Read all about this update on our blog.
Features
Preface
Improve planet visuals with cloud shadows enabled by default, updated cloud lighting and raymarching, refreshed basemap data, and cleaner distant population impostors.
Use curated start bookmarks instead of geolocation-based start positions.
Highlight new notifications and open the notifications panel when new notifications arrive.
Improve population rendering performance and VRAM use by packing population and impostor instance data.
OrbDemo
Release OrbDemo for the first time as a Melba tech demonstration for ML-assisted planet population.
Render Orb population from ML basemap and mask channels using Orb-specific surface/shader code, species and cluster lookup tables, and updated Orb population assets.
Add the Orb ground-start camera flow, loading overlay, explanatory popup, updated basemaps, and visual tuning for color, clouds, atmosphere, and population readability.
Improve OrbDemo performance and distant-object rendering with optimized population mapping and Orb impostors.
Increase Orb population density and draw distance by allowing procedural population on larger tiles without visible popping.
SwarmDemo and Battle Simulation
Release SwarmDemo for the first time as a single-player troop battle simulation.
Add robot squads that can be spawned, moved, selected, inspected, damaged, killed, and drawn in a ground-facing death pose.
Add battle setup save/load, configurable squad placement, unit-state display, and selection indicators.
Add robot faction meshes, faction variants, unit prefabs, troop audio, and a Swarm help link.
Add Battle Simulation controls for safer camera focus and input-driven simulations.
Add character combat simulation support, including steering, collision handling, attacking, dying, and improved target selection.
Add on-screen F2 control hints and top-bar Quit entries to OrbDemo and SwarmDemo.
Fixes
Fix windowed-mode tooltip placement.
Fix hidden UI accepting interactions after it has been hidden.
Fix waypoint marker placement, above-water waypoint placement, and waypoint travel audio timing.
Fix ocean normal reconstruction and reduce unnecessary ocean instance-data uploads.
Fix an ocean/global-shadow-map issue that could show a black rectangle artifact.
Fix clouds intersecting with the planet in OrbDemo.
Fix high-altitude clouds appearing too bright at night.
Fix normal mapping on assets without UV derivatives.
Fix global shadow map handling when the sun is directly above the camera.
Fix shadow rendering for GLTF models by passing shadow and global-shadow-map values correctly.
Fix resource barriers in post-processing.
Fix instance rendering for non-main cameras.
Fix impostor depth handling so ambient occlusion and shadows line up more cleanly.
Fix grass renderer GPU page faults caused by shader requests and population AOI scheduling.
Fix SwarmDemo faction colors and reduce render item duplication that could crash large squad setups.
Fix Orb basemap cluster assignment and reduce terrain face transition artifacts.
Fix excessive Swarm NPC audio noise in large battles.
Fix grass in distant transition areas rendering too dark.
Fix incorrect green terrain colors near the ocean.
Fix sky and cloud clipping caused by invalid sky-pixel ray limits.
Fix missing population instances in dense Preface locations by increasing supported population capacity.
Fix formations loaded from file in the sandbox not starting.
Fix character heading changes so units rotate smoothly and apply angular velocity.
Improve texture import errors so unsupported texture types are easier to diagnose.
Invisible and Upcoming Work
SwarmDemo scale work
Prototype a dense data-oriented POD/Sandbox simulation path alongside the existing sparse ECS to explore troop-count scaling limits.
Add high-volume simulation samples, double-buffered simulation modes, spatial hashing, elevation sampling, optimized collision/separation, and parallel NPC iteration.
Add a Sandbox execution frame and deferred command buffering for simulation graphs.
Keep health bars, the draggable Battle Simulation toolbar, delayed replicated destruction, and networked NPC/lobby work out of the release-supported path until they are ready.
Battle Simulation and Sandbox
Add single entity picking behind the toolbar feature flag.
Add sandbox execution statistics behind a feature flag.
Add a sandbox execution pipeline and supporting viewport, camera, terrain query, and surface-basis math.
Update POD transform context ergonomics and simplify transform definitions.
OrbDemo ML and data pipeline
Fork Orb-specific surface and population systems so Orb can evolve its population and shader path independently from Preface.
Add cooked basemap loading, tensor byte-stream storage, basemap import utilities, async asset decoding, deterministic cluster/species/population config generation, and validation tests.
Keep Orb population AOI entity spawning disabled in the shipped Orb config while the visible demo uses shader-driven population.
Add tensor debug readback so developers can inspect precise ML data values on terrain.
Rendering and World
Build cloud-shadow and impostor tooling/debug paths used to tune the shipped visuals without exposing debug modes in the public path.
Enable and fix one-pass camera buffers for occlusion and non-main camera rendering.
Add lake rendering behind the lake feature flag.
Convert impostor configuration from binary to JSON and refresh cooked impostor configs.
Move atmospheric scattering into a clearer module and convert its settings and context to context APIs.
Clean up render memory inspection, resource state handling, global shadow map code, TBN generation, render naming/style, instancing, lighting, probes, tone mapping, cameras, shadow maps, debug views, and render resources.
Keep raytracing LOD and virtual-texture-feedback work out of the public path while raytracing remains disabled in shipped config.
Animation and ML
Add skeletal animation runtime groundwork for rig, skin, pose, and bitset assets.
Carry runtime element format information through tensor and tensor-view APIs.
Parse model tensor descriptors and transcode tensor files to the expected format.
Simplify NumPy loading to reduce file buffer copying.
Documentation and Tooling
Add Blender tool support for models with no LODs or one LOD.
Update Swarm robot LOD colors, coverage data, audio banks, and source/cooked assets.
Apply CMake and developer-tooling cleanups for intellisense, third-party targets, and internal UI.
Add documentation for lobbies, multi-process execution, in-game voting, crash reporting, authentication, and analytics.
Fix manual build upload target selection.
Add build source grouping and artifact organization updates.
Code Style and Refactors
Align names and member casing across rendering, lighting, instancing, scattering, analytics, and related systems.
Known Issues
Some AMD GPU configurations may still hit rendering or shutdown crashes near the planet surface - investigation is ongoing.
Foliage, shrubs, and some population objects may pop, flicker, disappear briefly, or transition late as the camera moves.
Some rock assets may appear lower resolution than expected.
Some Preface basemap seams may still be visible on the top and bottom planet faces.
SwarmDemo's release-supported flow is single-player. Multiplayer, lobby flow, join-in-progress, and networked NPC synchronization are present but experimental.
Very large SwarmDemo battles may still hit performance or stability limits.