If I remember correctly, the diffuse texture was actually REDUCED in the V3 process. They doubled the normal map texture resolution and halved the diffuse map resolution. So its reversed from what it used to be. I too would like prettier spaceships, but it becomes hard to justify if there is any performance hit at all because you hardly ever see any of the spaceships in this game during actual gameplay. Would be nice to have the option to have double texture res though, for those with machines and play styles that can handle it. Or for when you feel like taking screenshots.

I agree some currently V3ed ships definitely look better than others. Ships with lots of drawn-on detailing such as the plating on Amarr ships look very blurry. Drawn-on circular shapes also look bad, more likely to find those on Amarr and Gallente than Minmatar or Caldari. The Harbinger normal map looks kinda messy, but they should probably just redesign that ship eventually anyway like the bombers and Raven. Looks like a chicken. :)

Would be nice if all ships were as crisp as the Impairor...

Ok jumped onto Sisi and hoped for the best.

First impressions where quite nice of the V3 update, but after undocking my Abaddon i was shocked about how bad the textures look if you zoom into close range.

Well, the ships didn't get new textures, just the shaders were changed. So ships like the 'Baddon are in terms of texture resolution still in good ol' '07. Which probably also explains CCP's reluctance to v3 caps ... their textures are even worse.

It's mostly down to the fact CCP had to cater to those strange people still running 128mb graphics cards who for some reason run ten accounts but don't have $200 to put down on a modern mid-range card. Until they stop whining in every dev blog about graphical updates, CCP will keep the game hamstrung because it has to run across a huge variety of hardware.

Either way, it does indeed suck. I was quite disappointed with the visual gains from most of Gallente ships I fly, too.

It's rather shocking, TBH. Most of the frigate and destroyer textures are fairly high-detail, but once you take more than just a cursory look at anything larger than that you'll notice a distinct lack of detail that gets worse the bigger the ship in question is. It's even noticeable on the new R aven model.

I hope the art team will eventually get around to rectify that.

At the moment, ships are limited to 1 or 2 1024x1024 texure maps (T3s are done by individual subsystems and they, frigs and other small things normally use 512x512 maps) so BSs that are many many times bigger than a frigate are stuck with, at most, only 8 times more pixels to play with.

Oh gawd...my eyeballs! Not going to emo-rage cause after all this is just test server but sheet man. My beautiful golden hulls look like crap. If this is their proposed change and its final I would just rather they not **** with them at all.

At the moment, ships are limited to 1 or 2 1024x1024 texure maps (T3s are done by individual subsystems and they, frigs and other small things normally use 512x512 maps) so BSs that are many many times bigger than a frigate are stuck with, at most, only 8 times more pixels to play with.

Well, the ships didn't get new textures, just the shaders were changed. So ships like the 'Baddon are in terms of texture resolution still in good ol' '07. Which probably also explains CCP's reluctance to v3 caps ... their textures are even worse.

I just don't like how half the larger amarr ships now look like they been stuck belly up in the mud...i know it won't change, but this changes my perception of what used to be one of my favorite to look at ships in the game...the abaddon, is now almost as ugly color-wise as the new CNR's...which were only made 'less ugly' by the new textures.

Another major gripe i have. the OLD amarr freighter ( pre trinity ) looked 100 times better than the NEW one even on ultra settings..

See here

http://youtu.be/BrWAOeIN4Ik?t=2m23s

and here

http://youtu.be/e5LdPf2J_hs?t=4m40s

I Don't get how CCPs art team can be even slightly happy with how crap it looks today.

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1205/2012.05.03.16.17.37.jpg

mm yeh id be embarrsed at how a new updated graphics ship to use all modern fancy features look like it was done in MS paint compared to the OLD... one.. ( i know it hasnt been V3ed yet.. so i pray for a decent update. )

And to comment on other amarr V3s. Why is every ship SOOO dark? Mostly tech 2 ships. I i can hardly see my ship, its just a shadow and an outline...
heres a hint, dark things hide bad art work. cough cough.

I would suggest you stop playing with the lowest possible graphics settings. This is how a Providence looks like on my PC:

http://www.mashie.org/eve/providence.jpg

yep, bland and bad. Congrats on proving nothing.