v0.5.2

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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.

1. 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.