How to- Seamless level design

Hi @REDACTEDUSER

That sounds like a great project! I think that until Lumberyard supports rendering and physics at these scales your best bet is going to be to take the kerbal space program approach for rendering in layers and then compositing the results. This work would still be fairly involved though because you need to insert your layer after the stars are drawn (assuming you want to use Lumberyard's HDR star sky) but before the rest of the scene. In addition, you would need to mark these large objects (planets, moons, space stations etc) as the only ones to get rendered in the "far away large objects" pass. You will still also need to apply scaling for these large, far away objects too in order for them to fit within 32 bit limitations and be sure to exclude them from physics also. Here's another example of this kind of approach used for a 3d skybox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJ6zJIHbqY).

In the future we intend to make it easier to create worlds of any size and would love to get your feedback on any ideas you have.

Sean Tracy discusses seamless space to first-person ground terrain and Procedural Planet Editor (space-based massive planetary scale with no restriction on view distance).

Sean Tracy discusses Procedural Universe and Procedural Planet Editor Tools here.

This code/technology/tools were migrated into Lumberyard by CGI / RSI, but we still don't have this technology in the public version of Lumberyard (and probably never will) because Lumberyard Development Team doesn't have the skillsets/developers (or knowledge) that the Crytek developers (Sean Tracy, etc.) currently have that are working at CGI / RSI / Foundry 42.

Hi @NickS

Yes, this seems to be an extremely common request, it's been requested repeatedly for over 3+ years now, but still nothing has been done (in Lumberyard), despite all our requests for this same exact feature/request.

Here, and here, and here and here.

https://forums.awsgametech.com/t/feature-request-open-world-support-suplemental-tools/607/1

https://forums.awsgametech.com/t/64-bit-starcitizen-and-worldspace-sizes/1829/1

CIG / Star Citizen seems to be doing exactly this for their Space Sim - Star Citizen (using a modified version of Lumberyard) but none of these features have not been implemented back into Lumberyard.

It seems that Sean Tracy (Crytek / CIG) has already done this feature/work for Lumberyard for Star Citizen / Cloud Imperium Games] See here, here, and here and here. Unfortunately several years have passed, and we still don't have any of these features added in Lumberyard.

I really wish that Amazon would hire Sean Tracy to lead the Amazon Lumberyard Development and add this code directly into Lumberyard. We just can't seem to get any help from the Lumberyard Dev Team, or even a development roadmap such as this or this or this. EVERY single development project seems to have a public roadmap (explaining what they are currently doing, what features they are currently working on, what features will be included in the next release, and the following release after that, and where the project is currently headed), except Lumberyard. Lumberyard has no roadmap, no direction, and it's impossible to get any help from the Lumberyard Team Developers. They seem to only discuss the past, and not the future, so it makes it difficult/impossible to even plan (or use) Lumberyard for development. It seems the only option at this point in time is to just use Unreal Engine at this point (or possibly migrate to CryEngine 5).

The latest discussion on this topic can be found here:

https://forums.awsgametech.com/t/64-bit-positioning-world-sizes-large-world-coordinates-and-64-bit-physics-refactoring/2448/1

It doesn't seem likely that anyone from the Lumberyard Team will help us, or do anything about this. Lumberyard doesn't seem to have any current plans to implement 64-bit precision, or multi-planet/universe open world support. We've been going on 4+ years, asking for this same exact feature request, and over 3+ years (with Lumberyard) and we still can't seem to get any Lumberyard developers to work on it, or add this feature (and tools) to Lumberyard. This feature doesn't seem likely to ever get added or done in Lumberyard, and it seems like Lumberyard is currently moving backwards (not forwards) with tools and engine development and you'll probably have to switch to Unreal Engine (or CryEngine 5) if you want to have support/features like this added, and see large open-world seamless level design (with the ability to have planets and solar systems), and the planet editor, universe editor and procedural content generation tools.

Chris Roberts (CIG) hired several CryTek developers (CryEngine developers) including Sean Tracy to implement these same features (and develop the Planet Editor Tools, etc.), and they modified Lumberyard to support these exact same features that we've been requesting, but unfortunately the Lumberyard Team currently doesn't have the talent or skills (or knowledge) that CIG/RSI and Sean Tracy have. I do wish that Amazon would directly hire Sean Tracy (CIG / Crytek) to lead the Amazon Lumberyard Development, be the lead technical director for Lumberyard, and implement these same exact features/tools directly into Lumberyard.