How small things can get?

As we know the largest map size supported for multiplayer is 20Km x 20Km x 20Km

Currently I wish to go past this limit for a multiplayer scenario and since you can’t go past that limit without endangering the stability of physX and rendering precision I chose a different solution

I plan to take everything smaller in scale , by a factor of 0.01 which will make the multiplayer world space 100x in size or 2000Km in each direction

Now the obvious question would be why do I need so much space , am I a mad man? No, the answer is space.

The game is set in space with large empty space around you and you should be able to move around with high speed.

In other words majority of the map will be empty space to travel around with high speed so its not like too many objects putting stress on the engine.

So what I want to learn is what effects should I notice as I operate at scale as low as 0.01 .
I can already observe a bit jerkier physics and loss of shadows for objects that tiny.

What other things would change dramatically and are they feasible to fix?

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Your question is equile of how much precise is floating point (Float type) can be, the bigger fixed number the less precise floating point becomes. I recommand you to read about floating points. You need to remember that UE4 use single-precision floating points for world location data:

Behavior of floats depends on how code is compiled and how CPU operates floating points (OS might effect it too) and if something involves GPU computations it also depends on it too.

UE4 was design to operate in 1.000000 = 1cm scale. You might figure also some illusion of high speed.