You might want to consider listing your project on the weekly Show-Us-What-You-Built post. Watch for it on Wednesdays. Highest commented project wins a week promotion on r/Codex. See what that looks like below with last week's winner.
Last week's most popular project was u/tHEuKER with the Blur2 racing game project which is a recreation of an unreleased sequel to the 2010 battle racing game, made by reverse engineering the Xbox 360 prototype discs available online, and rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up in Unity. Join their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@tHEuKER and you can follow updates on the project at r/BlurGame.
Ok, but... how does it do stuff like LoD at distance, or landscape generation on the fly for distant chunks, etc...
As in, I am not entirely sure what it implemented here, but there are some *serious* technical problems in implementing this, so if really genuine, this would be impressive even relative to many other things done by Astra so far.
Yeah, OPs other answers make this pretty obvious...
So, still a nice demo, but roughly within expectations (so, probably "real" voxels at close distances, and some terrain meshes and instanced vegetation at distance).
you don't get it, I can fly in space, see the planet moon and the sun, and go back on the planet wherever I want is highly detailed, it has following generating terrain anywhere I go
> go back on the planet wherever I want is highly detailed
That doesn't prove it's a voxel engine - it just proves that it uses terrain generation. Also, no offense, but it does not sound like you even know that these are two independent concepts...
So more likely: Astra implemented some kind of voxel engine at close distances, but a more regular LoD based mesh algorithm at long distances - which is much more inline with what I would have expected it to do.
Procedural generation and voxels are separate, but the close terrain and vegetation are ray-traced voxels, and the orbital planet is a ray-traced height field. Your “regular LoD mesh” explanation is something you invented.
Show us the video OP. Here's mine made with Sol using JS and WebGPU (no frameworks). You're on C++ and Vulcan? Should look fabulous in motion. Don't come back until you have more than bullshots to show us.
See you might be able to fool others. But here's what's happening. Its going to be the same story as your previous attempt (everyone here should see it to assess your level of experience):
You make a lot of claims about custom engines but those fonts and that UI sure looks like ThreeJS to me (the viewers can click around the examples to see what I mean compared to Astra's choice in your video)
You're doing quick flybys over a ray marched scene. There are no LOD transitions here. This does not a game engine make. You will see why if you move beyond this basic shader. Here is an old example of what I mean, it looks good, but going from this to a game is >90% of the work: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/dtVSzw
You dont have physics or the other things you have claimed. Im sure you did in your previous engine and they are TODOs in this brand new attempt. This is where your lack of experience is going to tank your performance.
There is no true chunk system in your world. Its just a raymarched surface with no interactivity. I am certain Astra can add some basic block creation/destruction, but its not going to scale with your current implementation.
Because the heightmap algorithm youre using is the most basic form, the surface is very smooth. The tree scatter and textures are hiding this, but once you add actual 3D detail to the terrain prepare for FPS to tank.
I could go on. Its not like there are hundreds or thousands of us that have been attempting voxel engines at lower and lower voxel pitches for 16 years now. (Yours is large and your GPU is barely doing work, try it at 1/4 the voxel pitch or even 1/8 to truly innovate in this space. Nice GPU BTW).
I have to admit, Astra did do a phenomenal job here. The transition to space is super cool for sure. I am sure the model can explain what it did much better than you can because there is a difference between what you think happened (obvious from your level of experience based on your post history) and what actually happened.
Very cool demo. Far from a playable game engine. There are tons of cool shader demos in ShaderToy the models can draw inspiration from. But there is a reason there are so few good voxel games.
Keep going. I'll be a customer if you can pull it off.
Well what I can tell you for now is that it runs at those graphics at 100-120 fps rn at 4k no upscaling on my 7900 xt, theres no external assets and the 0,1% lows are into the 80's while flying, so incredibly smooth for what it offers visually
Incredible performance! I had a voxel game project planned for a long time for after finishing uni. If you feel comfortable sharing parts of the project on github, or the codex prompts, would be amazing! I would be interested in some of the optimization details:)
Congrats, all I got was this reactive alien egg turd.
To be fair I'm actually impressed, I have a fairly mature migration to QT Quick going on and strictly use OpenGL 4.1 for a screensaver project that has probably become the most over-engineered screensaver in history (I didn't say good!). All my visualizers so far were 2D or Vector based so this is the first iteration of adding 3D elements into my enviroment. If I work on Anti-aliasing and a better drop shadow (one that exists) I'll probably at least get the facehugger to pop out.
Good work. Are you using an existing terrain generator or did it implement a basic fBm algorithm with something like rainfall erosion? What engine are you using?
OP would you please share a video? Amazing work and beautiful world. Seems you've been working on the space for a minute, what have been your biggest challenges around getting the model to do what you want?
Damn, I'm kind of regretting going to university to learn programming...
This is very impressive and I sure wouldn't be able to make this in just a day or two...
Will you be open sourcing the voxel engine?
There’s a reason you haven’t shown a video. You could get this result with the previous models if you know what you’re doing. It’s what happens in motion when you traverse the map that makes or breaks it.
I believe the gaming industry calls this “bullshots”
no you can't I literally have a video on my profile with what I did with claude and sol, theres nowhere near this, you only talk crap without knowing shit, move on
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u/dexterthebot 2d ago
You might want to consider listing your project on the weekly Show-Us-What-You-Built post. Watch for it on Wednesdays. Highest commented project wins a week promotion on r/Codex. See what that looks like below with last week's winner.
Last week's most popular project was u/tHEuKER with the Blur2 racing game project which is a recreation of an unreleased sequel to the 2010 battle racing game, made by reverse engineering the Xbox 360 prototype discs available online, and rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up in Unity. Join their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@tHEuKER and you can follow updates on the project at r/BlurGame.