This past week at Gamescom 2017, developer Cloud Imperium Games gave a presentation and introduced new gameplay footage of their upcoming multi-genre space themed MMO, Star Citizen. The full two and a half hour presentation can be watched below, with gameplay footage beginning around the nine-minute mark.

Alpha 3.0 will, among other things, add a new explorable solar system and the first tools for building outposts. One of Cloud Imperium’s biggest Gamescom announcements was the incorporation of their facial animation system, which is also discussed in the presentation. Cloud Imperium has been working with Faceware Technologies to incorporate brand new and cutting edge real-time animation into Star Citizen that allows players to animate their characters’ faces as they speak with other players. The system utilizes Face Over Internet Protocol, which is comprised of a facial motion sensor that detects hundreds of different facial movements in players.

Cloud Imperium also released a separate video concerning their facial animation system and demonstrated progress with the system while clarifying that the technology was still in its early stages of development. Sean Tracy, Technical Director at Cloud Imperium stated, “We’re doing a lot to map and to improve the quality of the actual tracking as well as adding full names into the tracking so that the runtime logic reacts exactly as we expect it to.”

The product of a record-breaking and incredibly successful crowdfunding campaign, Star Citizen and its accompanying single-player campaign Squadron 42 are both in development at Cloud Imperium. Star Citizen‘s Alpha 3.0 update is currently expected to launch in early September.