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Steam News5 June 20261mo ago

[EXPERIMENTAL] 26w23c: Terrain Virtual Texture in hot water

Last shot at the virtual texture thing (it is actually a lot harder than just VTs, as I am also baking textures live as it is a planetary tech): In order to solve the hiccups issue after prolonged travel I had to make s

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Full Starship EVO update

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What changed

1 fix1 addition5 changes1 removal
  • Gameplay
  • Performance
  • Fixes
  • UI and audio
addedIn order to solve the hiccups issue after prolonged travel I had to make several compromises that now degrade the added value of the technology:
removedDue to technical reason I can no longer use compression, which means I had to half quality to keep size contained.
changedDue to this I had to increase the hybrid range by a bit, which degrade the net FPS gains compared to before. We still gains some FPS (90-95 vs 70).
changedtravel should now be smooth, but it increased the visual artifacts you get when tiles are loading
changed#7781 Mouse cursor for ship now uses same contrast shader as cursor
fixed#7758 Fixed dismantled ships still being available through shipyard recovery

Starship EVO changes

addedIn order to solve the hiccups issue after prolonged travel I had to make several compromises that now degrade the added value of the technology:
removedDue to technical reason I can no longer use compression, which means I had to half quality to keep size contained.
changedDue to this I had to increase the hybrid range by a bit, which degrade the net FPS gains compared to before. We still gains some FPS (90-95 vs 70).
changedtravel should now be smooth, but it increased the visual artifacts you get when tiles are loading
changed#7781 Mouse cursor for ship now uses same contrast shader as cursor

Last shot at the virtual texture thing (it is actually a lot harder than just VTs, as I am also baking textures live as it is a planetary tech):

In order to solve the hiccups issue after prolonged travel I had to make several compromises that now degrade the added value of the technology:

  • Due to technical reason I can no longer use compression, which means I had to half quality to keep size contained.

  • Due to this I had to increase the hybrid range by a bit, which degrade the net FPS gains compared to before. We still gains some FPS (90-95 vs 70).

  • travel should now be smooth, but it increased the visual artifacts you get when tiles are loading

  • also in some case it will look a bit blurry, like wall of rocks at medium distance. Close still looks nice, far looks nicer compared to before, but medium can looks worse =(

=> honestly it felt this whole tech was not worth it, especially with regards with the time invested, it is a bummer =(

If we get any more bumps in the road I feel it will better to call it a day (unfortunately more like a week, anyways...)

Also now there only a single setting, but it still requires 500mb of VRAM

=> I plan to do a lower settings for cards that are too short, if I am not scrapping the whole things that is.

Community Suggestion:

  • #7781 Mouse cursor for ship now uses same contrast shader as cursor

  • #6807 Assembler displays component quantity in storage. Missing components appears in red.

Bugfixes

  • #7736 No computer linked message on linked yoke setup

  • #7758 Fixed dismantled ships still being available through shipyard recovery

  • #7782 #7330 #7025 #7024 Assembler status tooltip could hijack tooltip if windows was closed when on the status tooltip

  • #7760 Deleting children entity now gives bricks back in survival

Thanks for playing!

Source

Steam News / 5 June 2026

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