Creating of huge landscapes

I have compiled unreal project, where I can see 300 by 300 kilometers landscape and an object flying above that landscape. I think that there are no any physics and collisions are used because position and rotation of flying object come from network. What instruments may be used to create such huge terrain? May it be just mesh, not landscape? What restricitions Unreal has on landscape size?

This is kind of a hard answer to a very multi-part (unintended I’m sure) question…

To create the massive terrain: Several tools are available. Unreal terrain editor, or, something like World Machine
It maybe a mesh, and, maybe a landscape via heighmap import. Hard to know without the project.
As for restrictions? Well, as far as i am aware, and, i haven’t seen anything noted of a change, replication stops at about X/Y 1.2 million coordinates. There are ways around, via, level streaming and such, well, kinda around it. Single player you wouldn’t have an issue, as far as i know. Really the limitations are simply based on hardware ability at this time. You can make massive maps with tons of foliage and pretty effects. The issue arises when someone with a “low-end” video card (500-700 series, or, 960 or something) attempts to make millions of draw-calls. It is mostly situational, and, how good you are at “fooling the player” to think your world is seamless.

Can you make a 300x300 km 8k map? Sure.
Should you make a 300x300 8k map? Nope.

And what about 300x300 km 1k map?

To create such a landscape is no problem, but the performance is the main reason why this is not a good idea (you somehow have to fill the world + that takes very long and is nearly impossible for such a large map) :wink:

you can create huge landscapes but that’s not the problem, the problem is when placing all of the meshes and buildings and other stuff also into it is where the engine is not going to beable to handle all of this. let along render also the huge skysphere as well, and the resullt is going to be awful frate rates and engine failure. It will cause so many issues trying to put everything else also into it that it will be unplayable… Even level streaming can only stretch it so far… The engine is more suited for doing medium to small outdoor areas or small and medium indoor areas. To keep maximum frame rates. The frame rate is the main issue.

Anyone can advice what is the most “cost effective” way to build the large terrain? I have about 20x20km mesh built in Blender (88 Mb file), using height maps found on-line. I had subdivided plane in blender x10 times to achieve good resolution on displacement map. Now I’m curious if exporting this mesh from Blender to UE4 would be my best bet or there more compact solutions, so I don’t pay later with game speed. Thank you for any advice, total newbie to UE4 here.

There is no need to make super detailed landscape for me. I need just 2 airports to be detailed and 20 kilometers areas around them. All other surface will be visible from big height(flying helicopter), so there is no need for great details.

A question you should ask yourself is what type of machine you want your project to play on. Not everyone has a supercomputer. You can add props of terrain, and mountains, and enlarge your sky sphere etc. That doesn’t solve the limitations of other peoples equipment. A 600 sq km map with 74 million polygons, and 250 gb of textures would never load on a current gen console.

Yeah, I agree with these guys, the negative performance impact of creating that kind of scenario is going to be huge!

World composition is how huge worlds are built. Level streaming is good for manually transitioning interiors and stuff but for the obnoxiously large landscapes world composition is the common solution, it’s tricky though and is probably the most complex part of making UE4 games in my experience thus far due to the fact that getting decent performance is very difficult. When done right it can make games look like a Hollywood production.

Single player, sure. Maybe. Your REALLY stretching the truth here tho.
Mutliplayer? Not a chance. Nope, not anytime soon.

Sorry let me clear this up -
True statement, but, not applied to the OP

Want to bet? Right now is the turning point towards world composition multiplayer as PC games are starting to grow in number that use this method. Consoles can’t do it yet so it’ll be next gen but that’s 2 years probably.

I would love to make that bet with you …

You don’t think world composition is going to be the future, what do you think will be? Right now the consoles are bottlenecked by hdd speed and vram but when the new gen comes out there’ll be no reason not to use it.

Using world comp is not going to resolve the OP issue - your point and question are not on topic at all.
Do i agree that world comp “is the future”? Sure, but not as it is. Even with world comp you cant have billions of foliage spawned in. Performance is horrible with or without it. Now, if your asking me if instanced based world comp would work, sure. But that wouldn’t really do for a multiplayer world solution.