good ideas changes, but the way they were implemented soils it for me. The only improvements I see is the performance, otherwise I actually canât work on my maps anymore because I canât see what Iâm doing, itâs just not comfortable anymore.
Also whatâs the point in having a testing branch if you arenât going to use it for updates that make big changes like these? 
fr it feels so claustrophobic now
Hm, almost as if updates should be TESTED before theyâre launched, ESPECIALLY by the public who receives them.
thatâs because the render distance of the entire game has also been almost more than halved on top of the fog
Nelson seems to be taking a page from the zelda BOTW book of âhide everything behind a dense layer of fog to imply scaleâ yet is executing it in a game that has never had any real need for it
it works in BOTW because the fog doesnât entirely negate the need for LODs - you can still see every major landmark in the map from anywhere in the game, even though you could probably count the polys on the LOD models on your hands and feet
my point is, and do forgive me for turning into a âwhere 4.0â schizo:
this update is IMO unnecessary, even if maybe itâs for steam deck optimization or something
the gameâs 7+ years old with multiple layers of jank going all the way back to the early OPERATIONMAPLELEAF alphas, perhaps working on refactoring what can be fixed there instead of just halving the render distance and removing the borderline iconic boulder clouds would be a good place to start
or work on 4.0 instead? last devlog for that was just over a year ago and backporting all these features to 3.0 from it isnât exactly giving me hope for itâs future
Yeah, itâs weird how we first got a lot of WIP pictures and videos, private test access passes were issued left and right. There was a lot of hype going around. And then Nelson just goes in the dark. Not only the long wait made people forget about 4 and move on(potentially abandoning 3 aswell), but even the long-time fans arenât even taking it seriously anymore. What 2025 release we are even talking about, when the basic mechanics are pretty much working at this point? What was the point in showcasing all of that in, like, 2019? We couldâve had a playable beta right now, probably. But we are getting minor weekly updates to 3.0 instead. Why? And what was even the point of switching to UE4 and starting from scratch when Nelson finally had a good grip on Unity?
I liked the old version of the clouds a bit more then the new ones and the fog was annoying because didnât see very far
Blocky characters and blocky clouds seemed more in theme than ms paint cloud scribbles in Roblox.
Honestly I agree, I wouldnât care if Nelson worked solely on Unturned II (4.0) and permanently/temporarily ceased updates for 3.0. The game is done, what quirks it has weâve just grown to accept, and hopes of Unturned II help us to accept them more because we expect most of these things to be fixed in the next game.
This trying to manage more than you can chew is exactly the reason 3.0 launched in a poor state, why 4.0 is still stuck in a dev loop, and why I expect II to either be canned or release in a similar rough shape.
Iâve honestly been a fan of the recent improvements to 3.x, graphical, background fixes, auditory, etc. Iâm not going to deny that the game is old and that 4.0 should take priority, but Iâm also not going to shun the changes that make 3.x feel more lively and almost stylized. Thereâs bound to be a proper balance of these things, and I wonât even get into âitâs not difficultâ because Iâm not a game developer and I wonât pretend to be one.
On another note though, the recent fog and render distance changes, even after being âfixedâ are weird, theyâve properly messed up Kuwait, Elver and Arid and Iâm sure they couldâve been handled better, I was on preview this week and was hoping the fix for the visual issues like big objects getting sliced would be done for the final update
I have been turning over in my mind what to do about the epic-scale skybox details. One option would be to have customizable skybox cubemaps. Another (not ideal) option would be to render distance objects in a separate pass, but that continues the problems these changes aimed to resolve. Either way I think it would probably look weird to have colored objects past the sky transition fog.
Once I can share details of the ongoing issues I tweeted about in January I think the history of 4.0 will make a lot more sense.