Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games showed off the game’s underlying StarEngine technology with a new video of 24 and a half minutes. Boldly titled ‘The Future of Gaming, ‘ the flyover video demonstrates the impressive visuals powered by the StarEngine. It all becomes even more remarkable when considering that it renders an open galaxy game that should host over a hundred star systems (when the final game is complete, according to the developer’s original goal) in a completely seamless capacity.
In fact, the footage opens with the following disclaimer: ‘Everything you are about to see has been captured in engine as one continuous shot without loading screens. Distance between planets has been compressed for the sake of brevity.’ Here’s a list of the noteworthy StarEngine features highlighted in the video.
- Solar System-size game spaces
- 64-bit large world coordinates engine
- Fully explorable planets without loading screens or barriers
- Physically based atmospheres with multiple light scattering
- Seamless transition from space to ground (and vice-versa)
- Planet surface generation on client and server at different levels of details
- Object container streaming allows for expansive exteriors with interiors
- Locations populated densely with characters and players
- Physicalized frozen ocean
- Real-time transit systems across city districts
- Fully interactable and explorable multi-crew spaceships
- Real-time biome generation
- Subterranean locations
- Mineral extraction and resource simulation
- Ground fog fully integrated into the atmosphere
- Sunlight shafts into the atmosphere
- Rivers driving terrain modification and object distribution
- Dense environment procedural generation based on rulesets
- Terrain tessellation and hardware displacement
- Dynamic planetary winds driving physics simulation
- Dynamic ecosystem generation for flora and fauna
- Generation and rendering of volumetric clouds at planetary scale
- Real-time large scale asteroid belt generation and rendering
- Real day/night cycle based on planet rotation
- Volumetric clouds on a gas giant scale
- Multiscale volumetric space scaping
- Fully explorable space stations streaming on demand
- Melanin driven skin shader with blemish, freckles, and tattoo layers
- Sun shaft occlusion on a planetary scale
- Dynamic fire simulation based on voxel grids
- Volumetric shadows from clouds cast into the atmosphere
- Water simulation on decals
- Streaming hierarchical object container technology for outposts and POIs
- Physically based advanced water effects
- Physically based destruction
- Real-time water interaction effects
- Real-time cloth simulation
- Dynamic sweat and tears
Star Citizen began development with the CryEngine, later ‘switching’ to Amazon’s Lumberyard Engine. However, the Lumberyard engine itself was based on the CryEngine, essentially making the transition more nominal than factual.
Recently, the StarEngine was updated to support High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays, though the feature is still experimental. On the other hand, there’s no native support for upscalers yet.
While there’s still no release date in sight for Star Citizen, the single player campaign Squadron 42 received a major update last month. CIG now considers the game feature-complete, with the polishing phase coming up next. Of course, there’s no telling how long that will last.
This story-driven mode will feature an ensemble cast of Hollywood actors, including Gary Oldman, Mark Hamill, Gillian Anderson, Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Eleanor Tomlinson, Rhona Mitra, Henry Cavill, and Ben Mendelsohn.
