Update log
Full Stationeers update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Store
- Maps
- Workshop
- Performance
We believe this major overhaul of Stationeers was a necessary investment to help the project reach the wider audience it deserves. However, bringing this update to you meant taking a huge risk: pausing our regular 2-3 week updates. This has a direct financial cost, as player numbers and revenue taper off immediately without them. This project has always been more than just a job; it's taught us so much about development and, most importantly, how to build a meaningful relationship with you, our community. We've always strived to be transparent, and you've repaid us by being incredibly active and supportive. We believe this update can bring in many new players and this is where you can make a huge difference:
Spread the word: Make some noise on socials like Reddit and recommend Stationeers to everyone you think might enjoy it.
Welcome new players: Continue being the engaging and welcoming community that you are.
Leave a review: If you haven't already, please consider leaving a review for the game!
Support us directly: If you want to support us in the most impactful way, please consider purchasing our DLC.
Simon Brown - Project Lead
Your support makes these updates possible
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/2624/Stationeers_Complete_the_Set/
The Terrain
We had to rewrite the terrain system to resolve some extremely buggy behavior as well as performance issues caused by even small amounts of exploration within the game. We did this by moving a lot of the terrain tasks to make better utilization of your GPU and have frontloaded a lot of the ram usage.
There are a number of new or changed settings. Two of the major ones that have an impact on performance are Tessellation, Shadows, and Distance Shadows.
This Stationeers update completely redefines the how terrain looks, how the game performs, and how connected you feel to the world while playing. Pictures below will do the speaking, but the new terrain looks amazing, and blows the previous worlds away. The maps are now hand authored with meaningful thought put into kilometers of expanses to explore. Yet at the same time, with this new approach performance has increased, terrain hitching has disappeared, and save files are a tiny fraction of what they used to be.
A New Look
The terrain is rendered with a completely new material that supports a range of features. The largest improvement is the ability for multiple sets of textures, representing multiple voxel types, to dynamically blend together. This is leveraged in many different ways and is a powerful tool for creating new and interesting planets. For example, on Vulcan there’s glowing rocks around the lava, while on Europa there’s a thick layer of ice and snow contrasting the black rock that lays beneath.
Regions
The maps are layered with regions that are used for different things, including names to help you become familiar with the maps and navigating. Additionally, points of interest add flavor, and more functional things such as deep mining regions and playarea bounds.
View Distance
The new terrain system can render kilometers of voxel landscape. Multiple voxel types can create mountain vistas with contrasting rocky peaks and snow layers. The voxel system also allows us to create several layers of perfectly integrated LoDs of decreasing resolution. With the old system the view distance was limited by the culling system and terrain loading requirements. This previously resulted in a short terrain rendering distance which was stitched together with a very low resolution distant terrain mesh.
Looking about 1.5km
Source