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Dual Universe switches to Unigine 2!


NQ-Nyzaltar

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(Posted Friday 29th of April 2016 on the DevBlog

 

unigine-logo.png?w=500

 

Many of you have been waiting for quite some time to see the first in-game screenshots of Dual Universe! It?s coming soon, but one of the main reasons why we haven't shown anything sooner is that we were working on a very big move: we have switched our underlying game engine from Unreal Engine 4 to Unigine 2. Let me say a few words about this decisive evolution.

 
Unigine is a rendering engine that was well known for GPU benchmarks showcasing advanced Direct X11 features. Quoting their web page, ?Unigine 2 is designed to handle virtual worlds of unprecedented scale without limits: double precision of coordinates, supersonic speed of data streaming and huge visibility distance.?. Well, that?s exactly the kind of technology we needed for Dual Universe.
 
We had been working with Unreal Engine 4, which has lots of incredible features and excellent rendering quality, but some of the things we wanted to do were more complex, or would have required us to branch the source code of Unreal to basically make our own version. Unigine 2 is much more low level and thus provides us more flexibility and computational power. Unigine 2 is perhaps less developed than Unreal regarding the game engine side (level edition, assets integration, etc, even if this is progressing rapidly and should improve in the near future), but as we generate everything procedurally those features are less relevant for us.
 
However, the freedom in low level modification and the clear focus of Unigine 2 towards large scale open world rendering was a perfect match for us. It also gives us a great platform to develop our own PBR (Physically Based Rendering) shading framework. We have already started to work with our engineers on many other rendering technologies on top of Unigine 2 features, that will enable us to provide really cool stuffs visually.
 
To give a taste of the kind of rendering that Unigine 2 enables, here are some images from the Unigine website, following the 2.2 release (these are NOT images from Dual Universe!). You can get more images & news from here.
 
 
unigine-thumb-03.jpg?w=200     unigine-thumb-02.jpg?w=200    unigine-thumb-01.jpg?w=200
 
 
 
In the ?coming soon? screenshots of Dual Universe, you will see giant spaceship, mountains, planets and the amazing thing is that everything you will see will be real: you can walk to the top of those mountains, or fly in a ship and visit those planets. We know that since we started to work on Dual Universe, several other games have shown inter-planetary seamless travel, but keep in mind everything you will see is modifiable with voxel technology: You could take a bite out of those mountains, or even out of the planet, and the landscape would adapt from every point within the universe. We are talking about a full gigantic open world with editable content at the scale of planets. There are not many games that can show this today, together with a network engine capable to handle millions of players in the same universe.
 
That?s it for now. I also want to say a big thank you to the Unigine Corp team that has been invaluable and helped a lot in the transition to Unigine 2. More to come soon!
 
 
JC Baillie,
Project Lead.
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Seems like the right move! 

There is this other game out there who's trying to do everything with an FPS engine. Which obviously isn't made for such games.

 

I'm looking forward in seeing some actual screenshots tho. 

Good call this early on! 

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to do this the game that people played it and that Eva already got

 

??? drunk?

 

@Vylqun & Semigod: Eagle777 is from Russia. He made some efforts to write in English (even if it's still difficult to understand)

 

@Eagle777: If I understand well what you are saying, I don't think we can't compare EvE Online and Dual Universe on many aspects:

1) In EvE Online you can build things, but you can't design the shape of your ships or your buildings. It's already predefined in the game.

2) In EvE Online you have planets and Planetary Interaction, but you can't walk yourself, as a character on any planet surface, nor modify it either.

3) Dual Universe is more centered on a character avatar than a ship model considered as an avatar.

So while both games have similar points, they are also very different.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

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@Vylqun & Semigod: Eagle777 is from Russia. He made some efforts to write in English (even if it's still difficult to understand)

 

 

Oh, right, i forgot,sorry my bad. Still weird coloring tho :P

But i sure wouldn't have thought that google translate is so bad in case of russian -> english.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

 

@Vylqun & Semigod: Eagle777 is from Russia. He made some efforts to write in English (even if it's still difficult to understand)

 

@Eagle777: If I understand well what you are saying, I don't think we can't compare EvE Online and Dual Universe on many aspects:

1) In EvE Online you can build things, but you can't design the shape of your ships or your buildings. It's already predefined in the game.

2) In EvE Online you have planets and Planetary Interaction, but you can't walk yourself, as a character on any planet surface, nor modify it either.

3) Dual Universe is more centered on a character avatar than a ship model considered as an avatar.

So while both games have similar points, they are also very different.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

 

 

No harm meant, I was merely joking. 

English isn't my native tongue so I understand all to well. 

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I really feel that the future of MMO's, especially with Sci Fi should be open world from the surface of a planet to the Farthest star in the sky with no loading screens from WoW, to the deceased SWG, to SWTOR, to Eve. In fact it no longer seems this is the future but the present. I can't wait to log into this game and build an Empire or Explore the deepest section of a galaxy.  Do your thing., Originality will stand out for PC gamers.  

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I really feel that the future of MMO's, especially with Sci Fi should be open world from the surface of a planet to the Farthest star in the sky with no loading screens from WoW, to the deceased SWG, to SWTOR, to Eve.

 

This is also exactly our feeling!
From our knowledge, no MMORPG has used the full potential of cloud computing until now, despite the technology has been around for years.
And this is an aspect on which we have some cards to play ;)
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.
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This is also exactly our feeling!
From our knowledge, no MMORPG has used the full potential of cloud computing until now, despite the technology has been around for years.
And this is an aspect on which we have some cards to play ;)
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

 

 

I've been having a look around the unigine 2 website and the stuff it can do, if you can pull of the things they boast... Damn... this will be a very interesting game. 

 

I'm basing much of my ideas from what games i've already played, but using unigine 2 to it's fullest.... This could be a completely ground breaking experience... And i found it early!.. woo i get to see DU grow into the monster it's going to be... It's going to be like poking Bruce Banner with a stick, I'm going to have a front row seat to watching it grow big and green.... or blue.. or orange, not sure what colour your making everything yet..

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I have a question about the use of Unigine.

 

Unigine lists these features as part of their physics engine:

 

Collision detection and rigid body physics

Rag dolls

Various joints, motors and springs

Deformable cloth and rope physics

Dynamic destruction of objects

Force fields

Fluid buoyancy and two-way interaction

Time reverse feature

 

 

https://unigine.com/en/products/engine/versatile-platform 

 

 

Will any of these features be making it into Dual Universe? Specifically Joints, Motors and Springs? 

 

Or will Dual Universe not be using the physics engine features of Unigine? 

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Is there any idea how hard this engine will hit PC systems?  I surely don't want to see.

 

System Requirements

 

Minimum              Recommended

One Skynet          Two Skynets

 

 

 

Not an original joke by me

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  • 1 month later...

Unigine2 is a DX11 Engine.

So no chance to get it run with Vulkan or DX12 i guest? :/

Would be good to have mGPU support and more over, less overhead on the CPU.(for the important stuff xD)

 

oh yeah btw: Hi! xP

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Unigine2 is a DX11 Engine.

So no chance to get it run with Vulkan or DX12 i guest? :/

Would be good to have mGPU support and more over, less overhead on the CPU.(for the important stuff xD)

 

oh yeah btw: Hi! xP

If Planetside 2 could have 3000 players at the same area, with the ForgeLight engine, running on DX9, I think the Unigine with DX11 can do just fine. If Daybreak Games did something as Planetside 2 with that horrendous game engine, I think NQ can do EVERYTHING with Unigine.

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[...]

There is this other game out there who's trying to do everything with an FPS engine. Which obviously isn't made for such games.

[...]

That's why they are rewriting most of it and even adding procedural generation. Whether they will be able to pull it off  it's another matter.

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That's why they are rewriting most of it and even adding procedural generation. Whether they will be able to pull it off  it's another matter.

ACtually, Chris Roberts can officially patent his Star Engine, since there's little to no Cry Engine in there at this point. And given it's Cry Engine and not something not made by Satan, I can't see it going above 100 players in the same area without GPUs whining like "Master, Y U hurting me?!".

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Yes, 100 players seem to be the limit, per instance. But depending on need there are supposed to be several instances at once accommodating more players, seamless between one another. But again, how exactly it will work if ever it's unknown at the moment. And one of the major obstacles seems to be the  net code.

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Yes, 100 players seem to be the limit, per instance. But depending on need there are supposed to be several instances at once accommodating more players, seamless between one another. But again, how exactly it will work if ever it's unknown at the moment. And one of the major obstacles seems to be the  net code.

The only way I see it happening, is if they somehow treat each ship as a mini-instance and blend them all together. And that's a hard pony to tame when it comes to netcode. Their physics grid is already... fidgety, can you imagine isolating each ship to an instance? That would either make each ship have to act on its own laws of physics entirely server-wise, OR, destroy immersion by having a "loading" screen". In any case, they can go with fractures of instances, their star systems look pretty realistic distance-wise. Space is big and they can utilise that to overcome the Cry Engine hard-cap limitations.

 

 

The thing is, a game engine like Unigine, is meant for no loading screens due to its "Serious Games" features, which are meant for large scale simulation. The NovaQuark devs seem to use those to emulate Relativistic Effects (time lag from an objects's light to reach you in space), which blends perfectly with their server tech, giving the server a "head start" to catch up to sending the correct information to anyone, while the players in a cluster don't have to wait for information to come tha they don't really need.

 

 

That's the difference between Cry Engine/Unreal Engine and Unigine. The first two are meant for smaller scales with high level of difedelity in them, while Unigine is meant for enormous scales with lesser fidelity. And I'm totally fine with that. I could play a 2D game if it had Dual Universe's scale.

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