Jan Hloušek @janhlousek Twitter profile

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Jan Hloušek

1 year

My #GDC2023 slides are available here: (Predicted Physics Based Multiplayer in Space Engineers) PDF (9MB, without videos): PPTX (2.5GB): Enjoy. Let me know your thoughts!

Predicted Physics Based_Hlousek_Jan.pdf

drive.google.com

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

We are busy optimizing #VRAGE3 water to support large scale changes. For example see the Dam being deleted and water from flooded valley starts flowing with the slope. This is of course without support of VFX like proper waves, particles and foam. Those will be added later.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

Caves with water can be found on #VRAGE3 planets now. The challenge was making the water surface smooth as these ponds are as shallow as 1 water cell (1m thick). I wonder what players will use such cave for🤔

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

Displacing #VRAGE3 water while submerging body into the fluid. You can almost call it a ship, right? And what would Archimedes say?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Time for #VRAGE3 showcase of many individual planet features coming together: - terrain voxel system driven by height maps, details maps and additional voxel entities - ray-marched water rendering - experimental cloud system and more... What do you think stands out the most?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Cliffs are the most challenging type of surface for height-map based terrain systems as the cliff spans typically just few pixels in the texture. In #VRAGE3 , we combat it with procedurally placed overhangs (add) and crevices (subtract) on the slopes. Here is how it looks like.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Our artists are testing #VRAGE3 planet overlays system with freshly generated data. Atmosphere tints the surface too much, otherwise it starts looking quite good I would say.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

Finally! We can look underwater in #VRAGE3 (confirmed: no aliens there). It is first implementation with just a distance based fog and nice refraction when looking through the water surface. It also features new FFT based waves on the surface.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Taking the stroll on #VRAGE3 planet. The setting couldn't be more romantic😅 You can observe many new features coming together here nicely: the tessellated triplanar materials, water shading, the atmosphere sun light color tint and improved planet heightmaps.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

7 months

#VRAGE3 Raytraced Global Illumination using Restir solution. The room is lit by bounces from direct light and emissive surfaces (notice green glow on the wall). No local lights involved in this image. The system is fully dynamic and reacts instantly to light or topology changes

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

With #VRAGE3 water comes a big question: can players live under water? TLDR: yes. It comes with an engineering challenges of course - your base have to be air/watertight, you have to suck water out of it while building and you have to have enough air for yourself while building

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

9 months

Artists improved some regions of our #VRAGE3 planets utilizing detailed height maps support and baked overlays in the distance. Here you can see an Arctic Rift with water coming from the lake.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

When crash landing the ship on the #VRAGE3 planet, make sure to choose a sandy terrain. The ship would look very different after hitting the rock.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

9 months

This year, we improved #VRAGE3 voxel planets visuals significantly. We added lakes, detailed heightmaps, overlays, clouds, caves, overhangs and improved atmosphere. There is lots of work in progress, like rivers and oceans, new biomes and better transitions. Stay tuned.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

10 months

We are continuing implementation of #VRAGE3 water rendering with some larger water bodies. Added indirect light from atmosphere, basic screen space reflections and fixing various ray marching inconsistencies caused by nature of data flowing from the water simulation.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

We are improving our #VRAGE3 planet visuals, making sure transition from space to planet is as seamless as possible with enough detail. Parts of terrain will get hidden with foliage later on (grass, trees and bushes), but it is important the basis is sound. What do you think?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

We have many scenarios for testing our water solution, for example: - roman aqueduct to stress test thin streams of water flowing through horizontal surface - water dam to hold large body of water and testing leaks or even large scale changes What would YOU do with our water?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

Global illumination in #VRAGE3 just got better with specular reflections, mostly visible from emissive stripes. Notice how fast the screen space reflections converges while changing the camera angle, even though it is using spatio-temporal cache to reduce number of rays casted.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

Recently we started experimenting with clouds rendering in #VRAGE3 . These are the first results. It uses ray marching and multiple noise and fractal textures along with gradient textures defining the cloud types. The lighting is very rudimentary atm.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

What to do when someone does not want to exit the cockpit. Shooting block into pieces in #VRAGE3 using our granular fractures & deformation destruction system.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

8 months

Icebergs half submerged in #VRAGE3 water. Creative use of asteroid spawning and material assignment. Any other ideas for water gameplay / visuals?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

3 months

#VRAGE3 water system listens to voxel edits and adjusts its flow when needed. Here you can see a hole made into the mountain lake's shore: it starts leaking water towards the sea below. What would YOU do with voxel edits and water?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

8 months

Dam diversion caused it to leak #VRAGE3 water in large quantities, flowing down the valley. Damn! This is @mikrogen2 's largest scale test so far: The dam spans whole valley, hundreds of meters wide and captures massive amount of water from higher ground sources.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

10 months

#VRAGE3 planet surface, when testing procedurally spawned overhangs and boulders.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

7 months

Mountain region on our new #VRAGE3 planet prepared by @defonten . It combines all the new features like planet overlays, cliffs & overhangs and detailed height maps. Most recent improvement is better meshing which produces sharper details in the distance without performance hit

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Taking a step back comparing the improvements so far. We are not yet done, especially the clouds are missing (in progress atm), but the difference is staggering.

Defonten

@defonten

4 months

Here's the quick comparison of the ⌀ 120km Earthlike planets in VRAGE2 and #VRAGE3 featuring detailed Heightmaps, Biome maps and pre-baked Overlays - all in 8K resolution!

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

In @KeenSWH , my team started development of new engine #VRAGE 3. It is new iteration of the @SpaceEngineersG engine, with similar goals (sandbox, open world, solar system distances etc.), but very different technology.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

We are experimenting with flow visualization for #VRAGE3 water. Simulation hands over to render velocity vector for each water cell, which is then applied in surface shader while generating FFT waves. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

8 months

Last screenshot was taken from this #VRAGE3 footage, where player made dam stops water flow in the valley ruptured by exploding missiles. There is no structural integrity, in reality it would probably collapse. Notice the flow velocity affected by water pressure.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

#VRAGE3 tessellation being applied on a planet materials. Since tessellation is not reflected in physics, it is a matter of fine balance of visual impact and artifacts caused by foot penetrating the surface. What do you think - is the tessellation here too strong or weak?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

#VRAGE3 parallax mapping just got better with support for alpha cutout. Perforation depth on these images is just an illusion on thin geometry.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

Solar eclipse in #VRAGE3 with a brand new skybox.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

We started experimenting with Raytraced Global Illumination on large scale terrain in #VRAGE3 . It improves terrain clarity, especially in shadowed areas. The biggest bottleneck being BLAS creation for terrain meshes. We are considering a secondary, low mesh density clip map.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

Artificial crash landing of blue fighter in #VRAGE3 . The debris are physical fractures of the blocks and armors, no particles present yet.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

We are experimenting with stochastic screen space reflections (SSSR from AMD) combined with an environment probe for missed rays in #VRAGE3 . The reflection strength is increased for presentation purposes, not representative of the final look :) With and without reflections:

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

7 months

Our #VRAGE3 raytraced GI got specular support as well. Notice the floor and wall highlights. I believe this will be a huge step up compared to @SpaceEngineersG environment probe GI. What do you think?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Water surface rendering in #VRAGE3 using Gerstner Waves approach named after 18th century Czech mathematician. We are using ray marching, the water surface is just a simple quad. This is an ocean water representation. 1/4

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

#VRAGE3 planets are shaping up nicely. Water biome breathes so much life to the static terrain. Looking forward to adding grass and vegetation.

Defonten

@defonten

6 months

Testing various individual planetary heightstamps inside of #VRAGE3 - integrating them seamlessly into base planetary heghtmaps that are cubemaped onto a sphere (planet)

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

10 months

Quick experiment of forming #VRAGE3 clouds out of the blue 😅

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

Introduction of 25cm granularity for unified grid in #VRAGE3 is reflected even in larger blocks via 25cm occupancy grid. It means, whenever there is a free cube in the space of any block, you can place there something else. Think about compound blocks in ME, but more versatile!

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

We have added HDR IBL previews to #VRAGE3 for our artists, to test specific indirect lighting conditions.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

Raytraced Global Illumination using Restir method (simulating indirect lighting via accumulation of reflected light over multiple bounces over time) in some #VRAGE3 test scenarios. Notice color bleeding and local lights correctly affecting the environment. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

8 months

Attempt reducing repeating wave patterns on the #VRAGE3 water surface. It looks bit like a boiling water to me - but hey, no patterns :) What do you think? 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

Adding wind to #VRAGE3 water with properties like strength and direction. Waves are generated using Fast Fourier Transformation now, which allows us to combine many frequencies (waves). After many attempts it is hopefully final solution for water surface. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

10 months

Few stills from #VRAGE3 volumetric water rendering using ray marching. The main issue here is waves creating moire and repeating patterns. We are looking into solutions like FFT to mitigate it.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

6 months

Some more destruction testing with #VRAGE3 . Upon impact, blocks now disintegrate into deformed fractures. Those are simulated client side only and does not affect other physical bodies. Armor plating still get deformations applied. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

We are continuing polishing our #VRAGE3 planet system. In this video you can see the smooth transition from macro scale to the tiny details tessellated on GPU. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Few #VRAGE3 atmosphere glamour shots. We made a number of improvements, including proper scaling of calculations to planet size, so the sunsets have a correct colors, dynamically reducing size of atmosphere in distance and adding night fog and haze on horizon. 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

9 months

Low altitude fly through the #VRAGE3 planet valley. Having hard edges of rocks represented well in the voxel technology was a challenge, but I think @defonten did a great job there!

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Asteroid vs ship collision progress in #VRAGE3 update. The Red ship looks a bit haywire, but the collision dynamics are almost there. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

In #VRAGE3 , we are implementing various high level performance tests to reduce the overhead in the communication between the systems. This is a planet galaxy test. 1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

9 months

Another view of the Arctic Rift in our new #VRAGE3 EarthLike planet. The combination of shadow, reflections and specular on the water plays real nice together. Also the edges of the rift have superbly sharp contours, given the voxel nature of the terrain.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

First test of #VRAGE3 water on planet. This is lagoon visual style. There are visible artifacts at the water edges - water sticking to the banks like goo. 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Another #VRAGE3 water rendering experiment, this time using (order independent) transparent pass rendering. It combines previously shared techniques of surface estimation, Gestner waves and volume rendering. 1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

I would like to thank #UnityEngine for free advertising of all the other engines. And by the way, we are hiring ;)

Marek Rosa

@marek_rosa

1 year

Are you a Unity engine developer ready for a new challenge? Join the #VRAGE3 team: VRAGE3 boasts a dynamic, destructible environment using voxels and block grids, deformable and breakable structures, and vast worlds featuring 100+km planets that are both

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

To make our planets more realistic in #VRAGE3 we started adding details to the terrain. It is not an easy feat considering having height map density of 1 pixel per 1m of surface for 120km diameter planet would need ~100 GB of data. Thread with experiments made so far. 🧵1/6

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Artists are taking advantage of #VRAGE3 planet terrain detail maps. Here are some examples of before and after. You can as well see the character reference for the scale. As you can see, the bumps are not too big to still make them wheeled-vehicle-friendly. 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

10 months

We added an atmospheric light into #VRAGE3 clouds rendering. This video shows whole night - day cycle. It is nice progress, but still work in progress. Notice no shadows from clouds on the ground and lack of cloud formation simulation.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

In #VRAGE3 we added underground biomes for planets and changed surface ore distribution to be procedurally generated instead of static map. The layers on this gif are very thin just for presentation purposes. You will have to dig much deeper. But where is the lava? 🤔 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Our very own @defonten put our #VRAGE3 improved height maps into good use. Screenshots include higher density maps with detail height map textures applied. Don't mind the boulders, it is just stress testing in progress.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

In #VRAGE3 , we have changed the triplanar for voxels on planets to use spherical mapping. So, instead of having triplanar textures map in world space, it makes Z texture tangential to planet center (representing ground) and XY the sides. We can have a proper sediments now!

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Planets in #VRAGE3 just got much better from distance by reducing amount of fog. Transition to planet surface is still seamless though. 1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

We are experimenting with cave systems for planets in #VRAGE3 Caves are procedurally generated in specific biomes based on the environment rules artists and designers setup. The images are just programmer art. 1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Experimenting with improving distant planet rendering using PBR overlays. The transition is still temporary (missing mipmaps, triplanar blending operation) #VRAGE3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

For debugging #VRAGE3 destruction system the Havok Visual Debugger is indispensable. Here you can see fighter hitting red ship, tessellating the surface into smaller convex shapes in order to mimic the visual deformation. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

First multiplayer experiment in #VRAGE3 using Epic Online Services with simple entity position synchronization. We have a client server model in place even in single player now, so getting it running fully should not be a big deal. I am glad we have a base networking setup🥳

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

We made some improvements into our planet procedural generator in #VRAGE3 . It can now spawn overhangs on the cliffs and caves. On left screenshot you can see cliff from height map without overhang, on the right with it (it is just programmer placeholder art ;) 1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

11 months

As I already mentioned, we have a new default skybox in #VRAGE3 . It is less green a stainy. You can see it here in all its glory.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

In #VRAGE3 , we have been working on improving our #PBR lighting for past few weeks. These are work in progress results. (don't mind the flicker - TAA is disabled and geometric decals are z-fighting, not yet implemented in the new GPU pipeline) 🧵1/6

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

We made some improvements to our #VRAGE3 atmosphere shader - adding better controls to artists, preserving rayleigh color (see sunset with blue sky) and adaptive atmosphere thickness (based on viewer position, see planet shot)

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Water simulation is developed for some time by dedicated team led by @mikrogen2 . Recently, #VRAGE3 team started to research water rendering approach. These are the results so far. 🧵1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Our experiments with water rendering in #VRAGE3 continue with adding refraction, shadows, depth fog, surface specular and more. System is fully ray-marched, which presents many challenges - mostly discontinuities either in close ups or LOD transitions (not in this video) 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

These are latest improvements to #VRAGE3 planet overlays rendering with new data from our artists. The mid and large distances have overlay normals blended with voxel materials. 1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

How do we actually make sure the #VRAGE3 engine does not break while rapidly developing it. Good question, glad you asked: We have tons of unit tests, but also various integration tests running on multiple test machines continuously. Here is an example of an automated

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Did you know, there is an app, where you can build @SpaceEngineersG ships in VR and then import them into the game? Have anyone tried it?

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Our artists have made a short show reel for #VRAGE3 for upcoming #GDC2023 .

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

We spent lots of time last year to get our local lights & shadow solution in #VRAGE3 . Let me share with you the outcome. Spot lights with cookies in scene with solid and transparent surfaces. Improvement over VR2 is transparent surface support and better shadow quality. 🧵1/4

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Early test of the ship crash landing on the planet. #VRAGE3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Some images from our artists testing improved #VRAGE3 PBR workflow using in-game HDR IBL skyboxes. 1/5

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

9 months

We improved depth based blending of #VRAGE3 triplanar mapped materials and added some more controls for our artists. This looks especially great for the tessellated materials with up to 20cm depth variety like rocks.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

We just added a boulder generator to #VRAGE3 planets. Boulders are separate voxel storages which can be mined for ores. They are procedurally generated from the pool of shapes on top of the planet surface, similarly to asteroids. 1/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Armor deformation test with lodding. Bones are in 1m grid with blocks of arbitrary size. #VRAGE3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Sunsets in #VRAGE3 using updated rayleigh / mie based atmosphere shader.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

To improve visuals of planets in #VRAGE3 we are looking into solving height map limitation of having single value for each surface position, thus unable to represent overhangs, caves, bridges or any other feature with multiple layers. 🧵1/4

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

#VRAGE3 screenshots for Friday evening - Moon and atmosphere.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Few glamour shots of #VRAGE3 boulder fields. It is a stress testing in progress, not representative of final density. It would be hard to drive on such terrain as each boulder is human sized.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

Good morning sunshine from #VRAGE3 😇

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

For #VRAGE3 , we set out to implement global illumination using ray tracing. Here you can see the first prototype implemented in our engine (and signature green skybox) Notice reflection of first light bounce on the floor from colored curtains. 🧵1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

Continuing our quest for stabilizing shadows in #VRAGE3 with local light shadows. Spot (reflector) light shadows: We added the stretch correctness factor, which reduces stair stepping in steep angled shadows and improved Poisson filtering. Closely lit steep angled shadow 🧵1/6

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

In #VRAGE3 , We are continuing with our destruction experiments. Blocks are being destroyed and kinetic energy is transferred between the bodies. 🧵1/5

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

4 months

Another view of the same test scene. Nice property of this solution is that for stabilized river flow, render does not need updates from simulation and river still keeps flowing visually. 🧵2/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

In the past few months, part of the #VRAGE3 team was working on improving direction (sun) shadows. In Space Engineers, we are using shadow cascades supporting planetary scale distances. Here is a thread with some of the improvements we have made so far.

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

We are experimenting with block fracturing. Any fracture piece becomes a debris, despawns after a while. The area of block where piece was removed becomes pass through for rigidbodies, characters and shooting. Here is an example of shooting (debug menu action) #VRAGE3 1/3

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

One of the major improvements in #VRAGE3 will be stability of subgrids connected with constraints like rotor and piston, especially with high mass ratios and long chains. Here is a simple test of all types of constraints we support, including a moving entity collisions. 1/4

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

🤔 @SpaceEngineersG

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

2 years

We take great care of performance in #VRAGE3 development. Each commit is tested for various performance metrics like server / client / render CPU threads, GPU time, memory and per frame allocations and loading times. We have multiple scenes like this entity stress test. 🧵1/4

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

5 months

We are also experimenting with expressing water velocity on its surface, useful for rivers and waterfalls. 🧵2/2

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Jan Hloušek

@janhlousek

1 year

While improving our PBR rendering in #VRAGE3 , all the light types got a proper treatment as well. The showcase scene now contains transparent surfaces along with opaque. Area lights below, got LUTs updated for GGX and mips prefiltered offline. 1/4