VOXEL ASTRA

During a look at the tools used to build planets, Murray and Ream take us to Soleth Prime and show us a distant view of Oria V. From the surface, we can see real mountains and canyons at a low level of detail. “This isn’t a texture, it’s generated voxels, and as you fly towards it, they get increasingly more detailed.” There are several levels of detail, from those that produce terrain able to be seen from a kilometre away to the very finest level, which handles minutiae such as rocks and grass. You’ll never be able to outrun the procedural generation in-game, but Murray uses the debug camera to move 2,000 times faster than normal. Even at this rate, there is no loading, merely a lower LOD, while the scenery takes a few seconds to catch up when we stop.