Is it possible to make a huge star system 1 LY in radius, using UE5?

Development World Creation
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1

So basicly it. Im asking because I cant set up my lights properly, and UE does not seem to have an omnidirectional light which I can use for the host star, and the directional lights are buggy at such scale.

So two questions:

  1. Is it even possible?
  2. If not, are there any workarounds?

Because people are somehow making their open world space games, and I just want to know how.

2

This post is fairly old and I dont know if you got your answer or anything but I am almost certain it is!
Maybe not 1LY large but currently I am in the process of doing it myself and it has gotten to quite the scale haha~

3

No problem at all but for this scale you need to use proper distance unit.

There would be problem if expect to have “light year” scale coordinates, and in same time you expect “milimeter” scale coordinates locally (like in your starship, or details on one of planets" - because floating point accuracy.

“double” could give enough precision for both, but still there could be problems from GPU side (at least low performance).

Generally “interplanetary” games do some tricks with having (and switching) independent map for each planet (and additionally for detailed “sites” on planets - like cities, bases etc.), and common map with solar system.

4

Didn’t see that the post is already years old, but it popped up in my list and I already wrote the reply.

A game engine is not going to load a system 1 light year in radius. It’s going to fake it.

  • Things load in and out based on distance based on player position.
  • Player position can be faked (aka teleported back to X0 Y0 Z0)
  • Lighting is mostly faked, and not present at distance
  • Lighting doesn’t necessarily work at huge or tiny scale.
  • Distant objects are culled, simplified (LODs), or replaced with textures
  • The playable universe is surrounded by a large textured sphere, showing stars etc. Optionally this sphere moves with the player’s position.
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