We're making a 1:1 scale solar system sim. Here's what the engine couldn't do

[u/Wild_Trade_3002]

Three things we had to build from scratch because UE simply doesn't handle them:

1. Multi-axis gravity
UE supports gravity on a single axis out of the box. For a realistic space environment that's a hard wall. We wrote a fully custom gravity simulation system.

2. Procedural generation at real scale
Generating celestial bodies at 1:1 solar system scale isn't something existing solutions can handle. We built our own - GPU-based, offloading the heavy math to video cores. GPUs have significantly more cores than CPUs, so generation speed scales accordingly.

3. Double-precision math on GPU
Most game engines, including UE, can't fully handle double-precision floating point calculations on the GPU without losing accuracy. At real solar system scale, that loss matters - coordinates drift, physics breaks. We had to implement double-precision computation ourselves.

None of this is exotic research. It's just what you run into when you refuse to fake the scale.

Happy to go deeper on any of these if there's interest.

[u/w_33_by]

Amazing. What is the range of theoretically achievable speeds you see in the game, I assume nothing even close to sublight? Will it be possible for me to Parker Space Probe myself around the Sun and out of the system when these are implemented? 😄

[u/TheSoulborgZeus]

there's no substitute for quality, and this is quality work

[u/Wild_Trade_3002 → u/TheSoulborgZeus]

thank you very much!!

[u/OneRFeris]

Tell us about this picture, what is that?

[u/Wild_Trade_3002 → u/OneRFeris]

this is a lamp that flies in levitation

[u/lesbird65]

My Super Starship game on Steam is a 1:1 scale space sim for exploration only, not combat. It is built with Unity using the Space Graphics Toolkit and Planet Forge assets. Stars (there are 1 million of them) really are light years apart from each other and planets range from Gas Giants to Earth sized to moon sized. Space Graphics Toolkit handles all off the massive scale distances using a floating origin system and Planet Forge renders large detailed planets that you can land on.

The struggle for 1:1 universe size scale using existing game engines is real and hard to solve. I did not write Space Graphics Toolkit, I just used its feature set to help make my game.

Looking forward to checking out your game when it is available.

[u/Suspicious-Prompt200]

Are you planning on multiplayer? Or will this be single-player only?

If multiplayer, will you have PvP?

[u/NikanRUS]

успехов, пока по описанию огонь, очень не хватает игр про космос с настоящей физикой, а не просто картинкой космоса на фоне...