This still looks really goodm a clear style.
Visually there is still a long way to go; for instance the engine flames were inspired by the in-game ones but our chosen aesthetic is to match the FMV. There are some compromises; ambient occlusion wasn't really a thing even in pre-rendered scenes in 1996, but once you start rendering at 4k I feel it is necessary.
Once it's a bit more common place I hope to start using ray traced shadows/ reflections which should be even closer to the original look.
We've added film grain, but sadly it never comes through the compression very well. It's a lot more noticeable when playing.
Hopefully our new nebula looks familiar, but frustratingly the nebulas seem to change within the same system. Here are two shots from Nephele, I've still not decided if we need to switch skybox between navpoints or have two color sets on a single skybox.
The lexington/ intrepid jump sequences always re-use the same background too, this worked for WC3 with the consistent navy blue space, the more distinctive space in WCIV makes this problematic. No one noticed in the original as in-game it switched to a black background.
