For ease of reference I suggest having each image open in a separate tab so you can flick between what I am commenting on and the picture itself to have a look.
Right, first picture.
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Quite a bit going on in this scene once you start to look at it and pull it apart in detail. Although the focus of the image is the ship in the foreground, lets ignore that for the moment and look at the 'roid.
On the two left most sections of the 'roid (the ones least obscured by the ship itself) it is worth looking at the shadows. They are deep, black and have very high contrast, exactly like shadows in space really are. This is clearest in the craters facing the camera, but if you look at the image a little longer you can see that the shadows are not reserved for just the large features, but also are created by smaller texture details on the rock surface as well. The more oblique the 'roids surface is to the light the more of the smaller details become apparent through shadowing. (Most noticeable on the lower of the left hand pieces.)
To have shadows of that detail clearly points to heavy use of ambient occlusion. I also think that this is real time AO and not baked into a texture in the same way it was on the Terran stations in TC. Why? OK I'll tell you.
Take a look at the ship in the foreground. On the far right of the ship, at the top right of the hanger entrance/exit (could be either or both), you can see a shadow cast by the roof of the hanger bay onto the side wall. Ships move, which means you cannot bake shadows into the textures, but this shadow has the same depth to it as the one on the 'roid does.
Moving on from AO, if you take another look at that shadow, it has a shape to it and has quite a detailed edge, so this is not a low quality blocky 'fake' shadow map being cast, this is a high res shadow cast by the model itself. Full dynamic lighting effects anyone? Additionally the shadow has very nice looking soft edges too it, but while they are soft the dispersal of light is kept to a minimum. Which means that although it sounds like a contradiction, the soft edges are kept crisp and sharp.
The ship itself almost looks drawn - if we didn't know it was an in-game screen shot you could be fooled into thinking it was a bit of concept art. So I can see where some may think of cell shading here, but it is actually the high contrast edges cause by AO that gives everything an outlined drawn look. We are not used to seeing (the human eye and brain that is) such high contrast levels as we live in an atmosphere which scatters and bounces light creating ambient lighting. It is how you can see the side of a chair (or whatever) even though it is facing away from the light source (a window or a light bulb for example). While you still get light bouncing about in space, there is no scattering effect from the atmosphere which means that shadows are very high in contrast compared to what we are used to seeing.
The ships has some nice lighting effects in the hanger and also on top of the 'nacelle' (for want of a better name for it) running down the outside of the ship. These effects could be baked into the texture, but I have a feeling that these are also created by a dynamic lighting system. I'm not sure on this, but there are a couple of things that make the think this is so. One in this picture and one in the next which I will point out when we get there.
This is pure speculation on my part, so you are free to think what you want, but the thing in this picture that makes me think the lighting is dynamic and not baked into the texture is in the hanger bay. If you look at the upper lighting strip it is casting a nice blue glow, now if you look a little further down the inner wall you can see a ledge or shelf sticking out into the hanger bay itself, and this ledge is casting a shadow below it right into the hanger bay beyond where the sunlight is penetrating.
Finally for this picture, does anyone else think that the ship on the upper left of the image looks like a borg cube?
OK picture two.
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First off let me point out the other thing that makes me think the lighting on the ship in the first picture is dynamic and not baked. In this picture of the station I would like to direct your attention to the very obvious windows on the left of the image. There's stacks of them so you can't miss them.
Below these there are three blue and one orange light sources. These are definitely glowing beyond what we have seen in TC. They are causing a very distinctive ball of light that reaches well beyond the actual stations model and into space itself. These seem a little to pronounced atm, but this being an early shot hopefully the 'ball' look will be reduced.
There are two ways of creating this effect. 1) you have a dynamic light source with a set radius and fall off, or 2) you place a texture on a plane and rotate the plane so it is always facing the camera.
2 however has it's problems. First of all it does not light up surrounding areas, and secondly (and most importantly) if it intersects a model you can see the edge of the texture as the model cuts into the texture and causes jaggies.
Neither of these problems are apparent on these lights so it leads me to believe (along with the hanger lights of the ship) that these are all dynamic lighting effects. If you want a closer look at the lights for the jaggie an not casting light problems, then look at the blue and orange glows in the foreground by the storage tanks. No jaggies and definitely casting a small amount of light onto the surrounding model.
One unfortunate place where there are jaggies though is on the shadows cast by the station. On the storage tanks in the lower left of the picture there is a very clear shot of low res shadows being used. Considering the nice shadows on the ship in the first picture I can only think of two reasons for this. The first is that this is an earlier shot using an earlier build, and second (and imo the more likely reason) is that because stations are so large and such complex structures, that lower res shadows need to be used to keep performance at a reasonable level. I'd like to see an option to use the higher res shadows on stations if you would like included tbh, but we will have to wait and see.
Apart from pointing out the use of AO on the 'roids again, there is only one other thing of note in this scene and that is the energy ribbon in the right side of the picture. More speculation from me here, but between this picture and some of the shots in the teaser trailer, I will have a stab at saying this is part of a high speed conduit system for ships to travel along.
I have seen people speculating how these may be used to allow faster travel around sectors. My opinion? There are no longer sectors, at least not in the way we currently perceive them. You have to remember that this game was created from scratch to be a totally new game that had nothing to do with the old X games. However, at a later date ES found that the base concepts were compatible with the old X universe and so decided to transfer the game back to a universe that already has a huge amount of lore and history to pull from for background. So taking this into account I do not think we should be thinking in terms of an X game, but in terms of a new game which just happens to share a common history as the original design concepts for the game were not based in the X universe.
I think that we should be thinking more along the lines of freelancer on steroids, or perhaps even EVE. Huge areas of space connected by a fast travel network for local areas, and large jump gates to connect the separate areas.
With that premise, it is logical to say that the ribbon is a part of the local fast travel network.
OK, third picture.
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Wow, just wow. Not very professional I know, but what else can you say about this shot. The detail on the station is just pant wettingly good. Just on the dish alone we can see that the poly count has been given a huge shove in an upwards direction. This also shows why I think that the lower res shadows had to be used for stations, Having something like this casting high res shadows would kill just about any computer out there.
Lots of stuff going on in this picture. Plenty of dynamic lighting, AO and (as someone has mentioned before) colour usage.
There is another energy ribbon/fast transit conduit visible in this shot. Streams of normal sized ships going to and from the station, plus one large ship in the central background, all nicely lit and shadowed. Lots of different light sources on the station, ships and from the sun - which you will notice hasn't been given rubbish lens flare effects beyond a light scattering glare. This looks much better imo.
The 'roids in the background (right side of the picture) have a rather blocky look to them, but given the scale of the picture and the position of everything in it, I think it is safe to assume that these have dropped to a low LOD setting due to their distance from the camera.
And the final picture.
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Another jaw dropper, but lets pull this one apart a little. There is a gate in this shot, and as in the previous shot the colour of the local high speed network 'energy ribbon' is a different colour from the one in the second shot. Whether they are all blue or all yellow and have changed between builds, or whether we have different colour ribbons for whatever reasons is open to speculation at this point. Either way we currently have more than one colour.
This is an energy ribbon gate. Although it is not as easy to see in this shot, there is definitely the start of the ribbon leading away from the back of the gate, and it also curves around and comes back into the shot below the gate (just above the atmosphere). In the teaser trailer you can see another type of gate which is a different design to this one. I think the one in the trailer is more likely to be a major gate to change systems/main areas as it does not seem to have any energy ribbon leading away from it's back edge. However, that is side tracking.
There is something interesting on the foreground station I would like to point out. It's a little difficult to describe the position, so bear with me. Look at the right-hand engine of the ship in the foreground, yeah that big bugger you can't miss. Now move straight down and on the side of the station you can see some black objects.
Now it is difficult to see from this shot and they could be some sort of fighter or drone, but for my money they look suspiciously like gun turrets. Now given the position of the station (in low orbit. In fact so low it needs thrusters not to plummet to the ground), I'm thinking orbital defence platform.
On the ship itself there is one small effect to point out. It has nice faded good looking engine trails.
The last thing I would like to point out in this image is the station in the background. At first glance it looks like a very cool bit of art in the skybox. At first. Until you start to really look at it and notice that there are a lot of areas where the station edges are being hit by a back light (the sun) and the AA is having trouble getting rid of the jaggies. Hang on, AA doesn't work on skybox textures, so that means that this is actually another station and not a bit of scenery. More support for the theory that this is a huge expanse of space and not broken down into 'sectors' in the traditional X sense.
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