16000 figures on screen at the same time. can it be done?

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Hi all,

I’m VERY new to Unreal and a complete newbie when it comes to programming but had a question. I am VERY into military simulations and would like to model a COMPLETE 16000 man WWII Division on screen. Yes, each individual figure. Not necessarily in uniform and not even necessarily clothed, just a plain generic figure. Add in LOTS of military machines and weapons and you have a HUGE amount of material to put on the screen. Is there something in Unreal that is packaged or a starting point that would make this possible? I am not a game developer and this would be strictly for my own use to play around with the different unit sizes and variations with their weapons and vehicle to see how they compare. I’ve gone thru several of the tutorials that put one or two figures on the screen but I just don’t have the programming ability to start something like that from scratch. Any ideas? Too much for a graphics engine? I’ve seen it on the net with a couple Civil War simulations but they have no editor so its not possible to change the simulation. Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions would be appreciated. Please refrain from “are you crazy” haha. I can also be contacted by e-mail of you prefer. Thx in advance for any help or suggestions.

Dan

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You’re going to have to use tricks and cheats to get that many characters on screen at once, instancing, replacing characters will billboards/sprites, etc.

I can’t seem to find it right now, but I’m sure I’ve seen a video on the UE4 channel about them using these animated sprites, walking around an environment, that look real 3d, but are just planes.

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You can try this plugin: Object Pool Plugin in Code Plugins - UE Marketplace, should do a trick.